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Roman Empire, by Edward Gibbon
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Title: The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Volume 1
Author: Edward Gibbon
Posting Date: June 7, 2008 [EBook #890]
Last Updated: November 15, 2012
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE ***
Produced by David Reed, Dale R. Fredrickson and David Widger
CONTENTS
Introduction
Preface By The Editor
Preface Of The Author
Preface To The First Volume
Chapter I: The Extent Of The Empire In The Age Of The Antoninies.—Part I. Part II. Part III.Introduction—The Extent And Military Force Of The Empire In The Age Of The Antonines.
Chapter II: The Internal Prosperity In The Age Of The Antonines.—Part I. Part II. Part III. Part IV.Of The Union And Internal Prosperity Of The Roman Empire, In The Age Of The Antonines.
Chapter III: The Constitution In The Age Of The Antonines.—Part I. Part II.Of The Constitution Of The Roman Empire, In The Age Of The Antonines.
Chapter IV: The Cruelty, Follies And Murder Of Commodus.—Part I. Part II.The Cruelty, Follies, And Murder Of Commodus. Election Of Pertinax—His Attempts To Reform The State—His Assassination By The Prætorian Guards.
Chapter V: Sale Of The Empire To Didius Julianus.—Part I. Part II.Public Sale Of The Empire To Didius Julianus By The Prætorian Guards—Clodius Albinus In Britain, Pescennius Niger In Syria, And Septimius Severus In Pannonia, Declare Against The Murderers Of Pertinax—Civil Wars And Victory Of Severus Over His Three Rivals—Relaxation Of Discipline—New Maxims Of Government.
Chapter VI: Death Of Severus, Tyranny Of Caracalla, Usurpation Of Marcinus.—Part I. Part II. Part III. Part IV.The Death Of Severus.—Tyranny Of Caracalla.—Usurpation Of Macrinus.—Follies Of Elagabalus.—Virtues Of Alexander Severus.—Licentiousness Of The Army.—General State Of The Roman Finances.
Chapter VII: Tyranny Of Maximin, Rebellion, Civil Wars, Death Of Maximin.—Part I. Part II. Part III.The Elevation And Tyranny Of Maximin.—Rebellion In Africa And Italy, Under The Authority Of The Senate.—Civil Wars And Seditions.—Violent Deaths Of Maximin And His Son, Of Maximus And Balbinus, And Of The Three Gordians.—Usurpation And Secular Games Of Philip.
Chapter VIII: State Of Persion And Restoration Of The Monarchy.—Part I. Part II.Of The State Of Persia After The Restoration Of The Monarchy By Artaxerxes.
Chapter IX: State Of Germany Until The Barbarians.—Part I. Part II. Part III.The State Of Germany Till The Invasion Of The Barbarians In The Time Of The Emperor Decius.
Chapter X: Emperors Decius, Gallus, Æmilianus, Valerian And Gallienus.—Part I. Part II. Part III. Part IV.The Emperors Decius, Gallus, Æmilianus, Valerian, And Gallienus.—The General Irruption Of The Barbari Ans.—The Thirty Tyrants.
Chapter XI: Reign Of Claudius, Defeat Of The Goths.—Part I. Part II. Part III.Reign Of Claudius.—Defeat Of The Goths.—Victories, Triumph, And Death Of Aurelian.
Chapter XII: Reigns Of Tacitus, Probus, Carus And His Sons.—Part I. Part II. Part III.Conduct Of The Army And Senate After The Death Of Aurelian.— Reigns Of Tacitus, Probus, Carus, And His Sons.
Chapter XIII: Reign Of Diocletian And This Three Associates.—Part I. Part II. Part III. Part IV.The Reign Of Diocletian And His Three Associates, Maximian, Galerius, And Constantius.—General Reestablishment Of Order And Tranquillity.—The Persian War, Victory, And Triumph.— The New Form Of Administration.—Abdication And Retirement Of Diocletian And Maximian.
Chapter XIV: Six Emperors At The Same Time, Reunion Of The Empire.—Part I. Part II. Part III. Part IV.Troubles After The Abdication Of Diocletian.—Death Of Constantius.—Elevation Of Constantine And Maxen Tius. Six Emperors At The Same Time.—Death Of Maximian And Galerius. —Victories Of Constantine Over Maxentius And Licinus.— Reunion Of The Empire Under The Authority Of Constantine.
Chapter XV: Progress Of The Christian Religion.—Part I. Part II. Part III. Part IV. Part V. Part VI. Part VII. Part VIII. Part IX.The Progress Of The Christian Religion, And The Sentiments, Manners, Numbers, And Condition Of The Primitive Christians.
The great work of Gibbon is indispensable to the student of history. The
literature of Europe offers no substitute for "The Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire." It has obtained undisputed possession, as rightful
occupant, of the vast period which it comprehends. However some subjects,
which it embraces, may have undergone more complete investigation, on the
general view of the whole period, this history is the sole undisputed
authority to which all defer, and from which few appeal to the original
writers, or to more modern compilers. The inherent interest of the
subject, the inexhaustible labor employed upon it; the immense
condensation of matter; the luminous arrangement; the general accuracy;
the style, which, however monotonous from its uniform stateliness, and
sometimes wearisome from its elaborate art., is throughout vigorous,
animated, often picturesque always commands attention, always conveys its
meaning with emphatic energy, describes with singular breadth and
fidelity, and generalizes with unrivalled felicity of expression; all
these high qualifications have secured, and seem likely to secure, its
permanent place in historic literature.
This vast design of Gibbon, the magnificent whole into which he has cast
the decay and ruin of the ancient civilization, the formation and birth of
the new order of things, will of itself, independent of the laborious
execution of his immense plan, render "The Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire" an unapproachable subject to the future historian:* in the
eloquent language of his recent French editor, M. Guizot:—
"The gradual decline of the most extraordinary dominion which has ever
invaded and oppressed the world; the fall of that immense empire, erected
on the ruins of so many kingdoms, republics, and states both barbarous and
civilized; and forming in its turn, by its dismemberment, a multitude of
states, republics, and kingdoms; the annihilation of the religion of
Greece and Rome; the birth and the progress of the two new religions which
have shared the most beautiful regions of the earth; the decrepitude of
the ancient world, the spectacle of its expiring glory and degenerate
manners; the infancy of the modern world, the picture of its first
progress, of the new direction given to the mind and character of man—such
a subject must necessarily fix the attention and excite the interest of
men, who cannot behold with indifference those memorable epochs, during
which, in the fine language of Corneille—
'Un grand destin commence, un grand destin s'achève.'"
This extent and harmony of design is unquestionably that which
distinguishes the work of Gibbon from all other great historical
compositions. He has first bridged the abyss between ancient and modern
times, and connected together the two great worlds of history. The great
advantage which the classical historians possess over those of modern
times is in unity of plan, of course greatly facilitated by the narrower
sphere to which their researches were confined. Except Herodotus, the
great historians of Greece—we exclude the more modern compilers,
like Diodorus Siculus—limited themselves to a single period, or at
least to the contracted sphere of Grecian affairs. As far as the Barbarians
trespassed within the Grecian boundary, or were necessarily mingled up
with Grecian politics, they were admitted into the pale of Grecian
history; but to Thucydides and to Xenophon, excepting in the Persian
inroad of the latter, Greece was the world. Natural unity confined their
narrative almost to chronological order, the episodes were of rare
occurrence and extremely brief. To the Roman historians the course was
equally clear and defined. Rome was their centre of unity; and the
uniformity with which the circle of the Roman dominion spread around, the
regularity with which their civil polity expanded, forced, as it were,
upon the Roman historian that plan which Polybius announces as the subject
of his history, the means and the manner by which the whole world became
subject to the Roman sway. How different the complicated politics of the
European kingdoms! Every national history, to be complete, must, in a
certain sense, be the history of Europe; there is no knowing to how remote
a quarter it may be necessary to trace our most domestic events; from a
country, how apparently disconnected, may originate the impulse which
gives its direction to the whole course of affairs.
In imitation of his classical models, Gibbon places Rome
as the cardinal point from which his inquiries diverge, and to which they
bear constant reference; yet how immeasurable the space over which those
inquiries range; how complicated, how confused, how apparently
inextricable the causes which tend to the decline of the Roman empire! how
countless the nations which swarm forth, in mingling and indistinct
hordes, constantly changing the geographical limits—incessantly
confounding the natural boundaries! At first sight, the whole period, the
whole state of the world, seems to offer no more secure footing to an
historical adventurer than the chaos of Milton—to be in a state of
irreclaimable disorder, best described in the language of the poet:—
"A dark Illimitable ocean, without bound,
Without dimension, where length, breadth, and height,
And time, and place, are lost: where eldest Night
And Chaos, ancestors of Nature, hold
Eternal anarchy, amidst the noise
Of endless wars, and by confusion stand."
We feel that the unity and harmony of narrative, which shall comprehend
this period of social disorganization, must be ascribed entirely to the
skill and luminous disposition of the historian. It is in this sublime
Gothic architecture of his work, in which the boundless range, the
infinite variety, the, at first sight, incongruous gorgeousness of the
separate parts, nevertheless are all subordinate to one main and
predominant idea, that Gibbon is unrivalled. We cannot but admire the
manner in which he masses his materials, and arranges his facts in
successive groups, not according to chronological order, but to their
moral or political connection; the distinctness with which he marks his
periods of gradually increasing decay; and the skill with which, though
advancing on separate parallels of history, he shows the common tendency
of the slower or more rapid religious or civil innovations. However these
principles of composition may demand more than ordinary attention on the
part of the reader, they can alone impress upon the memory the real
course, and the relative importance of the events. Whoever would justly
appreciate the superiority of Gibbon's lucid arrangement, should attempt
to make his way through the regular but wearisome annals of Tillemont, or
even the less ponderous volumes of Le Beau. Both these writers adhere,
almost entirely, to chronological order; the consequence is, that we are
twenty times called upon to break off, and resume the thread of six or
eight wars in different parts of the empire; to suspend the operations of
a military expedition for a court intrigue; to hurry away from a siege to
a council; and the same page places us in the middle of a campaign against
the barbarians, and in the depths of the Monophysite controversy. In
Gibbon it is not always easy to bear in mind the exact dates but the
course of events is ever clear and distinct; like a skilful general,
though his troops advance from the most remote and opposite quarters, they
are constantly bearing down and concentrating themselves on one point—that
which is still occupied by the name, and by the waning power of Rome.
Whether he traces the progress of hostile religions, or leads from the
shores of the Baltic, or the verge of the Chinese empire, the successive
hosts of barbarians—though one wave has hardly burst and discharged
itself, before another swells up and approaches—all is made to flow
in the same direction, and the impression which each makes upon the
tottering fabric of the Roman greatness, connects their distant movements,
and measures the relative importance assigned to them in the panoramic
history. The more peaceful and didactic episodes on the development of the
Roman law, or even on the details of ecclesiastical history, interpose
themselves as resting-places or divisions between the periods of barbaric
invasion. In short, though distracted first by the two capitals, and
afterwards by the formal partition of the empire, the extraordinary
felicity of arrangement maintains an order and a regular progression. As
our horizon expands to reveal to us the gathering tempests which are
forming far beyond the boundaries of the civilized world—as we
follow their successive approach to the trembling frontier—the
compressed and receding line is still distinctly visible; though gradually
dismembered and the broken fragments assuming the form of regular states
and kingdoms, the real relation of those kingdoms to the empire is
maintained and defined; and even when the Roman dominion has shrunk into
little more than the province of Thrace—when the name of Rome,
confined, in Italy, to the walls of the city—yet it is still the
memory, the shade of the Roman greatness, which extends over the wide
sphere into which the historian expands his later narrative; the whole
blends into the unity, and is manifestly essential to the double
catastrophe of his tragic drama.
But the amplitude, the magnificence, or the harmony of design, are, though
imposing, yet unworthy claims on our admiration, unless the details are
filled up with correctness and accuracy. No writer has been more severely
tried on this point than Gibbon. He has undergone the triple scrutiny of
theological zeal quickened by just resentment, of literary emulation, and
of that mean and invidious vanity which delights in detecting errors in
writers of established fame. On the result of the trial, we may be
permitted to summon competent witnesses before we deliver our own
judgment.
M. Guizot, in his preface, after stating that in France and Germany, as
well as in England, in the most enlightened countries of Europe, Gibbon is
constantly cited as an authority, thus proceeds:—
"I have had occasion, during my labors, to consult the writings of
philosophers, who have treated on the finances of the Roman empire; of
scholars, who have investigated the chronology; of theologians, who have
searched the depths of ecclesiastical history; of writers on law, who have
studied with care the Roman jurisprudence; of Orientalists, who have
occupied themselves with the Arabians and the Koran; of modern historians,
who have entered upon extensive researches touching the crusades and their
influence; each of these writers has remarked and pointed out, in the
'History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,' some negligences,
some false or imperfect views some omissions, which it is impossible not
to suppose voluntary; they have rectified some facts combated with
advantage some assertions; but in general they have taken the researches
and the ideas of Gibbon, as points of departure, or as proofs of the
researches or of the new opinions which they have advanced."
M. Guizot goes on to state his own impressions on reading Gibbon's
history, and no authority will have greater weight with those to whom the
extent and accuracy of his historical researches are known:—
"After a first rapid perusal, which allowed me to feel nothing but the
interest of a narrative, always animated, and, notwithstanding its extent
and the variety of objects which it makes to pass before the view, always
perspicuous, I entered upon a minute examination of the details of which
it was composed; and the opinion which I then formed was, I confess,
singularly severe. I discovered, in certain chapters, errors which
appeared to me sufficiently important and numerous to make me believe that
they had been written with extreme negligence; in others, I was struck
with a certain tinge of partiality and prejudice, which imparted to the
exposition of the facts that want of truth and justice, which the English
express by their happy term misrepresentation.
Some imperfect (tronquées) quotations;
some passages, omitted unintentionally or designedly cast a suspicion on
the honesty (bonne foi) of the author; and his
violation of the first law of history—increased to my eye by the
prolonged attention with which I occupied myself with every phrase, every
note, every reflection—caused me to form upon the whole work, a
judgment far too rigorous. After having finished my labors, I allowed some
time to elapse before I reviewed the whole. A second attentive and regular
perusal of the entire work, of the notes of the author, and of those which
I had thought it right to subjoin, showed me how much I had exaggerated
the importance of the reproaches which Gibbon really deserved; I was
struck with the same errors, the same partiality on certain subjects; but
I had been far from doing adequate justice to the immensity of his
researches, the variety of his knowledge, and above all, to that truly
philosophical discrimination (justesse d'esprit)
which judges the past as it would judge the present; which does not permit
itself to be blinded by the clouds which time gathers around the dead, and
which prevent us from seeing that, under the toga, as under the modern
dress, in the senate as in our councils, men were what they still are, and
that events took place eighteen centuries ago, as they take place in our
days. I then felt that his book, in spite of its faults, will always be a
noble work—and that we may correct his errors and combat his
prejudices, without ceasing to admit that few men have combined, if we are
not to say in so high a degree, at least in a manner so complete, and so
well regulated, the necessary qualifications for a writer of history."
The present editor has followed the track of Gibbon through many parts of
his work; he has read his authorities with constant reference to his
pages, and must pronounce his deliberate judgment, in terms of the highest
admiration as to his general accuracy. Many of his seeming errors are
almost inevitable from the close condensation of his matter. From the
immense range of his history, it was sometimes necessary to compress into
a single sentence, a whole vague and diffuse page of a Byzantine
chronicler. Perhaps something of importance may have thus escaped, and his
expressions may not quite contain the whole substance of the passage from
which they are taken. His limits, at times, compel him to sketch; where
that is the case, it is not fair to expect the full details of the
finished picture. At times he can only deal with important results; and in
his account of a war, it sometimes requires great attention to discover
that the events which seem to be comprehended in a single campaign, occupy
several years. But this admirable skill in selecting and giving prominence
to the points which are of real weight and importance—this
distribution of light and shade—though perhaps it may occasionally
betray him into vague and imperfect statements, is one of the highest
excellencies of Gibbon's historic manner. It is the more striking, when we
pass from the works of his chief authorities, where, after laboring
through long, minute, and wearisome descriptions of the accessary and
subordinate circumstances, a single unmarked and undistinguished sentence,
which we may overlook from the inattention of fatigue, contains the great
moral and political result.
Gibbon's method of arrangement, though on the whole most favorable to the
clear comprehension of the events, leads likewise to apparent inaccuracy.
That which we expect to find in one part is reserved for another. The
estimate which we are to form, depends on the accurate balance of
statements in remote parts of the work; and we have sometimes to correct
and modify opinions, formed from one chapter by those of another. Yet, on
the other hand, it is astonishing how rarely we detect contradiction; the
mind of the author has already harmonized the whole result to truth and
probability; the general impression is almost invariably the same. The
quotations of Gibbon have likewise been called in question;—I have,
in general, been more inclined to admire their
exactitude, than to complain of their indistinctness, or incompleteness.
Where they are imperfect, it is commonly from the study of brevity, and
rather from the desire of compressing the substance of his notes into
pointed and emphatic sentences, than from dishonesty, or uncandid
suppression of truth.
These observations apply more particularly to the accuracy and fidelity of
the historian as to his facts; his inferences, of course, are more liable
to exception. It is almost impossible to trace the line between unfairness
and unfaithfulness; between intentional misrepresentation and undesigned
false coloring. The relative magnitude and importance of events must, in
some respect, depend upon the mind before which they are presented; the
estimate of character, on the habits and feelings of the reader.
Christians, like M. Guizot and ourselves, will see some things, and some
persons, in a different light from the historian of the Decline and Fall.
We may deplore the bias of his mind; we may ourselves be on our guard
against the danger of being misled, and be anxious to warn less wary
readers against the same perils; but we must not confound this secret and
unconscious departure from truth, with the deliberate violation of that
veracity which is the only title of an historian to our confidence.
Gibbon, it may be fearlessly asserted, is rarely chargeable even with the
suppression of any material fact, which bears upon individual character;
he may, with apparently invidious hostility, enhance the errors and
crimes, and disparage the virtues of certain persons; yet, in general, he
leaves us the materials for forming a fairer judgment; and if he is not
exempt from his own prejudices, perhaps we might write passions,
yet it must be candidly acknowledged, that his philosophical bigotry is
not more unjust than the theological partialities of those ecclesiastical
writers who were before in undisputed possession of this province of
history.
We are thus naturally led to that great misrepresentation which pervades
his history—his false estimate of the nature and influence of
Christianity.
But on this subject some preliminary caution is necessary, lest that
should be expected from a new edition, which it is impossible that it
should completely accomplish. We must first be prepared with the only
sound preservative against the false impression likely to be produced by
the perusal of Gibbon; and we must see clearly the real cause of that
false impression. The former of these cautions will be briefly suggested
in its proper place, but it may be as well to state it, here, somewhat
more at length. The art of Gibbon, or at least the unfair impression
produced by his two memorable chapters, consists in his confounding
together, in one indistinguishable mass, the origin
and apostolic propagation of the new religion,
with its later progress. No argument for the
divine authority of Christianity has been urged with greater force, or
traced with higher eloquence, than that deduced from its primary
development, explicable on no other hypothesis than a heavenly origin, and
from its rapid extension through great part of the Roman empire. But this
argument—one, when confined within reasonable limits, of
unanswerable force—becomes more feeble and disputable in proportion
as it recedes from the birthplace, as it were, of the religion. The
further Christianity advanced, the more causes purely human were enlisted
in its favor; nor can it be doubted that those developed with such artful
exclusiveness by Gibbon did concur most essentially to its establishment.
It is in the Christian dispensation, as in the material world. In both it
is as the great First Cause, that the Deity is most undeniably manifest.
When once launched in regular motion upon the bosom of space, and endowed
with all their properties and relations of weight and mutual attraction,
the heavenly bodies appear to pursue their courses according to secondary
laws, which account for all their sublime regularity. So Christianity
proclaims its Divine Author chiefly in its first origin and development.
When it had once received its impulse from above—when it had once
been infused into the minds of its first teachers—when it had gained
full possession of the reason and affections of the favored few—it
might be—and to the Protestant, the
rational Christian, it is impossible to define when
it really was—left to make its way by its
native force, under the ordinary secret agencies of all-ruling Providence.
The main question, the divine origin of the religion,
was dexterously eluded, or speciously conceded by Gibbon; his plan enabled
him to commence his account, in most parts, below the
apostolic times; and it was only by the strength of the dark
coloring with which he brought out the failings and the follies of the
succeeding ages, that a shadow of doubt and suspicion was thrown back upon
the primitive period of Christianity.
"The theologian," says Gibbon, "may indulge the pleasing task of
describing religion as she descended from heaven, arrayed in her native
purity; a more melancholy duty is imposed upon the historian:—he
must discover the inevitable mixture of error and corruption which she
contracted in a long residence upon earth among a weak and degenerate race
of beings." Divest this passage of the latent sarcasm betrayed by the
subsequent tone of the whole disquisition, and it might commence a
Christian history written in the most Christian spirit of candor. But as
the historian, by seeming to respect, yet by dexterously confounding the
limits of the sacred land, contrived to insinuate that it was an Utopia
which had no existence but in the imagination of the theologian—as
he suggested rather than affirmed that the days
of Christian purity were a kind of poetic golden age;—so the
theologian, by venturing too far into the domain of the historian, has
been perpetually obliged to contest points on which he had little chance
of victory—to deny facts established on unshaken evidence—and
thence, to retire, if not with the shame of defeat, yet with but doubtful
and imperfect success.
Paley, with his intuitive sagacity, saw through the difficulty of
answering Gibbon by the ordinary arts of controversy; his emphatic
sentence, "Who can refute a sneer?" contains as much truth as point. But
full and pregnant as this phrase is, it is not quite the whole truth; it
is the tone in which the progress of Christianity is traced, in comparison
with the rest of the splendid and prodigally ornamented work, which is the
radical defect in the "Decline and Fall." Christianity alone receives no
embellishment from the magic of Gibbon's language; his imagination is dead
to its moral dignity; it is kept down by a general zone of jealous
disparagement, or neutralized by a painfully elaborate exposition of its
darker and degenerate periods. There are occasions, indeed, when its pure
and exalted humanity, when its manifestly beneficial influence, can compel
even him, as it were, to fairness, and kindle his unguarded eloquence to
its usual fervor; but, in general, he soon relapses into a frigid apathy;
affects an ostentatiously severe impartiality;
notes all the faults of Christians in every age with bitter and almost
malignant sarcasm; reluctantly, and with exception and reservation, admits
their claim to admiration. This inextricable bias appears even to
influence his manner of composition. While all the other assailants of the
Roman empire, whether warlike or religious, the Goth, the Hun, the Arab,
the Tartar, Alaric and Attila, Mahomet, and Zengis, and Tamerlane, are
each introduced upon the scene almost with dramatic animation—their
progress related in a full, complete, and unbroken narrative—the
triumph of Christianity alone takes the form of a cold and critical
disquisition. The successes of barbarous energy and brute force call forth
all the consummate skill of composition; while the moral triumphs of
Christian benevolence—the tranquil heroism of endurance, the
blameless purity, the contempt of guilty fame and of honors destructive to
the human race, which, had they assumed the proud name of philosophy,
would have been blazoned in his brightest words, because they own religion
as their principle—sink into narrow asceticism. The glories
of Christianity, in short, touch on no chord in the heart of the writer;
his imagination remains unkindled; his words, though they maintain their
stately and measured march, have become cool, argumentative, and
inanimate. Who would obscure one hue of that gorgeous coloring in which
Gibbon has invested the dying forms of Paganism, or darken one paragraph
in his splendid view of the rise and progress of Mahometanism? But who
would not have wished that the same equal justice had been done to
Christianity; that its real character and deeply penetrating influence had
been traced with the same philosophical sagacity, and represented with
more sober, as would become its quiet course, and perhaps less
picturesque, but still with lively and attractive, descriptiveness? He
might have thrown aside, with the same scorn, the mass of ecclesiastical
fiction which envelops the early history of the church, stripped off the
legendary romance, and brought out the facts in their primitive nakedness
and simplicity—if he had but allowed those facts the benefit of the
glowing eloquence which he denied to them alone. He might have annihilated
the whole fabric of post-apostolic miracles, if he had left uninjured by
sarcastic insinuation those of the New Testament; he might have cashiered,
with Dodwell, the whole host of martyrs, which owe their existence to the
prodigal invention of later days, had he but bestowed fair room, and dwelt
with his ordinary energy on the sufferings of the genuine witnesses to the
truth of Christianity, the Polycarps, or the martyrs of Vienne.
And indeed, if, after all, the view of the early progress of Christianity
be melancholy and humiliating we must beware lest we charge the whole of
this on the infidelity of the historian. It is idle, it is disingenuous,
to deny or to dissemble the early depravations of Christianity, its
gradual but rapid departure from its primitive simplicity and purity,
still more, from its spirit of universal love. It may be no unsalutary
lesson to the Christian world, that this silent, this unavoidable,
perhaps, yet fatal change shall have been drawn by an impartial, or even
an hostile hand. The Christianity of every age may take warning, lest by
its own narrow views, its want of wisdom, and its want of charity, it give
the same advantage to the future unfriendly historian, and disparage the
cause of true religion.
The design of the present edition is partly corrective, partly
supplementary: corrective, by notes, which point out (it is hoped, in a
perfectly candid and dispassionate spirit with no desire but to establish
the truth) such inaccuracies or misstatements as may have been detected,
particularly with regard to Christianity; and which thus, with the
previous caution, may counteract to a considerable extent the unfair and
unfavorable impression created against rational religion: supplementary,
by adding such additional information as the editor's reading may have
been able to furnish, from original documents or books, not accessible at
the time when Gibbon wrote.
The work originated in the editor's habit of noting on the margin of his
copy of Gibbon references to such authors as had discovered errors, or
thrown new light on the subjects treated by Gibbon. These had grown to
some extent, and seemed to him likely to be of use to others. The
annotations of M. Guizot also appeared to him worthy of being better known
to the English public than they were likely to be, as appended to the
French translation.
The chief works from which the editor has derived his materials are, I.
The French translation, with notes by M. Guizot; 2d edition, Paris, 1828.
The editor has translated almost all the notes of M. Guizot. Where he has
not altogether agreed with him, his respect for the learning and judgment
of that writer has, in general, induced him to retain the statement from
which he has ventured to differ, with the grounds on which he formed his
own opinion. In the notes on Christianity, he has retained all those of M.
Guizot, with his own, from the conviction, that on such a subject, to
many, the authority of a French statesman, a Protestant, and a rational
and sincere Christian, would appear more independent and unbiassed, and
therefore be more commanding, than that of an English clergyman.
The editor has not scrupled to transfer the notes of M. Guizot to the
present work. The well-known zeal for knowledge, displayed in all the
writings of that distinguished historian, has led to the natural
inference, that he would not be displeased at the attempt to make them of
use to the English readers of Gibbon. The notes of M. Guizot are signed
with the letter G.
II. The German translation, with the notes of Wenck. Unfortunately this
learned translator died, after having completed only the first volume; the
rest of the work was executed by a very inferior hand.
The notes of Wenck are extremely valuable; many of them have been adopted
by M. Guizot; they are distinguished by the letter W.*
III. The new edition of Le Beau's "Histoire du Bas Empire, with notes by
M. St. Martin, and M. Brosset." That distinguished Armenian scholar, M.
St. Martin (now, unhappily, deceased) had added much information from
Oriental writers, particularly from those of Armenia, as well as from more
general sources. Many of his observations have been found as applicable to
the work of Gibbon as to that of Le Beau.
IV. The editor has consulted the various answers made to Gibbon on the
first appearance of his work; he must confess, with little profit. They
were, in general, hastily compiled by inferior and now forgotten writers,
with the exception of Bishop Watson, whose able apology is rather a
general argument, than an examination of misstatements. The name of Milner
stands higher with a certain class of readers, but will not carry much
weight with the severe investigator of history.
V. Some few classical works and fragments have come to light, since the
appearance of Gibbon's History, and have been noticed in their respective
places; and much use has been made, in the latter volumes particularly, of
the increase to our stores of Oriental literature. The editor cannot,
indeed, pretend to have followed his author, in these gleanings, over the
whole vast field of his inquiries; he may have overlooked or may not have
been able to command some works, which might have thrown still further
light on these subjects; but he trusts that what he has adduced will be of
use to the student of historic truth.
The editor would further observe, that with regard to some other
objectionable passages, which do not involve misstatement or inaccuracy,
he has intentionally abstained from directing particular attention towards
them by any special protest.
The editor's notes are marked M.
A considerable part of the quotations (some of which in the later editions
had fallen into great confusion) have been verified, and have been
corrected by the latest and best editions of the authors.
June, 1845.
In this new edition, the text and the notes have been carefully revised,
the latter by the editor.
Some additional notes have been subjoined, distinguished by the signature
M. 1845.
It is not my intention to detain the reader by expatiating on the variety
or the importance of the subject, which I have undertaken to treat; since
the merit of the choice would serve to render the weakness of the
execution still more apparent, and still less excusable. But as I have
presumed to lay before the public a first volume only of the History of
the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, it will, perhaps, be expected
that I should explain, in a few words, the nature and limits of my general
plan.
The memorable series of revolutions, which in the course of about thirteen
centuries gradually undermined, and at length destroyed, the solid fabric
of human greatness, may, with some propriety, be divided into the three
following periods:
I. The first of these periods may be traced from the age of Trajan and the
Antonines, when the Roman monarchy, having attained its full strength and
maturity, began to verge towards its decline; and will extend to the
subversion of the Western Empire, by the barbarians of Germany and
Scythia, the rude ancestors of the most polished nations of modern Europe.
This extraordinary revolution, which subjected Rome to the power of a
Gothic conqueror, was completed about the beginning of the sixth century.
II. The second period of the Decline and Fall of Rome may be supposed to
commence with the reign of Justinian, who, by his laws, as well as by his
victories, restored a transient splendor to the Eastern Empire. It will
comprehend the invasion of Italy by the Lombards; the conquest of the
Asiatic and African provinces by the Arabs, who embraced the religion of
Mahomet; the revolt of the Roman people against the feeble princes of
Constantinople; and the elevation of Charlemagne, who, in the year eight
hundred, established the second, or German Empire of the West
III. The last and longest of these periods includes about six centuries
and a half; from the revival of the Western Empire, till the taking of
Constantinople by the Turks, and the extinction of a degenerate race of
princes, who continued to assume the titles of Cæsar and Augustus,
after their dominions were contracted to the limits of a single city; in
which the language, as well as manners, of the ancient Romans, had been
long since forgotten. The writer who should undertake to relate the events
of this period, would find himself obliged to enter into the general
history of the Crusades, as far as they contributed to the ruin of the
Greek Empire; and he would scarcely be able to restrain his curiosity from
making some inquiry into the state of the city of Rome, during the
darkness and confusion of the middle ages.
As I have ventured, perhaps too hastily, to commit to the press a work
which in every sense of the word, deserves the epithet of imperfect. I
consider myself as contracting an engagement to finish, most probably in a
second volume, the first of these memorable periods; and to deliver to the
Public the complete History of the Decline and Fall of Rome, from the age
of the Antonines to the subversion of the Western Empire. With regard to
the subsequent periods, though I may entertain some hopes, I dare not
presume to give any assurances. The execution of the extensive plan which
I have described, would connect the ancient and modern history of the
world; but it would require many years of health, of leisure, and of
perseverance.
Bentinck Street, February 1, 1776.
P. S. The entire History, which is now published, of the Decline and Fall
of the Roman Empire in the West, abundantly discharges my engagements with
the Public. Perhaps their favorable opinion may encourage me to prosecute
a work, which, however laborious it may seem, is the most agreeable
occupation of my leisure hours.
Bentinck Street, March 1, 1781.
An Author easily persuades himself that the public opinion is still
favorable to his labors; and I have now embraced the serious resolution of
proceeding to the last period of my original design, and of the Roman
Empire, the taking of Constantinople by the Turks, in the year one
thousand four hundred and fifty-three. The most patient Reader, who
computes that three ponderous volumes have been already employed on the
events of four centuries, may, perhaps, be alarmed at the long prospect of
nine hundred years. But it is not my intention to expatiate with the same
minuteness on the whole series of the Byzantine history. At our entrance
into this period, the reign of Justinian, and the conquests of the
Mahometans, will deserve and detain our attention, and the last age of
Constantinople (the Crusades and the Turks) is connected with the
revolutions of Modern Europe. From the seventh to the eleventh century,
the obscure interval will be supplied by a concise narrative of such facts
as may still appear either interesting or important.
Bentinck Street, March 1, 1782.
Diligence and accuracy are the only merits which an historical writer may
ascribe to himself; if any merit, indeed, can be assumed from the
performance of an indispensable duty. I may therefore be allowed to say,
that I have carefully examined all the original materials that could
illustrate the subject which I had undertaken to treat. Should I ever
complete the extensive design which has been sketched out in the Preface,
I might perhaps conclude it with a critical account of the authors
consulted during the progress of the whole work; and however such an
attempt might incur the censure of ostentation, I am persuaded that it
would be susceptible of entertainment, as well as information.
At present I shall content myself with a single observation. The
biographers, who, under the reigns of Diocletian and Constantine,
composed, or rather compiled, the lives of the Emperors, from Hadrian to
the sons of Carus, are usually mentioned under the names of Ælius
Spartianus, Julius Capitolinus, Ælius Lampridius, Vulcatius
Gallicanus, Trebellius Pollio and Flavius Vopiscus. But there is so much
perplexity in the titles of the MSS., and so many disputes have arisen
among the critics (see Fabricius, Biblioth. Latin. l. iii. c. 6)
concerning their number, their names, and their respective property, that
for the most part I have quoted them without distinction, under the
general and well-known title of the Augustan History.
I now discharge my promise, and complete my design, of writing the History
of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, both in the West and the
East. The whole period extends from the age of Trajan and the Antonines,
to the taking of Constantinople by Mahomet the Second; and includes a
review of the Crusades, and the state of Rome during the middle ages.
Since the publication of the first volume, twelve years have elapsed;
twelve years, according to my wish, "of health, of leisure, and of
perseverance." I may now congratulate my deliverance from a long and
laborious service, and my satisfaction will be pure and perfect, if the
public favor should be extended to the conclusion of my work.
It was my first intention to have collected, under one view, the numerous
authors, of every age and language, from whom I have derived the materials
of this history; and I am still convinced that the apparent ostentation
would be more than compensated by real use. If I have renounced this idea,
if I have declined an undertaking which had obtained the approbation of a
master-artist, * my excuse may be found in the extreme difficulty of
assigning a proper measure to such a catalogue. A naked list of names and
editions would not be satisfactory either to myself or my readers: the
characters of the principal Authors of the Roman and Byzantine History
have been occasionally connected with the events which they describe; a
more copious and critical inquiry might indeed deserve, but it would
demand, an elaborate volume, which might swell by degrees into a general
library of historical writers. For the present, I shall content myself
with renewing my serious protestation, that I have always endeavored to
draw from the fountain-head; that my curiosity, as well as a sense of
duty, has always urged me to study the originals; and that, if they have
sometimes eluded my search, I have carefully marked the secondary
evidence, on whose faith a passage or a fact were reduced to depend.
I shall soon revisit the banks of the Lake of Lausanne, a country which I
have known and loved from my early youth. Under a mild government, amidst
a beauteous landscape, in a life of leisure and independence, and among a
people of easy and elegant manners, I have enjoyed, and may again hope to
enjoy, the varied pleasures of retirement and society. But I shall ever
glory in the name and character of an Englishman: I am proud of my birth
in a free and enlightened country; and the approbation of that country is
the best and most honorable reward of my labors. Were I ambitious of any
other Patron than the Public, I would inscribe this work to a Statesman,
who, in a long, a stormy, and at length an unfortunate administration, had
many political opponents, almost without a personal enemy; who has
retained, in his fall from power, many faithful and disinterested friends;
and who, under the pressure of severe infirmity, enjoys the lively vigor
of his mind, and the felicity of his incomparable temper. Lord North will
permit me to express the feelings of friendship in the language of truth:
but even truth and friendship should be silent, if he still dispensed the
favors of the crown.
In a remote solitude, vanity may still whisper in my ear, that my readers,
perhaps, may inquire whether, in the conclusion of the present work, I am
now taking an everlasting farewell. They shall hear all that I know
myself, and all that I could reveal to the most intimate friend. The
motives of action or silence are now equally balanced; nor can I
pronounce, in my most secret thoughts, on which side the scale will
preponderate. I cannot dissemble that six quartos must have tried, and may
have exhausted, the indulgence of the Public; that, in the repetition of
similar attempts, a successful Author has much more to lose than he can
hope to gain; that I am now descending into the vale of years; and that
the most respectable of my countrymen, the men whom I aspire to imitate,
have resigned the pen of history about the same period of their lives. Yet
I consider that the annals of ancient and modern times may afford many
rich and interesting subjects; that I am still possessed of health and
leisure; that by the practice of writing, some skill and facility must be
acquired; and that, in the ardent pursuit of truth and knowledge, I am not
conscious of decay. To an active mind, indolence is more painful than
labor; and the first months of my liberty will be occupied and amused in
the excursions of curiosity and taste. By such temptations, I have been
sometimes seduced from the rigid duty even of a pleasing and voluntary
task: but my time will now be my own; and in the use or abuse of
independence, I shall no longer fear my own reproaches or those of my
friends. I am fairly entitled to a year of jubilee: next summer and the
following winter will rapidly pass away; and experience only can determine
whether I shall still prefer the freedom and variety of study to the
design and composition of a regular work, which animates, while it
confines, the daily application of the Author. Caprice and accident may
influence my choice; but the dexterity of self-love will contrive to
applaud either active industry or philosophic repose.
Downing Street, May 1, 1788.
P. S. I shall embrace this opportunity of introducing two verbal
remarks, which have not conveniently offered themselves to my notice. 1.
As often as I use the definitions of beyond the Alps, the Rhine,
the Danube, &c., I generally suppose myself at Rome, and afterwards at
Constantinople; without observing whether this relative geography may
agree with the local, but variable, situation of the reader, or the
historian. 2. In proper names of foreign, and especially of Oriental
origin, it should be always our aim to express, in our English version, a
faithful copy of the original. But this rule, which is founded on a just
regard to uniformity and truth, must often be relaxed; and the exceptions
will be limited or enlarged by the custom of the language and the taste of
the interpreter. Our alphabets may be often defective; a harsh sound, an
uncouth spelling, might offend the ear or the eye of our countrymen; and
some words, notoriously corrupt, are fixed, and, as it were, naturalized
in the vulgar tongue. The prophet Mohammed can no longer be
stripped of the famous, though improper, appellation of Mahomet: the
well-known cities of Aleppo, Damascus, and Cairo, would almost be lost in
the strange descriptions of Haleb, Demashk, and Al
Cahira: the titles and offices of the Ottoman empire are fashioned by
the practice of three hundred years; and we are pleased to blend the three
Chinese monosyllables, Con-fû-tzee, in the respectable name
of Confucius, or even to adopt the Portuguese corruption of Mandarin. But
I would vary the use of Zoroaster and Zerdusht, as I drew my
information from Greece or Persia: since our connection with India, the
genuine Timour is restored to the throne of Tamerlane: our most
correct writers have retrenched the Al, the superfluous article,
from the Koran; and we escape an ambiguous termination, by adopting Moslem
instead of Musulman, in the plural number. In these, and in a thousand
examples, the shades of distinction are often minute; and I can feel,
where I cannot explain, the motives of my choice.
Introduction—The Extent And Military Force Of The Empire In The Age Of The Antonines.
In the second century of the Christian Æra, the empire of Rome
comprehended the fairest part of the earth, and the most civilized portion
of mankind. The frontiers of that extensive monarchy were guarded by
ancient renown and disciplined valor. The gentle but powerful influence of
laws and manners had gradually cemented the union of the provinces. Their
peaceful inhabitants enjoyed and abused the advantages of wealth and
luxury. The image of a free constitution was preserved with decent
reverence: the Roman senate appeared to possess the sovereign authority,
and devolved on the emperors all the executive powers of government.
During a happy period of more than fourscore years, the public
administration was conducted by the virtue and abilities of Nerva, Trajan,
Hadrian, and the two Antonines. It is the design of this, and of the two
succeeding chapters, to describe the prosperous condition of their empire;
and after wards, from the death of Marcus Antoninus, to deduce the most
important circumstances of its decline and fall; a revolution which will
ever be remembered, and is still felt by the nations of the earth.
The principal conquests of the Romans were achieved under the republic;
and the emperors, for the most part, were satisfied with preserving those
dominions which had been acquired by the policy of the senate, the active
emulations of the consuls, and the martial enthusiasm of the people. The
seven first centuries were filled with a rapid succession of triumphs; but
it was reserved for Augustus to relinquish the ambitious design of
subduing the whole earth, and to introduce a spirit of moderation into the
public councils. Inclined to peace by his temper and situation, it was
easy for him to discover that Rome, in her present exalted situation, had
much less to hope than to fear from the chance of arms; and that, in the
prosecution of remote wars, the undertaking became every day more
difficult, the event more doubtful, and the possession more precarious,
and less beneficial. The experience of Augustus added weight to these
salutary reflections, and effectually convinced him that, by the prudent
vigor of his counsels, it would be easy to secure every concession which
the safety or the dignity of Rome might require from the most formidable
barbarians. Instead of exposing his person and his legions to the arrows
of the Parthians, he obtained, by an honorable treaty, the restitution of
the standards and prisoners which had been taken in the defeat of Crassus.
His generals, in the early part of his reign, attempted the reduction of
Ethiopia and Arabia Felix. They marched near a thousand miles to the south
of the tropic; but the heat of the climate soon repelled the invaders, and
protected the un-warlike natives of those sequestered regions. The
northern countries of Europe scarcely deserved the expense and labor of
conquest. The forests and morasses of Germany were filled with a hardy
race of barbarians, who despised life when it was separated from freedom;
and though, on the first attack, they seemed to yield to the weight of the
Roman power, they soon, by a signal act of despair, regained their
independence, and reminded Augustus of the vicissitude of fortune. On the
death of that emperor, his testament was publicly read in the senate. He
bequeathed, as a valuable legacy to his successors, the advice of
confining the empire within those limits which nature seemed to have
placed as its permanent bulwarks and boundaries: on the west, the Atlantic
Ocean; the Rhine and Danube on the north; the Euphrates on the east; and
towards the south, the sandy deserts of Arabia and Africa.
Happily for the repose of mankind, the moderate system recommended by the
wisdom of Augustus, was adopted by the fears and vices of his immediate
successors. Engaged in the pursuit of pleasure, or in the exercise of
tyranny, the first Cæsars seldom showed themselves to the armies, or
to the provinces; nor were they disposed to suffer, that those triumphs
which their indolence neglected, should be usurped by the conduct
and valor of their lieutenants. The military fame of a subject was
considered as an insolent invasion of the Imperial prerogative; and it
became the duty, as well as interest, of every Roman general, to guard the
frontiers intrusted to his care, without aspiring to conquests which might
have proved no less fatal to himself than to the vanquished barbarians.
The only accession which the Roman empire received, during the first
century of the Christian Æra, was the province of Britain. In this
single instance, the successors of Cæsar and Augustus were persuaded
to follow the example of the former, rather than the precept of the
latter. The proximity of its situation to the coast of Gaul seemed to
invite their arms; the pleasing though doubtful intelligence of a pearl
fishery, attracted their avarice; and as Britain was viewed in the light
of a distinct and insulated world, the conquest scarcely formed any
exception to the general system of continental measures. After a war of
about forty years, undertaken by the most stupid, maintained by the most
dissolute, and terminated by the most timid of all the emperors, the far
greater part of the island submitted to the Roman yoke. The various tribes
of Britain possessed valor without conduct, and the love of freedom
without the spirit of union. They took up arms with savage fierceness;
they laid them down, or turned them against each other, with wild
inconsistency; and while they fought singly, they were successively
subdued. Neither the fortitude of Caractacus, nor the despair of Boadicea,
nor the fanaticism of the Druids, could avert the slavery of their
country, or resist the steady progress of the Imperial generals, who
maintained the national glory, when the throne was disgraced by the
weakest, or the most vicious of mankind. At the very time when Domitian,
confined to his palace, felt the terrors which he inspired, his legions,
under the command of the virtuous Agricola, defeated the collected force
of the Caledonians, at the foot of the Grampian Hills; and his fleets,
venturing to explore an unknown and dangerous navigation, displayed the
Roman arms round every part of the island. The conquest of Britain was
considered as already achieved; and it was the design of Agricola to
complete and insure his success, by the easy reduction of Ireland, for
which, in his opinion, one legion and a few auxiliaries were sufficient.
The western isle might be improved into a valuable possession, and the
Britons would wear their chains with the less reluctance, if the prospect
and example of freedom were on every side removed from before their eyes.
But the superior merit of Agricola soon occasioned his removal from the
government of Britain; and forever disappointed this rational, though
extensive scheme of conquest. Before his departure, the prudent general
had provided for security as well as for dominion. He had observed, that
the island is almost divided into two unequal parts by the opposite gulfs,
or, as they are now called, the Friths of Scotland. Across the narrow
interval of about forty miles, he had drawn a line of military stations,
which was afterwards fortified, in the reign of Antoninus Pius, by a turf
rampart, erected on foundations of stone. This wall of Antoninus, at a
small distance beyond the modern cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow, was
fixed as the limit of the Roman province. The native Caledonians
preserved, in the northern extremity of the island, their wild
independence, for which they were not less indebted to their poverty than
to their valor. Their incursions were frequently repelled and chastised;
but their country was never subdued. The masters of the fairest and most
wealthy climates of the globe turned with contempt from gloomy hills,
assailed by the winter tempest, from lakes concealed in a blue mist, and
from cold and lonely heaths, over which the deer of the forest were chased
by a troop of naked barbarians.
Such was the state of the Roman frontiers, and such the maxims of Imperial
policy, from the death of Augustus to the accession of Trajan. That
virtuous and active prince had received the education of a soldier, and
possessed the talents of a general. The peaceful system of his
predecessors was interrupted by scenes of war and conquest; and the
legions, after a long interval, beheld a military emperor at their head.
The first exploits of Trajan were against the Dacians, the most warlike of
men, who dwelt beyond the Danube, and who, during the reign of Domitian,
had insulted, with impunity, the Majesty of Rome. To the strength and
fierceness of barbarians they added a contempt for life, which was derived
from a warm persuasion of the immortality and transmigration of the soul.
Decebalus, the Dacian king, approved himself a rival not unworthy of
Trajan; nor did he despair of his own and the public fortune, till, by the
confession of his enemies, he had exhausted every resource both of valor
and policy. This memorable war, with a very short suspension of
hostilities, lasted five years; and as the emperor could exert, without
control, the whole force of the state, it was terminated by an absolute
submission of the barbarians. The new province of Dacia, which formed a
second exception to the precept of Augustus, was about thirteen hundred
miles in circumference. Its natural boundaries were the Niester, the Teyss
or Tibiscus, the Lower Danube, and the Euxine Sea. The vestiges of a
military road may still be traced from the banks of the Danube to the
neighborhood of Bender, a place famous in modern history, and the actual
frontier of the Turkish and Russian empires.
Trajan was ambitious of fame; and as long as mankind shall continue to
bestow more liberal applause on their destroyers than on their
benefactors, the thirst of military glory will ever be the vice of the
most exalted characters. The praises of Alexander, transmitted by a
succession of poets and historians, had kindled a dangerous emulation in
the mind of Trajan. Like him, the Roman emperor undertook an expedition
against the nations of the East; but he lamented with a sigh, that his
advanced age scarcely left him any hopes of equalling the renown of the
son of Philip. Yet the success of Trajan, however transient, was rapid and
specious. The degenerate Parthians, broken by intestine discord, fled
before his arms. He descended the River Tigris in triumph, from the
mountains of Armenia to the Persian Gulf. He enjoyed the honor of being
the first, as he was the last, of the Roman generals, who ever navigated
that remote sea. His fleets ravaged the coast of Arabia; and Trajan vainly
flattered himself that he was approaching towards the confines of India.
Every day the astonished senate received the intelligence of new names and
new nations, that acknowledged his sway. They were informed that the kings
of Bosphorus, Colchos, Iberia, Albania, Osrhoene, and even the Parthian
monarch himself, had accepted their diadems from the hands of the emperor;
that the independent tribes of the Median and Carduchian hills had
implored his protection; and that the rich countries of Armenia,
Mesopotamia, and Assyria, were reduced into the state of provinces. But
the death of Trajan soon clouded the splendid prospect; and it was justly
to be dreaded, that so many distant nations would throw off the
unaccustomed yoke, when they were no longer restrained by the powerful
hand which had imposed it.
It was an ancient tradition, that when the Capitol was founded by one of
the Roman kings, the god Terminus (who presided over boundaries, and was
represented, according to the fashion of that age, by a large stone)
alone, among all the inferior deities, refused to yield his place to
Jupiter himself. A favorable inference was drawn from his obstinacy, which
was interpreted by the augurs as a sure presage that the boundaries of the
Roman power would never recede. During many ages, the prediction, as it is
usual, contributed to its own accomplishment. But though Terminus had
resisted the Majesty of Jupiter, he submitted to the authority of the
emperor Hadrian. The resignation of all the eastern conquests of Trajan
was the first measure of his reign. He restored to the Parthians the
election of an independent sovereign; withdrew the Roman garrisons from
the provinces of Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Assyria; and, in compliance
with the precept of Augustus, once more established the Euphrates as the
frontier of the empire. Censure, which arraigns the public actions and the
private motives of princes, has ascribed to envy, a conduct which might be
attributed to the prudence and moderation of Hadrian. The various
character of that emperor, capable, by turns, of the meanest and the most
generous sentiments, may afford some color to the suspicion. It was,
however, scarcely in his power to place the superiority of his predecessor
in a more conspicuous light, than by thus confessing himself unequal to
the task of defending the conquests of Trajan.
The martial and ambitious of spirit Trajan formed a very singular contrast
with the moderation of his successor. The restless activity of Hadrian was
not less remarkable when compared with the gentle repose of Antoninus
Pius. The life of the former was almost a perpetual journey; and as he
possessed the various talents of the soldier, the statesman, and the
scholar, he gratified his curiosity in the discharge of his duty. Careless
of the difference of seasons and of climates, he marched on foot, and
bare-headed, over the snows of Caledonia, and the sultry plains of the
Upper Egypt; nor was there a province of the empire which, in the course
of his reign, was not honored with the presence of the monarch. But the
tranquil life of Antoninus Pius was spent in the bosom of Italy, and,
during the twenty-three years that he directed the public administration,
the longest journeys of that amiable prince extended no farther than from
his palace in Rome to the retirement of his Lanuvian villa.
Notwithstanding this difference in their personal conduct, the general
system of Augustus was equally adopted and uniformly pursued by Hadrian
and by the two Antonines. They persisted in the design of maintaining the
dignity of the empire, without attempting to enlarge its limits. By every
honorable expedient they invited the friendship of the barbarians; and
endeavored to convince mankind that the Roman power, raised above the
temptation of conquest, was actuated only by the love of order and
justice. During a long period of forty-three years, their virtuous labors
were crowned with success; and if we except a few slight hostilities, that
served to exercise the legions of the frontier, the reigns of Hadrian and
Antoninus Pius offer the fair prospect of universal peace. The Roman name
was revered among the most remote nations of the earth. The fiercest
barbarians frequently submitted their differences to the arbitration of
the emperor; and we are informed by a contemporary historian that he had
seen ambassadors who were refused the honor which they came to solicit of
being admitted into the rank of subjects.
The terror of the Roman arms added weight and dignity to the moderation of
the emperors. They preserved peace by a constant preparation for war; and
while justice regulated their conduct, they announced to the nations on
their confines, that they were as little disposed to endure, as to offer
an injury. The military strength, which it had been sufficient for Hadrian
and the elder Antoninus to display, was exerted against the Parthians and
the Germans by the emperor Marcus. The hostilities of the barbarians
provoked the resentment of that philosophic monarch, and, in the
prosecution of a just defence, Marcus and his generals obtained many
signal victories, both on the Euphrates and on the Danube. The military
establishment of the Roman empire, which thus assured either its
tranquillity or success, will now become the proper and important object
of our attention.
In the purer ages of the commonwealth, the use of arms was reserved for
those ranks of citizens who had a country to love, a property to defend,
and some share in enacting those laws, which it was their interest as well
as duty to maintain. But in proportion as the public freedom was lost in
extent of conquest, war was gradually improved into an art, and degraded
into a trade. The legions themselves, even at the time when they were
recruited in the most distant provinces, were supposed to consist of Roman
citizens. That distinction was generally considered, either as a legal
qualification or as a proper recompense for the soldier; but a more
serious regard was paid to the essential merit of age, strength, and
military stature. In all levies, a just preference was given to the
climates of the North over those of the South: the race of men born to the
exercise of arms was sought for in the country rather than in cities; and
it was very reasonably presumed, that the hardy occupations of smiths,
carpenters, and huntsmen, would supply more vigor and resolution than the
sedentary trades which are employed in the service of luxury. After every
qualification of property had been laid aside, the armies of the Roman
emperors were still commanded, for the most part, by officers of liberal
birth and education; but the common soldiers, like the mercenary troops of
modern Europe, were drawn from the meanest, and very frequently from the
most profligate, of mankind.
That public virtue, which among the ancients was denominated patriotism,
is derived from a strong sense of our own interest in the preservation and
prosperity of the free government of which we are members. Such a
sentiment, which had rendered the legions of the republic almost
invincible, could make but a very feeble impression on the mercenary
servants of a despotic prince; and it became necessary to supply that
defect by other motives, of a different, but not less forcible nature—honor
and religion. The peasant, or mechanic, imbibed the useful prejudice that
he was advanced to the more dignified profession of arms, in which his
rank and reputation would depend on his own valor; and that, although the
prowess of a private soldier must often escape the notice of fame, his own
behavior might sometimes confer glory or disgrace on the company, the
legion, or even the army, to whose honors he was associated. On his first
entrance into the service, an oath was administered to him with every
circumstance of solemnity. He promised never to desert his standard, to
submit his own will to the commands of his leaders, and to sacrifice his
life for the safety of the emperor and the empire. The attachment of the
Roman troops to their standards was inspired by the united influence of
religion and of honor. The golden eagle, which glittered in the front of
the legion, was the object of their fondest devotion; nor was it esteemed
less impious than it was ignominious, to abandon that sacred ensign in the
hour of danger. These motives, which derived their strength from the
imagination, were enforced by fears and hopes of a more substantial kind.
Regular pay, occasional donatives, and a stated recompense, after the
appointed time of service, alleviated the hardships of the military life,
whilst, on the other hand, it was impossible for cowardice or disobedience
to escape the severest punishment. The centurions were authorized to
chastise with blows, the generals had a right to punish with death; and it
was an inflexible maxim of Roman discipline, that a good soldier should
dread his officers far more than the enemy. From such laudable arts did
the valor of the Imperial troops receive a degree of firmness and docility
unattainable by the impetuous and irregular passions of barbarians.
And yet so sensible were the Romans of the imperfection of valor without
skill and practice, that, in their language, the name of an army was
borrowed from the word which signified exercise. Military exercises were
the important and unremitted object of their discipline. The recruits and
young soldiers were constantly trained, both in the morning and in the
evening, nor was age or knowledge allowed to excuse the veterans from the
daily repetition of what they had completely learnt. Large sheds were
erected in the winter-quarters of the troops, that their useful labors
might not receive any interruption from the most tempestuous weather; and
it was carefully observed, that the arms destined to this imitation of
war, should be of double the weight which was required in real action. It
is not the purpose of this work to enter into any minute description of
the Roman exercises. We shall only remark, that they comprehended whatever
could add strength to the body, activity to the limbs, or grace to the
motions. The soldiers were diligently instructed to march, to run, to
leap, to swim, to carry heavy burdens, to handle every species of arms
that was used either for offence or for defence, either in distant
engagement or in a closer onset; to form a variety of evolutions; and to
move to the sound of flutes in the Pyrrhic or martial dance. In the midst
of peace, the Roman troops familiarized themselves with the practice of
war; and it is prettily remarked by an ancient historian who had fought
against them, that the effusion of blood was the only circumstance which
distinguished a field of battle from a field of exercise. ^39 It was the
policy of the ablest generals, and even of the emperors themselves, to
encourage these military studies by their presence and example; and we are
informed that Hadrian, as well as Trajan, frequently condescended to
instruct the unexperienced soldiers, to reward the diligent, and sometimes
to dispute with them the prize of superior strength or dexterity. Under
the reigns of those princes, the science of tactics was cultivated with
success; and as long as the empire retained any vigor, their military
instructions were respected as the most perfect model of Roman discipline.
Nine centuries of war had gradually introduced into the service many
alterations and improvements. The legions, as they are described by
Polybius, in the time of the Punic wars, differed very materially from
those which achieved the victories of Cæsar, or defended the
monarchy of Hadrian and the Antonines. The constitution of the Imperial
legion may be described in a few words. The heavy-armed infantry, which
composed its principal strength, was divided into ten cohorts, and
fifty-five companies, under the orders of a correspondent number of
tribunes and centurions. The first cohort, which always claimed the post
of honor and the custody of the eagle, was formed of eleven hundred and
five soldiers, the most approved for valor and fidelity. The remaining
nine cohorts consisted each of five hundred and fifty-five; and the whole
body of legionary infantry amounted to six thousand one hundred men. Their
arms were uniform, and admirably adapted to the nature of their service:
an open helmet, with a lofty crest; a breastplate, or coat of mail;
greaves on their legs, and an ample buckler on their left arm. The buckler
was of an oblong and concave figure, four feet in length, and two and a
half in breadth, framed of a light wood, covered with a bull's hide, and
strongly guarded with plates of brass. Besides a lighter spear, the
legionary soldier grasped in his right hand the formidable pilum,
a ponderous javelin, whose utmost length was about six feet, and which was
terminated by a massy triangular point of steel of eighteen inches. This
instrument was indeed much inferior to our modern fire-arms; since it was
exhausted by a single discharge, at the distance of only ten or twelve
paces. Yet when it was launched by a firm and skilful hand, there was not
any cavalry that durst venture within its reach, nor any shield or
corselet that could sustain the impetuosity of its weight. As soon as the
Roman had darted his pilum, he drew his sword, and rushed
forwards to close with the enemy. His sword was a short well-tempered
Spanish blade, that carried a double edge, and was alike suited to the
purpose of striking or of pushing; but the soldier was always instructed
to prefer the latter use of his weapon, as his own body remained less
exposed, whilst he inflicted a more dangerous wound on his adversary. The
legion was usually drawn up eight deep; and the regular distance of three
feet was left between the files as well as ranks. A body of troops,
habituated to preserve this open order, in a long front and a rapid
charge, found themselves prepared to execute every disposition which the
circumstances of war, or the skill of their leader, might suggest. The
soldier possessed a free space for his arms and motions, and sufficient
intervals were allowed, through which seasonable reenforcements might be
introduced to the relief of the exhausted combatants. The tactics of the
Greeks and Macedonians were formed on very different principles. The
strength of the phalanx depended on sixteen ranks of long pikes, wedged
together in the closest array. But it was soon discovered by reflection,
as well as by the event, that the strength of the phalanx was unable to
contend with the activity of the legion.
The cavalry, without which the force of the legion would have remained
imperfect, was divided into ten troops or squadrons; the first, as the
companion of the first cohort, consisted of a hundred and thirty-two men;
whilst each of the other nine amounted only to sixty-six. The entire
establishment formed a regiment, if we may use the modern expression, of
seven hundred and twenty-six horse, naturally connected with its
respective legion, but occasionally separated to act in the line, and to
compose a part of the wings of the army. The cavalry of the emperors was
no longer composed, like that of the ancient republic, of the noblest
youths of Rome and Italy, who, by performing their military service on
horseback, prepared themselves for the offices of senator and consul; and
solicited, by deeds of valor, the future suffrages of their countrymen.
Since the alteration of manners and government, the most wealthy of the
equestrian order were engaged in the administration of justice, and of the
revenue; and whenever they embraced the profession of arms, they were
immediately intrusted with a troop of horse, or a cohort of foot. Trajan
and Hadrian formed their cavalry from the same provinces, and the same
class of their subjects, which recruited the ranks of the legion. The
horses were bred, for the most part, in Spain or Cappadocia. The Roman
troopers despised the complete armor with which the cavalry of the East
was encumbered. Their more useful arms consisted in a helmet, an
oblong shield, light boots, and a coat of mail. A javelin, and a long
broad sword, were their principal weapons of offence. The use of lances
and of iron maces they seem to have borrowed from the barbarians.
The safety and honor of the empire was principally intrusted to the
legions, but the policy of Rome condescended to adopt every useful
instrument of war. Considerable levies were regularly made among the
provincials, who had not yet deserved the honorable distinction of Romans.
Many dependent princes and communities, dispersed round the frontiers,
were permitted, for a while, to hold their freedom and security by the
tenure of military service. Even select troops of hostile barbarians were
frequently compelled or persuaded to consume their dangerous valor in
remote climates, and for the benefit of the state. All these were included
under the general name of auxiliaries; and howsoever they might vary
according to the difference of times and circumstances, their numbers were
seldom much inferior to those of the legions themselves. Among the
auxiliaries, the bravest and most faithful bands were placed under the
command of præfects and centurions, and severely trained in the arts
of Roman discipline; but the far greater part retained those arms, to
which the nature of their country, or their early habits of life, more
peculiarly adapted them. By this institution, each legion, to whom a
certain proportion of auxiliaries was allotted, contained within itself
every species of lighter troops, and of missile weapons; and was capable
of encountering every nation, with the advantages of its respective arms
and discipline. Nor was the legion destitute of what, in modern language,
would be styled a train of artillery. It consisted in ten military engines
of the largest, and fifty-five of a smaller size; but all of which, either
in an oblique or horizontal manner, discharged stones and darts with
irresistible violence.
The camp of a Roman legion presented the appearance of a fortified city.
As soon as the space was marked out, the pioneers carefully levelled the
ground, and removed every impediment that might interrupt its perfect
regularity. Its form was an exact quadrangle; and we may calculate, that a
square of about seven hundred yards was sufficient for the encampment of
twenty thousand Romans; though a similar number of our own troops would
expose to the enemy a front of more than treble that extent. In the midst
of the camp, the prætorium, or general's quarters, rose above the
others; the cavalry, the infantry, and the auxiliaries occupied their
respective stations; the streets were broad and perfectly straight, and a
vacant space of two hundred feet was left on all sides between the tents
and the rampart. The rampart itself was usually twelve feet high, armed
with a line of strong and intricate palisades, and defended by a ditch of
twelve feet in depth as well as in breadth. This important labor was
performed by the hands of the legionaries themselves; to whom the use of
the spade and the pickaxe was no less familiar than that of the sword or
pilum. Active valor may often be the present of nature; but such
patient diligence can be the fruit only of habit and discipline.
Whenever the trumpet gave the signal of departure, the camp was almost
instantly broke up, and the troops fell into their ranks without delay or
confusion. Besides their arms, which the legendaries scarcely considered
as an encumbrance, they were laden with their kitchen furniture, the
instruments of fortification, and the provision of many days. Under this
weight, which would oppress the delicacy of a modern soldier, they were
trained by a regular step to advance, in about six hours, near twenty
miles. On the appearance of an enemy, they threw aside their baggage, and
by easy and rapid evolutions converted the column of march into an order
of battle. The slingers and archers skirmished in the front; the
auxiliaries formed the first line, and were seconded or sustained by the
strength of the legions; the cavalry covered the flanks, and the military
engines were placed in the rear.
Such were the arts of war, by which the Roman emperors defended their
extensive conquests, and preserved a military spirit, at a time when every
other virtue was oppressed by luxury and despotism. If, in the
consideration of their armies, we pass from their discipline to their
numbers, we shall not find it easy to define them with any tolerable
accuracy. We may compute, however, that the legion, which was itself a
body of six thousand eight hundred and thirty-one Romans, might, with its
attendant auxiliaries, amount to about twelve thousand five hundred men.
The peace establishment of Hadrian and his successors was composed of no
less than thirty of these formidable brigades; and most probably formed a
standing force of three hundred and seventy-five thousand men. Instead of
being confined within the walls of fortified cities, which the Romans
considered as the refuge of weakness or pusillanimity, the legions were
encamped on the banks of the great rivers, and along the frontiers of the
barbarians. As their stations, for the most part, remained fixed and
permanent, we may venture to describe the distribution of the troops.
Three legions were sufficient for Britain. The principal strength lay upon
the Rhine and Danube, and consisted of sixteen legions, in the following
proportions: two in the Lower, and three in the Upper Germany; one in Rhætia,
one in Noricum, four in Pannonia, three in Mæsia, and two in Dacia.
The defence of the Euphrates was intrusted to eight legions, six of whom
were planted in Syria, and the other two in Cappadocia. With regard to
Egypt, Africa, and Spain, as they were far removed from any important
scene of war, a single legion maintained the domestic tranquillity of each
of those great provinces. Even Italy was not left destitute of a military
force. Above twenty thousand chosen soldiers, distinguished by the titles
of City Cohorts and Prætorian Guards, watched over the safety of the
monarch and the capital. As the authors of almost every revolution that
distracted the empire, the Prætorians will, very soon, and very
loudly, demand our attention; but, in their arms and institutions, we
cannot find any circumstance which discriminated them from the legions,
unless it were a more splendid appearance, and a less rigid discipline.
The navy maintained by the emperors might seem inadequate to their
greatness; but it was fully sufficient for every useful purpose of
government. The ambition of the Romans was confined to the land; nor was
that warlike people ever actuated by the enterprising spirit which had
prompted the navigators of Tyre, of Carthage, and even of Marseilles, to
enlarge the bounds of the world, and to explore the most remote coasts of
the ocean. To the Romans the ocean remained an object of terror rather
than of curiosity; the whole extent of the Mediterranean, after the
destruction of Carthage, and the extirpation of the pirates, was included
within their provinces. The policy of the emperors was directed only to
preserve the peaceful dominion of that sea, and to protect the commerce of
their subjects. With these moderate views, Augustus stationed two
permanent fleets in the most convenient ports of Italy, the one at
Ravenna, on the Adriatic, the other at Misenum, in the Bay of Naples.
Experience seems at length to have convinced the ancients, that as soon as
their galleys exceeded two, or at the most three ranks of oars, they were
suited rather for vain pomp than for real service. Augustus himself, in
the victory of Actium, had seen the superiority of his own light frigates
(they were called Liburnians) over the lofty but unwieldy castles of his
rival. Of these Liburnians he composed the two fleets of Ravenna and
Misenum, destined to command, the one the eastern, the other the western
division of the Mediterranean; and to each of the squadrons he attached a
body of several thousand marines. Besides these two ports, which may be
considered as the principal seats of the Roman navy, a very considerable
force was stationed at Frejus, on the coast of Provence, and the Euxine
was guarded by forty ships, and three thousand soldiers. To all these we
add the fleet which preserved the communication between Gaul and Britain,
and a great number of vessels constantly maintained on the Rhine and
Danube, to harass the country, or to intercept the passage of the
barbarians. If we review this general state of the Imperial forces; of the
cavalry as well as infantry; of the legions, the auxiliaries, the guards,
and the navy; the most liberal computation will not allow us to fix the
entire establishment by sea and by land at more than four hundred and
fifty thousand men: a military power, which, however formidable it may
seem, was equalled by a monarch of the last century, whose kingdom was
confined within a single province of the Roman empire.
We have attempted to explain the spirit which moderated, and the strength
which supported, the power of Hadrian and the Antonines. We shall now
endeavor, with clearness and precision, to describe the provinces once
united under their sway, but, at present, divided into so many independent
and hostile states.
Spain, the western extremity of the empire, of Europe, and of the ancient
world, has, in every age, invariably preserved the same natural limits;
the Pyrenæan Mountains, the Mediterranean, and the Atlantic Ocean.
That great peninsula, at present so unequally divided between two
sovereigns, was distributed by Augustus into three provinces, Lusitania, Bætica,
and Tarraconensis. The kingdom of Portugal now fills the place of the
warlike country of the Lusitanians; and the loss sustained by the former
on the side of the East, is compensated by an accession of territory
towards the North. The confines of Grenada and Andalusia correspond with
those of ancient Bætica. The remainder of Spain, Gallicia, and the
Asturias, Biscay, and Navarre, Leon, and the two Castiles, Murcia,
Valencia, Catalonia, and Arragon, all contributed to form the third and
most considerable of the Roman governments, which, from the name of its
capital, was styled the province of Tarragona. Of the native barbarians,
the Celtiberians were the most powerful, as the Cantabrians and Asturians
proved the most obstinate. Confident in the strength of their mountains,
they were the last who submitted to the arms of Rome, and the first who
threw off the yoke of the Arabs.
Ancient Gaul, as it contained the whole country between the Pyrenees, the
Alps, the Rhine, and the Ocean, was of greater extent than modern France.
To the dominions of that powerful monarchy, with its recent acquisitions
of Alsace and Lorraine, we must add the duchy of Savoy, the cantons of
Switzerland, the four electorates of the Rhine, and the territories of
Liege, Luxemburgh, Hainault, Flanders, and Brabant. When Augustus gave
laws to the conquests of his father, he introduced a division of Gaul,
equally adapted to the progress of the legions, to the course of the
rivers, and to the principal national distinctions, which had comprehended
above a hundred independent states. The sea-coast of the Mediterranean,
Languedoc, Provence, and Dauphine, received their provincial appellation
from the colony of Narbonne. The government of Aquitaine was extended from
the Pyrenees to the Loire. The country between the Loire and the Seine was
styled the Celtic Gaul, and soon borrowed a new denomination from the
celebrated colony of Lugdunum, or Lyons. The Belgic lay beyond the Seine,
and in more ancient times had been bounded only by the Rhine; but a little
before the age of Cæsar, the Germans, abusing their superiority of
valor, had occupied a considerable portion of the Belgic territory. The
Roman conquerors very eagerly embraced so flattering a circumstance, and
the Gallic frontier of the Rhine, from Basil to Leyden, received the
pompous names of the Upper and the Lower Germany. Such, under the reign of
the Antonines, were the six provinces of Gaul; the Narbonnese, Aquitaine,
the Celtic, or Lyonnese, the Belgic, and the two Germanies.
We have already had occasion to mention the conquest of Britain, and to
fix the boundary of the Roman Province in this island. It comprehended all
England, Wales, and the Lowlands of Scotland, as far as the Friths of
Dumbarton and Edinburgh. Before Britain lost her freedom, the country was
irregularly divided between thirty tribes of barbarians, of whom the most
considerable were the Belgæ in the West, the Brigantes in the North,
the Silures in South Wales, and the Iceni in Norfolk and Suffolk. As far
as we can either trace or credit the resemblance of manners and language,
Spain, Gaul, and Britain were peopled by the same hardy race of savages.
Before they yielded to the Roman arms, they often disputed the field, and
often renewed the contest. After their submission, they constituted the
western division of the European provinces, which extended from the
columns of Hercules to the wall of Antoninus, and from the mouth of the
Tagus to the sources of the Rhine and Danube.
Before the Roman conquest, the country which is now called Lombardy, was
not considered as a part of Italy. It had been occupied by a powerful
colony of Gauls, who, settling themselves along the banks of the Po, from
Piedmont to Romagna, carried their arms and diffused their name from the
Alps to the Apennine. The Ligurians dwelt on the rocky coast which now
forms the republic of Genoa. Venice was yet unborn; but the territories of
that state, which lie to the east of the Adige, were inhabited by the
Venetians. The middle part of the peninsula, that now composes the duchy
of Tuscany and the ecclesiastical state, was the ancient seat of the
Etruscans and Umbrians; to the former of whom Italy was indebted for the
first rudiments of civilized life. The Tyber rolled at the foot of the
seven hills of Rome, and the country of the Sabines, the Latins, and the
Volsci, from that river to the frontiers of Naples, was the theatre of her
infant victories. On that celebrated ground the first consuls deserved
triumphs, their successors adorned villas, and their posterity have
erected convents. Capua and Campania possessed the immediate territory of
Naples; the rest of the kingdom was inhabited by many warlike nations, the
Marsi, the Samnites, the Apulians, and the Lucanians; and the sea-coasts
had been covered by the flourishing colonies of the Greeks. We may remark,
that when Augustus divided Italy into eleven regions, the little province
of Istria was annexed to that seat of Roman sovereignty.
The European provinces of Rome were protected by the course of the Rhine
and the Danube. The latter of those mighty streams, which rises at the
distance of only thirty miles from the former, flows above thirteen
hundred miles, for the most part to the south-east, collects the tribute
of sixty navigable rivers, and is, at length, through six mouths, received
into the Euxine, which appears scarcely equal to such an accession of
waters. The provinces of the Danube soon acquired the general appellation
of Illyricum, or the Illyrian frontier, and were esteemed the most warlike
of the empire; but they deserve to be more particularly considered under
the names of Rhætia, Noricum, Pannonia, Dalmatia, Dacia, Mæsia,
Thrace, Macedonia, and Greece.
The province of Rhætia, which soon extinguished the name of the
Vindelicians, extended from the summit of the Alps to the banks of the
Danube; from its source, as far as its conflux with the Inn. The greatest
part of the flat country is subject to the elector of Bavaria; the city of
Augsburg is protected by the constitution of the German empire; the
Grisons are safe in their mountains, and the country of Tirol is ranked
among the numerous provinces of the house of Austria.
The wide extent of territory which is included between the Inn, the
Danube, and the Save,—Austria, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, the
Lower Hungary, and Sclavonia,—was known to the ancients under the
names of Noricum and Pannonia. In their original state of independence,
their fierce inhabitants were intimately connected. Under the Roman
government they were frequently united, and they still remain the
patrimony of a single family. They now contain the residence of a German
prince, who styles himself Emperor of the Romans, and form the centre, as
well as strength, of the Austrian power. It may not be improper to
observe, that if we except Bohemia, Moravia, the northern skirts of
Austria, and a part of Hungary between the Teyss and the Danube, all the
other dominions of the House of Austria were comprised within the limits
of the Roman Empire.
Dalmatia, to which the name of Illyricum more properly belonged, was a
long, but narrow tract, between the Save and the Adriatic. The best part
of the sea-coast, which still retains its ancient appellation, is a
province of the Venetian state, and the seat of the little republic of
Ragusa. The inland parts have assumed the Sclavonian names of Croatia and
Bosnia; the former obeys an Austrian governor, the latter a Turkish pacha;
but the whole country is still infested by tribes of barbarians, whose
savage independence irregularly marks the doubtful limit of the Christian
and Mahometan power.
After the Danube had received the waters of the Teyss and the Save, it
acquired, at least among the Greeks, the name of Ister. It formerly
divided Mæsia and Dacia, the latter of which, as we have already
seen, was a conquest of Trajan, and the only province beyond the river. If
we inquire into the present state of those countries, we shall find that,
on the left hand of the Danube, Temeswar and Transylvania have been
annexed, after many revolutions, to the crown of Hungary; whilst the
principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia acknowledge the supremacy of the
Ottoman Porte. On the right hand of the Danube, Mæsia, which, during
the middle ages, was broken into the barbarian kingdoms of Servia and
Bulgaria, is again united in Turkish slavery.
The appellation of Roumelia, which is still bestowed by the Turks on the
extensive countries of Thrace, Macedonia, and Greece, preserves the memory
of their ancient state under the Roman empire. In the time of the
Antonines, the martial regions of Thrace, from the mountains of Hæmus
and Rhodope, to the Bosphorus and the Hellespont, had assumed the form of
a province. Notwithstanding the change of masters and of religion, the new
city of Rome, founded by Constantine on the banks of the Bosphorus, has
ever since remained the capital of a great monarchy. The kingdom of
Macedonia, which, under the reign of Alexander, gave laws to Asia, derived
more solid advantages from the policy of the two Philips; and with its
dependencies of Epirus and Thessaly, extended from the Ægean to the
Ionian Sea. When we reflect on the fame of Thebes and Argos, of Sparta and
Athens, we can scarcely persuade ourselves, that so many immortal
republics of ancient Greece were lost in a single province of the Roman
empire, which, from the superior influence of the Achæan league, was
usually denominated the province of Achaia.
Such was the state of Europe under the Roman emperors. The provinces of
Asia, without excepting the transient conquests of Trajan, are all
comprehended within the limits of the Turkish power. But, instead of
following the arbitrary divisions of despotism and ignorance, it will be
safer for us, as well as more agreeable, to observe the indelible
characters of nature. The name of Asia Minor is attributed with some
propriety to the peninsula, which, confined betwixt the Euxine and the
Mediterranean, advances from the Euphrates towards Europe. The most
extensive and flourishing district, westward of Mount Taurus and the River
Halys, was dignified by the Romans with the exclusive title of Asia. The
jurisdiction of that province extended over the ancient monarchies of
Troy, Lydia, and Phrygia, the maritime countries of the Pamphylians,
Lycians, and Carians, and the Grecian colonies of Ionia, which equalled in
arts, though not in arms, the glory of their parent. The kingdoms of
Bithynia and Pontus possessed the northern side of the peninsula from
Constantinople to Trebizond. On the opposite side, the province of Cilicia
was terminated by the mountains of Syria: the inland country, separated
from the Roman Asia by the River Halys, and from Armenia by the Euphrates,
had once formed the independent kingdom of Cappadocia. In this place we
may observe, that the northern shores of the Euxine, beyond Trebizond in
Asia, and beyond the Danube in Europe, acknowledged the sovereignty of the
emperors, and received at their hands either tributary princes or Roman
garrisons. Budzak, Crim Tartary, Circassia, and Mingrelia, are the modern
appellations of those savage countries.
Under the successors of Alexander, Syria was the seat of the Seleucidæ,
who reigned over Upper Asia, till the successful revolt of the Parthians
confined their dominions between the Euphrates and the Mediterranean. When
Syria became subject to the Romans, it formed the eastern frontier of
their empire: nor did that province, in its utmost latitude, know any
other bounds than the mountains of Cappadocia to the north, and towards
the south, the confines of Egypt, and the Red Sea. Phoenicia and Palestine
were sometimes annexed to, and sometimes separated from, the jurisdiction
of Syria. The former of these was a narrow and rocky coast; the latter was
a territory scarcely superior to Wales, either in fertility or extent. *
Yet Phoenicia and Palestine will forever live in the memory of mankind;
since America, as well as Europe, has received letters from the one, and
religion from the other. A sandy desert, alike destitute of wood and
water, skirts along the doubtful confine of Syria, from the Euphrates to
the Red Sea. The wandering life of the Arabs was inseparably connected
with their independence; and wherever, on some spots less barren than the
rest, they ventured to for many settled habitations, they soon became
subjects to the Roman empire.
The geographers of antiquity have frequently hesitated to what portion of
the globe they should ascribe Egypt. By its situation that celebrated
kingdom is included within the immense peninsula of Africa; but it is
accessible only on the side of Asia, whose revolutions, in almost every
period of history, Egypt has humbly obeyed. A Roman præfect was
seated on the splendid throne of the Ptolemies; and the iron sceptre of
the Mamelukes is now in the hands of a Turkish pacha. The Nile flows down
the country, above five hundred miles from the tropic of Cancer to the
Mediterranean, and marks on either side of the extent of fertility by the
measure of its inundations. Cyrene, situate towards the west, and along
the sea-coast, was first a Greek colony, afterwards a province of Egypt,
and is now lost in the desert of Barca. *
From Cyrene to the ocean, the coast of Africa extends above fifteen
hundred miles; yet so closely is it pressed between the Mediterranean and
the Sahara, or sandy desert, that its breadth seldom exceeds fourscore or
a hundred miles. The eastern division was considered by the Romans as the
more peculiar and proper province of Africa. Till the arrival of the
Phnician colonies, that fertile country was inhabited by the Libyans, the
most savage of mankind. Under the immediate jurisdiction of Carthage, it
became the centre of commerce and empire; but the republic of Carthage is
now degenerated into the feeble and disorderly states of Tripoli and
Tunis. The military government of Algiers oppresses the wide extent of
Numidia, as it was once united under Massinissa and Jugurtha; but in the
time of Augustus, the limits of Numidia were contracted; and, at least,
two thirds of the country acquiesced in the name of Mauritania, with the
epithet of Cæsariensis. The genuine Mauritania, or country of the
Moors, which, from the ancient city of Tingi, or Tangier, was
distinguished by the appellation of Tingitana, is represented by the
modern kingdom of Fez. Salle, on the Ocean, so infamous at present for its
piratical depredations, was noticed by the Romans, as the extreme object
of their power, and almost of their geography. A city of their foundation
may still be discovered near Mequinez, the residence of the barbarian whom
we condescend to style the Emperor of Morocco; but it does not appear,
that his more southern dominions, Morocco itself, and Segelmessa, were
ever comprehended within the Roman province. The western parts of Africa
are intersected by the branches of Mount Atlas, a name so idly celebrated
by the fancy of poets; but which is now diffused over the immense ocean
that rolls between the ancient and the new continent.
Having now finished the circuit of the Roman empire, we may observe, that
Africa is divided from Spain by a narrow strait of about twelve miles,
through which the Atlantic flows into the Mediterranean. The columns of
Hercules, so famous among the ancients, were two mountains which seemed to
have been torn asunder by some convulsion of the elements; and at the foot
of the European mountain, the fortress of Gibraltar is now seated. The
whole extent of the Mediterranean Sea, its coasts and its islands, were
comprised within the Roman dominion. Of the larger islands, the two
Baleares, which derive their name of Majorca and Minorca from their
respective size, are subject at present, the former to Spain, the latter
to Great Britain. * It is easier to deplore the fate, than to describe the
actual condition, of Corsica. Two Italian sovereigns assume a regal title
from Sardinia and Sicily. Crete, or Candia, with Cyprus, and most of the
smaller islands of Greece and Asia, have been subdued by the Turkish arms,
whilst the little rock of Malta defies their power, and has emerged, under
the government of its military Order, into fame and opulence.
This long enumeration of provinces, whose broken fragments have formed so
many powerful kingdoms, might almost induce us to forgive the vanity or
ignorance of the ancients. Dazzled with the extensive sway, the
irresistible strength, and the real or affected moderation of the
emperors, they permitted themselves to despise, and sometimes to forget,
the outlying countries which had been left in the enjoyment of a barbarous
independence; and they gradually usurped the license of confounding the
Roman monarchy with the globe of the earth. But the temper, as well as
knowledge, of a modern historian, require a more sober and accurate
language. He may impress a juster image of the greatness of Rome, by
observing that the empire was above two thousand miles in breadth, from
the wall of Antoninus and the northern limits of Dacia, to Mount Atlas and
the tropic of Cancer; that it extended in length more than three thousand
miles from the Western Ocean to the Euphrates; that it was situated in the
finest part of the Temperate Zone, between the twenty-fourth and
fifty-sixth degrees of northern latitude; and that it was supposed to
contain above sixteen hundred thousand square miles, for the most part of
fertile and well-cultivated land.
Of The Union And Internal Prosperity Of The Roman Empire, In The Age Of The Antonines.
It is not alone by the rapidity, or extent of conquest, that we should
estimate the greatness of Rome. The sovereign of the Russian deserts
commands a larger portion of the globe. In the seventh summer after his
passage of the Hellespont, Alexander erected the Macedonian trophies on
the banks of the Hyphasis. Within less than a century, the irresistible
Zingis, and the Mogul princes of his race, spread their cruel devastations
and transient empire from the Sea of China, to the confines of Egypt and
Germany. But the firm edifice of Roman power was raised and preserved by
the wisdom of ages. The obedient provinces of Trajan and the Antonines
were united by laws, and adorned by arts. They might occasionally suffer
from the partial abuse of delegated authority; but the general principle
of government was wise, simple, and beneficent. They enjoyed the religion
of their ancestors, whilst in civil honors and advantages they were
exalted, by just degrees, to an equality with their conquerors.
I. The policy of the emperors and the senate, as far as it concerned
religion, was happily seconded by the reflections of the enlightened, and
by the habits of the superstitious, part of their subjects. The various
modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered
by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and
by the magistrate, as equally useful. And thus toleration produced not
only mutual indulgence, but even religious concord.
The superstition of the people was not imbittered by any mixture of
theological rancor; nor was it confined by the chains of any speculative
system. The devout polytheist, though fondly attached to his national
rites, admitted with implicit faith the different religions of the earth.
Fear, gratitude, and curiosity, a dream or an omen, a singular disorder,
or a distant journey, perpetually disposed him to multiply the articles of
his belief, and to enlarge the list of his protectors. The thin texture of
the Pagan mythology was interwoven with various but not discordant
materials. As soon as it was allowed that sages and heroes, who had lived
or who had died for the benefit of their country, were exalted to a state
of power and immortality, it was universally confessed, that they
deserved, if not the adoration, at least the reverence, of all mankind.
The deities of a thousand groves and a thousand streams possessed, in
peace, their local and respective influence; nor could the Romans who
deprecated the wrath of the Tiber, deride the Egyptian who presented his
offering to the beneficent genius of the Nile. The visible powers of
nature, the planets, and the elements were the same throughout the
universe. The invisible governors of the moral world were inevitably cast
in a similar mould of fiction and allegory. Every virtue, and even vice,
acquired its divine representative; every art and profession its patron,
whose attributes, in the most distant ages and countries, were uniformly
derived from the character of their peculiar votaries. A republic of gods
of such opposite tempers and interests required, in every system, the
moderating hand of a supreme magistrate, who, by the progress of knowledge
and flattery, was gradually invested with the sublime perfections of an
Eternal Parent, and an Omnipotent Monarch. Such was the mild spirit of
antiquity, that the nations were less attentive to the difference, than to
the resemblance, of their religious worship. The Greek, the Roman, and the
Barbarian, as they met before their respective altars, easily persuaded
themselves, that under various names, and with various ceremonies, they
adored the same deities. The elegant mythology of Homer gave a beautiful,
and almost a regular form, to the polytheism of the ancient world.
The philosophers of Greece deduced their morals from the nature of man,
rather than from that of God. They meditated, however, on the Divine
Nature, as a very curious and important speculation; and in the profound
inquiry, they displayed the strength and weakness of the human
understanding. Of the four most celebrated schools, the Stoics and the
Platonists endeavored to reconcile the jaring interests of reason and
piety. They have left us the most sublime proofs of the existence and
perfections of the first cause; but, as it was impossible for them to
conceive the creation of matter, the workman in the Stoic philosophy was
not sufficiently distinguished from the work; whilst, on the contrary, the
spiritual God of Plato and his disciples resembled an idea, rather than a
substance. The opinions of the Academics and Epicureans were of a less
religious cast; but whilst the modest science of the former induced them
to doubt, the positive ignorance of the latter urged them to deny, the
providence of a Supreme Ruler. The spirit of inquiry, prompted by
emulation, and supported by freedom, had divided the public teachers of
philosophy into a variety of contending sects; but the ingenious youth,
who, from every part, resorted to Athens, and the other seats of learning
in the Roman empire, were alike instructed in every school to reject and
to despise the religion of the multitude. How, indeed, was it possible
that a philosopher should accept, as divine truths, the idle tales of the
poets, and the incoherent traditions of antiquity; or that he should
adore, as gods, those imperfect beings whom he must have despised, as men?
Against such unworthy adversaries, Cicero condescended to employ the arms
of reason and eloquence; but the satire of Lucian was a much more
adequate, as well as more efficacious, weapon. We may be well assured,
that a writer, conversant with the world, would never have ventured to
expose the gods of his country to public ridicule, had they not already
been the objects of secret contempt among the polished and enlightened
orders of society.
Notwithstanding the fashionable irreligion which prevailed in the age of
the Antonines, both the interest of the priests and the credulity of the
people were sufficiently respected. In their writings and conversation,
the philosophers of antiquity asserted the independent dignity of reason;
but they resigned their actions to the commands of law and of custom.
Viewing, with a smile of pity and indulgence, the various errors of the
vulgar, they diligently practised the ceremonies of their fathers,
devoutly frequented the temples of the gods; and sometimes condescending
to act a part on the theatre of superstition, they concealed the
sentiments of an atheist under the sacerdotal robes. Reasoners of such a
temper were scarcely inclined to wrangle about their respective modes of
faith, or of worship. It was indifferent to them what shape the folly of
the multitude might choose to assume; and they approached with the same
inward contempt, and the same external reverence, the altars of the
Libyan, the Olympian, or the Capitoline Jupiter.
It is not easy to conceive from what motives a spirit of persecution could
introduce itself into the Roman councils. The magistrates could not be
actuated by a blind, though honest bigotry, since the magistrates were
themselves philosophers; and the schools of Athens had given laws to the
senate. They could not be impelled by ambition or avarice, as the temporal
and ecclesiastical powers were united in the same hands. The pontiffs were
chosen among the most illustrious of the senators; and the office of
Supreme Pontiff was constantly exercised by the emperors themselves. They
knew and valued the advantages of religion, as it is connected with civil
government. They encouraged the public festivals which humanize the
manners of the people. They managed the arts of divination as a convenient
instrument of policy; and they respected, as the firmest bond of society,
the useful persuasion, that, either in this or in a future life, the crime
of perjury is most assuredly punished by the avenging gods. But whilst
they acknowledged the general advantages of religion, they were convinced
that the various modes of worship contributed alike to the same salutary
purposes; and that, in every country, the form of superstition, which had
received the sanction of time and experience, was the best adapted to the
climate, and to its inhabitants. Avarice and taste very frequently
despoiled the vanquished nations of the elegant statues of their gods, and
the rich ornaments of their temples; but, in the exercise of the religion
which they derived from their ancestors, they uniformly experienced the
indulgence, and even protection, of the Roman conquerors. The province of
Gaul seems, and indeed only seems, an exception to this universal
toleration. Under the specious pretext of abolishing human sacrifices, the
emperors Tiberius and Claudius suppressed the dangerous power of the
Druids: but the priests themselves, their gods and their altars, subsisted
in peaceful obscurity till the final destruction of Paganism.
Rome, the capital of a great monarchy, was incessantly filled with
subjects and strangers from every part of the world, who all introduced
and enjoyed the favorite superstitions of their native country. Every city
in the empire was justified in maintaining the purity of its ancient
ceremonies; and the Roman senate, using the common privilege, sometimes
interposed, to check this inundation of foreign rites. * The Egyptian
superstition, of all the most contemptible and abject, was frequently
prohibited: the temples of Serapis and Isis demolished, and their
worshippers banished from Rome and Italy. But the zeal of fanaticism
prevailed over the cold and feeble efforts of policy. The exiles returned,
the proselytes multiplied, the temples were restored with increasing
splendor, and Isis and Serapis at length assumed their place among the
Roman Deities. Nor was this indulgence a departure from the old maxims of
government. In the purest ages of the commonwealth, Cybele and Æsculapius
had been invited by solemn embassies; and it was customary to tempt the
protectors of besieged cities, by the promise of more distinguished honors
than they possessed in their native country. Rome gradually became the
common temple of her subjects; and the freedom of the city was bestowed on
all the gods of mankind.
II. The narrow policy of preserving, without any foreign mixture, the pure
blood of the ancient citizens, had checked the fortune, and hastened the
ruin, of Athens and Sparta. The aspiring genius of Rome sacrificed vanity
to ambition, and deemed it more prudent, as well as honorable, to adopt
virtue and merit for her own wheresoever they were found, among slaves or
strangers, enemies or barbarians. During the most flourishing æra of
the Athenian commonwealth, the number of citizens gradually decreased from
about thirty to twenty-one thousand. If, on the contrary, we study the
growth of the Roman republic, we may discover, that, notwithstanding the
incessant demands of wars and colonies, the citizens, who, in the first
census of Servius Tullius, amounted to no more than eighty-three thousand,
were multiplied, before the commencement of the social war, to the number
of four hundred and sixty-three thousand men, able to bear arms in the
service of their country. When the allies of Rome claimed an equal share
of honors and privileges, the senate indeed preferred the chance of arms
to an ignominious concession. The Samnites and the Lucanians paid the
severe penalty of their rashness; but the rest of the Italian states, as
they successively returned to their duty, were admitted into the bosom of
the republic, and soon contributed to the ruin of public freedom. Under a
democratical government, the citizens exercise the powers of sovereignty;
and those powers will be first abused, and afterwards lost, if they are
committed to an unwieldy multitude. But when the popular assemblies had
been suppressed by the administration of the emperors, the conquerors were
distinguished from the vanquished nations, only as the first and most
honorable order of subjects; and their increase, however rapid, was no
longer exposed to the same dangers. Yet the wisest princes, who adopted
the maxims of Augustus, guarded with the strictest care the dignity of the
Roman name, and diffused the freedom of the city with a prudent
liberality.
Till the privileges of Romans had been progressively extended to all the
inhabitants of the empire, an important distinction was preserved between
Italy and the provinces. The former was esteemed the centre of public
unity, and the firm basis of the constitution. Italy claimed the birth, or
at least the residence, of the emperors and the senate. The estates of the
Italians were exempt from taxes, their persons from the arbitrary
jurisdiction of governors. Their municipal corporations, formed after the
perfect model of the capital, * were intrusted, under the immediate eye of
the supreme power, with the execution of the laws. From the foot of the
Alps to the extremity of Calabria, all the natives of Italy were born
citizens of Rome. Their partial distinctions were obliterated, and they
insensibly coalesced into one great nation, united by language, manners,
and civil institutions, and equal to the weight of a powerful empire. The
republic gloried in her generous policy, and was frequently rewarded by
the merit and services of her adopted sons. Had she always confined the
distinction of Romans to the ancient families within the walls of the
city, that immortal name would have been deprived of some of its noblest
ornaments. Virgil was a native of Mantua; Horace was inclined to doubt
whether he should call himself an Apulian or a Lucanian; it was in Padua
that an historian was found worthy to record the majestic series of Roman
victories. The patriot family of the Catos emerged from Tusculum; and the
little town of Arpinum claimed the double honor of producing Marius and
Cicero, the former of whom deserved, after Romulus and Camillus, to be
styled the Third Founder of Rome; and the latter, after saving his country
from the designs of Catiline, enabled her to contend with Athens for the
palm of eloquence.
The provinces of the empire (as they have been described in the preceding
chapter) were destitute of any public force, or constitutional freedom. In
Etruria, in Greece, and in Gaul, it was the first care of the senate to
dissolve those dangerous confederacies, which taught mankind that, as the
Roman arms prevailed by division, they might be resisted by union. Those
princes, whom the ostentation of gratitude or generosity permitted for a
while to hold a precarious sceptre, were dismissed from their thrones, as
soon as they had per formed their appointed task of fashioning to the yoke
the vanquished nations. The free states and cities which had embraced the
cause of Rome were rewarded with a nominal alliance, and insensibly sunk
into real servitude. The public authority was every where exercised by the
ministers of the senate and of the emperors, and that authority was
absolute, and without control. But the same salutary maxims of government,
which had secured the peace and obedience of Italy were extended to the
most distant conquests. A nation of Romans was gradually formed in the
provinces, by the double expedient of introducing colonies, and of
admitting the most faithful and deserving of the provincials to the
freedom of Rome.
"Wheresoever the Roman conquers, he inhabits," is a very just observation
of Seneca, confirmed by history and experience. The natives of Italy,
allured by pleasure or by interest, hastened to enjoy the advantages of
victory; and we may remark, that, about forty years after the reduction of
Asia, eighty thousand Romans were massacred in one day, by the cruel
orders of Mithridates. These voluntary exiles were engaged, for the most
part, in the occupations of commerce, agriculture, and the farm of the
revenue. But after the legions were rendered permanent by the emperors,
the provinces were peopled by a race of soldiers; and the veterans,
whether they received the reward of their service in land or in money,
usually settled with their families in the country, where they had
honorably spent their youth. Throughout the empire, but more particularly
in the western parts, the most fertile districts, and the most convenient
situations, were reserved for the establishment of colonies; some of which
were of a civil, and others of a military nature. In their manners and
internal policy, the colonies formed a perfect representation of their
great parent; and they were soon endeared to the natives by the ties of
friendship and alliance, they effectually diffused a reverence for the
Roman name, and a desire, which was seldom disappointed, of sharing, in
due time, its honors and advantages. The municipal cities insensibly
equalled the rank and splendor of the colonies; and in the reign of
Hadrian, it was disputed which was the preferable condition, of those
societies which had issued from, or those which had been received into,
the bosom of Rome. The right of Latium, as it was called, * conferred on
the cities to which it had been granted, a more partial favor. The
magistrates only, at the expiration of their office, assumed the quality
of Roman citizens; but as those offices were annual, in a few years they
circulated round the principal families. Those of the provincials who were
permitted to bear arms in the legions; those who exercised any civil
employment; all, in a word, who performed any public service, or displayed
any personal talents, were rewarded with a present, whose value was
continually diminished by the increasing liberality of the emperors. Yet
even, in the age of the Antonines, when the freedom of the city had been
bestowed on the greater number of their subjects, it was still accompanied
with very solid advantages. The bulk of the people acquired, with that
title, the benefit of the Roman laws, particularly in the interesting
articles of marriage, testaments, and inheritances; and the road of
fortune was open to those whose pretensions were seconded by favor or
merit. The grandsons of the Gauls, who had besieged Julius Cæsar in
Alcsia, commanded legions, governed provinces, and were admitted into the
senate of Rome. Their ambition, instead of disturbing the tranquillity of
the state, was intimately connected with its safety and greatness.
So sensible were the Romans of the influence of language over national
manners, that it was their most serious care to extend, with the progress
of their arms, the use of the Latin tongue. The ancient dialects of Italy,
the Sabine, the Etruscan, and the Venetian, sunk into oblivion; but in the
provinces, the east was less docile than the west to the voice of its
victorious preceptors. This obvious difference marked the two portions of
the empire with a distinction of colors, which, though it was in some
degree concealed during the meridian splendor of prosperity, became
gradually more visible, as the shades of night descended upon the Roman
world. The western countries were civilized by the same hands which
subdued them. As soon as the barbarians were reconciled to obedience,
their minds were open to any new impressions of knowledge and politeness.
The language of Virgil and Cicero, though with some inevitable mixture of
corruption, was so universally adopted in Africa, Spain, Gaul Britain, and
Pannonia, that the faint traces of the Punic or Celtic idioms were
preserved only in the mountains, or among the peasants. Education and
study insensibly inspired the natives of those countries with the
sentiments of Romans; and Italy gave fashions, as well as laws, to her
Latin provincials. They solicited with more ardor, and obtained with more
facility, the freedom and honors of the state; supported the national
dignity in letters and in arms; and at length, in the person of Trajan,
produced an emperor whom the Scipios would not have disowned for their
countryman. The situation of the Greeks was very different from that of
the barbarians. The former had been long since civilized and corrupted.
They had too much taste to relinquish their language, and too much vanity
to adopt any foreign institutions. Still preserving the prejudices, after
they had lost the virtues, of their ancestors, they affected to despise
the unpolished manners of the Roman conquerors, whilst they were compelled
to respect their superior wisdom and power. Nor was the influence of the
Grecian language and sentiments confined to the narrow limits of that once
celebrated country. Their empire, by the progress of colonies and
conquest, had been diffused from the Adriatic to the Euphrates and the
Nile. Asia was covered with Greek cities, and the long reign of the
Macedonian kings had introduced a silent revolution into Syria and Egypt.
In their pompous courts, those princes united the elegance of Athens with
the luxury of the East, and the example of the court was imitated, at an
humble distance, by the higher ranks of their subjects. Such was the
general division of the Roman empire into the Latin and Greek languages.
To these we may add a third distinction for the body of the natives in
Syria, and especially in Egypt, the use of their ancient dialects, by
secluding them from the commerce of mankind, checked the improvements of
those barbarians. The slothful effeminacy of the former exposed them to
the contempt, the sullen ferociousness of the latter excited the aversion,
of the conquerors. Those nations had submitted to the Roman power, but
they seldom desired or deserved the freedom of the city: and it was
remarked, that more than two hundred and thirty years elapsed after the
ruin of the Ptolemies, before an Egyptian was admitted into the senate of
Rome.
It is a just though trite observation, that victorious Rome was herself
subdued by the arts of Greece. Those immortal writers who still command
the admiration of modern Europe, soon became the favorite object of study
and imitation in Italy and the western provinces. But the elegant
amusements of the Romans were not suffered to interfere with their sound
maxims of policy. Whilst they acknowledged the charms of the Greek, they
asserted the dignity of the Latin tongue, and the exclusive use of the
latter was inflexibly maintained in the administration of civil as well as
military government. The two languages exercised at the same time their
separate jurisdiction throughout the empire: the former, as the natural
idiom of science; the latter, as the legal dialect of public transactions.
Those who united letters with business were equally conversant with both;
and it was almost impossible, in any province, to find a Roman subject, of
a liberal education, who was at once a stranger to the Greek and to the
Latin language.
It was by such institutions that the nations of the empire insensibly
melted away into the Roman name and people. But there still remained, in
the centre of every province and of every family, an unhappy condition of
men who endured the weight, without sharing the benefits, of society. In
the free states of antiquity, the domestic slaves were exposed to the
wanton rigor of despotism. The perfect settlement of the Roman empire was
preceded by ages of violence and rapine. The slaves consisted, for the
most part, of barbarian captives, * taken in thousands by the chance of
war, purchased at a vile price, accustomed to a life of independence, and
impatient to break and to revenge their fetters. Against such internal
enemies, whose desperate insurrections had more than once reduced the
republic to the brink of destruction, the most severe regulations, and the
most cruel treatment, seemed almost justified by the great law of
self-preservation. But when the principal nations of Europe, Asia, and
Africa were united under the laws of one sovereign, the source of foreign
supplies flowed with much less abundance, and the Romans were reduced to
the milder but more tedious method of propagation. * In their numerous
families, and particularly in their country estates, they encouraged the
marriage of their slaves. The sentiments of nature, the habits of
education, and the possession of a dependent species of property,
contributed to alleviate the hardships of servitude. The existence of a
slave became an object of greater value, and though his happiness still
depended on the temper and circumstances of the master, the humanity of
the latter, instead of being restrained by fear, was encouraged by the
sense of his own interest. The progress of manners was accelerated by the
virtue or policy of the emperors; and by the edicts of Hadrian and the
Antonines, the protection of the laws was extended to the most abject part
of mankind. The jurisdiction of life and death over the slaves, a power
long exercised and often abused, was taken out of private hands, and
reserved to the magistrates alone. The subterraneous prisons were
abolished; and, upon a just complaint of intolerable treatment, the
injured slave obtained either his deliverance, or a less cruel master.
Hope, the best comfort of our imperfect condition, was not denied to the
Roman slave; and if he had any opportunity of rendering himself either
useful or agreeable, he might very naturally expect that the diligence and
fidelity of a few years would be rewarded with the inestimable gift of
freedom. The benevolence of the master was so frequently prompted by the
meaner suggestions of vanity and avarice, that the laws found it more
necessary to restrain than to encourage a profuse and undistinguishing
liberality, which might degenerate into a very dangerous abuse. It was a
maxim of ancient jurisprudence, that a slave had not any country of his
own; he acquired with his liberty an admission into the political society
of which his patron was a member. The consequences of this maxim would
have prostituted the privileges of the Roman city to a mean and
promiscuous multitude. Some seasonable exceptions were therefore provided;
and the honorable distinction was confined to such slaves only as, for
just causes, and with the approbation of the magistrate, should receive a
solemn and legal manumission. Even these chosen freedmen obtained no more
than the private rights of citizens, and were rigorously excluded from
civil or military honors. Whatever might be the merit or fortune of their
sons, they likewise were esteemed unworthy of a seat in the
senate; nor were the traces of a servile origin allowed to be completely
obliterated till the third or fourth generation. Without destroying the
distinction of ranks, a distant prospect of freedom and honors was
presented, even to those whom pride and prejudice almost disdained to
number among the human species.
It was once proposed to discriminate the slaves by a peculiar habit; but
it was justly apprehended that there might be some danger in acquainting
them with their own numbers. Without interpreting, in their utmost
strictness, the liberal appellations of legions and myriads, we may
venture to pronounce, that the proportion of slaves, who were valued as
property, was more considerable than that of servants, who can be computed
only as an expense. The youths of a promising genius were instructed in
the arts and sciences, and their price was ascertained by the degree of
their skill and talents. Almost every profession, either liberal or
mechanical, might be found in the household of an opulent senator. The
ministers of pomp and sensuality were multiplied beyond the conception of
modern luxury. It was more for the interest of the merchant or
manufacturer to purchase, than to hire his workmen; and in the country,
slaves were employed as the cheapest and most laborious instruments of
agriculture. To confirm the general observation, and to display the
multitude of slaves, we might allege a variety of particular instances. It
was discovered, on a very melancholy occasion, that four hundred slaves
were maintained in a single palace of Rome. The same number of four
hundred belonged to an estate which an African widow, of a very private
condition, resigned to her son, whilst she reserved for herself a much
larger share of her property. A freedman, under the name of Augustus,
though his fortune had suffered great losses in the civil wars, left
behind him three thousand six hundred yoke of oxen, two hundred and fifty
thousand head of smaller cattle, and what was almost included in the
description of cattle, four thousand one hundred and sixteen slaves.
The number of subjects who acknowledged the laws of Rome, of citizens, of
provincials, and of slaves, cannot now be fixed with such a degree of
accuracy, as the importance of the object would deserve. We are informed,
that when the Emperor Claudius exercised the office of censor, he took an
account of six millions nine hundred and forty-five thousand Roman
citizens, who, with the proportion of women and children, must have
amounted to about twenty millions of souls. The multitude of subjects of
an inferior rank was uncertain and fluctuating. But, after weighing with
attention every circumstance which could influence the balance, it seems
probable that there existed, in the time of Claudius, about twice as many
provincials as there were citizens, of either sex, and of every age; and
that the slaves were at least equal in number to the free inhabitants of
the Roman world. * The total amount of this imperfect calculation would
rise to about one hundred and twenty millions of persons; a degree of
population which possibly exceeds that of modern Europe, and forms the
most numerous society that has ever been united under the same system of
government.
Domestic peace and union were the natural consequences of the moderate and
comprehensive policy embraced by the Romans. If we turn our eyes towards
the monarchies of Asia, we shall behold despotism in the centre, and
weakness in the extremities; the collection of the revenue, or the
administration of justice, enforced by the presence of an army; hostile
barbarians established in the heart of the country, hereditary satraps
usurping the dominion of the provinces, and subjects inclined to
rebellion, though incapable of freedom. But the obedience of the Roman
world was uniform, voluntary, and permanent. The vanquished nations,
blended into one great people, resigned the hope, nay, even the wish, of
resuming their independence, and scarcely considered their own existence
as distinct from the existence of Rome. The established authority of the
emperors pervaded without an effort the wide extent of their dominions,
and was exercised with the same facility on the banks of the Thames, or of
the Nile, as on those of the Tyber. The legions were destined to serve
against the public enemy, and the civil magistrate seldom required the aid
of a military force. In this state of general security, the leisure, as
well as opulence, both of the prince and people, were devoted to improve
and to adorn the Roman empire.
Among the innumerable monuments of architecture constructed by the Romans,
how many have escaped the notice of history, how few have resisted the
ravages of time and barbarism! And yet, even the majestic ruins that are
still scattered over Italy and the provinces, would be sufficient to prove
that those countries were once the seat of a polite and powerful empire.
Their greatness alone, or their beauty, might deserve our attention: but
they are rendered more interesting, by two important circumstances, which
connect the agreeable history of the arts with the more useful history of
human manners. Many of those works were erected at private expense, and
almost all were intended for public benefit.
It is natural to suppose that the greatest number, as well as the most
considerable of the Roman edifices, were raised by the emperors, who
possessed so unbounded a command both of men and money. Augustus was
accustomed to boast that he had found his capital of brick, and that he
had left it of marble. The strict economy of Vespasian was the source of
his magnificence. The works of Trajan bear the stamp of his genius. The
public monuments with which Hadrian adorned every province of the empire,
were executed not only by his orders, but under his immediate inspection.
He was himself an artist; and he loved the arts, as they conduced to the
glory of the monarch. They were encouraged by the Antonines, as they
contributed to the happiness of the people. But if the emperors were the
first, they were not the only architects of their dominions. Their example
was universally imitated by their principal subjects, who were not afraid
of declaring to the world that they had spirit to conceive, and wealth to
accomplish, the noblest undertakings. Scarcely had the proud structure of
the Coliseum been dedicated at Rome, before the edifices, of a smaller
scale indeed, but of the same design and materials, were erected for the
use, and at the expense, of the cities of Capua and Verona. The
inscription of the stupendous bridge of Alcantara attests that it was
thrown over the Tagus by the contribution of a few Lusitanian communities.
When Pliny was intrusted with the government of Bithynia and Pontus,
provinces by no means the richest or most considerable of the empire, he
found the cities within his jurisdiction striving with each other in every
useful and ornamental work, that might deserve the curiosity of strangers,
or the gratitude of their citizens. It was the duty of the proconsul to
supply their deficiencies, to direct their taste, and sometimes to
moderate their emulation. The opulent senators of Rome and the provinces
esteemed it an honor, and almost an obligation, to adorn the splendor of
their age and country; and the influence of fashion very frequently
supplied the want of taste or generosity. Among a crowd of these private
benefactors, we may select Herodes Atticus, an Athenian citizen, who lived
in the age of the Antonines. Whatever might be the motive of his conduct,
his magnificence would have been worthy of the greatest kings.
[See Theatre Of Marcellus: Augustus built in Rome the theatre of
Marcellus.]
The family of Herod, at least after it had been favored by fortune, was
lineally descended from Cimon and Miltiades, Theseus and Cecrops, Æacus
and Jupiter. But the posterity of so many gods and heroes was fallen into
the most abject state. His grandfather had suffered by the hands of
justice, and Julius Atticus, his father, must have ended his life in
poverty and contempt, had he not discovered an immense treasure buried
under an old house, the last remains of his patrimony. According to the
rigor of the law, the emperor might have asserted his claim, and the
prudent Atticus prevented, by a frank confession, the officiousness of
informers. But the equitable Nerva, who then filled the throne, refused to
accept any part of it, and commanded him to use, without scruple, the
present of fortune. The cautious Athenian still insisted, that the
treasure was too considerable for a subject, and that he knew not how to
use it. Abuse it then, replied the monarch, with a
good-natured peevishness; for it is your own. Many will be of opinion,
that Atticus literally obeyed the emperor's last instructions; since he
expended the greatest part of his fortune, which was much increased by an
advantageous marriage, in the service of the public. He had obtained for
his son Herod the prefecture of the free cities of Asia; and the young
magistrate, observing that the town of Troas was indifferently supplied
with water, obtained from the munificence of Hadrian three hundred myriads
of drachms, (about a hundred thousand pounds,) for the construction of a
new aqueduct. But in the execution of the work, the charge amounted to
more than double the estimate, and the officers of the revenue began to
murmur, till the generous Atticus silenced their complaints, by requesting
that he might be permitted to take upon himself the whole additional
expense.
The ablest preceptors of Greece and Asia had been invited by liberal
rewards to direct the education of young Herod. Their pupil soon became a
celebrated orator, according to the useless rhetoric of that age, which,
confining itself to the schools, disdained to visit either the Forum or
the Senate. He was honored with the consulship at Rome: but the greatest
part of his life was spent in a philosophic retirement at Athens, and his
adjacent villas; perpetually surrounded by sophists, who acknowledged,
without reluctance, the superiority of a rich and generous rival. The
monuments of his genius have perished; some considerable ruins still
preserve the fame of his taste and munificence: modern travellers have
measured the remains of the stadium which he constructed at Athens. It was
six hundred feet in length, built entirely of white marble, capable of
admitting the whole body of the people, and finished in four years, whilst
Herod was president of the Athenian games. To the memory of his wife
Regilla he dedicated a theatre, scarcely to be paralleled in the empire:
no wood except cedar, very curiously carved, was employed in any part of
the building. The Odeum, * designed by Pericles for musical performances,
and the rehearsal of new tragedies, had been a trophy of the victory of
the arts over barbaric greatness; as the timbers employed in the
construction consisted chiefly of the masts of the Persian vessels.
Notwithstanding the repairs bestowed on that ancient edifice by a king of
Cappadocia, it was again fallen to decay. Herod restored its ancient
beauty and magnificence. Nor was the liberality of that illustrious
citizen confined to the walls of Athens. The most splendid ornaments
bestowed on the temple of Neptune in the Isthmus, a theatre at Corinth, a
stadium at Delphi, a bath at Thermopylæ, and an aqueduct at Canusium
in Italy, were insufficient to exhaust his treasures. The people of
Epirus, Thessaly, Euboea, Boeotia, and Peloponnesus, experienced his
favors; and many inscriptions of the cities of Greece and Asia gratefully
style Herodes Atticus their patron and benefactor.
In the commonwealths of Athens and Rome, the modest simplicity of private
houses announced the equal condition of freedom; whilst the sovereignty of
the people was represented in the majestic edifices designed to the public
use; nor was this republican spirit totally extinguished by the
introduction of wealth and monarchy. It was in works of national honor and
benefit, that the most virtuous of the emperors affected to display their
magnificence. The golden palace of Nero excited a just indignation, but
the vast extent of ground which had been usurped by his selfish luxury was
more nobly filled under the succeeding reigns by the Coliseum, the baths
of Titus, the Claudian portico, and the temples dedicated to the goddess
of Peace, and to the genius of Rome. These monuments of architecture, the
property of the Roman people, were adorned with the most beautiful
productions of Grecian painting and sculpture; and in the temple of Peace,
a very curious library was open to the curiosity of the learned. * At a
small distance from thence was situated the Forum of Trajan. It was
surrounded by a lofty portico, in the form of a quadrangle, into which
four triumphal arches opened a noble and spacious entrance: in the centre
arose a column of marble, whose height, of one hundred and ten feet,
denoted the elevation of the hill that had been cut away. This column,
which still subsists in its ancient beauty, exhibited an exact
representation of the Dacian victories of its founder. The veteran soldier
contemplated the story of his own campaigns, and by an easy illusion of
national vanity, the peaceful citizen associated himself to the honors of
the triumph. All the other quarters of the capital, and all the provinces
of the empire, were embellished by the same liberal spirit of public
magnificence, and were filled with amphi theatres, theatres, temples,
porticoes, triumphal arches, baths and aqueducts, all variously conducive
to the health, the devotion, and the pleasures of the meanest citizen. The
last mentioned of those edifices deserve our peculiar attention. The
boldness of the enterprise, the solidity of the execution, and the uses to
which they were subservient, rank the aqueducts among the noblest
monuments of Roman genius and power. The aqueducts of the capital claim a
just preeminence; but the curious traveller, who, without the light of
history, should examine those of Spoleto, of Metz, or of Segovia, would
very naturally conclude that those provincial towns had formerly been the
residence of some potent monarch. The solitudes of Asia and Africa were
once covered with flourishing cities, whose populousness, and even whose
existence, was derived from such artificial supplies of a perennial stream
of fresh water.
We have computed the inhabitants, and contemplated the public works, of
the Roman empire. The observation of the number and greatness of its
cities will serve to confirm the former, and to multiply the latter. It
may not be unpleasing to collect a few scattered instances relative to
that subject without forgetting, however, that from the vanity of nations
and the poverty of language, the vague appellation of city has been
indifferently bestowed on Rome and upon Laurentum.
I. Ancient Italy is said to have contained eleven hundred and
ninety-seven cities; and for whatsoever æra of antiquity the
expression might be intended, there is not any reason to believe the
country less populous in the age of the Antonines, than in that of
Romulus. The petty states of Latium were contained within the metropolis
of the empire, by whose superior influence they had been attracted. *
Those parts of Italy which have so long languished under the lazy tyranny
of priests and viceroys, had been afflicted only by the more tolerable
calamities of war; and the first symptoms of decay which they experienced,
were amply compensated by the rapid improvements of the Cisalpine Gaul.
The splendor of Verona may be traced in its remains: yet Verona was less
celebrated than Aquileia or Padua, Milan or Ravenna. II. The spirit of
improvement had passed the Alps, and been felt even in the woods of
Britain, which were gradually cleared away to open a free space for
convenient and elegant habitations. York was the seat of government;
London was already enriched by commerce; and Bath was celebrated for the
salutary effects of its medicinal waters. Gaul could boast of her twelve
hundred cities; and though, in the northern parts, many of them, without
excepting Paris itself, were little more than the rude and imperfect
townships of a rising people, the southern provinces imitated the wealth
and elegance of Italy. Many were the cities of Gaul, Marseilles, Arles,
Nismes, Narbonne, Thoulouse, Bourdeaux, Autun, Vienna, Lyons, Langres, and
Treves, whose ancient condition might sustain an equal, and perhaps
advantageous comparison with their present state. With regard to Spain,
that country flourished as a province, and has declined as a kingdom.
Exhausted by the abuse of her strength, by America, and by superstition,
her pride might possibly be confounded, if we required such a list of
three hundred and sixty cities, as Pliny has exhibited under the reign of
Vespasian. III. Three hundred African cities had once acknowledged the
authority of Carthage, nor is it likely that their numbers diminished
under the administration of the emperors: Carthage itself rose with new
splendor from its ashes; and that capital, as well as Capua and Corinth,
soon recovered all the advantages which can be separated from independent
sovereignty. IV. The provinces of the East present the contrast of Roman
magnificence with Turkish barbarism. The ruins of antiquity scattered over
uncultivated fields, and ascribed, by ignorance to the power of magic,
scarcely afford a shelter to the oppressed peasant or wandering Arab.
Under the reign of the Cæsars, the proper Asia alone contained five
hundred populous cities, enriched with all the gifts of nature, and
adorned with all the refinements of art. Eleven cities of Asia had once
disputed the honor of dedicating a temple of Tiberius, and their
respective merits were examined by the senate. Four of them were
immediately rejected as unequal to the burden; and among these was
Laodicea, whose splendor is still displayed in its ruins. Laodicea
collected a very considerable revenue from its flocks of sheep, celebrated
for the fineness of their wool, and had received, a little before the
contest, a legacy of above four hundred thousand pounds by the testament
of a generous citizen. If such was the poverty of Laodicea, what must have
been the wealth of those cities, whose claim appeared preferable, and
particularly of Pergamus, of Smyrna, and of Ephesus, who so long disputed
with each other the titular primacy of Asia? The capitals of Syria and
Egypt held a still superior rank in the empire; Antioch and Alexandria
looked down with disdain on a crowd of dependent cities, and yielded, with
reluctance, to the majesty of Rome itself.
All these cities were connected with each other, and with the capital, by
the public highways, which, issuing from the Forum of Rome, traversed
Italy, pervaded the provinces, and were terminated only by the frontiers
of the empire. If we carefully trace the distance from the wall of
Antoninus to Rome, and from thence to Jerusalem, it will be found that the
great chain of communication, from the north-west to the south-east point
of the empire, was drawn out to the length of four thousand and eighty
Roman miles. The public roads were accurately divided by mile-stones, and
ran in a direct line from one city to another, with very little respect
for the obstacles either of nature or private property. Mountains were
perforated, and bold arches thrown over the broadest and most rapid
streams. The middle part of the road was raised into a terrace which
commanded the adjacent country, consisted of several strata of sand,
gravel, and cement, and was paved with large stones, or, in some places
near the capital, with granite. Such was the solid construction of the
Roman highways, whose firmness has not entirely yielded to the effort of
fifteen centuries. They united the subjects of the most distant provinces
by an easy and familiar intercourse; out their primary object had been to
facilitate the marches of the legions; nor was any country considered as
completely subdued, till it had been rendered, in all its parts, pervious
to the arms and authority of the conqueror. The advantage of receiving the
earliest intelligence, and of conveying their orders with celerity,
induced the emperors to establish, throughout their extensive dominions,
the regular institution of posts. Houses were every where erected at the
distance only of five or six miles; each of them was constantly provided
with forty horses, and by the help of these relays, it was easy to travel
a hundred miles in a day along the Roman roads. * The use of posts was
allowed to those who claimed it by an Imperial mandate; but though
originally intended for the public service, it was sometimes indulged to
the business or conveniency of private citizens. Nor was the communication
of the Roman empire less free and open by sea than it was by land. The
provinces surrounded and enclosed the Mediterranean: and Italy, in the
shape of an immense promontory, advanced into the midst of that great
lake. The coasts of Italy are, in general, destitute of safe harbors; but
human industry had corrected the deficiencies of nature; and the
artificial port of Ostia, in particular, situate at the mouth of the
Tyber, and formed by the emperor Claudius, was a useful monument of Roman
greatness. From this port, which was only sixteen miles from the capital,
a favorable breeze frequently carried vessels in seven days to the columns
of Hercules, and in nine or ten, to Alexandria in Egypt.
[See Remains Of Claudian Aquaduct]
Whatever evils either reason or declamation have imputed to extensive
empire, the power of Rome was attended with some beneficial consequences
to mankind; and the same freedom of intercourse which extended the vices,
diffused likewise the improvements, of social life. In the more remote
ages of antiquity, the world was unequally divided. The East was in the
immemorial possession of arts and luxury; whilst the West was inhabited by
rude and warlike barbarians, who either disdained agriculture, or to whom
it was totally unknown. Under the protection of an established government,
the productions of happier climates, and the industry of more civilized
nations, were gradually introduced into the western countries of Europe;
and the natives were encouraged, by an open and profitable commerce, to
multiply the former, as well as to improve the latter. It would be almost
impossible to enumerate all the articles, either of the animal or the
vegetable reign, which were successively imported into Europe from Asia
and Egypt: but it will not be unworthy of the dignity, and much less of
the utility, of an historical work, slightly to touch on a few of the
principal heads. 1. Almost all the flowers, the herbs, and the fruits,
that grow in our European gardens, are of foreign extraction, which, in
many cases, is betrayed even by their names: the apple was a native of
Italy, and when the Romans had tasted the richer flavor of the apricot,
the peach, the pomegranate, the citron, and the orange, they contented
themselves with applying to all these new fruits the common denomination
of apple, discriminating them from each other by the additional epithet of
their country. 2. In the time of Homer, the vine grew wild in the island
of Sicily, and most probably in the adjacent continent; but it was not
improved by the skill, nor did it afford a liquor grateful to the taste,
of the savage inhabitants. A thousand years afterwards, Italy could boast,
that of the fourscore most generous and celebrated wines, more than two
thirds were produced from her soil. The blessing was soon communicated to
the Narbonnese province of Gaul; but so intense was the cold to the north
of the Cevennes, that, in the time of Strabo, it was thought impossible to
ripen the grapes in those parts of Gaul. This difficulty, however, was
gradually vanquished; and there is some reason to believe, that the
vineyards of Burgundy are as old as the age of the Antonines. 3. The
olive, in the western world, followed the progress of peace, of which it
was considered as the symbol. Two centuries after the foundation of Rome,
both Italy and Africa were strangers to that useful plant: it was
naturalized in those countries; and at length carried into the heart of
Spain and Gaul. The timid errors of the ancients, that it required a
certain degree of heat, and could only flourish in the neighborhood of the
sea, were insensibly exploded by industry and experience. 4. The
cultivation of flax was transported from Egypt to Gaul, and enriched the
whole country, however it might impoverish the particular lands on which
it was sown. 5. The use of artificial grasses became familiar to the
farmers both of Italy and the provinces, particularly the Lucerne, which
derived its name and origin from Media. The assured supply of wholesome
and plentiful food for the cattle during winter, multiplied the number of
the docks and herds, which in their turn contributed to the fertility of
the soil. To all these improvements may be added an assiduous attention to
mines and fisheries, which, by employing a multitude of laborious hands,
serve to increase the pleasures of the rich and the subsistence of the
poor. The elegant treatise of Columella describes the advanced state of
the Spanish husbandry under the reign of Tiberius; and it may be observed,
that those famines, which so frequently afflicted the infant republic,
were seldom or never experienced by the extensive empire of Rome. The
accidental scarcity, in any single province, was immediately relieved by
the plenty of its more fortunate neighbors.
Agriculture is the foundation of manufactures; since the productions of
nature are the materials of art. Under the Roman empire, the labor of an
industrious and ingenious people was variously, but incessantly, employed
in the service of the rich. In their dress, their table, their houses, and
their furniture, the favorites of fortune united every refinement of
conveniency, of elegance, and of splendor, whatever could soothe their
pride or gratify their sensuality. Such refinements, under the odious name
of luxury, have been severely arraigned by the moralists of every age; and
it might perhaps be more conducive to the virtue, as well as happiness, of
mankind, if all possessed the necessaries, and none the superfluities, of
life. But in the present imperfect condition of society, luxury, though it
may proceed from vice or folly, seems to be the only means that can
correct the unequal distribution of property. The diligent mechanic, and
the skilful artist, who have obtained no share in the division of the
earth, receive a voluntary tax from the possessors of land; and the latter
are prompted, by a sense of interest, to improve those estates, with whose
produce they may purchase additional pleasures. This operation, the
particular effects of which are felt in every society, acted with much
more diffusive energy in the Roman world. The provinces would soon have
been exhausted of their wealth, if the manufactures and commerce of luxury
had not insensibly restored to the industrious subjects the sums which
were exacted from them by the arms and authority of Rome. As long as the
circulation was confined within the bounds of the empire, it impressed the
political machine with a new degree of activity, and its consequences,
sometimes beneficial, could never become pernicious.
But it is no easy task to confine luxury within the limits of an empire.
The most remote countries of the ancient world were ransacked to supply
the pomp and delicacy of Rome. The forests of Scythia afforded some
valuable furs. Amber was brought over land from the shores of the Baltic
to the Danube; and the barbarians were astonished at the price which they
received in exchange for so useless a commodity. There was a considerable
demand for Babylonian carpets, and other manufactures of the East; but the
most important and unpopular branch of foreign trade was carried on with
Arabia and India. Every year, about the time of the summer solstice, a
fleet of a hundred and twenty vessels sailed from Myos-hormos, a port of
Egypt, on the Red Sea. By the periodical assistance of the monsoons, they
traversed the ocean in about forty days. The coast of Malabar, or the
island of Ceylon, was the usual term of their navigation, and it was in
those markets that the merchants from the more remote countries of Asia
expected their arrival. The return of the fleet of Egypt was fixed to the
months of December or January; and as soon as their rich cargo had been
transported on the backs of camels, from the Red Sea to the Nile, and had
descended that river as far as Alexandria, it was poured, without delay,
into the capital of the empire. The objects of oriental traffic were
splendid and trifling; silk, a pound of which was esteemed not inferior in
value to a pound of gold; precious stones, among which the pearl claimed
the first rank after the diamond; and a variety of aromatics, that were
consumed in religious worship and the pomp of funerals. The labor and risk
of the voyage was rewarded with almost incredible profit; but the profit
was made upon Roman subjects, and a few individuals were enriched at the
expense of the public. As the natives of Arabia and India were contented
with the productions and manufactures of their own country, silver, on the
side of the Romans, was the principal, if not the only * instrument of
commerce. It was a complaint worthy of the gravity of the senate, that, in
the purchase of female ornaments, the wealth of the state was
irrecoverably given away to foreign and hostile nations. The annual loss
is computed, by a writer of an inquisitive but censorious temper, at
upwards of eight hundred thousand pounds sterling. Such was the style of
discontent, brooding over the dark prospect of approaching poverty. And
yet, if we compare the proportion between gold and silver, as it stood in
the time of Pliny, and as it was fixed in the reign of Constantine, we
shall discover within that period a very considerable increase. There is
not the least reason to suppose that gold was become more scarce; it is
therefore evident that silver was grown more common; that whatever might
be the amount of the Indian and Arabian exports, they were far from
exhausting the wealth of the Roman world; and that the produce of the
mines abundantly supplied the demands of commerce.
Notwithstanding the propensity of mankind to exalt the past, and to
depreciate the present, the tranquil and prosperous state of the empire
was warmly felt, and honestly confessed, by the provincials as well as
Romans. "They acknowledged that the true principles of social life, laws,
agriculture, and science, which had been first invented by the wisdom of
Athens, were now firmly established by the power of Rome, under whose
auspicious influence the fiercest barbarians were united by an equal
government and common language. They affirm, that with the improvement of
arts, the human species were visibly multiplied. They celebrate the
increasing splendor of the cities, the beautiful face of the country,
cultivated and adorned like an immense garden; and the long festival of
peace which was enjoyed by so many nations, forgetful of the ancient
animosities, and delivered from the apprehension of future danger."
Whatever suspicions may be suggested by the air of rhetoric and
declamation, which seems to prevail in these passages, the substance of
them is perfectly agreeable to historic truth.
It was scarcely possible that the eyes of contemporaries should discover
in the public felicity the latent causes of decay and corruption. This
long peace, and the uniform government of the Romans, introduced a slow
and secret poison into the vitals of the empire. The minds of men were
gradually reduced to the same level, the fire of genius was extinguished,
and even the military spirit evaporated. The natives of Europe were brave
and robust. Spain, Gaul, Britain, and Illyricum supplied the legions with
excellent soldiers, and constituted the real strength of the monarchy.
Their personal valor remained, but they no longer possessed that public
courage which is nourished by the love of independence, the sense of
national honor, the presence of danger, and the habit of command. They
received laws and governors from the will of their sovereign, and trusted
for their defence to a mercenary army. The posterity of their boldest
leaders was contented with the rank of citizens and subjects. The most
aspiring spirits resorted to the court or standard of the emperors; and
the deserted provinces, deprived of political strength or union,
insensibly sunk into the languid indifference of private life.
The love of letters, almost inseparable from peace and refinement, was
fashionable among the subjects of Hadrian and the Antonines, who were
themselves men of learning and curiosity. It was diffused over the whole
extent of their empire; the most northern tribes of Britons had acquired a
taste for rhetoric; Homer as well as Virgil were transcribed and studied
on the banks of the Rhine and Danube; and the most liberal rewards sought
out the faintest glimmerings of literary merit. The sciences of physic and
astronomy were successfully cultivated by the Greeks; the observations of
Ptolemy and the writings of Galen are studied by those who have improved
their discoveries and corrected their errors; but if we except the
inimitable Lucian, this age of indolence passed away without having
produced a single writer of original genius, or who excelled in the arts
of elegant composition. ^! The authority of Plato and Aristotle, of Zeno
and Epicurus, still reigned in the schools; and their systems, transmitted
with blind deference from one generation of disciples to another,
precluded every generous attempt to exercise the powers, or enlarge the
limits, of the human mind. The beauties of the poets and orators, instead
of kindling a fire like their own, inspired only cold and servile
mitations: or if any ventured to deviate from those models, they deviated
at the same time from good sense and propriety. On the revival of letters,
the youthful vigor of the imagination, after a long repose, national
emulation, a new religion, new languages, and a new world, called forth
the genius of Europe. But the provincials of Rome, trained by a uniform
artificial foreign education, were engaged in a very unequal competition
with those bold ancients, who, by expressing their genuine feelings in
their native tongue, had already occupied every place of honor. The name
of Poet was almost forgotten; that of Orator was usurped by the sophists.
A cloud of critics, of compilers, of commentators, darkened the face of
learning, and the decline of genius was soon followed by the corruption of
taste.
The sublime Longinus, who, in somewhat a later period, and in the court of
a Syrian queen, preserved the spirit of ancient Athens, observes and
laments this degeneracy of his contemporaries, which debased their
sentiments, enervated their courage, and depressed their talents. "In the
same manner," says he, "as some children always remain pygmies, whose
infant limbs have been too closely confined, thus our tender minds,
fettered by the prejudices and habits of a just servitude, are unable to
expand themselves, or to attain that well-proportioned greatness which we
admire in the ancients; who, living under a popular government, wrote with
the same freedom as they acted." This diminutive stature of mankind, if we
pursue the metaphor, was daily sinking below the old standard, and the
Roman world was indeed peopled by a race of pygmies; when the fierce
giants of the north broke in, and mended the puny breed. They restored a
manly spirit of freedom; and after the revolution of ten centuries,
freedom became the happy parent of taste and science.
Of The Constitution Of The Roman Empire, In The Age Of The Antonines.
The obvious definition of a monarchy seems to be that of a state, in which
a single person, by whatsoever name he may be distinguished, is intrusted
with the execution of the laws, the management of the revenue, and the
command of the army. But, unless public liberty is protected by intrepid
and vigilant guardians, the authority of so formidable a magistrate will
soon degenerate into despotism. The influence of the clergy, in an age of
superstition, might be usefully employed to assert the rights of mankind;
but so intimate is the connection between the throne and the altar, that
the banner of the church has very seldom been seen on the side of the
people. * A martial nobility and stubborn commons, possessed of arms,
tenacious of property, and collected into constitutional assemblies, form
the only balance capable of preserving a free constitution against
enterprises of an aspiring prince.
Every barrier of the Roman constitution had been levelled by the vast
ambition of the dictator; every fence had been extirpated by the cruel
hand of the triumvir. After the victory of Actium, the fate of the Roman
world depended on the will of Octavianus, surnamed Cæsar, by his
uncle's adoption, and afterwards Augustus, by the flattery of the senate.
The conqueror was at the head of forty-four veteran legions, conscious of
their own strength, and of the weakness of the constitution, habituated,
during twenty years' civil war, to every act of blood and violence, and
passionately devoted to the house of Cæsar, from whence alone they
had received, and expected the most lavish rewards. The provinces, long
oppressed by the ministers of the republic, sighed for the government of a
single person, who would be the master, not the accomplice, of those petty
tyrants. The people of Rome, viewing, with a secret pleasure, the
humiliation of the aristocracy, demanded only bread and public shows; and
were supplied with both by the liberal hand of Augustus. The rich and
polite Italians, who had almost universally embraced the philosophy of
Epicurus, enjoyed the present blessings of ease and tranquillity, and
suffered not the pleasing dream to be interrupted by the memory of their
old tumultuous freedom. With its power, the senate had lost its dignity;
many of the most noble families were extinct. The republicans of spirit
and ability had perished in the field of battle, or in the proscription .
The door of the assembly had been designedly left open, for a mixed
multitude of more than a thousand persons, who reflected disgrace upon
their rank, instead of deriving honor from it.
The reformation of the senate was one of the first steps in which Augustus
laid aside the tyrant, and professed himself the father of his country. He
was elected censor; and, in concert with his faithful Agrippa, he examined
the list of the senators, expelled a few members, * whose vices or whose
obstinacy required a public example, persuaded near two hundred to prevent
the shame of an expulsion by a voluntary retreat, raised the qualification
of a senator to about ten thousand pounds, created a sufficient number of
patrician families, and accepted for himself the honorable title of Prince
of the Senate, which had always been bestowed, by the censors, on the
citizen the most eminent for his honors and services. But whilst he thus
restored the dignity, he destroyed the independence, of the senate. The
principles of a free constitution are irrecoverably lost, when the
legislative power is nominated by the executive.
Before an assembly thus modelled and prepared, Augustus pronounced a
studied oration, which displayed his patriotism, and disguised his
ambition. "He lamented, yet excused, his past conduct. Filial piety had
required at his hands the revenge of his father's murder; the humanity of
his own nature had sometimes given way to the stern laws of necessity, and
to a forced connection with two unworthy colleagues: as long as Antony
lived, the republic forbade him to abandon her to a degenerate Roman, and
a barbarian queen. He was now at liberty to satisfy his duty and his
inclination. He solemnly restored the senate and people to all their
ancient rights; and wished only to mingle with the crowd of his
fellow-citizens, and to share the blessings which he had obtained for his
country."
It would require the pen of Tacitus (if Tacitus had assisted at this
assembly) to describe the various emotions of the senate, those that were
suppressed, and those that were affected. It was dangerous to trust the
sincerity of Augustus; to seem to distrust it was still more dangerous.
The respective advantages of monarchy and a republic have often divided
speculative inquirers; the present greatness of the Roman state, the
corruption of manners, and the license of the soldiers, supplied new
arguments to the advocates of monarchy; and these general views of
government were again warped by the hopes and fears of each individual.
Amidst this confusion of sentiments, the answer of the senate was
unanimous and decisive. They refused to accept the resignation of
Augustus; they conjured him not to desert the republic, which he had
saved. After a decent resistance, the crafty tyrant submitted to the
orders of the senate; and consented to receive the government of the
provinces, and the general command of the Roman armies, under the
well-known names of Proconsul and Imperator. But he would receive them
only for ten years. Even before the expiration of that period, he hope
that the wounds of civil discord would be completely healed, and that the
republic, restored to its pristine health and vigor, would no longer
require the dangerous interposition of so extraordinary a magistrate. The
memory of this comedy, repeated several times during the life of Augustus,
was preserved to the last ages of the empire, by the peculiar pomp with
which the perpetual monarchs of Rome always solemnized the tenth years of
their reign.
Without any violation of the principles of the constitution, the general
of the Roman armies might receive and exercise an authority almost
despotic over the soldiers, the enemies, and the subjects of the republic.
With regard to the soldiers, the jealousy of freedom had, even from the
earliest ages of Rome, given way to the hopes of conquest, and a just
sense of military discipline. The dictator, or consul, had a right to
command the service of the Roman youth; and to punish an obstinate or
cowardly disobedience by the most severe and ignominious penalties, by
striking the offender out of the list of citizens, by confiscating his
property, and by selling his person into slavery. The most sacred rights
of freedom, confirmed by the Porcian and Sempronian laws, were suspended
by the military engagement. In his camp the general exercised an absolute
power of life and death; his jurisdiction was not confined by any forms of
trial, or rules of proceeding, and the execution of the sentence was
immediate and without appeal. The choice of the enemies of Rome was
regularly decided by the legislative authority. The most important
resolutions of peace and war were seriously debated in the senate, and
solemnly ratified by the people. But when the arms of the legions were
carried to a great distance from Italy, the general assumed the liberty of
directing them against whatever people, and in whatever manner, they
judged most advantageous for the public service. It was from the success,
not from the justice, of their enterprises, that they expected the honors
of a triumph. In the use of victory, especially after they were no longer
controlled by the commissioners of the senate, they exercised the most
unbounded despotism. When Pompey commanded in the East, he rewarded his
soldiers and allies, dethroned princes, divided kingdoms, founded
colonies, and distributed the treasures of Mithridates. On his return to
Rome, he obtained, by a single act of the senate and people, the universal
ratification of all his proceedings. Such was the power over the soldiers,
and over the enemies of Rome, which was either granted to, or assumed by,
the generals of the republic. They were, at the same time, the governors,
or rather monarchs, of the conquered provinces, united the civil with the
military character, administered justice as well as the finances, and
exercised both the executive and legislative power of the state.
From what has already been observed in the first chapter of this work,
some notion may be formed of the armies and provinces thus intrusted to
the ruling hand of Augustus. But as it was impossible that he could
personally command the regions of so many distant frontiers, he was
indulged by the senate, as Pompey had already been, in the permission of
devolving the execution of his great office on a sufficient number of
lieutenants. In rank and authority these officers seemed not inferior to
the ancient proconsuls; but their station was dependent and precarious.
They received and held their commissions at the will of a superior, to
whose auspicious influence the merit of their action was legally
attributed. They were the representatives of the emperor. The emperor
alone was the general of the republic, and his jurisdiction, civil as well
as military, extended over all the conquests of Rome. It was some
satisfaction, however, to the senate, that he always delegated his power
to the members of their body. The imperial lieutenants were of consular or
prætorian dignity; the legions were commanded by senators, and the
præfecture of Egypt was the only important trust committed to a
Roman knight.
Within six days after Augustus had been compelled to accept so very
liberal a grant, he resolved to gratify the pride of the senate by an easy
sacrifice. He represented to them, that they had enlarged his powers, even
beyond that degree which might be required by the melancholy condition of
the times. They had not permitted him to refuse the laborious command of
the armies and the frontiers; but he must insist on being allowed to
restore the more peaceful and secure provinces to the mild administration
of the civil magistrate. In the division of the provinces, Augustus
provided for his own power and for the dignity of the republic. The
proconsuls of the senate, particularly those of Asia, Greece, and Africa,
enjoyed a more honorable character than the lieutenants of the emperor,
who commanded in Gaul or Syria. The former were attended by lictors, the
latter by soldiers. * A law was passed, that wherever the emperor was
present, his extraordinary commission should supersede the ordinary
jurisdiction of the governor; a custom was introduced, that the new
conquests belonged to the imperial portion; and it was soon discovered
that the authority of the Prince, the favorite epithet of
Augustus, was the same in every part of the empire.
In return for this imaginary concession, Augustus obtained an important
privilege, which rendered him master of Rome and Italy. By a dangerous
exception to the ancient maxims, he was authorized to preserve his
military command, supported by a numerous body of guards, even in time of
peace, and in the heart of the capital. His command, indeed, was confined
to those citizens who were engaged in the service by the military oath;
but such was the propensity of the Romans to servitude, that the oath was
voluntarily taken by the magistrates, the senators, and the equestrian
order, till the homage of flattery was insensibly converted into an annual
and solemn protestation of fidelity.
Although Augustus considered a military force as the firmest foundation,
he wisely rejected it, as a very odious instrument of government. It was
more agreeable to his temper, as well as to his policy, to reign under the
venerable names of ancient magistracy, and artfully to collect, in his own
person, all the scattered rays of civil jurisdiction. With this view, he
permitted the senate to confer upon him, for his life, the powers of the
consular and tribunitian offices, which were, in the same manner,
continued to all his successors. The consuls had succeeded to the kings of
Rome, and represented the dignity of the state. They superintended the
ceremonies of religion, levied and commanded the legions, gave audience to
foreign ambassadors, and presided in the assemblies both of the senate and
people. The general control of the finances was intrusted to their care;
and though they seldom had leisure to administer justice in person, they
were considered as the supreme guardians of law, equity, and the public
peace. Such was their ordinary jurisdiction; but whenever the senate
empowered the first magistrate to consult the safety of the commonwealth,
he was raised by that decree above the laws, and exercised, in the defence
of liberty, a temporary despotism. The character of the tribunes was, in
every respect, different from that of the consuls. The appearance of the
former was modest and humble; but their persons were sacred and
inviolable. Their force was suited rather for opposition than for action.
They were instituted to defend the oppressed, to pardon offences, to
arraign the enemies of the people, and, when they judged it necessary, to
stop, by a single word, the whole machine of government. As long as the
republic subsisted, the dangerous influence, which either the consul or
the tribune might derive from their respective jurisdiction, was
diminished by several important restrictions. Their authority expired with
the year in which they were elected; the former office was divided between
two, the latter among ten persons; and, as both in their private and
public interest they were averse to each other, their mutual conflicts
contributed, for the most part, to strengthen rather than to destroy the
balance of the constitution. * But when the consular and tribunitian
powers were united, when they were vested for life in a single person,
when the general of the army was, at the same time, the minister of the
senate and the representative of the Roman people, it was impossible to
resist the exercise, nor was it easy to define the limits, of his imperial
prerogative.
To these accumulated honors, the policy of Augustus soon added the
splendid as well as important dignities of supreme pontiff, and of censor.
By the former he acquired the management of the religion, and by the
latter a legal inspection over the manners and fortunes, of the Roman
people. If so many distinct and independent powers did not exactly unite
with each other, the complaisance of the senate was prepared to supply
every deficiency by the most ample and extraordinary concessions. The
emperors, as the first ministers of the republic, were exempted from the
obligation and penalty of many inconvenient laws: they were authorized to
convoke the senate, to make several motions in the same day, to recommend
candidates for the honors of the state, to enlarge the bounds of the city,
to employ the revenue at their discretion, to declare peace and war, to
ratify treaties; and by a most comprehensive clause, they were empowered
to execute whatsoever they should judge advantageous to the empire, and
agreeable to the majesty of things private or public, human of divine.
When all the various powers of executive government were committed to the
Imperial magistrate, the ordinary magistrates of the commonwealth
languished in obscurity, without vigor, and almost without business. The
names and forms of the ancient administration were preserved by Augustus
with the most anxious care. The usual number of consuls, prætors,
and tribunes, were annually invested with their respective ensigns of
office, and continued to discharge some of their least important
functions. Those honors still attracted the vain ambition of the Romans;
and the emperors themselves, though invested for life with the powers of
the consul ship, frequently aspired to the title of that annual dignity,
which they condescended to share with the most illustrious of their
fellow-citizens. In the election of these magistrates, the people, during
the reign of Augustus, were permitted to expose all the inconveniences of
a wild democracy. That artful prince, instead of discovering the least
symptom of impatience, humbly solicited their suffrages for himself or his
friends, and scrupulously practised all the duties of an ordinary
candidate. But we may venture to ascribe to his councils the first measure
of the succeeding reign, by which the elections were transferred to the
senate. The assemblies of the people were forever abolished, and the
emperors were delivered from a dangerous multitude, who, without restoring
liberty, might have disturbed, and perhaps endangered, the established
government.
By declaring themselves the protectors of the people, Marius and Cæsar
had subverted the constitution of their country. But as soon as the senate
had been humbled and disarmed, such an assembly, consisting of five or six
hundred persons, was found a much more tractable and useful instrument of
dominion. It was on the dignity of the senate that Augustus and his
successors founded their new empire; and they affected, on every occasion,
to adopt the language and principles of Patricians. In the administration
of their own powers, they frequently consulted the great national council,
and seemed to refer to its decision the most important concerns
of peace and war. Rome, Italy, and the internal provinces, were subject to
the immediate jurisdiction of the senate. With regard to civil objects, it
was the supreme court of appeal; with regard to criminal matters, a
tribunal, constituted for the trial of all offences that were committed by
men in any public station, or that affected the peace and majesty of the
Roman people. The exercise of the judicial power became the most frequent
and serious occupation of the senate; and the important causes that were
pleaded before them afforded a last refuge to the spirit of ancient
eloquence. As a council of state, and as a court of justice, the senate
possessed very considerable prerogatives; but in its legislative capacity,
in which it was supposed virtually to represent the people, the rights of
sovereignty were acknowledged to reside in that assembly. Every power was
derived from their authority, every law was ratified by their sanction.
Their regular meetings were held on three stated days in every month, the
Calends, the Nones, and the Ides. The debates were conducted with decent
freedom; and the emperors themselves, who gloried in the name of senators,
sat, voted, and divided with their equals.
To resume, in a few words, the system of the Imperial government; as it
was instituted by Augustus, and maintained by those princes who understood
their own interest and that of the people, it may be defined an absolute
monarchy disguised by the forms of a commonwealth. The masters of the
Roman world surrounded their throne with darkness, concealed their
irresistible strength, and humbly professed themselves the accountable
ministers of the senate, whose supreme decrees they dictated and obeyed.
The face of the court corresponded with the forms of the administration.
The emperors, if we except those tyrants whose capricious folly violated
every law of nature and decency, disdained that pomp and ceremony which
might offend their countrymen, but could add nothing to their real power.
In all the offices of life, they affected to confound themselves with
their subjects, and maintained with them an equal intercourse of visits
and entertainments. Their habit, their palace, their table, were suited
only to the rank of an opulent senator. Their family, however numerous or
splendid, was composed entirely of their domestic slaves and freedmen.
Augustus or Trajan would have blushed at employing the meanest of the
Romans in those menial offices, which, in the household and bedchamber of
a limited monarch, are so eagerly solicited by the proudest nobles of
Britain.
The deification of the emperors is the only instance in which they
departed from their accustomed prudence and modesty. The Asiatic Greeks
were the first inventors, the successors of Alexander the first objects,
of this servile and impious mode of adulation. * It was easily transferred
from the kings to the governors of Asia; and the Roman magistrates very
frequently were adored as provincial deities, with the pomp of altars and
temples, of festivals and sacrifices. It was natural that the emperors
should not refuse what the proconsuls had accepted; and the divine honors
which both the one and the other received from the provinces, attested
rather the despotism than the servitude of Rome. But the conquerors soon
imitated the vanquished nations in the arts of flattery; and the imperious
spirit of the first Cæsar too easily consented to assume, during his
lifetime, a place among the tutelar deities of Rome. The milder temper of
his successor declined so dangerous an ambition, which was never
afterwards revived, except by the madness of Caligula and Domitian.
Augustus permitted indeed some of the provincial cities to erect temples
to his honor, on condition that they should associate the worship of Rome
with that of the sovereign; he tolerated private superstition, of which he
might be the object; but he contented himself with being revered by the
senate and the people in his human character, and wisely left to his
successor the care of his public deification. A regular custom was
introduced, that on the decease of every emperor who had neither lived nor
died like a tyrant, the senate by a solemn decree should place him in the
number of the gods: and the ceremonies of his apotheosis were blended with
those of his funeral. This legal, and, as it should seem, injudicious
profanation, so abhorrent to our stricter principles, was received with a
very faint murmur, by the easy nature of Polytheism; but it was received
as an institution, not of religion, but of policy. We should disgrace the
virtues of the Antonines by comparing them with the vices of Hercules or
Jupiter. Even the characters of Cæsar or Augustus were far superior
to those of the popular deities. But it was the misfortune of the former
to live in an enlightened age, and their actions were too faithfully
recorded to admit of such a mixture of fable and mystery, as the devotion
of the vulgar requires. As soon as their divinity was established by law,
it sunk into oblivion, without contributing either to their own fame, or
to the dignity of succeeding princes.
In the consideration of the Imperial government, we have frequently
mentioned the artful founder, under his well-known title of Augustus,
which was not, however, conferred upon him till the edifice was almost
completed. The obscure name of Octavianus he derived from a mean family,
in the little town of Aricia. It was stained with the blood of the
proscription; and he was desirous, had it been possible, to erase all
memory of his former life. The illustrious surname of Cæsar he had
assumed, as the adopted son of the dictator: but he had too much good
sense, either to hope to be confounded, or to wish to be compared with
that extraordinary man. It was proposed in the senate to dignify their
minister with a new appellation; and after a serious discussion, that of
Augustus was chosen, among several others, as being the most expressive of
the character of peace and sanctity, which he uniformly affected. Augustus
was therefore a personal, Cæsar a family distinction. The
former should naturally have expired with the prince on whom it was
bestowed; and however the latter was diffused by adoption and female
alliance, Nero was the last prince who could allege any hereditary claim
to the honors of the Julian line. But, at the time of his death, the
practice of a century had inseparably connected those appellations with
the Imperial dignity, and they have been preserved by a long succession of
emperors, Romans, Greeks, Franks, and Germans, from the fall of the
republic to the present time. A distinction was, however, soon introduced.
The sacred title of Augustus was always reserved for the monarch, whilst
the name of Cæsar was more freely communicated to his relations;
and, from the reign of Hadrian, at least, was appropriated to the second
person in the state, who was considered as the presumptive heir of the
empire. *
The tender respect of Augustus for a free constitution which he had
destroyed, can only be explained by an attentive consideration of the
character of that subtle tyrant. A cool head, an unfeeling heart, and a
cowardly disposition, prompted him at the age of nineteen to assume the
mask of hypocrisy, which he never afterwards laid aside. With the same
hand, and probably with the same temper, he signed the proscription of
Cicero, and the pardon of Cinna. His virtues, and even his vices, were
artificial; and according to the various dictates of his interest, he was
at first the enemy, and at last the father, of the Roman world. When he
framed the artful system of the Imperial authority, his moderation was
inspired by his fears. He wished to deceive the people by an image of
civil liberty, and the armies by an image of civil government.
I. The death of Cæsar was ever before his eyes. He had lavished
wealth and honors on his adherents; but the most favored friends of his
uncle were in the number of the conspirators. The fidelity of the legions
might defend his authority against open rebellion; but their vigilance
could not secure his person from the dagger of a determined republican;
and the Romans, who revered the memory of Brutus, would applaud the
imitation of his virtue. Cæsar had provoked his fate, as much as by
the ostentation of his power, as by his power itself. The consul or the
tribune might have reigned in peace. The title of king had armed the
Romans against his life. Augustus was sensible that mankind is governed by
names; nor was he deceived in his expectation, that the senate and people
would submit to slavery, provided they were respectfully assured that they
still enjoyed their ancient freedom. A feeble senate and enervated people
cheerfully acquiesced in the pleasing illusion, as long as it was
supported by the virtue, or even by the prudence, of the successors of
Augustus. It was a motive of self-preservation, not a principle of
liberty, that animated the conspirators against Caligula, Nero, and
Domitian. They attacked the person of the tyrant, without aiming their
blow at the authority of the emperor.
There appears, indeed, one memorable occasion, in which the
senate, after seventy years of patience, made an ineffectual attempt to
re-assume its long-forgotten rights. When the throne was vacant by the
murder of Caligula, the consuls convoked that assembly in the Capitol,
condemned the memory of the Cæsars, gave the watchword liberty
to the few cohorts who faintly adhered to their standard, and during
eight-and-forty hours acted as the independent chiefs of a free
commonwealth. But while they deliberated, the prætorian guards had
resolved. The stupid Claudius, brother of Germanicus, was already in their
camp, invested with the Imperial purple, and prepared to support his
election by arms. The dream of liberty was at an end; and the senate awoke
to all the horrors of inevitable servitude. Deserted by the people, and
threatened by a military force, that feeble assembly was compelled to
ratify the choice of the prætorians, and to embrace the benefit of
an amnesty, which Claudius had the prudence to offer, and the generosity
to observe.
[See The Capitol: When the throne was vacant by the murder of Caligula,
the consuls convoked that assembly in the Capitol.]
II. The insolence of the armies inspired Augustus with fears of a still
more alarming nature. The despair of the citizens could only attempt, what
the power of the soldiers was, at any time, able to execute. How
precarious was his own authority over men whom he had taught to violate
every social duty! He had heard their seditious clamors; he dreaded their
calmer moments of reflection. One revolution had been purchased by immense
rewards; but a second revolution might double those rewards. The troops
professed the fondest attachment to the house of Cæsar; but the
attachments of the multitude are capricious and inconstant. Augustus
summoned to his aid whatever remained in those fierce minds of Roman
prejudices; enforced the rigor of discipline by the sanction of law; and,
interposing the majesty of the senate between the emperor and the army,
boldly claimed their allegiance, as the first magistrate of the republic.
During a long period of two hundred and twenty years from the
establishment of this artful system to the death of Commodus, the dangers
inherent to a military government were, in a great measure, suspended. The
soldiers were seldom roused to that fatal sense of their own strength, and
of the weakness of the civil authority, which was, before and afterwards,
productive of such dreadful calamities. Caligula and Domitian were
assassinated in their palace by their own domestics: * the convulsions
which agitated Rome on the death of the former, were confined to the walls
of the city. But Nero involved the whole empire in his ruin. In the space
of eighteen months, four princes perished by the sword; and the Roman
world was shaken by the fury of the contending armies. Excepting only this
short, though violent eruption of military license, the two centuries from
Augustus to Commodus passed away unstained with civil blood, and
undisturbed by revolutions. The emperor was elected by the authority
of the senate, and the consent of the soldiers. The legions respected
their oath of fidelity; and it requires a minute inspection of the Roman
annals to discover three inconsiderable rebellions, which were all
suppressed in a few months, and without even the hazard of a battle.
In elective monarchies, the vacancy of the throne is a moment big with
danger and mischief. The Roman emperors, desirous to spare the legions
that interval of suspense, and the temptation of an irregular choice,
invested their designed successor with so large a share of present power,
as should enable him, after their decease, to assume the remainder,
without suffering the empire to perceive the change of masters. Thus
Augustus, after all his fairer prospects had been snatched from him by
untimely deaths, rested his last hopes on Tiberius, obtained for his
adopted son the censorial and tribunitian powers, and dictated a law, by
which the future prince was invested with an authority equal to his own,
over the provinces and the armies. Thus Vespasian subdued the generous
mind of his eldest son. Titus was adored by the eastern legions, which,
under his command, had recently achieved the conquest of Judæa. His
power was dreaded, and, as his virtues were clouded by the intemperance of
youth, his designs were suspected. Instead of listening to such unworthy
suspicions, the prudent monarch associated Titus to the full powers of the
Imperial dignity; and the grateful son ever approved himself the humble
and faithful minister of so indulgent a father.
The good sense of Vespasian engaged him indeed to embrace every measure
that might confirm his recent and precarious elevation. The military oath,
and the fidelity of the troops, had been consecrated, by the habits of a
hundred years, to the name and family of the Cæsars; and although
that family had been continued only by the fictitious rite of adoption,
the Romans still revered, in the person of Nero, the grandson of
Germanicus, and the lineal successor of Augustus. It was not without
reluctance and remorse, that the prætorian guards had been persuaded
to abandon the cause of the tyrant. The rapid downfall of Galba, Otho, and
Vitellus, taught the armies to consider the emperors as the creatures of
their will, and the instruments of their license. The
birth of Vespasian was mean: his grandfather had been a private soldier,
his father a petty officer of the revenue; his own merit had raised him,
in an advanced age, to the empire; but his merit was rather useful than
shining, and his virtues were disgraced by a strict and even sordid
parsimony. Such a prince consulted his true interest by the association of
a son, whose more splendid and amiable character might turn the public
attention from the obscure origin, to the future glories, of the Flavian
house. Under the mild administration of Titus, the Roman world enjoyed a
transient felicity, and his beloved memory served to protect, above
fifteen years, the vices of his brother Domitian.
Nerva had scarcely accepted the purple from the assassins of Domitian,
before he discovered that his feeble age was unable to stem the torrent of
public disorders, which had multiplied under the long tyranny of his
predecessor. His mild disposition was respected by the good; but the
degenerate Romans required a more vigorous character, whose justice should
strike terror into the guilty. Though he had several relations, he fixed
his choice on a stranger. He adopted Trajan, then about forty years of
age, and who commanded a powerful army in the Lower Germany; and
immediately, by a decree of the senate, declared him his colleague and
successor in the empire. It is sincerely to be lamented, that whilst we
are fatigued with the disgustful relation of Nero's crimes and follies, we
are reduced to collect the actions of Trajan from the glimmerings of an
abridgment, or the doubtful light of a panegyric. There remains, however,
one panegyric far removed beyond the suspicion of flattery. Above two
hundred and fifty years after the death of Trajan, the senate, in pouring
out the customary acclamations on the accession of a new emperor, wished
that he might surpass the felicity of Augustus, and the virtue of Trajan.
We may readily believe, that the father of his country hesitated whether
he ought to intrust the various and doubtful character of his kinsman
Hadrian with sovereign power. In his last moments the arts of the empress
Plotina either fixed the irresolution of Trajan, or boldly supposed a
fictitious adoption; the truth of which could not be safely disputed, and
Hadrian was peaceably acknowledged as his lawful successor. Under his
reign, as has been already mentioned, the empire flourished in peace and
prosperity. He encouraged the arts, reformed the laws, asserted military
discipline, and visited all his provinces in person. His vast and active
genius was equally suited to the most enlarged views, and the minute
details of civil policy. But the ruling passions of his soul were
curiosity and vanity. As they prevailed, and as they were attracted by
different objects, Hadrian was, by turns, an excellent prince, a
ridiculous sophist, and a jealous tyrant. The general tenor of his conduct
deserved praise for its equity and moderation. Yet in the first days of
his reign, he put to death four consular senators, his personal enemies,
and men who had been judged worthy of empire; and the tediousness of a
painful illness rendered him, at last, peevish and cruel. The senate
doubted whether they should pronounce him a god or a tyrant; and the
honors decreed to his memory were granted to the prayers of the pious
Antoninus.
The caprice of Hadrian influenced his choice of a successor. After
revolving in his mind several men of distinguished merit, whom he esteemed
and hated, he adopted Ælius Verus a gay and voluptuous nobleman,
recommended by uncommon beauty to the lover of Antinous. But whilst
Hadrian was delighting himself with his own applause, and the acclamations
of the soldiers, whose consent had been secured by an immense donative,
the new Cæsar was ravished from his embraces by an untimely death.
He left only one son. Hadrian commended the boy to the gratitude of the
Antonines. He was adopted by Pius; and, on the accession of Marcus, was
invested with an equal share of sovereign power. Among the many vices of
this younger Verus, he possessed one virtue; a dutiful reverence for his
wiser colleague, to whom he willingly abandoned the ruder cares of empire.
The philosophic emperor dissembled his follies, lamented his early death,
and cast a decent veil over his memory.
As soon as Hadrian's passion was either gratified or disappointed, he
resolved to deserve the thanks of posterity, by placing the most exalted
merit on the Roman throne. His discerning eye easily discovered a senator
about fifty years of age, blameless in all the offices of life; and a
youth of about seventeen, whose riper years opened a fair prospect of
every virtue: the elder of these was declared the son and successor of
Hadrian, on condition, however, that he himself should immediately adopt
the younger. The two Antonines (for it is of them that we are now
peaking,) governed the Roman world forty-two years, with the same
invariable spirit of wisdom and virtue. Although Pius had two sons, he
preferred the welfare of Rome to the interest of his family, gave his
daughter Faustina, in marriage to young Marcus, obtained from the senate
the tribunitian and proconsular powers, and, with a noble disdain, or
rather ignorance of jealousy, associated him to all the labors of
government. Marcus, on the other hand, revered the character of his
benefactor, loved him as a parent, obeyed him as his sovereign, and, after
he was no more, regulated his own administration by the example and maxims
of his predecessor. Their united reigns are possibly the only period of
history in which the happiness of a great people was the sole object of
government.
Titus Antoninus Pius has been justly denominated a second Numa. The same
love of religion, justice, and peace, was the distinguishing
characteristic of both princes. But the situation of the latter opened a
much larger field for the exercise of those virtues. Numa could only
prevent a few neighboring villages from plundering each other's harvests.
Antoninus diffused order and tranquillity over the greatest part of the
earth. His reign is marked by the rare advantage of furnishing very few
materials for history; which is, indeed, little more than the register of
the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind. In private life, he was
an amiable, as well as a good man. The native simplicity of his virtue was
a stranger to vanity or affectation. He enjoyed with moderation the
conveniences of his fortune, and the innocent pleasures of society; and
the benevolence of his soul displayed itself in a cheerful serenity of
temper.
The virtue of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus was of severer and more laborious
kind. It was the well-earned harvest of many a learned conference, of many
a patient lecture, and many a midnight lucubration. At the age of twelve
years he embraced the rigid system of the Stoics, which taught him to
submit his body to his mind, his passions to his reason; to consider
virtue as the only good, vice as the only evil, all things external as
things indifferent. His meditations, composed in the tumult of the camp,
are still extant; and he even condescended to give lessons of philosophy,
in a more public manner than was perhaps consistent with the modesty of
sage, or the dignity of an emperor. But his life was the noblest
commentary on the precepts of Zeno. He was severe to himself, indulgent to
the imperfections of others, just and beneficent to all mankind. He
regretted that Avidius Cassius, who excited a rebellion in Syria, had
disappointed him, by a voluntary death, * of the pleasure of converting an
enemy into a friend;; and he justified the sincerity of that sentiment, by
moderating the zeal of the senate against the adherents of the traitor.
War he detested, as the disgrace and calamity of human nature; but when
the necessity of a just defence called upon him to take up arms, he
readily exposed his person to eight winter campaigns, on the frozen banks
of the Danube, the severity of which was at last fatal to the weakness of
his constitution. His memory was revered by a grateful posterity, and
above a century after his death, many persons preserved the image of
Marcus Antoninus among those of their household gods.
If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world, during
which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he
would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of
Domitian to the accession of Commodus. The vast extent of the Roman empire
was governed by absolute power, under the guidance of virtue and wisdom.
The armies were restrained by the firm but gentle hand of four successive
emperors, whose characters and authority commanded involuntary respect.
The forms of the civil administration were carefully preserved by Nerva,
Trajan, Hadrian, and the Antonines, who delighted in the image of liberty,
and were pleased with considering themselves as the accountable ministers
of the laws. Such princes deserved the honor of restoring the republic,
had the Romans of their days been capable of enjoying a rational freedom.
The labors of these monarchs were overpaid by the immense reward that
inseparably waited on their success; by the honest pride of virtue, and by
the exquisite delight of beholding the general happiness of which they
were the authors. A just but melancholy reflection imbittered, however,
the noblest of human enjoyments. They must often have recollected the
instability of a happiness which depended on the character of single man.
The fatal moment was perhaps approaching, when some licentious youth, or
some jealous tyrant, would abuse, to the destruction, that absolute power,
which they had exerted for the benefit of their people. The ideal
restraints of the senate and the laws might serve to display the virtues,
but could never correct the vices, of the emperor. The military force was
a blind and irresistible instrument of oppression; and the corruption of
Roman manners would always supply flatterers eager to applaud, and
ministers prepared to serve, the fear or the avarice, the lust or the
cruelty, of their master.
These gloomy apprehensions had been already justified by the experience of
the Romans. The annals of the emperors exhibit a strong and various
picture of human nature, which we should vainly seek among the mixed and
doubtful characters of modern history. In the conduct of those monarchs we
may trace the utmost lines of vice and virtue; the most exalted
perfection, and the meanest degeneracy of our own species. The golden age
of Trajan and the Antonines had been preceded by an age of iron. It is
almost superfluous to enumerate the unworthy successors of Augustus. Their
unparalleled vices, and the splendid theatre on which they were acted,
have saved them from oblivion. The dark, unrelenting Tiberius, the furious
Caligula, the feeble Claudius, the profligate and cruel Nero, the beastly
Vitellius, and the timid, inhuman Domitian, are condemned to everlasting
infamy. During fourscore years (excepting only the short and doubtful
respite of Vespasian's reign) Rome groaned beneath an unremitting tyranny,
which exterminated the ancient families of the republic, and was fatal to
almost every virtue and every talent that arose in that unhappy period.
Under the reign of these monsters, the slavery of the Romans was
accompanied with two peculiar circumstances, the one occasioned by their
former liberty, the other by their extensive conquests, which rendered
their condition more completely wretched than that of the victims of
tyranny in any other age or country. From these causes were derived, 1.
The exquisite sensibility of the sufferers; and, 2. The impossibility of
escaping from the hand of the oppressor.
I. When Persia was governed by the descendants of Sefi, a race of princes
whose wanton cruelty often stained their divan, their table, and their
bed, with the blood of their favorites, there is a saying recorded of a
young nobleman, that he never departed from the sultan's presence, without
satisfying himself whether his head was still on his shoulders. The
experience of every day might almost justify the scepticism of Rustan. Yet
the fatal sword, suspended above him by a single thread, seems not to have
disturbed the slumbers, or interrupted the tranquillity, of the Persian.
The monarch's frown, he well knew, could level him with the dust; but the
stroke of lightning or apoplexy might be equally fatal; and it was the
part of a wise man to forget the inevitable calamities of human life in
the enjoyment of the fleeting hour. He was dignified with the appellation
of the king's slave; had, perhaps, been purchased from obscure parents, in
a country which he had never known; and was trained up from his infancy in
the severe discipline of the seraglio. His name, his wealth, his honors,
were the gift of a master, who might, without injustice, resume what he
had bestowed. Rustan's knowledge, if he possessed any, could only serve to
confirm his habits by prejudices. His language afforded not words for any
form of government, except absolute monarchy. The history of the East
informed him, that such had ever been the condition of mankind. The Koran,
and the interpreters of that divine book, inculcated to him, that the
sultan was the descendant of the prophet, and the vicegerent of heaven;
that patience was the first virtue of a Mussulman, and unlimited obedience
the great duty of a subject.
The minds of the Romans were very differently prepared for slavery.
Oppressed beneath the weight of their own corruption and of military
violence, they for a long while preserved the sentiments, or at least the
ideas, of their free-born ancestors. The education of Helvidius and
Thrasea, of Tacitus and Pliny, was the same as that of Cato and Cicero.
From Grecian philosophy, they had imbibed the justest and most liberal
notions of the dignity of human nature, and the origin of civil society.
The history of their own country had taught them to revere a free, a
virtuous, and a victorious commonwealth; to abhor the successful crimes of
Cæsar and Augustus; and inwardly to despise those tyrants whom they
adored with the most abject flattery. As magistrates and senators they
were admitted into the great council, which had once dictated laws to the
earth, whose authority was so often prostituted to the vilest purposes of
tyranny. Tiberius, and those emperors who adopted his maxims, attempted to
disguise their murders by the formalities of justice, and perhaps enjoyed
a secret pleasure in rendering the senate their accomplice as well as
their victim. By this assembly, the last of the Romans were condemned for
imaginary crimes and real virtues. Their infamous accusers assumed the
language of independent patriots, who arraigned a dangerous citizen before
the tribunal of his country; and the public service was rewarded by riches
and honors. The servile judges professed to assert the majesty of the
commonwealth, violated in the person of its first magistrate, whose
clemency they most applauded when they trembled the most at his inexorable
and impending cruelty. The tyrant beheld their baseness with just
contempt, and encountered their secret sentiments of detestation with
sincere and avowed hatred for the whole body of the senate.
II. The division of Europe into a number of independent states, connected,
however, with each other by the general resemblance of religion, language,
and manners, is productive of the most beneficial consequences to the
liberty of mankind. A modern tyrant, who should find no resistance either
in his own breast, or in his people, would soon experience a gentle
restrain from the example of his equals, the dread of present censure, the
advice of his allies, and the apprehension of his enemies. The object of
his displeasure, escaping from the narrow limits of his dominions, would
easily obtain, in a happier climate, a secure refuge, a new fortune
adequate to his merit, the freedom of complaint, and perhaps the means of
revenge. But the empire of the Romans filled the world, and when the
empire fell into the hands of a single person, the world became a safe and
dreary prison for his enemies. The slave of Imperial despotism, whether he
was condemned to drag his gilded chain in Rome and the senate, or to were
out a life of exile on the barren rock of Seriphus, or the frozen bank of
the Danube, expected his fate in silent despair. To resist was fatal, and
it was impossible to fly. On every side he was encompassed with a vast
extent of sea and land, which he could never hope to traverse without
being discovered, seized, and restored to his irritated master. Beyond the
frontiers, his anxious view could discover nothing, except the ocean,
inhospitable deserts, hostile tribes of barbarians, of fierce manners and
unknown language, or dependent kings, who would gladly purchase the
emperor's protection by the sacrifice of an obnoxious fugitive. "Wherever
you are," said Cicero to the exiled Marcellus, "remember that you are
equally within the power of the conqueror."
The Cruelty, Follies, And Murder Of Commodus. Election Of
Pertinax—His Attempts To Reform The State—His Assassination
By The Prætorian Guards.
The mildness of Marcus, which the rigid discipline of the Stoics was
unable to eradicate, formed, at the same time, the most amiable, and the
only defective part of his character. His excellent understanding was
often deceived by the unsuspecting goodness of his heart. Artful men, who
study the passions of princes, and conceal their own, approached his
person in the disguise of philosophic sanctity, and acquired riches and
honors by affecting to despise them. His excessive indulgence to his
brother, * his wife, and his son, exceeded the bounds of private virtue,
and became a public injury, by the example and consequences of their
vices.
Faustina, the daughter of Pius and the wife of Marcus, has been as much
celebrated for her gallantries as for her beauty. The grave simplicity of
the philosopher was ill calculated to engage her wanton levity, or to fix
that unbounded passion for variety, which often discovered personal merit
in the meanest of mankind. The Cupid of the ancients was, in general, a
very sensual deity; and the amours of an empress, as they exact on her
side the plainest advances, are seldom susceptible of much sentimental
delicacy. Marcus was the only man in the empire who seemed ignorant or
insensible of the irregularities of Faustina; which, according to the
prejudices of every age, reflected some disgrace on the injured husband.
He promoted several of her lovers to posts of honor and profit, and during
a connection of thirty years, invariably gave her proofs of the most
tender confidence, and of a respect which ended not with her life. In his
Meditations, he thanks the gods, who had bestowed on him a wife so
faithful, so gentle, and of such a wonderful simplicity of manners. The
obsequious senate, at his earnest request, declared her a goddess. She was
represented in her temples, with the attributes of Juno, Venus, and Ceres;
and it was decreed, that, on the day of their nuptials, the youth of
either sex should pay their vows before the altar of their chaste
patroness.
The monstrous vices of the son have cast a shade on the purity of the
father's virtues. It has been objected to Marcus, that he sacrificed the
happiness of millions to a fond partiality for a worthless boy; and that
he chose a successor in his own family, rather than in the republic.
Nothing however, was neglected by the anxious father, and by the men of
virtue and learning whom he summoned to his assistance, to expand the
narrow mind of young Commodus, to correct his growing vices, and to render
him worthy of the throne for which he was designed. But the power of
instruction is seldom of much efficacy, except in those happy dispositions
where it is almost superfluous. The distasteful lesson of a grave
philosopher was, in a moment, obliterated by the whisper of a profligate
favorite; and Marcus himself blasted the fruits of this labored education,
by admitting his son, at the age of fourteen or fifteen, to a full
participation of the Imperial power. He lived but four years afterwards:
but he lived long enough to repent a rash measure, which raised the
impetuous youth above the restraint of reason and authority.
Most of the crimes which disturb the internal peace of society, are
produced by the restraints which the necessary but unequal laws of
property have imposed on the appetites of mankind, by confining to a few
the possession of those objects that are coveted by many. Of all our
passions and appetites, the love of power is of the most imperious and
unsociable nature, since the pride of one man requires the submission of
the multitude. In the tumult of civil discord, the laws of society lose
their force, and their place is seldom supplied by those of humanity. The
ardor of contention, the pride of victory, the despair of success, the
memory of past injuries, and the fear of future dangers, all contribute to
inflame the mind, and to silence the voice of pity. From such motives
almost every page of history has been stained with civil blood; but these
motives will not account for the unprovoked cruelties of Commodus, who had
nothing to wish and every thing to enjoy. The beloved son of Marcus
succeeded to his father, amidst the acclamations of the senate and armies;
and when he ascended the throne, the happy youth saw round him neither
competitor to remove, nor enemies to punish. In this calm, elevated
station, it was surely natural that he should prefer the love of mankind
to their detestation, the mild glories of his five predecessors to the
ignominious fate of Nero and Domitian.
Yet Commodus was not, as he has been represented, a tiger born with an
insatiate thirst of human blood, and capable, from his infancy, of the
most inhuman actions. Nature had formed him of a weak rather than a wicked
disposition. His simplicity and timidity rendered him the slave of his
attendants, who gradually corrupted his mind. His cruelty, which at first
obeyed the dictates of others, degenerated into habit, and at length
became the ruling passion of his soul.
Upon the death of his father, Commodus found himself embarrassed with the
command of a great army, and the conduct of a difficult war against the
Quadi and Marcomanni. The servile and profligate youths whom Marcus had
banished, soon regained their station and influence about the new emperor.
They exaggerated the hardships and dangers of a campaign in the wild
countries beyond the Danube; and they assured the indolent prince that the
terror of his name, and the arms of his lieutenants, would be sufficient
to complete the conquest of the dismayed barbarians, or to impose such
conditions as were more advantageous than any conquest. By a dexterous
application to his sensual appetites, they compared the tranquillity, the
splendor, the refined pleasures of Rome, with the tumult of a Pannonian
camp, which afforded neither leisure nor materials for luxury. Commodus
listened to the pleasing advice; but whilst he hesitated between his own
inclination and the awe which he still retained for his father's
counsellors, the summer insensibly elapsed, and his triumphal entry into
the capital was deferred till the autumn. His graceful person, popular
address, and imagined virtues, attracted the public favor; the honorable
peace which he had recently granted to the barbarians, diffused a
universal joy; his impatience to revisit Rome was fondly ascribed to the
love of his country; and his dissolute course of amusements was faintly
condemned in a prince of nineteen years of age.
During the three first years of his reign, the forms, and even the spirit,
of the old administration, were maintained by those faithful counsellors,
to whom Marcus had recommended his son, and for whose wisdom and integrity
Commodus still entertained a reluctant esteem. The young prince and his
profligate favorites revelled in all the license of sovereign power; but
his hands were yet unstained with blood; and he had even displayed a
generosity of sentiment, which might perhaps have ripened into solid
virtue. A fatal incident decided his fluctuating character.
One evening, as the emperor was returning to the palace, through a dark
and narrow portico in the amphitheatre, an assassin, who waited his
passage, rushed upon him with a drawn sword, loudly exclaiming, "The
senate sends you this." The menace prevented the deed; the assassin
was seized by the guards, and immediately revealed the authors of the
conspiracy. It had been formed, not in the state, but within the walls of
the palace. Lucilla, the emperor's sister, and widow of Lucius Verus,
impatient of the second rank, and jealous of the reigning empress, had
armed the murderer against her brother's life. She had not ventured to
communicate the black design to her second husband, Claudius Pompeiarus, a
senator of distinguished merit and unshaken loyalty; but among the crowd
of her lovers (for she imitated the manners of Faustina) she found men of
desperate fortunes and wild ambition, who were prepared to serve her more
violent, as well as her tender passions. The conspirators experienced the
rigor of justice, and the abandoned princess was punished, first with
exile, and afterwards with death.
But the words of the assassin sunk deep into the mind of Commodus, and
left an indelible impression of fear and hatred against the whole body of
the senate. * Those whom he had dreaded as importunate ministers, he now
suspected as secret enemies. The Delators, a race of men discouraged, and
almost extinguished, under the former reigns, again became formidable, as
soon as they discovered that the emperor was desirous of finding
disaffection and treason in the senate. That assembly, whom Marcus had
ever considered as the great council of the nation, was composed of the
most distinguished of the Romans; and distinction of every kind soon
became criminal. The possession of wealth stimulated the diligence of the
informers; rigid virtue implied a tacit censure of the irregularities of
Commodus; important services implied a dangerous superiority of merit; and
the friendship of the father always insured the aversion of the son.
Suspicion was equivalent to proof; trial to condemnation. The execution of
a considerable senator was attended with the death of all who might lament
or revenge his fate; and when Commodus had once tasted human blood, he
became incapable of pity or remorse.
Of these innocent victims of tyranny, none died more lamented than the two
brothers of the Quintilian family, Maximus and Condianus; whose fraternal
love has saved their names from oblivion, and endeared their memory to
posterity. Their studies and their occupations, their pursuits and their
pleasures, were still the same. In the enjoyment of a great estate, they
never admitted the idea of a separate interest: some fragments are now
extant of a treatise which they composed in common; and in every action of
life it was observed that their two bodies were animated by one soul. The
Antonines, who valued their virtues, and delighted in their union, raised
them, in the same year, to the consulship; and Marcus afterwards intrusted
to their joint care the civil administration of Greece, and a great
military command, in which they obtained a signal victory over the
Germans. The kind cruelty of Commodus united them in death.
The tyrant's rage, after having shed the noblest blood of the senate, at
length recoiled on the principal instrument of his cruelty. Whilst
Commodus was immersed in blood and luxury, he devolved the detail of the
public business on Perennis, a servile and ambitious minister, who had
obtained his post by the murder of his predecessor, but who possessed a
considerable share of vigor and ability. By acts of extortion, and the
forfeited estates of the nobles sacrificed to his avarice, he had
accumulated an immense treasure. The Prætorian guards were under his
immediate command; and his son, who already discovered a military genius,
was at the head of the Illyrian legions. Perennis aspired to the empire;
or what, in the eyes of Commodus, amounted to the same crime, he was
capable of aspiring to it, had he not been prevented, surprised, and put
to death. The fall of a minister is a very trifling incident in the
general history of the empire; but it was hastened by an extraordinary
circumstance, which proved how much the nerves of discipline were already
relaxed. The legions of Britain, discontented with the administration of
Perennis, formed a deputation of fifteen hundred select men, with
instructions to march to Rome, and lay their complaints before the
emperor. These military petitioners, by their own determined behaviour, by
inflaming the divisions of the guards, by exaggerating the strength of the
British army, and by alarming the fears of Commodus, exacted and obtained
the minister's death, as the only redress of their grievances. This
presumption of a distant army, and their discovery of the weakness of
government, was a sure presage of the most dreadful convulsions.
The negligence of the public administration was betrayed, soon afterwards,
by a new disorder, which arose from the smallest beginnings. A spirit of
desertion began to prevail among the troops: and the deserters, instead of
seeking their safety in flight or concealment, infested the highways.
Maternus, a private soldier, of a daring boldness above his station,
collected these bands of robbers into a little army, set open the prisons,
invited the slaves to assert their freedom, and plundered with impunity
the rich and defenceless cities of Gaul and Spain. The governors of the
provinces, who had long been the spectators, and perhaps the partners, of
his depredations, were, at length, roused from their supine indolence by
the threatening commands of the emperor. Maternus found that he was
encompassed, and foresaw that he must be overpowered. A great effort of
despair was his last resource. He ordered his followers to disperse, to
pass the Alps in small parties and various disguises, and to assemble at
Rome, during the licentious tumult of the festival of Cybele. To murder
Commodus, and to ascend the vacant throne, was the ambition of no vulgar
robber. His measures were so ably concerted that his concealed troops
already filled the streets of Rome. The envy of an accomplice discovered
and ruined this singular enterprise, in a moment when it was ripe for
execution.
Suspicious princes often promote the last of mankind, from a vain
persuasion, that those who have no dependence, except on their favor, will
have no attachment, except to the person of their benefactor. Cleander,
the successor of Perennis, was a Phrygian by birth; of a nation over whose
stubborn, but servile temper, blows only could prevail. He had been sent
from his native country to Rome, in the capacity of a slave. As a slave he
entered the Imperial palace, rendered himself useful to his master's
passions, and rapidly ascended to the most exalted station which a subject
could enjoy. His influence over the mind of Commodus was much greater than
that of his predecessor; for Cleander was devoid of any ability or virtue
which could inspire the emperor with envy or distrust. Avarice was the
reigning passion of his soul, and the great principle of his
administration. The rank of Consul, of Patrician, of Senator, was exposed
to public sale; and it would have been considered as disaffection, if any
one had refused to purchase these empty and disgraceful honors with the
greatest part of his fortune. In the lucrative provincial employments, the
minister shared with the governor the spoils of the people. The execution
of the laws was penal and arbitrary. A wealthy criminal might obtain, not
only the reversal of the sentence by which he was justly condemned, but
might likewise inflict whatever punishment he pleased on the accuser, the
witnesses, and the judge.
By these means, Cleander, in the space of three years, had accumulated
more wealth than had ever yet been possessed by any freedman. Commodus was
perfectly satisfied with the magnificent presents which the artful
courtier laid at his feet in the most seasonable moments. To divert the
public envy, Cleander, under the emperor's name, erected baths, porticos,
and places of exercise, for the use of the people. He flattered himself
that the Romans, dazzled and amused by this apparent liberality, would be
less affected by the bloody scenes which were daily exhibited; that they
would forget the death of Byrrhus, a senator to whose superior merit the
late emperor had granted one of his daughters; and that they would forgive
the execution of Arrius Antoninus, the last representative of the name and
virtues of the Antonines. The former, with more integrity than prudence,
had attempted to disclose, to his brother-in-law, the true character of
Cleander. An equitable sentence pronounced by the latter, when proconsul
of Asia, against a worthless creature of the favorite, proved fatal to
him. After the fall of Perennis, the terrors of Commodus had, for a short
time, assumed the appearance of a return to virtue. He repealed the most
odious of his acts; loaded his memory with the public execration, and
ascribed to the pernicious counsels of that wicked minister all the errors
of his inexperienced youth. But his repentance lasted only thirty days;
and, under Cleander's tyranny, the administration of Perennis was often
regretted.
Pestilence and famine contributed to fill up the measure of the calamities
of Rome. The first could be only imputed to the just indignation of the
gods; but a monopoly of corn, supported by the riches and power of the
minister, was considered as the immediate cause of the second. The popular
discontent, after it had long circulated in whispers, broke out in the
assembled circus. The people quitted their favorite amusements for the
more delicious pleasure of revenge, rushed in crowds towards a palace in
the suburbs, one of the emperor's retirements, and demanded, with angry
clamors, the head of the public enemy. Cleander, who commanded the Prætorian
guards, ordered a body of cavalry to sally forth, and disperse the
seditious multitude. The multitude fled with precipitation towards the
city; several were slain, and many more were trampled to death; but when
the cavalry entered the streets, their pursuit was checked by a shower of
stones and darts from the roofs and windows of the houses. The foot
guards, who had been long jealous of the prerogatives and insolence of the
Prætorian cavalry, embraced the party of the people. The tumult
became a regular engagement, and threatened a general massacre. The Prætorians,
at length, gave way, oppressed with numbers; and the tide of popular fury
returned with redoubled violence against the gates of the palace, where
Commodus lay, dissolved in luxury, and alone unconscious of the civil war.
It was death to approach his person with the unwelcome news. He would have
perished in this supine security, had not two women, his eldest sister
Fadilla, and Marcia, the most favored of his concubines, ventured to break
into his presence. Bathed in tears, and with dishevelled hair, they threw
themselves at his feet; and with all the pressing eloquence of fear,
discovered to the affrighted emperor the crimes of the minister, the rage
of the people, and the impending ruin, which, in a few minutes, would
burst over his palace and person. Commodus started from his dream of
pleasure, and commanded that the head of Cleander should be thrown out to
the people. The desired spectacle instantly appeased the tumult; and the
son of Marcus might even yet have regained the affection and confidence of
his subjects.
But every sentiment of virtue and humanity was extinct in the mind of
Commodus. Whilst he thus abandoned the reins of empire to these unworthy
favorites, he valued nothing in sovereign power, except the unbounded
license of indulging his sensual appetites. His hours were spent in a
seraglio of three hundred beautiful women, and as many boys, of every
rank, and of every province; and, wherever the arts of seduction proved
ineffectual, the brutal lover had recourse to violence. The ancient
historians have expatiated on these abandoned scenes of prostitution,
which scorned every restraint of nature or modesty; but it would not be
easy to translate their too faithful descriptions into the decency of
modern language. The intervals of lust were filled up with the basest
amusements. The influence of a polite age, and the labor of an attentive
education, had never been able to infuse into his rude and brutish mind
the least tincture of learning; and he was the first of the Roman emperors
totally devoid of taste for the pleasures of the understanding. Nero
himself excelled, or affected to excel, in the elegant arts of music and
poetry: nor should we despise his pursuits, had he not converted the
pleasing relaxation of a leisure hour into the serious business and
ambition of his life. But Commodus, from his earliest infancy, discovered
an aversion to whatever was rational or liberal, and a fond attachment to
the amusements of the populace; the sports of the circus and amphitheatre,
the combats of gladiators, and the hunting of wild beasts. The masters in
every branch of learning, whom Marcus provided for his son, were heard
with inattention and disgust; whilst the Moors and Parthians, who taught
him to dart the javelin and to shoot with the bow, found a disciple who
delighted in his application, and soon equalled the most skilful of his
instructors in the steadiness of the eye and the dexterity of the hand.
The servile crowd, whose fortune depended on their master's vices,
applauded these ignoble pursuits. The perfidious voice of flattery
reminded him, that by exploits of the same nature, by the defeat of the
Nemæan lion, and the slaughter of the wild boar of Erymanthus, the
Grecian Hercules had acquired a place among the gods, and an immortal
memory among men. They only forgot to observe, that, in the first ages of
society, when the fiercer animals often dispute with man the possession of
an unsettled country, a successful war against those savages is one of the
most innocent and beneficial labors of heroism. In the civilized state of
the Roman empire, the wild beasts had long since retired from the face of
man, and the neighborhood of populous cities. To surprise them in their
solitary haunts, and to transport them to Rome, that they might be slain
in pomp by the hand of an emperor, was an enterprise equally ridiculous
for the prince and oppressive for the people. Ignorant of these
distinctions, Commodus eagerly embraced the glorious resemblance, and
styled himself (as we still read on his medals ) the Roman Hercules.
* The club and the lion's hide were placed by the side of the throne,
amongst the ensigns of sovereignty; and statues were erected, in which
Commodus was represented in the character, and with the attributes, of the
god, whose valor and dexterity he endeavored to emulate in the daily
course of his ferocious amusements.
Elated with these praises, which gradually extinguished the innate sense
of shame, Commodus resolved to exhibit before the eyes of the Roman people
those exercises, which till then he had decently confined within the walls
of his palace, and to the presence of a few favorites. On the appointed
day, the various motives of flattery, fear, and curiosity, attracted to
the amphitheatre an innumerable multitude of spectators; and some degree
of applause was deservedly bestowed on the uncommon skill of the Imperial
performer. Whether he aimed at the head or heart of the animal, the wound
was alike certain and mortal. With arrows whose point was shaped into the
form of crescent, Commodus often intercepted the rapid career, and cut
asunder the long, bony neck of the ostrich. A panther was let loose; and
the archer waited till he had leaped upon a trembling malefactor. In the
same instant the shaft flew, the beast dropped dead, and the man remained
unhurt. The dens of the amphitheatre disgorged at once a hundred lions: a
hundred darts from the unerring hand of Commodus laid them dead as they
run raging round the Arena. Neither the huge bulk of the
elephant, nor the scaly hide of the rhinoceros, could defend them from his
stroke. Æthiopia and India yielded their most extraordinary
productions; and several animals were slain in the amphitheatre, which had
been seen only in the representations of art, or perhaps of fancy. In all
these exhibitions, the securest precautions were used to protect the
person of the Roman Hercules from the desperate spring of any savage, who
might possibly disregard the dignity of the emperor and the sanctity of
the god. ^
But the meanest of the populace were affected with shame and indignation
when they beheld their sovereign enter the lists as a gladiator, and glory
in a profession which the laws and manners of the Romans had branded with
the justest note of infamy. He chose the habit and arms of the Secutor,
whose combat with the Retiarius formed one of the most lively
scenes in the bloody sports of the amphitheatre. The Secutor was
armed with a helmet, sword, and buckler; his naked antagonist had only a
large net and a trident; with the one he endeavored to entangle, with the
other to despatch his enemy. If he missed the first throw, he was obliged
to fly from the pursuit of the Secutor, till he had prepared his
net for a second cast. The emperor fought in this character seven hundred
and thirty-five several times. These glorious achievements were carefully
recorded in the public acts of the empire; and that he might omit no
circumstance of infamy, he received from the common fund of gladiators a
stipend so exorbitant that it became a new and most ignominious tax upon
the Roman people. It may be easily supposed, that in these engagements the
master of the world was always successful; in the amphitheatre, his
victories were not often sanguinary; but when he exercised his skill in
the school of gladiators, or his own palace, his wretched antagonists were
frequently honored with a mortal wound from the hand of Commodus, and
obliged to seal their flattery with their blood. He now disdained the
appellation of Hercules. The name of Paulus, a celebrated Secutor, was the
only one which delighted his ear. It was inscribed on his colossal
statues, and repeated in the redoubled acclamations of the mournful and
applauding senate. Claudius Pompeianus, the virtuous husband of Lucilla,
was the only senator who asserted the honor of his rank. As a father, he
permitted his sons to consult their safety by attending the amphitheatre.
As a Roman, he declared, that his own life was in the emperor's hands, but
that he would never behold the son of Marcus prostituting his person and
dignity. Notwithstanding his manly resolution Pompeianus escaped the
resentment of the tyrant, and, with his honor, had the good fortune to
preserve his life.
Commodus had now attained the summit of vice and infamy. Amidst the
acclamations of a flattering court, he was unable to disguise from
himself, that he had deserved the contempt and hatred of every man of
sense and virtue in his empire. His ferocious spirit was irritated by the
consciousness of that hatred, by the envy of every kind of merit, by the
just apprehension of danger, and by the habit of slaughter, which he
contracted in his daily amusements. History has preserved a long list of
consular senators sacrificed to his wanton suspicion, which sought out,
with peculiar anxiety, those unfortunate persons connected, however
remotely, with the family of the Antonines, without sparing even the
ministers of his crimes or pleasures. His cruelty proved at last fatal to
himself. He had shed with impunity the noblest blood of Rome: he perished
as soon as he was dreaded by his own domestics. Marcia, his favorite
concubine, Eclectus, his chamberlain, and Lætus, his Prætorian
præfect, alarmed by the fate of their companions and predecessors,
resolved to prevent the destruction which every hour hung over their
heads, either from the mad caprice of the tyrant, * or the sudden
indignation of the people. Marcia seized the occasion of presenting a
draught of wine to her lover, after he had fatigued himself with hunting
some wild beasts. Commodus retired to sleep; but whilst he was laboring
with the effects of poison and drunkenness, a robust youth, by profession
a wrestler, entered his chamber, and strangled him without resistance. The
body was secretly conveyed out of the palace, before the least suspicion
was entertained in the city, or even in the court, of the emperor's death.
Such was the fate of the son of Marcus, and so easy was it to destroy a
hated tyrant, who, by the artificial powers of government, had oppressed,
during thirteen years, so many millions of subjects, each of whom was
equal to their master in personal strength and personal abilities.
The measures of the conspirators were conducted with the deliberate
coolness and celerity which the greatness of the occasion required. They
resolved instantly to fill the vacant throne with an emperor whose
character would justify and maintain the action that had been committed.
They fixed on Pertinax, præfect of the city, an ancient senator of
consular rank, whose conspicuous merit had broke through the obscurity of
his birth, and raised him to the first honors of the state. He had
successively governed most of the provinces of the empire; and in all his
great employments, military as well as civil, he had uniformly
distinguished himself by the firmness, the prudence, and the integrity of
his conduct. He now remained almost alone of the friends and ministers of
Marcus; and when, at a late hour of the night, he was awakened with the
news, that the chamberlain and the præfect were at his door, he
received them with intrepid resignation, and desired they would execute
their master's orders. Instead of death, they offered him the throne of
the Roman world. During some moments he distrusted their intentions and
assurances. Convinced at length of the death of Commodus, he accepted the
purple with a sincere reluctance, the natural effect of his knowledge both
of the duties and of the dangers of the supreme rank.
Lætus conducted without delay his new emperor to the camp of the Prætorians,
diffusing at the same time through the city a seasonable report that
Commodus died suddenly of an apoplexy; and that the virtuous Pertinax had
already succeeded to the throne. The guards were rather surprised than
pleased with the suspicious death of a prince, whose indulgence and
liberality they alone had experienced; but the emergency of the occasion,
the authority of their præfect, the reputation of Pertinax, and the
clamors of the people, obliged them to stifle their secret discontents, to
accept the donative promised by the new emperor, to swear allegiance to
him, and with joyful acclamations and laurels in their hands to conduct
him to the senate house, that the military consent might be ratified by
the civil authority.
This important night was now far spent; with the dawn of day, and the
commencement of the new year, the senators expected a summons to attend an
ignominious ceremony. * In spite of all remonstrances, even of those of
his creatures who yet preserved any regard for prudence or decency,
Commodus had resolved to pass the night in the gladiators' school, and
from thence to take possession of the consulship, in the habit and with
the attendance of that infamous crew. On a sudden, before the break of
day, the senate was called together in the temple of Concord, to meet the
guards, and to ratify the election of a new emperor. For a few minutes
they sat in silent suspense, doubtful of their unexpected deliverance, and
suspicious of the cruel artifices of Commodus: but when at length they
were assured that the tyrant was no more, they resigned themselves to all
the transports of joy and indignation. Pertinax, who modestly represented
the meanness of his extraction, and pointed out several noble senators
more deserving than himself of the empire, was constrained by their
dutiful violence to ascend the throne, and received all the titles of
Imperial power, confirmed by the most sincere vows of fidelity. The memory
of Commodus was branded with eternal infamy. The names of tyrant, of
gladiator, of public enemy resounded in every corner of the house. They
decreed in tumultuous votes, that his honors should be reversed, his
titles erased from the public monuments, his statues thrown down, his body
dragged with a hook into the stripping room of the gladiators, to satiate
the public fury; and they expressed some indignation against those
officious servants who had already presumed to screen his remains from the
justice of the senate. But Pertinax could not refuse those last rites to
the memory of Marcus, and the tears of his first protector Claudius
Pompeianus, who lamented the cruel fate of his brother-in-law, and
lamented still more that he had deserved it.
These effusions of impotent rage against a dead emperor, whom the senate
had flattered when alive with the most abject servility, betrayed a just
but ungenerous spirit of revenge. The legality of these decrees was,
however, supported by the principles of the Imperial constitution. To
censure, to depose, or to punish with death, the first magistrate of the
republic, who had abused his delegated trust, was the ancient and
undoubted prerogative of the Roman senate; but the feeble assembly was
obliged to content itself with inflicting on a fallen tyrant that public
justice, from which, during his life and reign, he had been shielded by
the strong arm of military despotism. *
Pertinax found a nobler way of condemning his predecessor's memory; by the
contrast of his own virtues with the vices of Commodus. On the day of his
accession, he resigned over to his wife and son his whole private fortune;
that they might have no pretence to solicit favors at the expense of the
state. He refused to flatter the vanity of the former with the title of
Augusta; or to corrupt the inexperienced youth of the latter by the rank
of Cæsar. Accurately distinguishing between the duties of a parent
and those of a sovereign, he educated his son with a severe simplicity,
which, while it gave him no assured prospect of the throne, might in time
have rendered him worthy of it. In public, the behavior of Pertinax was
grave and affable. He lived with the virtuous part of the senate, (and, in
a private station, he had been acquainted with the true character of each
individual,) without either pride or jealousy; considered them as friends
and companions, with whom he had shared the danger of the tyranny, and
with whom he wished to enjoy the security of the present time. He very
frequently invited them to familiar entertainments, the frugality of which
was ridiculed by those who remembered and regretted the luxurious
prodigality of Commodus.
To heal, as far as it was possible, the wounds inflicted by the hand of
tyranny, was the pleasing, but melancholy, task of Pertinax. The innocent
victims, who yet survived, were recalled from exile, released from prison,
and restored to the full possession of their honors and fortunes. The
unburied bodies of murdered senators (for the cruelty of Commodus
endeavored to extend itself beyond death) were deposited in the sepulchres
of their ancestors; their memory was justified and every consolation was
bestowed on their ruined and afflicted families. Among these consolations,
one of the most grateful was the punishment of the Delators; the common
enemies of their master, of virtue, and of their country. Yet even in the
inquisition of these legal assassins, Pertinax proceeded with a steady
temper, which gave every thing to justice, and nothing to popular
prejudice and resentment.
The finances of the state demanded the most vigilant care of the emperor.
Though every measure of injustice and extortion had been adopted, which
could collect the property of the subject into the coffers of the prince,
the rapaciousness of Commodus had been so very inadequate to his
extravagance, that, upon his death, no more than eight thousand pounds
were found in the exhausted treasury, to defray the current expenses of
government, and to discharge the pressing demand of a liberal donative,
which the new emperor had been obliged to promise to the Prætorian
guards. Yet under these distressed circumstances, Pertinax had the
generous firmness to remit all the oppressive taxes invented by Commodus,
and to cancel all the unjust claims of the treasury; declaring, in a
decree of the senate, "that he was better satisfied to administer a poor
republic with innocence, than to acquire riches by the ways of tyranny and
dishonor. "Economy and industry he considered as the pure and genuine
sources of wealth; and from them he soon derived a copious supply for the
public necessities. The expense of the household was immediately reduced
to one half. All the instruments of luxury Pertinax exposed to public
auction, gold and silver plate, chariots of a singular construction, a
superfluous wardrobe of silk and embroidery, and a great number of
beautiful slaves of both sexes; excepting only, with attentive humanity,
those who were born in a state of freedom, and had been ravished from the
arms of their weeping parents. At the same time that he obliged the
worthless favorites of the tyrant to resign a part of their ill-gotten
wealth, he satisfied the just creditors of the state, and unexpectedly
discharged the long arrears of honest services. He removed the oppressive
restrictions which had been laid upon commerce, and granted all the
uncultivated lands in Italy and the provinces to those who would improve
them; with an exemption from tribute during the term of ten years.
Such a uniform conduct had already secured to Pertinax the noblest reward
of a sovereign, the love and esteem of his people. Those who remembered
the virtues of Marcus were happy to contemplate in their new emperor the
features of that bright original; and flattered themselves, that they
should long enjoy the benign influence of his administration. A hasty zeal
to reform the corrupted state, accompanied with less prudence than might
have been expected from the years and experience of Pertinax, proved fatal
to himself and to his country. His honest indiscretion united against him
the servile crowd, who found their private benefit in the public
disorders, and who preferred the favor of a tyrant to the inexorable
equality of the laws.
Amidst the general joy, the sullen and angry countenance of the Prætorian
guards betrayed their inward dissatisfaction. They had reluctantly
submitted to Pertinax; they dreaded the strictness of the ancient
discipline, which he was preparing to restore; and they regretted the
license of the former reign. Their discontents were secretly fomented by Lætus,
their præfect, who found, when it was too late, that his new emperor
would reward a servant, but would not be ruled by a favorite. On the third
day of his reign, the soldiers seized on a noble senator, with a design to
carry him to the camp, and to invest him with the Imperial purple. Instead
of being dazzled by the dangerous honor, the affrighted victim escaped
from their violence, and took refuge at the feet of Pertinax. A short time
afterwards, Sosius Falco, one of the consuls of the year, a rash youth,
but of an ancient and opulent family, listened to the voice of ambition;
and a conspiracy was formed during a short absence of Pertinax, which was
crushed by his sudden return to Rome, and his resolute behavior. Falco was
on the point of being justly condemned to death as a public enemy had he
not been saved by the earnest and sincere entreaties of the injured
emperor, who conjured the senate, that the purity of his reign might not
be stained by the blood even of a guilty senator.
These disappointments served only to irritate the rage of the Prætorian
guards. On the twenty-eighth of March, eighty-six days only after the
death of Commodus, a general sedition broke out in the camp, which the
officers wanted either power or inclination to suppress. Two or three
hundred of the most desperate soldiers marched at noonday, with arms in
their hands and fury in their looks, towards the Imperial palace. The
gates were thrown open by their companions upon guard, and by the
domestics of the old court, who had already formed a secret conspiracy
against the life of the too virtuous emperor. On the news of their
approach, Pertinax, disdaining either flight or concealment, advanced to
meet his assassins; and recalled to their minds his own innocence, and the
sanctity of their recent oath. For a few moments they stood in silent
suspense, ashamed of their atrocious design, and awed by the venerable
aspect and majestic firmness of their sovereign, till at length, the
despair of pardon reviving their fury, a barbarian of the country of
Tongress levelled the first blow against Pertinax, who was instantly
despatched with a multitude of wounds. His head, separated from his body,
and placed on a lance, was carried in triumph to the Prætorian camp,
in the sight of a mournful and indignant people, who lamented the unworthy
fate of that excellent prince, and the transient blessings of a reign, the
memory of which could serve only to aggravate their approaching
misfortunes.
Public Sale Of The Empire To Didius Julianus By The Prætorian Guards—Clodius Albinus In Britain, Pescennius Niger In Syria, And Septimius Severus In Pannonia, Declare Against The Murderers Of Pertinax—Civil Wars And Victory Of Severus Over His Three Rivals—Relaxation Of Discipline—New Maxims Of Government.
The power of the sword is more sensibly felt in an extensive monarchy,
than in a small community. It has been calculated by the ablest
politicians, that no state, without being soon exhausted, can maintain
above the hundredth part of its members in arms and idleness. But although
this relative proportion may be uniform, the influence of the army over
the rest of the society will vary according to the degree of its positive
strength. The advantages of military science and discipline cannot be
exerted, unless a proper number of soldiers are united into one body, and
actuated by one soul. With a handful of men, such a union would be
ineffectual; with an unwieldy host, it would be impracticable; and the
powers of the machine would be alike destroyed by the extreme minuteness
or the excessive weight of its springs. To illustrate this observation, we
need only reflect, that there is no superiority of natural strength,
artificial weapons, or acquired skill, which could enable one man to keep
in constant subjection one hundred of his fellow-creatures: the tyrant of
a single town, or a small district, would soon discover that a hundred
armed followers were a weak defence against ten thousand peasants or
citizens; but a hundred thousand well-disciplined soldiers will command,
with despotic sway, ten millions of subjects; and a body of ten or fifteen
thousand guards will strike terror into the most numerous populace that
ever crowded the streets of an immense capital.
The Prætorian bands, whose licentious fury was the first symptom and
cause of the decline of the Roman empire, scarcely amounted to the
last-mentioned number They derived their institution from Augustus. That
crafty tyrant, sensible that laws might color, but that arms alone could
maintain, his usurped dominion, had gradually formed this powerful body of
guards, in constant readiness to protect his person, to awe the senate,
and either to prevent or to crush the first motions of rebellion. He
distinguished these favored troops by a double pay and superior
privileges; but, as their formidable aspect would at once have alarmed and
irritated the Roman people, three cohorts only were stationed in the
capital, whilst the remainder was dispersed in the adjacent towns of
Italy. But after fifty years of peace and servitude, Tiberius ventured on
a decisive measure, which forever rivetted the fetters of his country.
Under the fair pretences of relieving Italy from the heavy burden of
military quarters, and of introducing a stricter discipline among the
guards, he assembled them at Rome, in a permanent camp, which was
fortified with skilful care, and placed on a commanding situation.
Such formidable servants are always necessary, but often fatal to the
throne of despotism. By thus introducing the Prætorian guards as it
were into the palace and the senate, the emperors taught them to perceive
their own strength, and the weakness of the civil government; to view the
vices of their masters with familiar contempt, and to lay aside that
reverential awe, which distance only, and mystery, can preserve towards an
imaginary power. In the luxurious idleness of an opulent city, their pride
was nourished by the sense of their irresistible weight; nor was it
possible to conceal from them, that the person of the sovereign, the
authority of the senate, the public treasure, and the seat of empire, were
all in their hands. To divert the Prætorian bands from these
dangerous reflections, the firmest and best established princes were
obliged to mix blandishments with commands, rewards with punishments, to
flatter their pride, indulge their pleasures, connive at their
irregularities, and to purchase their precarious faith by a liberal
donative; which, since the elevation of Claudius, was enacted as a legal
claim, on the accession of every new emperor.
The advocate of the guards endeavored to justify by arguments the power
which they asserted by arms; and to maintain that, according to the purest
principles of the constitution, their consent was essentially
necessary in the appointment of an emperor. The election of consuls, of
generals, and of magistrates, however it had been recently usurped by the
senate, was the ancient and undoubted right of the Roman people. But where
was the Roman people to be found? Not surely amongst the mixed multitude
of slaves and strangers that filled the streets of Rome; a servile
populace, as devoid of spirit as destitute of property. The defenders of
the state, selected from the flower of the Italian youth, and trained in
the exercise of arms and virtue, were the genuine representatives of the
people, and the best entitled to elect the military chief of the republic.
These assertions, however defective in reason, became unanswerable when
the fierce Prætorians increased their weight, by throwing, like the
barbarian conqueror of Rome, their swords into the scale.
The Prætorians had violated the sanctity of the throne by the
atrocious murder of Pertinax; they dishonored the majesty of it by their
subsequent conduct. The camp was without a leader, for even the præfect
Lætus, who had excited the tempest, prudently declined the public
indignation. Amidst the wild disorder, Sulpicianus, the emperor's
father-in-law, and governor of the city, who had been sent to the camp on
the first alarm of mutiny, was endeavoring to calm the fury of the
multitude, when he was silenced by the clamorous return of the murderers,
bearing on a lance the head of Pertinax. Though history has accustomed us
to observe every principle and every passion yielding to the imperious
dictates of ambition, it is scarcely credible that, in these moments of
horror, Sulpicianus should have aspired to ascend a throne polluted with
the recent blood of so near a relation and so excellent a prince. He had
already begun to use the only effectual argument, and to treat for the
Imperial dignity; but the more prudent of the Prætorians,
apprehensive that, in this private contract, they should not obtain a just
price for so valuable a commodity, ran out upon the ramparts; and, with a
loud voice, proclaimed that the Roman world was to be disposed of to the
best bidder by public auction.
This infamous offer, the most insolent excess of military license,
diffused a universal grief, shame, and indignation throughout the city. It
reached at length the ears of Didius Julianus, a wealthy senator, who,
regardless of the public calamities, was indulging himself in the luxury
of the table. His wife and his daughter, his freedmen and his parasites,
easily convinced him that he deserved the throne, and earnestly conjured
him to embrace so fortunate an opportunity. The vain old man hastened to
the Prætorian camp, where Sulpicianus was still in treaty with the
guards, and began to bid against him from the foot of the rampart. The
unworthy negotiation was transacted by faithful emissaries, who passed
alternately from one candidate to the other, and acquainted each of them
with the offers of his rival. Sulpicianus had already promised a donative
of five thousand drachms (above one hundred and sixty pounds) to each
soldier; when Julian, eager for the prize, rose at once to the sum of six
thousand two hundred and fifty drachms, or upwards of two hundred pounds
sterling. The gates of the camp were instantly thrown open to the
purchaser; he was declared emperor, and received an oath of allegiance
from the soldiers, who retained humanity enough to stipulate that he
should pardon and forget the competition of Sulpicianus. *
It was now incumbent on the Prætorians to fulfil the conditions of
the sale. They placed their new sovereign, whom they served and despised,
in the centre of their ranks, surrounded him on every side with their
shields, and conducted him in close order of battle through the deserted
streets of the city. The senate was commanded to assemble; and those who
had been the distinguished friends of Pertinax, or the personal enemies of
Julian, found it necessary to affect a more than common share of
satisfaction at this happy revolution. After Julian had filled the senate
house with armed soldiers, he expatiated on the freedom of his election,
his own eminent virtues, and his full assurance of the affections of the
senate. The obsequious assembly congratulated their own and the public
felicity; engaged their allegiance, and conferred on him all the several
branches of the Imperial power. From the senate Julian was conducted, by
the same military procession, to take possession of the palace. The first
objects that struck his eyes, were the abandoned trunk of Pertinax, and
the frugal entertainment prepared for his supper. The one he viewed with
indifference, the other with contempt. A magnificent feast was prepared by
his order, and he amused himself, till a very late hour, with dice, and
the performances of Pylades, a celebrated dancer. Yet it was observed,
that after the crowd of flatterers dispersed, and left him to darkness,
solitude, and terrible reflection, he passed a sleepless night; revolving
most probably in his mind his own rash folly, the fate of his virtuous
predecessor, and the doubtful and dangerous tenure of an empire which had
not been acquired by merit, but purchased by money.
He had reason to tremble. On the throne of the world he found himself
without a friend, and even without an adherent. The guards themselves were
ashamed of the prince whom their avarice had persuaded them to accept; nor
was there a citizen who did not consider his elevation with horror, as the
last insult on the Roman name. The nobility, whose conspicuous station,
and ample possessions, exacted the strictest caution, dissembled their
sentiments, and met the affected civility of the emperor with smiles of
complacency and professions of duty. But the people, secure in their
numbers and obscurity, gave a free vent to their passions. The streets and
public places of Rome resounded with clamors and imprecations. The enraged
multitude affronted the person of Julian, rejected his liberality, and,
conscious of the impotence of their own resentment, they called aloud on
the legions of the frontiers to assert the violated majesty of the Roman
empire.
The public discontent was soon diffused from the centre to the frontiers
of the empire. The armies of Britain, of Syria, and of Illyricum, lamented
the death of Pertinax, in whose company, or under whose command, they had
so often fought and conquered. They received with surprise, with
indignation, and perhaps with envy, the extraordinary intelligence, that
the Prætorians had disposed of the empire by public auction; and
they sternly refused to ratify the ignominious bargain. Their immediate
and unanimous revolt was fatal to Julian, but it was fatal at the same
time to the public peace, as the generals of the respective armies,
Clodius Albinus, Pescennius Niger, and Septimius Severus, were still more
anxious to succeed than to revenge the murdered Pertinax. Their forces
were exactly balanced. Each of them was at the head of three legions, with
a numerous train of auxiliaries; and however different in their
characters, they were all soldiers of experience and capacity.
Clodius Albinus, governor of Britain, surpassed both his competitors in
the nobility of his extraction, which he derived from some of the most
illustrious names of the old republic. But the branch from which he
claimed his descent was sunk into mean circumstances, and transplanted
into a remote province. It is difficult to form a just idea of his true
character. Under the philosophic cloak of austerity, he stands accused of
concealing most of the vices which degrade human nature. But his accusers
are those venal writers who adored the fortune of Severus, and trampled on
the ashes of an unsuccessful rival. Virtue, or the appearances of virtue,
recommended Albinus to the confidence and good opinion of Marcus; and his
preserving with the son the same interest which he had acquired with the
father, is a proof at least that he was possessed of a very flexible
disposition. The favor of a tyrant does not always suppose a want of merit
in the object of it; he may, without intending it, reward a man of worth
and ability, or he may find such a man useful to his own service. It does
not appear that Albinus served the son of Marcus, either as the minister
of his cruelties, or even as the associate of his pleasures. He was
employed in a distant honorable command, when he received a confidential
letter from the emperor, acquainting him of the treasonable designs of
some discontented generals, and authorizing him to declare himself the
guardian and successor of the throne, by assuming the title and ensigns of
Cæsar. The governor of Britain wisely declined the dangerous honor,
which would have marked him for the jealousy, or involved him in the
approaching ruin, of Commodus. He courted power by nobler, or, at least,
by more specious arts. On a premature report of the death of the emperor,
he assembled his troops; and, in an eloquent discourse, deplored the
inevitable mischiefs of despotism, described the happiness and glory which
their ancestors had enjoyed under the consular government, and declared
his firm resolution to reinstate the senate and people in their legal
authority. This popular harangue was answered by the loud acclamations of
the British legions, and received at Rome with a secret murmur of
applause. Safe in the possession of his little world, and in the command
of an army less distinguished indeed for discipline than for numbers and
valor, Albinus braved the menaces of Commodus, maintained towards Pertinax
a stately ambiguous reserve, and instantly declared against the usurpation
of Julian. The convulsions of the capital added new weight to his
sentiments, or rather to his professions of patriotism. A regard to
decency induced him to decline the lofty titles of Augustus and Emperor;
and he imitated perhaps the example of Galba, who, on a similar occasion,
had styled himself the Lieutenant of the senate and people.
Personal merit alone had raised Pescennius Niger, from an obscure birth
and station, to the government of Syria; a lucrative and important
command, which in times of civil confusion gave him a near prospect of the
throne. Yet his parts seem to have been better suited to the second than
to the first rank; he was an unequal rival, though he might have approved
himself an excellent lieutenant, to Severus, who afterwards displayed the
greatness of his mind by adopting several useful institutions from a
vanquished enemy. In his government Niger acquired the esteem of the
soldiers and the love of the provincials. His rigid discipline fortified
the valor and confirmed the obedience of the former, whilst the voluptuous
Syrians were less delighted with the mild firmness of his administration,
than with the affability of his manners, and the apparent pleasure with
which he attended their frequent and pompous festivals. As soon as the
intelligence of the atrocious murder of Pertinax had reached Antioch, the
wishes of Asia invited Niger to assume the Imperial purple and revenge his
death. The legions of the eastern frontier embraced his cause; the opulent
but unarmed provinces, from the frontiers of Æthiopia to the
Hadriatic, cheerfully submitted to his power; and the kings beyond the
Tigris and the Euphrates congratulated his election, and offered him their
homage and services. The mind of Niger was not capable of receiving this
sudden tide of fortune: he flattered himself that his accession would be
undisturbed by competition and unstained by civil blood; and whilst he
enjoyed the vain pomp of triumph, he neglected to secure the means of
victory. Instead of entering into an effectual negotiation with the
powerful armies of the West, whose resolution might decide, or at least
must balance, the mighty contest; instead of advancing without delay
towards Rome and Italy, where his presence was impatiently expected, Niger
trifled away in the luxury of Antioch those irretrievable moments which
were diligently improved by the decisive activity of Severus.
The country of Pannonia and Dalmatia, which occupied the space between the
Danube and the Hadriatic, was one of the last and most difficult conquests
of the Romans. In the defence of national freedom, two hundred thousand of
these barbarians had once appeared in the field, alarmed the declining age
of Augustus, and exercised the vigilant prudence of Tiberius at the head
of the collected force of the empire. The Pannonians yielded at length to
the arms and institutions of Rome. Their recent subjection, however, the
neighborhood, and even the mixture, of the unconquered tribes, and perhaps
the climate, adapted, as it has been observed, to the production of great
bodies and slow minds, all contributed to preserve some remains of their
original ferocity, and under the tame and uniform countenance of Roman
provincials, the hardy features of the natives were still to be discerned.
Their warlike youth afforded an inexhaustible supply of recruits to the
legions stationed on the banks of the Danube, and which, from a perpetual
warfare against the Germans and Sarmazans, were deservedly esteemed the
best troops in the service.
The Pannonian army was at this time commanded by Septimius Severus, a
native of Africa, who, in the gradual ascent of private honors, had
concealed his daring ambition, which was never diverted from its steady
course by the allurements of pleasure, the apprehension of danger, or the
feelings of humanity. On the first news of the murder of Pertinax, he
assembled his troops, painted in the most lively colors the crime, the
insolence, and the weakness of the Prætorian guards, and animated
the legions to arms and to revenge. He concluded (and the peroration was
thought extremely eloquent) with promising every soldier about four
hundred pounds; an honorable donative, double in value to the infamous
bribe with which Julian had purchased the empire. The acclamations of the
army immediately saluted Severus with the names of Augustus, Pertinax, and
Emperor; and he thus attained the lofty station to which he was invited,
by conscious merit and a long train of dreams and omens, the fruitful
offsprings either of his superstition or policy.
The new candidate for empire saw and improved the peculiar advantage of
his situation. His province extended to the Julian Alps, which gave an
easy access into Italy; and he remembered the saying of Augustus, That a
Pannonian army might in ten days appear in sight of Rome. By a celerity
proportioned to the greatness of the occasion, he might reasonably hope to
revenge Pertinax, punish Julian, and receive the homage of the senate and
people, as their lawful emperor, before his competitors, separated from
Italy by an immense tract of sea and land, were apprised of his success,
or even of his election. During the whole expedition, he scarcely allowed
himself any moments for sleep or food; marching on foot, and in complete
armor, at the head of his columns, he insinuated himself into the
confidence and affection of his troops, pressed their diligence, revived
their spirits, animated their hopes, and was well satisfied to share the
hardships of the meanest soldier, whilst he kept in view the infinite
superiority of his reward.
The wretched Julian had expected, and thought himself prepared, to dispute
the empire with the governor of Syria; but in the invincible and rapid
approach of the Pannonian legions, he saw his inevitable ruin. The hasty
arrival of every messenger increased his just apprehensions. He was
successively informed, that Severus had passed the Alps; that the Italian
cities, unwilling or unable to oppose his progress, had received him with
the warmest professions of joy and duty; that the important place of
Ravenna had surrendered without resistance, and that the Hadriatic fleet
was in the hands of the conqueror. The enemy was now within two hundred
and fifty miles of Rome; and every moment diminished the narrow span of
life and empire allotted to Julian.
He attempted, however, to prevent, or at least to protract, his ruin. He
implored the venal faith of the Prætorians, filled the city with
unavailing preparations for war, drew lines round the suburbs, and even
strengthened the fortifications of the palace; as if those last
intrenchments could be defended, without hope of relief, against a
victorious invader. Fear and shame prevented the guards from deserting his
standard; but they trembled at the name of the Pannonian legions,
commanded by an experienced general, and accustomed to vanquish the
barbarians on the frozen Danube. They quitted, with a sigh, the pleasures
of the baths and theatres, to put on arms, whose use they had almost
forgotten, and beneath the weight of which they were oppressed. The
unpractised elephants, whose uncouth appearance, it was hoped, would
strike terror into the army of the north, threw their unskilful riders;
and the awkward evolutions of the marines, drawn from the fleet of
Misenum, were an object of ridicule to the populace; whilst the senate
enjoyed, with secret pleasure, the distress and weakness of the usurper.
Every motion of Julian betrayed his trembling perplexity. He insisted that
Severus should be declared a public enemy by the senate. He entreated that
the Pannonian general might be associated to the empire. He sent public
ambassadors of consular rank to negotiate with his rival; he despatched
private assassins to take away his life. He designed that the Vestal
virgins, and all the colleges of priests, in their sacerdotal habits, and
bearing before them the sacred pledges of the Roman religion, should
advance in solemn procession to meet the Pannonian legions; and, at the
same time, he vainly tried to interrogate, or to appease, the fates, by
magic ceremonies and unlawful sacrifices.
Severus, who dreaded neither his arms nor his enchantments, guarded
himself from the only danger of secret conspiracy, by the faithful
attendance of six hundred chosen men, who never quitted his person or
their cuirasses, either by night or by day, during the whole march.
Advancing with a steady and rapid course, he passed, without difficulty,
the defiles of the Apennine, received into his party the troops and
ambassadors sent to retard his progress, and made a short halt at
Interamnia, about seventy miles from Rome. His victory was already secure,
but the despair of the Prætorians might have rendered it bloody; and
Severus had the laudable ambition of ascending the throne without drawing
the sword. His emissaries, dispersed in the capital, assured the guards,
that provided they would abandon their worthless prince, and the
perpetrators of the murder of Pertinax, to the justice of the conqueror,
he would no longer consider that melancholy event as the act of the whole
body. The faithless Prætorians, whose resistance was supported only
by sullen obstinacy, gladly complied with the easy conditions, seized the
greatest part of the assassins, and signified to the senate, that they no
longer defended the cause of Julian. That assembly, convoked by the
consul, unanimously acknowledged Severus as lawful emperor, decreed divine
honors to Pertinax, and pronounced a sentence of deposition and death
against his unfortunate successor. Julian was conducted into a private
apartment of the baths of the palace, and beheaded as a common criminal,
after having purchased, with an immense treasure, an anxious and
precarious reign of only sixty-six days. The almost incredible expedition
of Severus, who, in so short a space of time, conducted a numerous army
from the banks of the Danube to those of the Tyber, proves at once the
plenty of provisions produced by agriculture and commerce, the goodness of
the roads, the discipline of the legions, and the indolent, subdued temper
of the provinces.
The first cares of Severus were bestowed on two measures the one dictated
by policy, the other by decency; the revenge, and the honors, due to the
memory of Pertinax. Before the new emperor entered Rome, he issued his
commands to the Prætorian guards, directing them to wait his arrival
on a large plain near the city, without arms, but in the habits of
ceremony, in which they were accustomed to attend their sovereign. He was
obeyed by those haughty troops, whose contrition was the effect of their
just terrors. A chosen part of the Illyrian army encompassed them with
levelled spears. Incapable of flight or resistance, they expected their
fate in silent consternation. Severus mounted the tribunal, sternly
reproached them with perfidy and cowardice, dismissed them with ignominy
from the trust which they had betrayed, despoiled them of their splendid
ornaments, and banished them, on pain of death, to the distance of a
hundred miles from the capital. During the transaction, another detachment
had been sent to seize their arms, occupy their camp, and prevent the
hasty consequences of their despair.
The funeral and consecration of Pertinax was next solemnized with every
circumstance of sad magnificence. The senate, with a melancholy pleasure,
performed the last rites to that excellent prince, whom they had loved,
and still regretted. The concern of his successor was probably less
sincere; he esteemed the virtues of Pertinax, but those virtues would
forever have confined his ambition to a private station. Severus
pronounced his funeral oration with studied eloquence, inward
satisfaction, and well-acted sorrow; and by this pious regard to his
memory, convinced the credulous multitude, that he alone was worthy to
supply his place. Sensible, however, that arms, not ceremonies, must
assert his claim to the empire, he left Rome at the end of thirty days,
and without suffering himself to be elated by this easy victory, prepared
to encounter his more formidable rivals.
The uncommon abilities and fortune of Severus have induced an elegant
historian to compare him with the first and greatest of the Cæsars.
The parallel is, at least, imperfect. Where shall we find, in the
character of Severus, the commanding superiority of soul, the generous
clemency, and the various genius, which could reconcile and unite the love
of pleasure, the thirst of knowledge, and the fire of ambition? In one
instance only, they may be compared, with some degree of propriety, in the
celerity of their motions, and their civil victories. In less than four
years, Severus subdued the riches of the East, and the valor of the West.
He vanquished two competitors of reputation and ability, and defeated
numerous armies, provided with weapons and discipline equal to his own. In
that age, the art of fortification, and the principles of tactics, were
well understood by all the Roman generals; and the constant superiority of
Severus was that of an artist, who uses the same instruments with more
skill and industry than his rivals. I shall not, however, enter into a
minute narrative of these military operations; but as the two civil wars
against Niger and against Albinus were almost the same in their conduct,
event, and consequences, I shall collect into one point of view the most
striking circumstances, tending to develop the character of the conqueror
and the state of the empire.
Falsehood and insincerity, unsuitable as they seem to the dignity of
public transactions, offend us with a less degrading idea of meanness,
than when they are found in the intercourse of private life. In the
latter, they discover a want of courage; in the other, only a defect of
power: and, as it is impossible for the most able statesmen to subdue
millions of followers and enemies by their own personal strength, the
world, under the name of policy, seems to have granted them a very liberal
indulgence of craft and dissimulation. Yet the arts of Severus cannot be
justified by the most ample privileges of state reason. He promised only
to betray, he flattered only to ruin; and however he might occasionally
bind himself by oaths and treaties, his conscience, obsequious to his
interest, always released him from the inconvenient obligation.
If his two competitors, reconciled by their common danger, had advanced
upon him without delay, perhaps Severus would have sunk under their united
effort. Had they even attacked him, at the same time, with separate views
and separate armies, the contest might have been long and doubtful. But
they fell, singly and successively, an easy prey to the arts as well as
arms of their subtle enemy, lulled into security by the moderation of his
professions, and overwhelmed by the rapidity of his action. He first
marched against Niger, whose reputation and power he the most dreaded: but
he declined any hostile declarations, suppressed the name of his
antagonist, and only signified to the senate and people his intention of
regulating the eastern provinces. In private, he spoke of Niger, his old
friend and intended successor, with the most affectionate regard, and
highly applauded his generous design of revenging the murder of Pertinax.
To punish the vile usurper of the throne, was the duty of every Roman
general. To persevere in arms, and to resist a lawful emperor,
acknowledged by the senate, would alone render him criminal. The sons of
Niger had fallen into his hands among the children of the provincial
governors, detained at Rome as pledges for the loyalty of their parents.
As long as the power of Niger inspired terror, or even respect, they were
educated with the most tender care, with the children of Severus himself;
but they were soon involved in their father's ruin, and removed first by
exile, and afterwards by death, from the eye of public compassion.
Whilst Severus was engaged in his eastern war, he had reason to apprehend
that the governor of Britain might pass the sea and the Alps, occupy the
vacant seat of empire, and oppose his return with the authority of the
senate and the forces of the West. The ambiguous conduct of Albinus, in
not assuming the Imperial title, left room for negotiation. Forgetting, at
once, his professions of patriotism, and the jealousy of sovereign power,
he accepted the precarious rank of Cæsar, as a reward for his fatal
neutrality. Till the first contest was decided, Severus treated the man,
whom he had doomed to destruction, with every mark of esteem and regard.
Even in the letter, in which he announced his victory over Niger, he
styles Albinus the brother of his soul and empire, sends him the
affectionate salutations of his wife Julia, and his young family, and
entreats him to preserve the armies and the republic faithful to their
common interest. The messengers charged with this letter were instructed
to accost the Cæsar with respect, to desire a private audience, and
to plunge their daggers into his heart. The conspiracy was discovered, and
the too credulous Albinus, at length, passed over to the continent, and
prepared for an unequal contest with his rival, who rushed upon him at the
head of a veteran and victorious army.
The military labors of Severus seem inadequate to the importance of his
conquests. Two engagements, * the one near the Hellespont, the other in
the narrow defiles of Cilicia, decided the fate of his Syrian competitor;
and the troops of Europe asserted their usual ascendant over the
effeminate natives of Asia. The battle of Lyons, where one hundred and
fifty thousand Romans were engaged, was equally fatal to Albinus. The
valor of the British army maintained, indeed, a sharp and doubtful
contest, with the hardy discipline of the Illyrian legions. The fame and
person of Severus appeared, during a few moments, irrecoverably lost, till
that warlike prince rallied his fainting troops, and led them on to a
decisive victory. The war was finished by that memorable day.
The civil wars of modern Europe have been distinguished, not only by the
fierce animosity, but likewise by the obstinate perseverance, of the
contending factions. They have generally been justified by some principle,
or, at least, colored by some pretext, of religion, freedom, or loyalty.
The leaders were nobles of independent property and hereditary influence.
The troops fought like men interested in the decision of the quarrel; and
as military spirit and party zeal were strongly diffused throughout the
whole community, a vanquished chief was immediately supplied with new
adherents, eager to shed their blood in the same cause. But the Romans,
after the fall of the republic, combated only for the choice of masters.
Under the standard of a popular candidate for empire, a few enlisted from
affection, some from fear, many from interest, none from principle. The
legions, uninflamed by party zeal, were allured into civil war by liberal
donatives, and still more liberal promises. A defeat, by disabling the
chief from the performance of his engagements, dissolved the mercenary
allegiance of his followers, and left them to consult their own safety by
a timely desertion of an unsuccessful cause. It was of little moment to
the provinces, under whose name they were oppressed or governed; they were
driven by the impulsion of the present power, and as soon as that power
yielded to a superior force, they hastened to implore the clemency of the
conqueror, who, as he had an immense debt to discharge, was obliged to
sacrifice the most guilty countries to the avarice of his soldiers. In the
vast extent of the Roman empire, there were few fortified cities capable
of protecting a routed army; nor was there any person, or family, or order
of men, whose natural interest, unsupported by the powers of government,
was capable of restoring the cause of a sinking party.
Yet, in the contest between Niger and Severus, a single city deserves an
honorable exception. As Byzantium was one of the greatest passages from
Europe into Asia, it had been provided with a strong garrison, and a fleet
of five hundred vessels was anchored in the harbor. The impetuosity of
Severus disappointed this prudent scheme of defence; he left to his
generals the siege of Byzantium, forced the less guarded passage of the
Hellespont, and, impatient of a meaner enemy, pressed forward to encounter
his rival. Byzantium, attacked by a numerous and increasing army, and
afterwards by the whole naval power of the empire, sustained a siege of
three years, and remained faithful to the name and memory of Niger. The
citizens and soldiers (we know not from what cause) were animated with
equal fury; several of the principal officers of Niger, who despaired of,
or who disdained, a pardon, had thrown themselves into this last refuge:
the fortifications were esteemed impregnable, and, in the defence of the
place, a celebrated engineer displayed all the mechanic powers known to
the ancients. Byzantium, at length, surrendered to famine. The magistrates
and soldiers were put to the sword, the walls demolished, the privileges
suppressed, and the destined capital of the East subsisted only as an open
village, subject to the insulting jurisdiction of Perinthus. The historian
Dion, who had admired the flourishing, and lamented the desolate, state of
Byzantium, accused the revenge of Severus, for depriving the Roman people
of the strongest bulwark against the barbarians of Pontus and Asia The
truth of this observation was but too well justified in the succeeding
age, when the Gothic fleets covered the Euxine, and passed through the
undefined Bosphorus into the centre of the Mediterranean.
Both Niger and Albinus were discovered and put to death in their flight
from the field of battle. Their fate excited neither surprise nor
compassion. They had staked their lives against the chance of empire, and
suffered what they would have inflicted; nor did Severus claim the
arrogant superiority of suffering his rivals to live in a private station.
But his unforgiving temper, stimulated by avarice, indulged a spirit of
revenge, where there was no room for apprehension. The most considerable
of the provincials, who, without any dislike to the fortunate candidate,
had obeyed the governor under whose authority they were accidentally
placed, were punished by death, exile, and especially by the confiscation
of their estates. Many cities of the East were stripped of their ancient
honors, and obliged to pay, into the treasury of Severus, four times the
amount of the sums contributed by them for the service of Niger.
Till the final decision of the war, the cruelty of Severus was, in some
measure, restrained by the uncertainty of the event, and his pretended
reverence for the senate. The head of Albinus, accompanied with a menacing
letter, announced to the Romans that he was resolved to spare none of the
adherents of his unfortunate competitors. He was irritated by the just
suspicion that he had never possessed the affections of the senate, and he
concealed his old malevolence under the recent discovery of some
treasonable correspondences. Thirty-five senators, however, accused of
having favored the party of Albinus, he freely pardoned, and, by his
subsequent behavior, endeavored to convince them, that he had forgotten,
as well as forgiven, their supposed offences. But, at the same time, he
condemned forty-one other senators, whose names history has recorded;
their wives, children, and clients attended them in death, * and the
noblest provincials of Spain and Gaul were involved in the same ruin. Such
rigid justice—for so he termed it—was, in the opinion of
Severus, the only conduct capable of insuring peace to the people or
stability to the prince; and he condescended slightly to lament, that to
be mild, it was necessary that he should first be cruel.
The true interest of an absolute monarch generally coincides with that of
his people. Their numbers, their wealth, their order, and their security,
are the best and only foundations of his real greatness; and were he
totally devoid of virtue, prudence might supply its place, and would
dictate the same rule of conduct. Severus considered the Roman empire as
his property, and had no sooner secured the possession, than he bestowed
his care on the cultivation and improvement of so valuable an acquisition.
Salutary laws, executed with inflexible firmness, soon corrected most of
the abuses with which, since the death of Marcus, every part of the
government had been infected. In the administration of justice, the
judgments of the emperor were characterized by attention, discernment, and
impartiality; and whenever he deviated from the strict line of equity, it
was generally in favor of the poor and oppressed; not so much indeed from
any sense of humanity, as from the natural propensity of a despot to
humble the pride of greatness, and to sink all his subjects to the same
common level of absolute dependence. His expensive taste for building,
magnificent shows, and above all a constant and liberal distribution of
corn and provisions, were the surest means of captivating the affection of
the Roman people. The misfortunes of civil discord were obliterated. The
calm of peace and prosperity was once more experienced in the provinces;
and many cities, restored by the munificence of Severus, assumed the title
of his colonies, and attested by public monuments their gratitude and
felicity. The fame of the Roman arms was revived by that warlike and
successful emperor, and he boasted, with a just pride, that, having
received the empire oppressed with foreign and domestic wars, he left it
established in profound, universal, and honorable peace.
Although the wounds of civil war appeared completely healed, its mortal
poison still lurked in the vitals of the constitution. Severus possessed a
considerable share of vigor and ability; but the daring soul of the first
Cæsar, or the deep policy of Augustus, were scarcely equal to the
task of curbing the insolence of the victorious legions. By gratitude, by
misguided policy, by seeming necessity, Severus was reduced to relax the
nerves of discipline. The vanity of his soldiers was flattered with the
honor of wearing gold rings their ease was indulged in the permission of
living with their wives in the idleness of quarters. He increased their
pay beyond the example of former times, and taught them to expect, and
soon to claim, extraordinary donatives on every public occasion of danger
or festivity. Elated by success, enervated by luxury, and raised above the
level of subjects by their dangerous privileges, they soon became
incapable of military fatigue, oppressive to the country, and impatient of
a just subordination. Their officers asserted the superiority of rank by a
more profuse and elegant luxury. There is still extant a letter of
Severus, lamenting the licentious stage of the army, * and exhorting one
of his generals to begin the necessary reformation from the tribunes
themselves; since, as he justly observes, the officer who has forfeited
the esteem, will never command the obedience, of his soldiers. Had the
emperor pursued the train of reflection, he would have discovered, that
the primary cause of this general corruption might be ascribed, not indeed
to the example, but to the pernicious indulgence, however, of the
commander-in-chief.
The Prætorians, who murdered their emperor and sold the empire, had
received the just punishment of their treason; but the necessary, though
dangerous, institution of guards was soon restored on a new model by
Severus, and increased to four times the ancient number. Formerly these
troops had been recruited in Italy; and as the adjacent provinces
gradually imbibed the softer manners of Rome, the levies were extended to
Macedonia, Noricum, and Spain. In the room of these elegant troops, better
adapted to the pomp of courts than to the uses of war, it was established
by Severus, that from all the legions of the frontiers, the soldiers most
distinguished for strength, valor, and fidelity, should be occasionally
draughted; and promoted, as an honor and reward, into the more eligible
service of the guards. By this new institution, the Italian youth were
diverted from the exercise of arms, and the capital was terrified by the
strange aspect and manners of a multitude of barbarians. But Severus
flattered himself, that the legions would consider these chosen Prætorians
as the representatives of the whole military order; and that the present
aid of fifty thousand men, superior in arms and appointments to any force
that could be brought into the field against them, would forever crush the
hopes of rebellion, and secure the empire to himself and his posterity.
The command of these favored and formidable troops soon became the first
office of the empire. As the government degenerated into military
despotism, the Prætorian Præfect, who in his origin had been a
simple captain of the guards, * was placed not only at the head of the
army, but of the finances, and even of the law. In every department of
administration, he represented the person, and exercised the authority, of
the emperor. The first præfect who enjoyed and abused this immense
power was Plautianus, the favorite minister of Severus. His reign lasted
above ten years, till the marriage of his daughter with the eldest son of
the emperor, which seemed to assure his fortune, proved the occasion of
his ruin. The animosities of the palace, by irritating the ambition and
alarming the fears of Plautianus, threatened to produce a revolution, and
obliged the emperor, who still loved him, to consent with reluctance to
his death. After the fall of Plautianus, an eminent lawyer, the celebrated
Papinian, was appointed to execute the motley office of Prætorian Præfect.
Till the reign of Severus, the virtue and even the good sense of the
emperors had been distinguished by their zeal or affected reverence for
the senate, and by a tender regard to the nice frame of civil policy
instituted by Augustus. But the youth of Severus had been trained in the
implicit obedience of camps, and his riper years spent in the despotism of
military command. His haughty and inflexible spirit could' not discover,
or would not acknowledge, the advantage of preserving an intermediate
power, however imaginary, between the emperor and the army. He disdained
to profess himself the servant of an assembly that detested his person and
trembled at his frown; he issued his commands, where his requests would
have proved as effectual; assumed the conduct and style of a sovereign and
a conqueror, and exercised, without disguise, the whole legislative, as
well as the executive power.
The victory over the senate was easy and inglorious. Every eye and every
passion were directed to the supreme magistrate, who possessed the arms
and treasure of the state; whilst the senate, neither elected by the
people, nor guarded by military force, nor animated by public spirit,
rested its declining authority on the frail and crumbling basis of ancient
opinion. The fine theory of a republic insensibly vanished, and made way
for the more natural and substantial feelings of monarchy. As the freedom
and honors of Rome were successively communicated to the provinces, in
which the old government had been either unknown, or was remembered with
abhorrence, the tradition of republican maxims was gradually obliterated.
The Greek historians of the age of the Antonines observe, with a malicious
pleasure, that although the sovereign of Rome, in compliance with an
obsolete prejudice, abstained from the name of king, he possessed the full
measure of regal power. In the reign of Severus, the senate was filled
with polished and eloquent slaves from the eastern provinces, who
justified personal flattery by speculative principles of servitude. These
new advocates of prerogative were heard with pleasure by the court, and
with patience by the people, when they inculcated the duty of passive
obedience, and descanted on the inevitable mischiefs of freedom. The
lawyers and historians concurred in teaching, that the Imperial authority
was held, not by the delegated commission, but by the irrevocable
resignation of the senate; that the emperor was freed from the restraint
of civil laws, could command by his arbitrary will the lives and fortunes
of his subjects, and might dispose of the empire as of his private
patrimony. The most eminent of the civil lawyers, and particularly
Papinian, Paulus, and Ulpian, flourished under the house of Severus; and
the Roman jurisprudence, having closely united itself with the system of
monarchy, was supposed to have attained its full majority and perfection.
The contemporaries of Severus in the enjoyment of the peace and glory of
his reign, forgave the cruelties by which it had been introduced.
Posterity, who experienced the fatal effects of his maxims and example,
justly considered him as the principal author of the decline of the Roman
empire.
The Death Of Severus.—Tyranny Of Caracalla.—Usurpation Of Macrinus.—Follies Of Elagabalus.—Virtues Of Alexander Severus.—Licentiousness Of The Army.—General State Of The Roman Finances.
The ascent to greatness, however steep and dangerous, may entertain an
active spirit with the consciousness and exercise of its own powers: but
the possession of a throne could never yet afford a lasting satisfaction
to an ambitious mind. This melancholy truth was felt and acknowledged by
Severus. Fortune and merit had, from an humble station, elevated him to
the first place among mankind. "He had been all things," as he said
himself, "and all was of little value" Distracted with the care, not of
acquiring, but of preserving an empire, oppressed with age and
infirmities, careless of fame, and satiated with power, all his prospects
of life were closed. The desire of perpetuating the greatness of his
family was the only remaining wish of his ambition and paternal
tenderness.
Like most of the Africans, Severus was passionately addicted to the vain
studies of magic and divination, deeply versed in the interpretation of
dreams and omens, and perfectly acquainted with the science of judicial
astrology; which, in almost every age except the present, has maintained
its dominion over the mind of man. He had lost his first wife, while he
was governor of the Lionnese Gaul. In the choice of a second, he sought
only to connect himself with some favorite of fortune; and as soon as he
had discovered that the young lady of Emesa in Syria had a royal nativity,
he solicited and obtained her hand. Julia Domna (for that was her name)
deserved all that the stars could promise her. She possessed, even in
advanced age, the attractions of beauty, and united to a lively
imagination a firmness of mind, and strength of judgment, seldom bestowed
on her sex. Her amiable qualities never made any deep impression on the
dark and jealous temper of her husband; but in her son's reign, she
administered the principal affairs of the empire, with a prudence that
supported his authority, and with a moderation that sometimes corrected
his wild extravagancies. Julia applied herself to letters and philosophy,
with some success, and with the most splendid reputation. She was the
patroness of every art, and the friend of every man of genius. The
grateful flattery of the learned has celebrated her virtues; but, if we
may credit the scandal of ancient history, chastity was very far from
being the most conspicuous virtue of the empress Julia.
Two sons, Caracalla and Geta, were the fruit of this marriage, and the
destined heirs of the empire. The fond hopes of the father, and of the
Roman world, were soon disappointed by these vain youths, who displayed
the indolent security of hereditary princes; and a presumption that
fortune would supply the place of merit and application. Without any
emulation of virtue or talents, they discovered, almost from their
infancy, a fixed and implacable antipathy for each other.
Their aversion, confirmed by years, and fomented by the arts of their
interested favorites, broke out in childish, and gradually in more serious
competitions; and, at length, divided the theatre, the circus, and the
court, into two factions, actuated by the hopes and fears of their
respective leaders. The prudent emperor endeavored, by every expedient of
advice and authority, to allay this growing animosity. The unhappy discord
of his sons clouded all his prospects, and threatened to overturn a throne
raised with so much labor, cemented with so much blood, and guarded with
every defence of arms and treasure. With an impartial hand he maintained
between them an exact balance of favor, conferred on both the rank of
Augustus, with the revered name of Antoninus; and for the first time the
Roman world beheld three emperors. Yet even this equal conduct served only
to inflame the contest, whilst the fierce Caracalla asserted the right of
primogeniture, and the milder Geta courted the affections of the people
and the soldiers. In the anguish of a disappointed father, Severus
foretold that the weaker of his sons would fall a sacrifice to the
stronger; who, in his turn, would be ruined by his own vices.
In these circumstances the intelligence of a war in Britain, and of an
invasion of the province by the barbarians of the North, was received with
pleasure by Severus. Though the vigilance of his lieutenants might have
been sufficient to repel the distant enemy, he resolved to embrace the
honorable pretext of withdrawing his sons from the luxury of Rome, which
enervated their minds and irritated their passions; and of inuring their
youth to the toils of war and government. Notwithstanding his advanced
age, (for he was above threescore,) and his gout, which obliged him to be
carried in a litter, he transported himself in person into that remote
island, attended by his two sons, his whole court, and a formidable army.
He immediately passed the walls of Hadrian and Antoninus, and entered the
enemy's country, with a design of completing the long attempted conquest
of Britain. He penetrated to the northern extremity of the island, without
meeting an enemy. But the concealed ambuscades of the Caledonians, who
hung unseen on the rear and flanks of his army, the coldness of the
climate and the severity of a winter march across the hills and morasses
of Scotland, are reported to have cost the Romans above fifty thousand
men. The Caledonians at length yielded to the powerful and obstinate
attack, sued for peace, and surrendered a part of their arms, and a large
tract of territory. But their apparent submission lasted no longer than
the present terror. As soon as the Roman legions had retired, they resumed
their hostile independence. Their restless spirit provoked Severus to send
a new army into Caledonia, with the most bloody orders, not to subdue, but
to extirpate the natives. They were saved by the death of their haughty
enemy.
This Caledonian war, neither marked by decisive events, nor attended with
any important consequences, would ill deserve our attention; but it is
supposed, not without a considerable degree of probability, that the
invasion of Severus is connected with the most shining period of the
British history or fable. Fingal, whose fame, with that of his heroes and
bards, has been revived in our language by a recent publication, is said
to have commanded the Caledonians in that memorable juncture, to have
eluded the power of Severus, and to have obtained a signal victory on the
banks of the Carun, in which the son of the King of the World,
Caracul, fled from his arms along the fields of his pride. Something of a
doubtful mist still hangs over these Highland traditions; nor can it be
entirely dispelled by the most ingenious researches of modern criticism;
but if we could, with safety, indulge the pleasing supposition, that
Fingal lived, and that Ossian sung, the striking contrast of the situation
and manners of the contending nations might amuse a philosophic mind. The
parallel would be little to the advantage of the more civilized people, if
we compared the unrelenting revenge of Severus with the generous clemency
of Fingal; the timid and brutal cruelty of Caracalla with the bravery, the
tenderness, the elegant genius of Ossian; the mercenary chiefs, who, from
motives of fear or interest, served under the imperial standard, with the
free-born warriors who started to arms at the voice of the king of Morven;
if, in a word, we contemplated the untutored Caledonians, glowing with the
warm virtues of nature, and the degenerate Romans, polluted with the mean
vices of wealth and slavery.
The declining health and last illness of Severus inflamed the wild
ambition and black passions of Caracalla's soul. Impatient of any delay or
division of empire, he attempted, more than once, to shorten the small
remainder of his father's days, and endeavored, but without success, to
excite a mutiny among the troops. The old emperor had often censured the
misguided lenity of Marcus, who, by a single act of justice, might have
saved the Romans from the tyranny of his worthless son. Placed in the same
situation, he experienced how easily the rigor of a judge dissolves away
in the tenderness of a parent. He deliberated, he threatened, but he could
not punish; and this last and only instance of mercy was more fatal to the
empire than a long series of cruelty. The disorder of his mind irritated
the pains of his body; he wished impatiently for death, and hastened the
instant of it by his impatience. He expired at York in the sixty-fifth
year of his life, and in the eighteenth of a glorious and successful
reign. In his last moments he recommended concord to his sons, and his
sons to the army. The salutary advice never reached the heart, or even the
understanding, of the impetuous youths; but the more obedient troops,
mindful of their oath of allegiance, and of the authority of their
deceased master, resisted the solicitations of Caracalla, and proclaimed
both brothers emperors of Rome. The new princes soon left the Caledonians
in peace, returned to the capital, celebrated their father's funeral with
divine honors, and were cheerfully acknowledged as lawful sovereigns, by
the senate, the people, and the provinces. Some preeminence of rank seems
to have been allowed to the elder brother; but they both administered the
empire with equal and independent power.
Such a divided form of government would have proved a source of discord
between the most affectionate brothers. It was impossible that it could
long subsist between two implacable enemies, who neither desired nor could
trust a reconciliation. It was visible that one only could reign, and that
the other must fall; and each of them, judging of his rival's designs by
his own, guarded his life with the most jealous vigilance from the
repeated attacks of poison or the sword. Their rapid journey through Gaul
and Italy, during which they never ate at the same table, or slept in the
same house, displayed to the provinces the odious spectacle of fraternal
discord. On their arrival at Rome, they immediately divided the vast
extent of the imperial palace. No communication was allowed between their
apartments; the doors and passages were diligently fortified, and guards
posted and relieved with the same strictness as in a besieged place. The
emperors met only in public, in the presence of their afflicted mother;
and each surrounded by a numerous train of armed followers. Even on these
occasions of ceremony, the dissimulation of courts could ill disguise the
rancor of their hearts.
This latent civil war already distracted the whole government, when a
scheme was suggested that seemed of mutual benefit to the hostile
brothers. It was proposed, that since it was impossible to reconcile their
minds, they should separate their interest, and divide the empire between
them. The conditions of the treaty were already drawn with some accuracy.
It was agreed that Caracalla, as the elder brother should remain in
possession of Europe and the western Africa; and that he should relinquish
the sovereignty of Asia and Egypt to Geta, who might fix his residence at
Alexandria or Antioch, cities little inferior to Rome itself in wealth and
greatness; that numerous armies should be constantly encamped on either
side of the Thracian Bosphorus, to guard the frontiers of the rival
monarchies; and that the senators of European extraction should
acknowledge the sovereign of Rome, whilst the natives of Asia followed the
emperor of the East. The tears of the empress Julia interrupted the
negotiation, the first idea of which had filled every Roman breast with
surprise and indignation. The mighty mass of conquest was so intimately
united by the hand of time and policy, that it required the most forcible
violence to rend it asunder. The Romans had reason to dread, that the
disjointed members would soon be reduced by a civil war under the dominion
of one master; but if the separation was permanent, the division of the
provinces must terminate in the dissolution of an empire whose unity had
hitherto remained inviolate.
Had the treaty been carried into execution, the sovereign of Europe might
soon have been the conqueror of Asia; but Caracalla obtained an easier,
though a more guilty, victory. He artfully listened to his mother's
entreaties, and consented to meet his brother in her apartment, on terms
of peace and reconciliation. In the midst of their conversation, some
centurions, who had contrived to conceal themselves, rushed with drawn
swords upon the unfortunate Geta. His distracted mother strove to protect
him in her arms; but, in the unavailing struggle, she was wounded in the
hand, and covered with the blood of her younger son, while she saw the
elder animating and assisting the fury of the assassins. As soon as the
deed was perpetrated, Caracalla, with hasty steps, and horror in his
countenance, ran towards the Prætorian camp, as his only refuge, and
threw himself on the ground before the statues of the tutelar deities. The
soldiers attempted to raise and comfort him. In broken and disordered
words he informed them of his imminent danger, and fortunate escape;
insinuating that he had prevented the designs of his enemy, and declared
his resolution to live and die with his faithful troops. Geta had been the
favorite of the soldiers; but complaint was useless, revenge was
dangerous, and they still reverenced the son of Severus. Their discontent
died away in idle murmurs, and Caracalla soon convinced them of the
justice of his cause, by distributing in one lavish donative the
accumulated treasures of his father's reign. The real sentiments
of the soldiers alone were of importance to his power or safety. Their
declaration in his favor commanded the dutiful professions of the
senate. The obsequious assembly was always prepared to ratify the decision
of fortune; * but as Caracalla wished to assuage the first emotions of
public indignation, the name of Geta was mentioned with decency, and he
received the funeral honors of a Roman emperor. Posterity, in pity to his
misfortune, has cast a veil over his vices. We consider that young prince
as the innocent victim of his brother's ambition, without recollecting
that he himself wanted power, rather than inclination, to consummate the
same attempts of revenge and murder.
The crime went not unpunished. Neither business, nor pleasure, nor
flattery, could defend Caracalla from the stings of a guilty conscience;
and he confessed, in the anguish of a tortured mind, that his disordered
fancy often beheld the angry forms of his father and his brother rising
into life, to threaten and upbraid him. The consciousness of his crime
should have induced him to convince mankind, by the virtues of his reign,
that the bloody deed had been the involuntary effect of fatal necessity.
But the repentance of Caracalla only prompted him to remove from the world
whatever could remind him of his guilt, or recall the memory of his
murdered brother. On his return from the senate to the palace, he found
his mother in the company of several noble matrons, weeping over the
untimely fate of her younger son. The jealous emperor threatened them with
instant death; the sentence was executed against Fadilla, the last
remaining daughter of the emperor Marcus; * and even the afflicted Julia
was obliged to silence her lamentations, to suppress her sighs, and to
receive the assassin with smiles of joy and approbation. It was computed
that, under the vague appellation of the friends of Geta, above twenty
thousand persons of both sexes suffered death. His guards and freedmen,
the ministers of his serious business, and the companions of his looser
hours, those who by his interest had been promoted to any commands in the
army or provinces, with the long connected chain of their dependants, were
included in the proscription; which endeavored to reach every one who had
maintained the smallest correspondence with Geta, who lamented his death,
or who even mentioned his name. Helvius Pertinax, son to the prince of
that name, lost his life by an unseasonable witticism. It was a sufficient
crime of Thrasea Priscus to be descended from a family in which the love
of liberty seemed an hereditary quality. The particular causes of calumny
and suspicion were at length exhausted; and when a senator was accused of
being a secret enemy to the government, the emperor was satisfied with the
general proof that he was a man of property and virtue. From this
well-grounded principle he frequently drew the most bloody inferences.
The execution of so many innocent citizens was bewailed by the secret
tears of their friends and families. The death of Papinian, the Prætorian
Præfect, was lamented as a public calamity. During the last seven
years of Severus, he had exercised the most important offices of the
state, and, by his salutary influence, guided the emperor's steps in the
paths of justice and moderation. In full assurance of his virtue and
abilities, Severus, on his death-bed, had conjured him to watch over the
prosperity and union of the Imperial family. The honest labors of Papinian
served only to inflame the hatred which Caracalla had already conceived
against his father's minister. After the murder of Geta, the Præfect
was commanded to exert the powers of his skill and eloquence in a studied
apology for that atrocious deed. The philosophic Seneca had condescended
to compose a similar epistle to the senate, in the name of the son and
assassin of Agrippina. "That it was easier to commit than to justify a
parricide," was the glorious reply of Papinian; who did not hesitate
between the loss of life and that of honor. Such intrepid virtue, which
had escaped pure and unsullied from the intrigues courts, the habits of
business, and the arts of his profession, reflects more lustre on the
memory of Papinian, than all his great employments, his numerous writings,
and the superior reputation as a lawyer, which he has preserved through
every age of the Roman jurisprudence.
It had hitherto been the peculiar felicity of the Romans, and in the worst
of times the consolation, that the virtue of the emperors was active, and
their vice indolent. Augustus, Trajan, Hadrian, and Marcus visited their
extensive dominions in person, and their progress was marked by acts of
wisdom and beneficence. The tyranny of Tiberius, Nero, and Domitian, who
resided almost constantly at Rome, or in the adjacent was confined to the
senatorial and equestrian orders. But Caracalla was the common enemy of
mankind. He left capital (and he never returned to it) about a year after
the murder of Geta. The rest of his reign was spent in the several
provinces of the empire, particularly those of the East, and province was
by turns the scene of his rapine and cruelty. The senators, compelled by
fear to attend his capricious motions, were obliged to provide daily
entertainments at an immense expense, which he abandoned with contempt to
his guards; and to erect, in every city, magnificent palaces and theatres,
which he either disdained to visit, or ordered immediately thrown down.
The most wealthy families ruined by partial fines and confiscations, and
the great body of his subjects oppressed by ingenious and aggravated
taxes. In the midst of peace, and upon the slightest provocation, he
issued his commands, at Alexandria, in Egypt for a general massacre. From
a secure post in the temple of Serapis, he viewed and directed the
slaughter of many thousand citizens, as well as strangers, without
distinguishing the number or the crime of the sufferers; since as he
coolly informed the senate, allthe Alexandrians, those who
perished, and those who had escaped, were alike guilty.
The wise instructions of Severus never made any lasting impression on the
mind of his son, who, although not destitute of imagination and eloquence,
was equally devoid of judgment and humanity. One dangerous maxim, worthy
of a tyrant, was remembered and abused by Caracalla. "To secure the
affections of the army, and to esteem the rest of his subjects as of
little moment." But the liberality of the father had been restrained by
prudence, and his indulgence to the troops was tempered by firmness and
authority. The careless profusion of the son was the policy of one reign,
and the inevitable ruin both of the army and of the empire. The vigor of
the soldiers, instead of being confirmed by the severe discipline of
camps, melted away in the luxury of cities. The excessive increase of
their pay and donatives exhausted the state to enrich the military order,
whose modesty in peace, and service in war, is best secured by an
honorable poverty. The demeanor of Caracalla was haughty and full of
pride; but with the troops he forgot even the proper dignity of his rank,
encouraged their insolent familiarity, and, neglecting the essential
duties of a general, affected to imitate the dress and manners of a common
soldier.
It was impossible that such a character, and such conduct as that of
Caracalla, could inspire either love or esteem; but as long as his vices
were beneficial to the armies, he was secure from the danger of rebellion.
A secret conspiracy, provoked by his own jealousy, was fatal to the
tyrant. The Prætorian præfecture was divided between two
ministers. The military department was intrusted to Adventus, an
experienced rather than able soldier; and the civil affairs were
transacted by Opilius Macrinus, who, by his dexterity in business, had
raised himself, with a fair character, to that high office. But his favor
varied with the caprice of the emperor, and his life might depend on the
slightest suspicion, or the most casual circumstance. Malice or fanaticism
had suggested to an African, deeply skilled in the knowledge of futurity,
a very dangerous prediction, that Macrinus and his son were destined to
reign over the empire. The report was soon diffused through the province;
and when the man was sent in chains to Rome, he still asserted, in the
presence of the præfect of the city, the faith of his prophecy. That
magistrate, who had received the most pressing instructions to inform
himself of the successors of Caracalla, immediately communicated
the examination of the African to the Imperial court, which at that time
resided in Syria. But, notwithstanding the diligence of the public
messengers, a friend of Macrinus found means to apprise him of the
approaching danger. The emperor received the letters from Rome; and as he
was then engaged in the conduct of a chariot race, he delivered them
unopened to the Prætorian Præfect, directing him to despatch
the ordinary affairs, and to report the more important business that might
be contained in them. Macrinus read his fate, and resolved to prevent it.
He inflamed the discontents of some inferior officers, and employed the
hand of Martialis, a desperate soldier, who had been refused the rank of
centurion. The devotion of Caracalla prompted him to make a pilgrimage
from Edessa to the celebrated temple of the Moon at Carrhæ. * He was
attended by a body of cavalry: but having stopped on the road for some
necessary occasion, his guards preserved a respectful distance, and
Martialis, approaching his person under a presence of duty, stabbed him
with a dagger. The bold assassin was instantly killed by a Scythian archer
of the Imperial guard. Such was the end of a monster whose life disgraced
human nature, and whose reign accused the patience of the Romans. The
grateful soldiers forgot his vices, remembered only his partial
liberality, and obliged the senate to prostitute their own dignity and
that of religion, by granting him a place among the gods. Whilst he was
upon earth, Alexander the Great was the only hero whom this god deemed
worthy his admiration. He assumed the name and ensigns of Alexander,
formed a Macedonian phalanx of guards, persecuted the disciples of
Aristotle, and displayed, with a puerile enthusiasm, the only sentiment by
which he discovered any regard for virtue or glory. We can easily
conceive, that after the battle of Narva, and the conquest of Poland,
Charles XII. (though he still wanted the more elegant accomplishments of
the son of Philip) might boast of having rivalled his valor and
magnanimity; but in no one action of his life did Caracalla express the
faintest resemblance of the Macedonian hero, except in the murder of a
great number of his own and of his father's friends.
After the extinction of the house of Severus, the Roman world remained
three days without a master. The choice of the army (for the authority of
a distant and feeble senate was little regarded) hung in anxious suspense,
as no candidate presented himself whose distinguished birth and merit
could engage their attachment and unite their suffrages. The decisive
weight of the Prætorian guards elevated the hopes of their præfects,
and these powerful ministers began to assert their legal claim to
fill the vacancy of the Imperial throne. Adventus, however, the senior præfect,
conscious of his age and infirmities, of his small reputation, and his
smaller abilities, resigned the dangerous honor to the crafty ambition of
his colleague Macrinus, whose well-dissembled grief removed all suspicion
of his being accessary to his master's death. The troops neither loved nor
esteemed his character. They cast their eyes around in search of a
competitor, and at last yielded with reluctance to his promises of
unbounded liberality and indulgence. A short time after his accession, he
conferred on his son Diadumenianus, at the age of only ten years, the
Imperial title, and the popular name of Antoninus. The beautiful figure of
the youth, assisted by an additional donative, for which the ceremony
furnished a pretext, might attract, it was hoped, the favor of the army,
and secure the doubtful throne of Macrinus.
The authority of the new sovereign had been ratified by the cheerful
submission of the senate and provinces. They exulted in their unexpected
deliverance from a hated tyrant, and it seemed of little consequence to
examine into the virtues of the successor of Caracalla. But as soon as the
first transports of joy and surprise had subsided, they began to
scrutinize the merits of Macrinus with a critical severity, and to arraign
the nasty choice of the army. It had hitherto been considered as a
fundamental maxim of the constitution, that the emperor must be always
chosen in the senate, and the sovereign power, no longer exercised by the
whole body, was always delegated to one of its members. But Macrinus was
not a senator. The sudden elevation of the Prætorian præfects
betrayed the meanness of their origin; and the equestrian order was still
in possession of that great office, which commanded with arbitrary sway
the lives and fortunes of the senate. A murmur of indignation was heard,
that a man, whose obscure extraction had never been illustrated by any
signal service, should dare to invest himself with the purple, instead of
bestowing it on some distinguished senator, equal in birth and dignity to
the splendor of the Imperial station. As soon as the character of Macrinus
was surveyed by the sharp eye of discontent, some vices, and many defects,
were easily discovered. The choice of his ministers was in many instances
justly censured, and the dissatisfied people, with their usual candor,
accused at once his indolent tameness and his excessive severity.
His rash ambition had climbed a height where it was difficult to stand
with firmness, and impossible to fall without instant destruction. Trained
in the arts of courts and the forms of civil business, he trembled in the
presence of the fierce and undisciplined multitude, over whom he had
assumed the command; his military talents were despised, and his personal
courage suspected; a whisper that circulated in the camp, disclosed the
fatal secret of the conspiracy against the late emperor, aggravated the
guilt of murder by the baseness of hypocrisy, and heightened contempt by
detestation. To alienate the soldiers, and to provoke inevitable ruin, the
character of a reformer was only wanting; and such was the peculiar
hardship of his fate, that Macrinus was compelled to exercise that
invidious office. The prodigality of Caracalla had left behind it a long
train of ruin and disorder; and if that worthless tyrant had been capable
of reflecting on the sure consequences of his own conduct, he would
perhaps have enjoyed the dark prospect of the distress and calamities
which he bequeathed to his successors.
In the management of this necessary reformation, Macrinus proceeded with a
cautious prudence, which would have restored health and vigor to the Roman
army in an easy and almost imperceptible manner. To the soldiers already
engaged in the service, he was constrained to leave the dangerous
privileges and extravagant pay given by Caracalla; but the new recruits
were received on the more moderate though liberal establishment of
Severus, and gradually formed to modesty and obedience. One fatal error
destroyed the salutary effects of this judicious plan. The numerous army,
assembled in the East by the late emperor, instead of being immediately
dispersed by Macrinus through the several provinces, was suffered to
remain united in Syria, during the winter that followed his elevation. In
the luxurious idleness of their quarters, the troops viewed their strength
and numbers, communicated their complaints, and revolved in their minds
the advantages of another revolution. The veterans, instead of being
flattered by the advantageous distinction, were alarmed by the first steps
of the emperor, which they considered as the presage of his future
intentions. The recruits, with sullen reluctance, entered on a service,
whose labors were increased while its rewards were diminished by a
covetous and unwarlike sovereign. The murmurs of the army swelled with
impunity into seditious clamors; and the partial mutinies betrayed a
spirit of discontent and disaffection that waited only for the slightest
occasion to break out on every side into a general rebellion. To minds
thus disposed, the occasion soon presented itself.
The empress Julia had experienced all the vicissitudes of fortune. From an
humble station she had been raised to greatness, only to taste the
superior bitterness of an exalted rank. She was doomed to weep over the
death of one of her sons, and over the life of the other. The cruel fate
of Caracalla, though her good sense must have long taught her to expect
it, awakened the feelings of a mother and of an empress. Notwithstanding
the respectful civility expressed by the usurper towards the widow of
Severus, she descended with a painful struggle into the condition of a
subject, and soon withdrew herself, by a voluntary death, from the anxious
and humiliating dependence. * Julia Mæsa, her sister, was ordered to
leave the court and Antioch. She retired to Emesa with an immense fortune,
the fruit of twenty years' favor accompanied by her two daughters, Soæmias
and Mamæ, each of whom was a widow, and each had an only son.
Bassianus, for that was the name of the son of Soæmias, was
consecrated to the honorable ministry of high priest of the Sun; and this
holy vocation, embraced either from prudence or superstition, contributed
to raise the Syrian youth to the empire of Rome. A numerous body of troops
was stationed at Emesa; and as the severe discipline of Macrinus had
constrained them to pass the winter encamped, they were eager to revenge
the cruelty of such unaccustomed hardships. The soldiers, who resorted in
crowds to the temple of the Sun, beheld with veneration and delight the
elegant dress and figure of the young pontiff; they recognized, or they
thought that they recognized, the features of Caracalla, whose memory they
now adored. The artful Mæsa saw and cherished their rising
partiality, and readily sacrificing her daughter's reputation to the
fortune of her grandson, she insinuated that Bassianus was the natural son
of their murdered sovereign. The sums distributed by her emissaries with a
lavish hand silenced every objection, and the profusion sufficiently
proved the affinity, or at least the resemblance, of Bassianus with the
great original. The young Antoninus (for he had assumed and polluted that
respectable name) was declared emperor by the troops of Emesa, asserted
his hereditary right, and called aloud on the armies to follow the
standard of a young and liberal prince, who had taken up arms to revenge
his father's death and the oppression of the military order.
Whilst a conspiracy of women and eunuchs was concerted with prudence, and
conducted with rapid vigor, Macrinus, who, by a decisive motion, might
have crushed his infant enemy, floated between the opposite extremes of
terror and security, which alike fixed him inactive at Antioch. A spirit
of rebellion diffused itself through all the camps and garrisons of Syria,
successive detachments murdered their officers, and joined the party of
the rebels; and the tardy restitution of military pay and privileges was
imputed to the acknowledged weakness of Macrinus. At length he marched out
of Antioch, to meet the increasing and zealous army of the young
pretender. His own troops seemed to take the field with faintness and
reluctance; but, in the heat of the battle, the Prætorian guards,
almost by an involuntary impulse, asserted the superiority of their valor
and discipline. The rebel ranks were broken; when the mother and
grandmother of the Syrian prince, who, according to their eastern custom,
had attended the army, threw themselves from their covered chariots, and,
by exciting the compassion of the soldiers, endeavored to animate their
drooping courage. Antoninus himself, who, in the rest of his life, never
acted like a man, in this important crisis of his fate, approved himself a
hero, mounted his horse, and, at the head of his rallied troops, charged
sword in hand among the thickest of the enemy; whilst the eunuch Gannys, *
whose occupations had been confined to female cares and the soft luxury of
Asia, displayed the talents of an able and experienced general. The battle
still raged with doubtful violence, and Macrinus might have obtained the
victory, had he not betrayed his own cause by a shameful and precipitate
flight. His cowardice served only to protract his life a few days, and to
stamp deserved ignominy on his misfortunes. It is scarcely necessary to
add, that his son Diadumenianus was involved in the same fate. As soon as
the stubborn Prætorians could be convinced that they fought for a
prince who had basely deserted them, they surrendered to the conqueror:
the contending parties of the Roman army, mingling tears of joy and
tenderness, united under the banners of the imagined son of Caracalla, and
the East acknowledged with pleasure the first emperor of Asiatic
extraction.
The letters of Macrinus had condescended to inform the senate of the
slight disturbance occasioned by an impostor in Syria, and a decree
immediately passed, declaring the rebel and his family public enemies;
with a promise of pardon, however, to such of his deluded adherents as
should merit it by an immediate return to their duty. During the twenty
days that elapsed from the declaration of the victory of Antoninus, (for
in so short an interval was the fate of the Roman world decided,) the
capital and the provinces, more especially those of the East, were
distracted with hopes and fears, agitated with tumult, and stained with a
useless effusion of civil blood, since whosoever of the rivals prevailed
in Syria must reign over the empire. The specious letters in which the
young conqueror announced his victory to the obedient senate were filled
with professions of virtue and moderation; the shining examples of Marcus
and Augustus, he should ever consider as the great rule of his
administration; and he affected to dwell with pride on the striking
resemblance of his own age and fortunes with those of Augustus, who in the
earliest youth had revenged, by a successful war, the murder of his
father. By adopting the style of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, son of
Antoninus and grandson of Severus, he tacitly asserted his hereditary
claim to the empire; but, by assuming the tribunitian and proconsular
powers before they had been conferred on him by a decree of the senate, he
offended the delicacy of Roman prejudice. This new and injudicious
violation of the constitution was probably dictated either by the
ignorance of his Syrian courtiers, or the fierce disdain of his military
followers.
As the attention of the new emperor was diverted by the most trifling
amusements, he wasted many months in his luxurious progress from Syria to
Italy, passed at Nicomedia his first winter after his victory, and
deferred till the ensuing summer his triumphal entry into the capital. A
faithful picture, however, which preceded his arrival, and was placed by
his immediate order over the altar of Victory in the senate house,
conveyed to the Romans the just but unworthy resemblance of his person and
manners. He was drawn in his sacerdotal robes of silk and gold, after the
loose flowing fashion of the Medes and Phnicians; his head was covered
with a lofty tiara, his numerous collars and bracelets were adorned with
gems of an inestimable value. His eyebrows were tinged with black, and his
cheeks painted with an artificial red and white. The grave senators
confessed with a sigh, that, after having long experienced the stern
tyranny of their own countrymen, Rome was at length humbled beneath the
effeminate luxury of Oriental despotism.
The Sun was worshipped at Emesa, under the name of Elagabalus, and under
the form of a black conical stone, which, as it was universally believed,
had fallen from heaven on that sacred place. To this protecting deity,
Antoninus, not without some reason, ascribed his elevation to the throne.
The display of superstitious gratitude was the only serious business of
his reign. The triumph of the god of Emesa over all the religions of the
earth, was the great object of his zeal and vanity; and the appellation of
Elagabalus (for he presumed as pontiff and favorite to adopt that sacred
name) was dearer to him than all the titles of Imperial greatness. In a
solemn procession through the streets of Rome, the way was strewed with
gold dust; the black stone, set in precious gems, was placed on a chariot
drawn by six milk-white horses richly caparisoned. The pious emperor held
the reins, and, supported by his ministers, moved slowly backwards, that
he might perpetually enjoy the felicity of the divine presence. In a
magnificent temple raised on the Palatine Mount, the sacrifices of the god
Elagabalus were celebrated with every circumstance of cost and solemnity.
The richest wines, the most extraordinary victims, and the rarest
aromatics, were profusely consumed on his altar. Around the altar, a
chorus of Syrian damsels performed their lascivious dances to the sound of
barbarian music, whilst the gravest personages of the state and army,
clothed in long Phnician tunics, officiated in the meanest functions, with
affected zeal and secret indignation.
To this temple, as to the common centre of religious worship, the Imperial
fanatic attempted to remove the Ancilia, the Palladium, and all the sacred
pledges of the faith of Numa. A crowd of inferior deities attended in
various stations the majesty of the god of Emesa; but his court was still
imperfect, till a female of distinguished rank was admitted to his bed.
Pallas had been first chosen for his consort; but as it was dreaded lest
her warlike terrors might affright the soft delicacy of a Syrian deity,
the Moon, adorned by the Africans under the name of Astarte, was deemed a
more suitable companion for the Sun. Her image, with the rich offerings of
her temple as a marriage portion, was transported with solemn pomp from
Carthage to Rome, and the day of these mystic nuptials was a general
festival in the capital and throughout the empire.
A rational voluptuary adheres with invariable respect to the temperate
dictates of nature, and improves the gratifications of sense by social
intercourse, endearing connections, and the soft coloring of taste and the
imagination. But Elagabalus, (I speak of the emperor of that name,)
corrupted by his youth, his country, and his fortune, abandoned himself to
the grossest pleasures with ungoverned fury, and soon found disgust and
satiety in the midst of his enjoyments. The inflammatory powers of art
were summoned to his aid: the confused multitude of women, of wines, and
of dishes, and the studied variety of attitude and sauces, served to
revive his languid appetites. New terms and new inventions in these
sciences, the only ones cultivated and patronized by the monarch,
signalized his reign, and transmitted his infamy to succeeding times. A
capricious prodigality supplied the want of taste and elegance; and whilst
Elagabalus lavished away the treasures of his people in the wildest
extravagance, his own voice and that of his flatterers applauded a spirit
of magnificence unknown to the tameness of his predecessors. To confound
the order of seasons and climates, to sport with the passions and
prejudices of his subjects, and to subvert every law of nature and
decency, were in the number of his most delicious amusements. A long train
of concubines, and a rapid succession of wives, among whom was a vestal
virgin, ravished by force from her sacred asylum, were insufficient to
satisfy the impotence of his passions. The master of the Roman world
affected to copy the dress and manners of the female sex, preferred the
distaff to the sceptre, and dishonored the principal dignities of the
empire by distributing them among his numerous lovers; one of whom was
publicly invested with the title and authority of the emperor's, or, as he
more properly styled himself, of the empress's husband.
It may seem probable, the vices and follies of Elagabalus have been
adorned by fancy, and blackened by prejudice. Yet, confining ourselves to
the public scenes displayed before the Roman people, and attested by grave
and contemporary historians, their inexpressible infamy surpasses that of
any other age or country. The license of an eastern monarch is secluded
from the eye of curiosity by the inaccessible walls of his seraglio. The
sentiments of honor and gallantry have introduced a refinement of
pleasure, a regard for decency, and a respect for the public opinion, into
the modern courts of Europe; * but the corrupt and opulent nobles of Rome
gratified every vice that could be collected from the mighty conflux of
nations and manners. Secure of impunity, careless of censure, they lived
without restraint in the patient and humble society of their slaves and
parasites. The emperor, in his turn, viewing every rank of his subjects
with the same contemptuous indifference, asserted without control his
sovereign privilege of lust and luxury.
The most worthless of mankind are not afraid to condemn in others the same
disorders which they allow in themselves; and can readily discover some
nice difference of age, character, or station, to justify the partial
distinction. The licentious soldiers, who had raised to the throne the
dissolute son of Caracalla, blushed at their ignominious choice, and
turned with disgust from that monster, to contemplate with pleasure the
opening virtues of his cousin Alexander, the son of Mamæa. The
crafty Mæsa, sensible that her grandson Elagabalus must inevitably
destroy himself by his own vices, had provided another and surer support
of her family. Embracing a favorable moment of fondness and devotion, she
had persuaded the young emperor to adopt Alexander, and to invest him with
the title of Cæsar, that his own divine occupations might be no
longer interrupted by the care of the earth. In the second rank that
amiable prince soon acquired the affections of the public, and excited the
tyrant's jealousy, who resolved to terminate the dangerous competition,
either by corrupting the manners, or by taking away the life, of his
rival. His arts proved unsuccessful; his vain designs were constantly
discovered by his own loquacious folly, and disappointed by those virtuous
and faithful servants whom the prudence of Mamæa had placed about
the person of her son. In a hasty sally of passion, Elagabalus resolved to
execute by force what he had been unable to compass by fraud, and by a
despotic sentence degraded his cousin from the rank and honors of Cæsar.
The message was received in the senate with silence, and in the camp with
fury. The Prætorian guards swore to protect Alexander, and to
revenge the dishonored majesty of the throne. The tears and promises of
the trembling Elagabalus, who only begged them to spare his life, and to
leave him in the possession of his beloved Hierocles, diverted their just
indignation; and they contented themselves with empowering their præfects
to watch over the safety of Alexander, and the conduct of the emperor.
It was impossible that such a reconciliation should last, or that even the
mean soul of Elagabalus could hold an empire on such humiliating terms of
dependence. He soon attempted, by a dangerous experiment, to try the
temper of the soldiers. The report of the death of Alexander, and the
natural suspicion that he had been murdered, inflamed their passions into
fury, and the tempest of the camp could only be appeased by the presence
and authority of the popular youth. Provoked at this new instance of their
affection for his cousin, and their contempt for his person, the emperor
ventured to punish some of the leaders of the mutiny. His unseasonable
severity proved instantly fatal to his minions, his mother, and himself.
Elagabalus was massacred by the indignant Prætorians, his mutilated
corpse dragged through the streets of the city, and thrown into the Tiber.
His memory was branded with eternal infamy by the senate; the justice of
whose decree has been ratified by posterity.
[See Island In The Tiber: Elagabalus was thrown into the Tiber]?
In the room of Elagabalus, his cousin Alexander was raised to the throne
by the Prætorian guards. His relation to the family of Severus,
whose name he assumed, was the same as that of his predecessor; his virtue
and his danger had already endeared him to the Romans, and the eager
liberality of the senate conferred upon him, in one day, the various
titles and powers of the Imperial dignity. But as Alexander was a modest
and dutiful youth, of only seventeen years of age, the reins of government
were in the hands of two women, of his mother, Mamæa, and of Mæsa,
his grandmother. After the death of the latter, who survived but a short
time the elevation of Alexander, Mamæa remained the sole regent of
her son and of the empire.
In every age and country, the wiser, or at least the stronger, of the two
sexes, has usurped the powers of the state, and confined the other to the
cares and pleasures of domestic life. In hereditary monarchies, however,
and especially in those of modern Europe, the gallant spirit of chivalry,
and the law of succession, have accustomed us to allow a singular
exception; and a woman is often acknowledged the absolute sovereign of a
great kingdom, in which she would be deemed incapable of exercising the
smallest employment, civil or military. But as the Roman emperors were
still considered as the generals and magistrates of the republic, their
wives and mothers, although distinguished by the name of Augusta were
never associated to their personal honors; and a female reign would have
appeared an inexpiable prodigy in the eyes of those primitive Romans, who
married without love, or loved without delicacy and respect. The haughty
Agripina aspired, indeed, to share the honors of the empire which she had
conferred on her son; but her mad ambition, detested by every citizen who
felt for the dignity of Rome, was disappointed by the artful firmness of
Seneca and Burrhus. The good sense, or the indifference, of succeeding
princes, restrained them from offending the prejudices of their subjects;
and it was reserved for the profligate Elagabalus to discharge the acts of
the senate with the name of his mother Soæmias, who was placed by
the side of the consuls, and subscribed, as a regular member, the decrees
of the legislative assembly. Her more prudent sister, Mamæa,
declined the useless and odious prerogative, and a solemn law was enacted,
excluding women forever from the senate, and devoting to the infernal gods
the head of the wretch by whom this sanction should be violated. The
substance, not the pageantry, of power. was the object of Mamæa's
manly ambition. She maintained an absolute and lasting empire over the
mind of her son, and in his affection the mother could not brook a rival.
Alexander, with her consent, married the daughter of a patrician; but his
respect for his father-in-law, and love for the empress, were inconsistent
with the tenderness of interest of Mamæa. The patrician was executed
on the ready accusation of treason, and the wife of Alexander driven with
ignominy from the palace, and banished into Africa.
Notwithstanding this act of jealous cruelty, as well as some instances of
avarice, with which Mamæa is charged, the general tenor of her
administration was equally for the benefit of her son and of the empire.
With the approbation of the senate, she chose sixteen of the wisest and
most virtuous senators as a perpetual council of state, before whom every
public business of moment was debated and determined. The celebrated
Ulpian, equally distinguished by his knowledge of, and his respect for,
the laws of Rome, was at their head; and the prudent firmness of this
aristocracy restored order and authority to the government. As soon as
they had purged the city from foreign superstition and luxury, the remains
of the capricious tyranny of Elagabalus, they applied themselves to remove
his worthless creatures from every department of the public
administration, and to supply their places with men of virtue and ability.
Learning, and the love of justice, became the only recommendations for
civil offices; valor, and the love of discipline, the only qualifications
for military employments.
But the most important care of Mamæa and her wise counsellors, was
to form the character of the young emperor, on whose personal qualities
the happiness or misery of the Roman world must ultimately depend. The
fortunate soil assisted, and even prevented, the hand of cultivation. An
excellent understanding soon convinced Alexander of the advantages of
virtue, the pleasure of knowledge, and the necessity of labor. A natural
mildness and moderation of temper preserved him from the assaults of
passion, and the allurements of vice. His unalterable regard for his
mother, and his esteem for the wise Ulpian, guarded his unexperienced
youth from the poison of flattery. *
The simple journal of his ordinary occupations exhibits a pleasing picture
of an accomplished emperor, and, with some allowance for the difference of
manners, might well deserve the imitation of modern princes. Alexander
rose early: the first moments of the day were consecrated to private
devotion, and his domestic chapel was filled with the images of those
heroes, who, by improving or reforming human life, had deserved the
grateful reverence of posterity. But as he deemed the service of mankind
the most acceptable worship of the gods, the greatest part of his morning
hours was employed in his council, where he discussed public affairs, and
determined private causes, with a patience and discretion above his years.
The dryness of business was relieved by the charms of literature; and a
portion of time was always set apart for his favorite studies of poetry,
history, and philosophy. The works of Virgil and Horace, the republics of
Plato and Cicero, formed his taste, enlarged his understanding, and gave
him the noblest ideas of man and government. The exercises of the body
succeeded to those of the mind; and Alexander, who was tall, active, and
robust, surpassed most of his equals in the gymnastic arts. Refreshed by
the use of the bath and a slight dinner, he resumed, with new vigor, the
business of the day; and, till the hour of supper, the principal meal of
the Romans, he was attended by his secretaries, with whom he read and
answered the multitude of letters, memorials, and petitions, that must
have been addressed to the master of the greatest part of the world. His
table was served with the most frugal simplicity, and whenever he was at
liberty to consult his own inclination, the company consisted of a few
select friends, men of learning and virtue, amongst whom Ulpian was
constantly invited. Their conversation was familiar and instructive; and
the pauses were occasionally enlivened by the recital of some pleasing
composition, which supplied the place of the dancers, comedians, and even
gladiators, so frequently summoned to the tables of the rich and luxurious
Romans. The dress of Alexander was plain and modest, his demeanor
courteous and affable: at the proper hours his palace was open to all his
subjects, but the voice of a crier was heard, as in the Eleusinian
mysteries, pronouncing the same salutary admonition: "Let none enter these
holy walls, unless he is conscious of a pure and innocent mind."
Such a uniform tenor of life, which left not a moment for vice or folly,
is a better proof of the wisdom and justice of Alexander's government,
than all the trifling details preserved in the compilation of Lampridius.
Since the accession of Commodus, the Roman world had experienced, during
the term of forty years, the successive and various vices of four tyrants.
From the death of Elagabalus, it enjoyed an auspicious calm of thirteen
years. * The provinces, relieved from the oppressive taxes invented by
Caracalla and his pretended son, flourished in peace and prosperity, under
the administration of magistrates, who were convinced by experience that
to deserve the love of the subjects, was their best and only method of
obtaining the favor of their sovereign. While some gentle restraints were
imposed on the innocent luxury of the Roman people, the price of
provisions and the interest of money, were reduced by the paternal care of
Alexander, whose prudent liberality, without distressing the industrious,
supplied the wants and amusements of the populace. The dignity, the
freedom, the authority of the senate was restored; and every virtuous
senator might approach the person of the emperor without a fear and
without a blush.
The name of Antoninus, ennobled by the virtues of Pius and Marcus, had
been communicated by adoption to the dissolute Verus, and by descent to
the cruel Commodus. It became the honorable appellation of the sons of
Severus, was bestowed on young Diadumenianus, and at length prostituted to
the infamy of the high priest of Emesa. Alexander, though pressed by the
studied, and, perhaps, sincere importunity of the senate, nobly refused
the borrowed lustre of a name; whilst in his whole conduct he labored to
restore the glories and felicity of the age of the genuine Antonines.
In the civil administration of Alexander, wisdom was enforced by power,
and the people, sensible of the public felicity, repaid their benefactor
with their love and gratitude. There still remained a greater, a more
necessary, but a more difficult enterprise; the reformation of the
military order, whose interest and temper, confirmed by long impunity,
rendered them impatient of the restraints of discipline, and careless of
the blessings of public tranquillity. In the execution of his design, the
emperor affected to display his love, and to conceal his fear of the army.
The most rigid economy in every other branch of the administration
supplied a fund of gold and silver for the ordinary pay and the
extraordinary rewards of the troops. In their marches he relaxed the
severe obligation of carrying seventeen days' provision on their
shoulders. Ample magazines were formed along the public roads, and as soon
as they entered the enemy's country, a numerous train of mules and camels
waited on their haughty laziness. As Alexander despaired of correcting the
luxury of his soldiers, he attempted, at least, to direct it to objects of
martial pomp and ornament, fine horses, splendid armor, and shields
enriched with silver and gold. He shared whatever fatigues he was obliged
to impose, visited, in person, the sick and wounded, preserved an exact
register of their services and his own gratitude, and expressed on every
occasion, the warmest regard for a body of men, whose welfare, as he
affected to declare, was so closely connected with that of the state. By
the most gentle arts he labored to inspire the fierce multitude with a
sense of duty, and to restore at least a faint image of that discipline to
which the Romans owed their empire over so many other nations, as warlike
and more powerful than themselves. But his prudence was vain, his courage
fatal, and the attempt towards a reformation served only to inflame the
ills it was meant to cure.
The Prætorian guards were attached to the youth of Alexander. They
loved him as a tender pupil, whom they had saved from a tyrant's fury, and
placed on the Imperial throne. That amiable prince was sensible of the
obligation; but as his gratitude was restrained within the limits of
reason and justice, they soon were more dissatisfied with the virtues of
Alexander, than they had ever been with the vices of Elagabalus. Their præfect,
the wise Ulpian, was the friend of the laws and of the people; he was
considered as the enemy of the soldiers, and to his pernicious counsels
every scheme of reformation was imputed. Some trifling accident blew up
their discontent into a furious mutiny; and the civil war raged, during
three days, in Rome, whilst the life of that excellent minister was
defended by the grateful people. Terrified, at length, by the sight of
some houses in flames, and by the threats of a general conflagration, the
people yielded with a sigh, and left the virtuous but unfortunate Ulpian
to his fate. He was pursued into the Imperial palace, and massacred at the
feet of his master, who vainly strove to cover him with the purple, and to
obtain his pardon from the inexorable soldiers. * Such was the deplorable
weakness of government, that the emperor was unable to revenge his
murdered friend and his insulted dignity, without stooping to the arts of
patience and dissimulation. Epagathus, the principal leader of the mutiny,
was removed from Rome, by the honorable employment of præfect of
Egypt: from that high rank he was gently degraded to the government of
Crete; and when at length, his popularity among the guards was effaced by
time and absence, Alexander ventured to inflict the tardy but deserved
punishment of his crimes. Under the reign of a just and virtuous prince,
the tyranny of the army threatened with instant death his most faithful
ministers, who were suspected of an intention to correct their intolerable
disorders. The historian Dion Cassius had commanded the Pannonian legions
with the spirit of ancient discipline. Their brethren of Rome, embracing
the common cause of military license, demanded the head of the reformer.
Alexander, however, instead of yielding to their seditious clamors, showed
a just sense of his merit and services, by appointing him his colleague in
the consulship, and defraying from his own treasury the expense of that
vain dignity: but as was justly apprehended, that if the soldiers beheld
him with the ensigns of his office, they would revenge the insult in his
blood, the nominal first magistrate of the state retired, by the emperor's
advice, from the city, and spent the greatest part of his consulship at
his villas in Campania.
The lenity of the emperor confirmed the insolence of the troops; the
legions imitated the example of the guards, and defended their prerogative
of licentiousness with the same furious obstinacy. The administration of
Alexander was an unavailing struggle against the corruption of his age. In
llyricum, in Mauritania, in Armenia, in Mesopotamia, in Germany, fresh
mutinies perpetually broke out; his officers were murdered, his authority
was insulted, and his life at last sacrificed to the fierce discontents of
the army. One particular fact well deserves to be recorded, as it
illustrates the manners of the troops, and exhibits a singular instance of
their return to a sense of duty and obedience. Whilst the emperor lay at
Antioch, in his Persian expedition, the particulars of which we shall
hereafter relate, the punishment of some soldiers, who had been discovered
in the baths of women, excited a sedition in the legion to which they
belonged. Alexander ascended his tribunal, and with a modest firmness
represented to the armed multitude the absolute necessity, as well as his
inflexible resolution, of correcting the vices introduced by his impure
predecessor, and of maintaining the discipline, which could not be relaxed
without the ruin of the Roman name and empire. Their clamors interrupted
his mild expostulation. "Reserve your shout," said the undaunted emperor,
"till you take the field against the Persians, the Germans, and the
Sarmatians. Be silent in the presence of your sovereign and benefactor,
who bestows upon you the corn, the clothing, and the money of the
provinces. Be silent, or I shall no longer style you solders, but citizens,
if those indeed who disclaim the laws of Rome deserve to be ranked among
the meanest of the people." His menaces inflamed the fury of the legion,
and their brandished arms already threatened his person. "Your courage,"
resumed the intrepid Alexander, "would be more nobly displayed in the
field of battle; me you may destroy, you cannot intimidate; and
the severe justice of the republic would punish your crime and revenge my
death." The legion still persisted in clamorous sedition, when the emperor
pronounced, with a cud voice, the decisive sentence, "Citizens!
lay down your arms, and depart in peace to your respective habitations."
The tempest was instantly appeased: the soldiers, filled with grief and
shame, silently confessed the justice of their punishment, and the power
of discipline, yielded up their arms and military ensigns, and retired in
confusion, not to their camp, but to the several inns of the city.
Alexander enjoyed, during thirty days, the edifying spectacle of their
repentance; nor did he restore them to their former rank in the army, till
he had punished with death those tribunes whose connivance had occasioned
the mutiny. The grateful legion served the emperor whilst living, and
revenged him when dead.
The resolutions of the multitude generally depend on a moment; and the
caprice of passion might equally determine the seditious legion to lay
down their arms at the emperor's feet, or to plunge them into his breast.
Perhaps, if this singular transaction had been investigated by the
penetration of a philosopher, we should discover the secret causes which
on that occasion authorized the boldness of the prince, and commanded the
obedience of the troops; and perhaps, if it had been related by a
judicious historian, we should find this action, worthy of Cæsar
himself, reduced nearer to the level of probability and the common
standard of the character of Alexander Severus. The abilities of that
amiable prince seem to have been inadequate to the difficulties of his
situation, the firmness of his conduct inferior to the purity of his
intentions. His virtues, as well as the vices of Elagabalus, contracted a
tincture of weakness and effeminacy from the soft climate of Syria, of
which he was a native; though he blushed at his foreign origin, and
listened with a vain complacency to the flattering genealogists, who
derived his race from the ancient stock of Roman nobility. The pride and
avarice of his mother cast a shade on the glories of his reign; an by
exacting from his riper years the same dutiful obedience which she had
justly claimed from his unexperienced youth, Mamæa exposed to public
ridicule both her son's character and her own. The fatigues of the Persian
war irritated the military discontent; the unsuccessful event * degraded
the reputation of the emperor as a general, and even as a soldier. Every
cause prepared, and every circumstance hastened, a revolution, which
distracted the Roman empire with a long series of intestine calamities.
The dissolute tyranny of Commodus, the civil wars occasioned by his death,
and the new maxims of policy introduced by the house of Severus, had all
contributed to increase the dangerous power of the army, and to obliterate
the faint image of laws and liberty that was still impressed on the minds
of the Romans. The internal change, which undermined the foundations of
the empire, we have endeavored to explain with some degree of order and
perspicuity. The personal characters of the emperors, their victories,
laws, follies, and fortunes, can interest us no farther than as they are
connected with the general history of the Decline and Fall of the
monarchy. Our constant attention to that great object will not suffer us
to overlook a most important edict of Antoninus Caracalla, which
communicated to all the free inhabitants of the empire the name and
privileges of Roman citizens. His unbounded liberality flowed not,
however, from the sentiments of a generous mind; it was the sordid result
of avarice, and will naturally be illustrated by some observations on the
finances of that state, from the victorious ages of the commonwealth to
the reign of Alexander Severus.
The siege of Veii in Tuscany, the first considerable enterprise of the
Romans, was protracted to the tenth year, much less by the strength of the
place than by the unskillfulness of the besiegers. The unaccustomed
hardships of so many winter campaigns, at the distance of near twenty
miles from home, required more than common encouragements; and the senate
wisely prevented the clamors of the people, by the institution of a
regular pay for the soldiers, which was levied by a general tribute,
assessed according to an equitable proportion on the property of the
citizens. During more than two hundred years after the conquest of Veii,
the victories of the republic added less to the wealth than to the power
of Rome. The states of Italy paid their tribute in military service only,
and the vast force, both by sea and land, which was exerted in the Punic
wars, was maintained at the expense of the Romans themselves. That
high-spirited people (such is often the generous enthusiasm of freedom)
cheerfully submitted to the most excessive but voluntary burdens, in the
just confidence that they should speedily enjoy the rich harvest of their
labors. Their expectations were not disappointed. In the course of a few
years, the riches of Syracuse, of Carthage, of Macedonia, and of Asia,
were brought in triumph to Rome. The treasures of Perseus alone amounted
to near two millions sterling, and the Roman people, the sovereign of so
many nations, was forever delivered from the weight of taxes. The
increasing revenue of the provinces was found sufficient to defray the
ordinary establishment of war and government, and the superfluous mass of
gold and silver was deposited in the temple of Saturn, and reserved for
any unforeseen emergency of the state.
History has never, perhaps, suffered a greater or more irreparable injury
than in the loss of the curious register * bequeathed by Augustus to the
senate, in which that experienced prince so accurately balanced the
revenues and expenses of the Roman empire. Deprived of this clear and
comprehensive estimate, we are reduced to collect a few imperfect hints
from such of the ancients as have accidentally turned aside from the
splendid to the more useful parts of history. We are informed that, by the
conquests of Pompey, the tributes of Asia were raised from fifty to one
hundred and thirty-five millions of drachms; or about four millions and a
half sterling. Under the last and most indolent of the Ptolemies, the
revenue of Egypt is said to have amounted to twelve thousand five hundred
talents; a sum equivalent to more than two millions and a half of our
money, but which was afterwards considerably improved by the more exact
economy of the Romans, and the increase of the trade of Æthiopia and
India. Gaul was enriched by rapine, as Egypt was by commerce, and the
tributes of those two great provinces have been compared as nearly equal
to each other in value. The ten thousand Euboic or Phnician talents, about
four millions sterling, which vanquished Carthage was condemned to pay
within the term of fifty years, were a slight acknowledgment of the
superiority of Rome, and cannot bear the least proportion with the taxes
afterwards raised both on the lands and on the persons of the inhabitants,
when the fertile coast of Africa was reduced into a province.
Spain, by a very singular fatality, was the Peru and Mexico of the old
world. The discovery of the rich western continent by the Phnicians, and
the oppression of the simple natives, who were compelled to labor in their
own mines for the benefit of strangers, form an exact type of the more
recent history of Spanish America. The Phnicians were acquainted only with
the sea-coast of Spain; avarice, as well as ambition, carried the arms of
Rome and Carthage into the heart of the country, and almost every part of
the soil was found pregnant with copper, silver, and gold. * Mention is
made of a mine near Carthagena which yielded every day twenty-five
thousand drachmns of silver, or about three hundred thousand pounds a
year. Twenty thousand pound weight of gold was annually received from the
provinces of Asturia, Gallicia, and Lusitania.
We want both leisure and materials to pursue this curious inquiry through
the many potent states that were annihilated in the Roman empire. Some
notion, however, may be formed of the revenue of the provinces where
considerable wealth had been deposited by nature, or collected by man, if
we observe the severe attention that was directed to the abodes of
solitude and sterility. Augustus once received a petition from the
inhabitants of Gyarus, humbly praying that they might be relieved from one
third of their excessive impositions. Their whole tax amounted indeed to
no more than one hundred and fifty drachms, or about five pounds: but
Gyarus was a little island, or rather a rock, of the Ægean Sea,
destitute of fresh water and every necessary of life, and inhabited only
by a few wretched fishermen.
From the faint glimmerings of such doubtful and scattered lights, we
should be inclined to believe, 1st, That (with every fair allowance for
the differences of times and circumstances) the general income of the
Roman provinces could seldom amount to less than fifteen or twenty
millions of our money; and, 2dly, That so ample a revenue must have been
fully adequate to all the expenses of the moderate government instituted
by Augustus, whose court was the modest family of a private senator, and
whose military establishment was calculated for the defence of the
frontiers, without any aspiring views of conquest, or any serious
apprehension of a foreign invasion.
Notwithstanding the seeming probability of both these conclusions, the
latter of them at least is positively disowned by the language and conduct
of Augustus. It is not easy to determine whether, on this occasion, he
acted as the common father of the Roman world, or as the oppressor of
liberty; whether he wished to relieve the provinces, or to impoverish the
senate and the equestrian order. But no sooner had he assumed the reins of
government, than he frequently intimated the insufficiency of the
tributes, and the necessity of throwing an equitable proportion of the
public burden upon Rome and Italy. In the prosecution of this unpopular
design, he advanced, however, by cautious and well-weighed steps. The
introduction of customs was followed by the establishment of an excise,
and the scheme of taxation was completed by an artful assessment on the
real and personal property of the Roman citizens, who had been exempted
from any kind of contribution above a century and a half.
I. In a great empire like that of Rome, a natural balance of money must
have gradually established itself. It has been already observed, that as
the wealth of the provinces was attracted to the capital by the strong
hand of conquest and power, so a considerable part of it was restored to
the industrious provinces by the gentle influence of commerce and arts. In
the reign of Augustus and his successors, duties were imposed on every
kind of merchandise, which through a thousand channels flowed to the great
centre of opulence and luxury; and in whatsoever manner the law was
expressed, it was the Roman purchaser, and not the provincial merchant,
who paid the tax. The rate of the customs varied from the eighth to the
fortieth part of the value of the commodity; and we have a right to
suppose that the variation was directed by the unalterable maxims of
policy; that a higher duty was fixed on the articles of luxury than on
those of necessity, and that the productions raised or manufactured by the
labor of the subjects of the empire were treated with more indulgence than
was shown to the pernicious, or at least the unpopular commerce of Arabia
and India. There is still extant a long but imperfect catalogue of eastern
commodities, which about the time of Alexander Severus were subject to the
payment of duties; cinnamon, myrrh, pepper, ginger, and the whole tribe of
aromatics a great variety of precious stones, among which the diamond was
the most remarkable for its price, and the emerald for its beauty;
Parthian and Babylonian leather, cottons, silks, both raw and
manufactured, ebony ivory, and eunuchs. We may observe that the use and
value of those effeminate slaves gradually rose with the decline of the
empire.
II. The excise, introduced by Augustus after the civil wars, was extremely
moderate, but it was general. It seldom exceeded one per cent.; but it
comprehended whatever was sold in the markets or by public auction, from
the most considerable purchases of lands and houses, to those minute
objects which can only derive a value from their infinite multitude and
daily consumption. Such a tax, as it affects the body of the people, has
ever been the occasion of clamor and discontent. An emperor well
acquainted with the wants and resources of the state was obliged to
declare, by a public edict, that the support of the army depended in a
great measure on the produce of the excise. 1
III. When Augustus resolved to establish a permanent military force for
the defence of his government against foreign and domestic enemies, he
instituted a peculiar treasury for the pay of the soldiers, the rewards of
the veterans, and the extra-ordinary expenses of war. The ample revenue of
the excise, though peculiarly appropriated to those uses, was found
inadequate. To supply the deficiency, the emperor suggested a new tax of
five per cent. on all legacies and inheritances. But the nobles of Rome
were more tenacious of property than of freedom. Their indignant murmurs
were received by Augustus with his usual temper. He candidly referred the
whole business to the senate, and exhorted them to provide for the public
service by some other expedient of a less odious nature. They were divided
and perplexed. He insinuated to them, that their obstinacy would oblige
him to propose a general land tax and capitation. They acquiesced in
silence. . The new imposition on legacies and inheritances was, however,
mitigated by some restrictions. It did not take place unless the object
was of a certain value, most probably of fifty or a hundred pieces of
gold; nor could it be exacted from the nearest of kin on the father's
side. When the rights of nature and poverty were thus secured, it seemed
reasonable, that a stranger, or a distant relation, who acquired an
unexpected accession of fortune, should cheerfully resign a twentieth part
of it, for the benefit of the state.
Such a tax, plentiful as it must prove in every wealthy community, was
most happily suited to the situation of the Romans, who could frame their
arbitrary wills, according to the dictates of reason or caprice, without
any restraint from the modern fetters of entails and settlements. From
various causes, the partiality of paternal affection often lost its
influence over the stern patriots of the commonwealth, and the dissolute
nobles of the empire; and if the father bequeathed to his son the fourth
part of his estate, he removed all ground of legal complaint. But a rich
childish old man was a domestic tyrant, and his power increased with his
years and infirmities. A servile crowd, in which he frequently reckoned prætors
and consuls, courted his smiles, pampered his avarice, applauded his
follies, served his passions, and waited with impatience for his death.
The arts of attendance and flattery were formed into a most lucrative
science; those who professed it acquired a peculiar appellation; and the
whole city, according to the lively descriptions of satire, was divided
between two parties, the hunters and their game. Yet, while so many unjust
and extravagant wills were every day dictated by cunning and subscribed by
folly, a few were the result of rational esteem and virtuous gratitude.
Cicero, who had so often defended the lives and fortunes of his
fellow-citizens, was rewarded with legacies to the amount of a hundred and
seventy thousand pounds; nor do the friends of the younger Pliny seem to
have been less generous to that amiable orator. Whatever was the motive of
the testator, the treasury claimed, without distinction, the twentieth
part of his estate: and in the course of two or three generations, the
whole property of the subject must have gradually passed through the
coffers of the state.
In the first and golden years of the reign of Nero, that prince, from a
desire of popularity, and perhaps from a blind impulse of benevolence,
conceived a wish of abolishing the oppression of the customs and excise.
The wisest senators applauded his magnanimity: but they diverted him from
the execution of a design which would have dissolved the strength and
resources of the republic. Had it indeed been possible to realize this
dream of fancy, such princes as Trajan and the Antonines would surely have
embraced with ardor the glorious opportunity of conferring so signal an
obligation on mankind. Satisfied, however, with alleviating the public
burden, they attempted not to remove it. The mildness and precision of
their laws ascertained the rule and measure of taxation, and protected the
subject of every rank against arbitrary interpretations, antiquated
claims, and the insolent vexation of the farmers of the revenue. For it is
somewhat singular, that, in every age, the best and wisest of the Roman
governors persevered in this pernicious method of collecting the principal
branches at least of the excise and customs.
The sentiments, and, indeed, the situation, of Caracalla were very
different from those of the Antonines. Inattentive, or rather averse, to
the welfare of his people, he found himself under the necessity of
gratifying the insatiate avarice which he had excited in the army. Of the
several impositions introduced by Augustus, the twentieth on inheritances
and legacies was the most fruitful, as well as the most comprehensive. As
its influence was not confined to Rome or Italy, the produce continually
increased with the gradual extension of the Roman City. The new citizens,
though charged, on equal terms, with the payment of new taxes, which had
not affected them as subjects, derived an ample compensation from the rank
they obtained, the privileges they acquired, and the fair prospect of
honors and fortune that was thrown open to their ambition. But the favor
which implied a distinction was lost in the prodigality of Caracalla, and
the reluctant provincials were compelled to assume the vain title, and the
real obligations, of Roman citizens. * Nor was the rapacious son of
Severus contented with such a measure of taxation as had appeared
sufficient to his moderate predecessors. Instead of a twentieth, he
exacted a tenth of all legacies and inheritances; and during his reign
(for the ancient proportion was restored after his death) he crushed alike
every part of the empire under the weight of his iron sceptre.
When all the provincials became liable to the peculiar impositions of
Roman citizens, they seemed to acquire a legal exemption from the tributes
which they had paid in their former condition of subjects. Such were not
the maxims of government adopted by Caracalla and his pretended son. The
old as well as the new taxes were, at the same time, levied in the
provinces. It was reserved for the virtue of Alexander to relieve them in
a great measure from this intolerable grievance, by reducing the tributes
to a thirteenth part of the sum exacted at the time of his accession. It
is impossible to conjecture the motive that engaged him to spare so
trifling a remnant of the public evil; but the noxious weed, which had not
been totally eradicated, again sprang up with the most luxuriant growth,
and in the succeeding age darkened the Roman world with its deadly shade.
In the course of this history, we shall be too often summoned to explain
the land tax, the capitation, and the heavy contributions of corn, wine,
oil, and meat, which were exacted from the provinces for the use of the
court, the army, and the capital.
As long as Rome and Italy were respected as the centre of government, a
national spirit was preserved by the ancient, and insensibly imbibed by
the adopted, citizens. The principal commands of the army were filled by
men who had received a liberal education, were well instructed in the
advantages of laws and letters, and who had risen, by equal steps, through
the regular succession of civil and military honors. To their influence
and example we may partly ascribe the modest obedience of the legions
during the two first centuries of the Imperial history.
But when the last enclosure of the Roman constitution was trampled down by
Caracalla, the separation of professions gradually succeeded to the
distinction of ranks. The more polished citizens of the internal provinces
were alone qualified to act as lawyers and magistrates. The rougher trade
of arms was abandoned to the peasants and barbarians of the frontiers, who
knew no country but their camp, no science but that of war no civil laws,
and scarcely those of military discipline. With bloody hands, savage
manners, and desperate resolutions, they sometimes guarded, but much
oftener subverted, the throne of the emperors.
The Elevation And Tyranny Of Maximin.—Rebellion In Africa And Italy, Under The Authority Of The Senate.—Civil Wars And Seditions.—Violent Deaths Of Maximin And His Son, Of Maximus And Balbinus, And Of The Three Gordians.—Usurpation And Secular Games Of Philip.
Of the various forms of government which have prevailed in the world, an
hereditary monarchy seems to present the fairest scope for ridicule. Is it
possible to relate without an indignant smile, that, on the father's
decease, the property of a nation, like that of a drove of oxen, descends
to his infant son, as yet unknown to mankind and to himself; and that the
bravest warriors and the wisest statesmen, relinquishing their natural
right to empire, approach the royal cradle with bended knees and
protestations of inviolable fidelity? Satire and declamation may paint
these obvious topics in the most dazzling colors, but our more serious
thoughts will respect a useful prejudice, that establishes a rule of
succession, independent of the passions of mankind; and we shall
cheerfully acquiesce in any expedient which deprives the multitude of the
dangerous, and indeed the ideal, power of giving themselves a master.
In the cool shade of retirement, we may easily devise imaginary forms of
government, in which the sceptre shall be constantly bestowed on the most
worthy, by the free and incorrupt suffrage of the whole community.
Experience overturns these airy fabrics, and teaches us, that in a large
society, the election of a monarch can never devolve to the wisest, or to
the most numerous part of the people. The army is the only order of men
sufficiently united to concur in the same sentiments, and powerful enough
to impose them on the rest of their fellow-citizens; but the temper of
soldiers, habituated at once to violence and to slavery, renders them very
unfit guardians of a legal, or even a civil constitution. Justice,
humanity, or political wisdom, are qualities they are too little
acquainted with in themselves, to appreciate them in others. Valor will
acquire their esteem, and liberality will purchase their suffrage; but the
first of these merits is often lodged in the most savage breasts; the
latter can only exert itself at the expense of the public; and both may be
turned against the possessor of the throne, by the ambition of a daring
rival.
The superior prerogative of birth, when it has obtained the sanction of
time and popular opinion, is the plainest and least invidious of all
distinctions among mankind. The acknowledged right extinguishes the hopes
of faction, and the conscious security disarms the cruelty of the monarch.
To the firm establishment of this idea we owe the peaceful succession and
mild administration of European monarchies. To the defect of it we must
attribute the frequent civil wars, through which an Asiatic despot is
obliged to cut his way to the throne of his fathers. Yet, even in the
East, the sphere of contention is usually limited to the princes of the
reigning house, and as soon as the more fortunate competitor has removed
his brethren by the sword and the bowstring, he no longer entertains any
jealousy of his meaner subjects. But the Roman empire, after the authority
of the senate had sunk into contempt, was a vast scene of confusion. The
royal, and even noble, families of the provinces had long since been led
in triumph before the car of the haughty republicans. The ancient families
of Rome had successively fallen beneath the tyranny of the Cæsars;
and whilst those princes were shackled by the forms of a commonwealth, and
disappointed by the repeated failure of their posterity, it was impossible
that any idea of hereditary succession should have taken root in the minds
of their subjects. The right to the throne, which none could claim from
birth, every one assumed from merit. The daring hopes of ambition were set
loose from the salutary restraints of law and prejudice; and the meanest
of mankind might, without folly, entertain a hope of being raised by valor
and fortune to a rank in the army, in which a single crime would enable
him to wrest the sceptre of the world from his feeble and unpopular
master. After the murder of Alexander Severus, and the elevation of
Maximin, no emperor could think himself safe upon the throne, and every
barbarian peasant of the frontier might aspire to that august, but
dangerous station.
About thirty-two years before that event, the emperor Severus, returning
from an eastern expedition, halted in Thrace, to celebrate, with military
games, the birthday of his younger son, Geta. The country flocked in
crowds to behold their sovereign, and a young barbarian of gigantic
stature earnestly solicited, in his rude dialect, that he might be allowed
to contend for the prize of wrestling. As the pride of discipline would
have been disgraced in the overthrow of a Roman soldier by a Thracian
peasant, he was matched with the stoutest followers of the camp, sixteen
of whom he successively laid on the ground. His victory was rewarded by
some trifling gifts, and a permission to enlist in the troops. The next
day, the happy barbarian was distinguished above a crowd of recruits,
dancing and exulting after the fashion of his country. As soon as he
perceived that he had attracted the emperor's notice, he instantly ran up
to his horse, and followed him on foot, without the least appearance of
fatigue, in a long and rapid career. "Thracian," said Severus with
astonishment, "art thou disposed to wrestle after thy race?" "Most
willingly, sir," replied the unwearied youth; and, almost in a breath,
overthrew seven of the strongest soldiers in the army. A gold collar was
the prize of his matchless vigor and activity, and he was immediately
appointed to serve in the horseguards who always attended on the person of
the sovereign.
Maximin, for that was his name, though born on the territories of the
empire, descended from a mixed race of barbarians. His father was a Goth,
and his mother of the nation of the Alani. He displayed on every occasion
a valor equal to his strength; and his native fierceness was soon tempered
or disguised by the knowledge of the world. Under the reign of Severus and
his son, he obtained the rank of centurion, with the favor and esteem of
both those princes, the former of whom was an excellent judge of merit.
Gratitude forbade Maximin to serve under the assassin of Caracalla. Honor
taught him to decline the effeminate insults of Elagabalus. On the
accession of Alexander he returned to court, and was placed by that prince
in a station useful to the service, and honorable to himself. The fourth
legion, to which he was appointed tribune, soon became, under his care,
the best disciplined of the whole army. With the general applause of the
soldiers, who bestowed on their favorite hero the names of Ajax and
Hercules, he was successively promoted to the first military command; and
had not he still retained too much of his savage origin, the emperor might
perhaps have given his own sister in marriage to the son of Maximin.
Instead of securing his fidelity, these favors served only to inflame the
ambition of the Thracian peasant, who deemed his fortune inadequate to his
merit, as long as he was constrained to acknowledge a superior. Though a
stranger to real wisdom, he was not devoid of a selfish cunning, which
showed him that the emperor had lost the affection of the army, and taught
him to improve their discontent to his own advantage. It is easy for
faction and calumny to shed their poison on the administration of the best
of princes, and to accuse even their virtues by artfully confounding them
with those vices to which they bear the nearest affinity. The troops
listened with pleasure to the emissaries of Maximin. They blushed at their
own ignominious patience, which, during thirteen years, had supported the
vexatious discipline imposed by an effeminate Syrian, the timid slave of
his mother and of the senate. It was time, they cried, to cast away that
useless phantom of the civil power, and to elect for their prince and
general a real soldier, educated in camps, exercised in war, who would
assert the glory, and distribute among his companions the treasures, of
the empire. A great army was at that time assembled on the banks of the
Rhine, under the command of the emperor himself, who, almost immediately
after his return from the Persian war, had been obliged to march against
the barbarians of Germany. The important care of training and reviewing
the new levies was intrusted to Maximin. One day, as he entered the field
of exercise, the troops either from a sudden impulse, or a formed
conspiracy, saluted him emperor, silenced by their loud acclamations his
obstinate refusal, and hastened to consummate their rebellion by the
murder of Alexander Severus.
The circumstances of his death are variously related. The writers, who
suppose that he died in ignorance of the ingratitude and ambition of
Maximin, affirm, that, after taking a frugal repast in the sight of the
army, he retired to sleep, and that, about the seventh hour of the day, a
part of his own guards broke into the imperial tent, and, with many
wounds, assassinated their virtuous and unsuspecting prince. If we credit
another, and indeed a more probable account, Maximin was invested with the
purple by a numerous detachment, at the distance of several miles from the
head-quarters; and he trusted for success rather to the secret wishes than
to the public declarations of the great army. Alexander had sufficient
time to awaken a faint sense of loyalty among the troops; but their
reluctant professions of fidelity quickly vanished on the appearance of
Maximin, who declared himself the friend and advocate of the military
order, and was unanimously acknowledged emperor of the Romans by the
applauding legions. The son of Mamæa, betrayed and deserted,
withdrew into his tent, desirous at least to conceal his approaching fate
from the insults of the multitude. He was soon followed by a tribune and
some centurions, the ministers of death; but instead of receiving with
manly resolution the inevitable stroke, his unavailing cries and
entreaties disgraced the last moments of his life, and converted into
contempt some portion of the just pity which his innocence and misfortunes
must inspire. His mother, Mamæa, whose pride and avarice he loudly
accused as the cause of his ruin, perished with her son. The most faithful
of his friends were sacrificed to the first fury of the soldiers. Others
were reserved for the more deliberate cruelty of the usurper; and those
who experienced the mildest treatment, were stripped of their employments,
and ignominiously driven from the court and army.
The former tyrants, Caligula and Nero, Commodus, and Caracalla, were all
dissolute and unexperienced youths, educated in the purple, and corrupted
by the pride of empire, the luxury of Rome, and the perfidious voice of
flattery. The cruelty of Maximin was derived from a different source, the
fear of contempt. Though he depended on the attachment of the soldiers,
who loved him for virtues like their own, he was conscious that his mean
and barbarian origin, his savage appearance, and his total ignorance of
the arts and institutions of civil life, formed a very unfavorable
contrast with the amiable manners of the unhappy Alexander. He remembered,
that, in his humbler fortune, he had often waited before the door of the
haughty nobles of Rome, and had been denied admittance by the insolence of
their slaves. He recollected too the friendship of a few who had relieved
his poverty, and assisted his rising hopes. But those who had spurned, and
those who had protected, the Thracian, were guilty of the same crime, the
knowledge of his original obscurity. For this crime many were put to
death; and by the execution of several of his benefactors, Maximin
published, in characters of blood, the indelible history of his baseness
and ingratitude.
The dark and sanguinary soul of the tyrant was open to every suspicion
against those among his subjects who were the most distinguished by their
birth or merit. Whenever he was alarmed with the sound of treason, his
cruelty was unbounded and unrelenting. A conspiracy against his life was
either discovered or imagined, and Magnus, a consular senator, was named
as the principal author of it. Without a witness, without a trial, and
without an opportunity of defence, Magnus, with four thousand of his
supposed accomplices, was put to death. Italy and the whole empire were
infested with innumerable spies and informers. On the slightest
accusation, the first of the Roman nobles, who had governed provinces,
commanded armies, and been adorned with the consular and triumphal
ornaments, were chained on the public carriages, and hurried away to the
emperor's presence. Confiscation, exile, or simple death, were esteemed
uncommon instances of his lenity. Some of the unfortunate sufferers he
ordered to be sewed up in the hides of slaughtered animals, others to be
exposed to wild beasts, others again to be beaten to death with clubs.
During the three years of his reign, he disdained to visit either Rome or
Italy. His camp, occasionally removed from the banks of the Rhine to those
of the Danube, was the seat of his stern despotism, which trampled on
every principle of law and justice, and was supported by the avowed power
of the sword. No man of noble birth, elegant accomplishments, or knowledge
of civil business, was suffered near his person; and the court of a Roman
emperor revived the idea of those ancient chiefs of slaves and gladiators,
whose savage power had left a deep impression of terror and detestation.
As long as the cruelty of Maximin was confined to the illustrious
senators, or even to the bold adventurers, who in the court or army expose
themselves to the caprice of fortune, the body of the people viewed their
sufferings with indifference, or perhaps with pleasure. But the tyrant's
avarice, stimulated by the insatiate desires of the soldiers, at length
attacked the public property. Every city of the empire was possessed of an
independent revenue, destined to purchase corn for the multitude, and to
supply the expenses of the games and entertainments. By a single act of
authority, the whole mass of wealth was at once confiscated for the use of
the Imperial treasury. The temples were stripped of their most valuable
offerings of gold and silver, and the statues of gods, heroes, and
emperors, were melted down and coined into money. These impious orders
could not be executed without tumults and massacres, as in many places the
people chose rather to die in the defence of their altars, than to behold
in the midst of peace their cities exposed to the rapine and cruelty of
war. The soldiers themselves, among whom this sacrilegious plunder was
distributed, received it with a blush; and hardened as they were in acts
of violence, they dreaded the just reproaches of their friends and
relations. Throughout the Roman world a general cry of indignation was
heard, imploring vengeance on the common enemy of human kind; and at
length, by an act of private oppression, a peaceful and unarmed province
was driven into rebellion against him.
The procurator of Africa was a servant worthy of such a master, who
considered the fines and confiscations of the rich as one of the most
fruitful branches of the Imperial revenue. An iniquitous sentence had been
pronounced against some opulent youths of that country, the execution of
which would have stripped them of far the greater part of their patrimony.
In this extremity, a resolution that must either complete or prevent their
ruin, was dictated by despair. A respite of three days, obtained with
difficulty from the rapacious treasurer, was employed in collecting from
their estates a great number of slaves and peasants blindly devoted to the
commands of their lords, and armed with the rustic weapons of clubs and
axes. The leaders of the conspiracy, as they were admitted to the audience
of the procurator, stabbed him with the daggers concealed under their
garments, and, by the assistance of their tumultuary train, seized on the
little town of Thysdrus, and erected the standard of rebellion against the
sovereign of the Roman empire. They rested their hopes on the hatred of
mankind against Maximin, and they judiciously resolved to oppose to that
detested tyrant an emperor whose mild virtues had already acquired the
love and esteem of the Romans, and whose authority over the province would
give weight and stability to the enterprise. Gordianus, their proconsul,
and the object of their choice, refused, with unfeigned reluctance, the
dangerous honor, and begged with tears, that they would suffer him to
terminate in peace a long and innocent life, without staining his feeble
age with civil blood. Their menaces compelled him to accept the Imperial
purple, his only refuge, indeed, against the jealous cruelty of Maximin;
since, according to the reasoning of tyrants, those who have been esteemed
worthy of the throne deserve death, and those who deliberate have already
rebelled.
The family of Gordianus was one of the most illustrious of the Roman
senate. On the father's side he was descended from the Gracchi; on his
mother's, from the emperor Trajan. A great estate enabled him to support
the dignity of his birth, and in the enjoyment of it, he displayed an
elegant taste and beneficent disposition. The palace in Rome, formerly
inhabited by the great Pompey, had been, during several generations, in
the possession of Gordian's family. It was distinguished by ancient
trophies of naval victories, and decorated with the works of modern
painting. His villa on the road to Præneste was celebrated for baths
of singular beauty and extent, for three stately rooms of a hundred feet
in length, and for a magnificent portico, supported by two hundred columns
of the four most curious and costly sorts of marble. The public shows
exhibited at his expense, and in which the people were entertained with
many hundreds of wild beasts and gladiators, seem to surpass the fortune
of a subject; and whilst the liberality of other magistrates was confined
to a few solemn festivals at Rome, the magnificence of Gordian was
repeated, when he was ædile, every month in the year, and extended,
during his consulship, to the principal cities of Italy. He was twice
elevated to the last-mentioned dignity, by Caracalla and by Alexander; for
he possessed the uncommon talent of acquiring the esteem of virtuous
princes, without alarming the jealousy of tyrants. His long life was
innocently spent in the study of letters and the peaceful honors of Rome;
and, till he was named proconsul of Africa by the voice of the senate and
the approbation of Alexander, he appears prudently to have declined the
command of armies and the government of provinces. * As long as that
emperor lived, Africa was happy under the administration of his worthy
representative: after the barbarous Maximin had usurped the throne,
Gordianus alleviated the miseries which he was unable to prevent. When he
reluctantly accepted the purple, he was above fourscore years old; a last
and valuable remains of the happy age of the Antonines, whose virtues he
revived in his own conduct, and celebrated in an elegant poem of thirty
books. With the venerable proconsul, his son, who had accompanied him into
Africa as his lieutenant, was likewise declared emperor. His manners were
less pure, but his character was equally amiable with that of his father.
Twenty-two acknowledged concubines, and a library of sixty-two thousand
volumes, attested the variety of his inclinations; and from the
productions which he left behind him, it appears that the former as well
as the latter were designed for use rather than for ostentation. The Roman
people acknowledged in the features of the younger Gordian the resemblance
of Scipio Africanus, recollected with pleasure that his mother was the
granddaughter of Antoninus Pius, and rested the public hope on those
latent virtues which had hitherto, as they fondly imagined, lain concealed
in the luxurious indolence of private life.
As soon as the Gordians had appeased the first tumult of a popular
election, they removed their court to Carthage. They were received with
the acclamations of the Africans, who honored their virtues, and who,
since the visit of Hadrian, had never beheld the majesty of a Roman
emperor. But these vain acclamations neither strengthened nor confirmed
the title of the Gordians. They were induced by principle, as well as
interest, to solicit the approbation of the senate; and a deputation of
the noblest provincials was sent, without delay, to Rome, to relate and
justify the conduct of their countrymen, who, having long suffered with
patience, were at length resolved to act with vigor. The letters of the
new princes were modest and respectful, excusing the necessity which had
obliged them to accept the Imperial title; but submitting their election
and their fate to the supreme judgment of the senate.
The inclinations of the senate were neither doubtful nor divided. The
birth and noble alliances of the Gordians had intimately connected them
with the most illustrious houses of Rome. Their fortune had created many
dependants in that assembly, their merit had acquired many friends. Their
mild administration opened the flattering prospect of the restoration, not
only of the civil but even of the republican government. The terror of
military violence, which had first obliged the senate to forget the murder
of Alexander, and to ratify the election of a barbarian peasant, now
produced a contrary effect, and provoked them to assert the injured rights
of freedom and humanity. The hatred of Maximin towards the senate was
declared and implacable; the tamest submission had not appeased his fury,
the most cautious innocence would not remove his suspicions; and even the
care of their own safety urged them to share the fortune of an enterprise,
of which (if unsuccessful) they were sure to be the first victims. These
considerations, and perhaps others of a more private nature, were debated
in a previous conference of the consuls and the magistrates. As soon as
their resolution was decided, they convoked in the temple of Castor the
whole body of the senate, according to an ancient form of secrecy,
calculated to awaken their attention, and to conceal their decrees.
"Conscript fathers," said the consul Syllanus, "the two Gordians, both of
consular dignity, the one your proconsul, the other your lieutenant, have
been declared emperors by the general consent of Africa. Let us return
thanks," he boldly continued, "to the youth of Thysdrus; let us return
thanks to the faithful people of Carthage, our generous deliverers from a
horrid monster—Why do you hear me thus coolly, thus timidly? Why do
you cast those anxious looks on each other? Why hesitate? Maximin is a
public enemy! may his enmity soon expire with him, and may we long enjoy
the prudence and felicity of Gordian the father, the valor and constancy
of Gordian the son!" The noble ardor of the consul revived the languid
spirit of the senate. By a unanimous decree, the election of the Gordians
was ratified, Maximin, his son, and his adherents, were pronounced enemies
of their country, and liberal rewards were offered to whomsoever had the
courage and good fortune to destroy them.
[See Temple Of Castor and Pollux]
During the emperor's absence, a detachment of the Prætorian guards
remained at Rome, to protect, or rather to command, the capital. The præfect
Vitalianus had signalized his fidelity to Maximin, by the alacrity with
which he had obeyed, and even prevented the cruel mandates of the tyrant.
His death alone could rescue the authority of the senate, and the lives of
the senators from a state of danger and suspense. Before their resolves
had transpired, a quæstor and some tribunes were commissioned to
take his devoted life. They executed the order with equal boldness and
success; and, with their bloody daggers in their hands, ran through the
streets, proclaiming to the people and the soldiers the news of the happy
revolution. The enthusiasm of liberty was seconded by the promise of a
large donative, in lands and money; the statues of Maximin were thrown
down; the capital of the empire acknowledged, with transport, the
authority of the two Gordians and the senate; and the example of Rome was
followed by the rest of Italy.
A new spirit had arisen in that assembly, whose long patience had been
insulted by wanton despotism and military license. The senate assumed the
reins of government, and, with a calm intrepidity, prepared to vindicate
by arms the cause of freedom. Among the consular senators recommended by
their merit and services to the favor of the emperor Alexander, it was
easy to select twenty, not unequal to the command of an army, and the
conduct of a war. To these was the defence of Italy intrusted. Each was
appointed to act in his respective department, authorized to enroll and
discipline the Italian youth; and instructed to fortify the ports and
highways, against the impending invasion of Maximin. A number of deputies,
chosen from the most illustrious of the senatorian and equestrian orders,
were despatched at the same time to the governors of the several
provinces, earnestly conjuring them to fly to the assistance of their
country, and to remind the nations of their ancient ties of friendship
with the Roman senate and people. The general respect with which these
deputies were received, and the zeal of Italy and the provinces in favor
of the senate, sufficiently prove that the subjects of Maximin were
reduced to that uncommon distress, in which the body of the people has
more to fear from oppression than from resistance. The consciousness of
that melancholy truth, inspires a degree of persevering fury, seldom to be
found in those civil wars which are artificially supported for the benefit
of a few factious and designing leaders.
For while the cause of the Gordians was embraced with such diffusive
ardor, the Gordians themselves were no more. The feeble court of Carthage
was alarmed by the rapid approach of Capelianus, governor of Mauritania,
who, with a small band of veterans, and a fierce host of barbarians,
attacked a faithful, but unwarlike province. The younger Gordian sallied
out to meet the enemy at the head of a few guards, and a numerous
undisciplined multitude, educated in the peaceful luxury of Carthage. His
useless valor served only to procure him an honorable death on the field
of battle. His aged father, whose reign had not exceeded thirty-six days,
put an end to his life on the first news of the defeat. Carthage,
destitute of defence, opened her gates to the conqueror, and Africa was
exposed to the rapacious cruelty of a slave, obliged to satisfy his
unrelenting master with a large account of blood and treasure.
The fate of the Gordians filled Rome with just but unexpected terror. The
senate, convoked in the temple of Concord, affected to transact the common
business of the day; and seemed to decline, with trembling anxiety, the
consideration of their own and the public danger. A silent consternation
prevailed in the assembly, till a senator, of the name and family of
Trajan, awakened his brethren from their fatal lethargy. He represented to
them that the choice of cautious, dilatory measures had been long since
out of their power; that Maximin, implacable by nature, and exasperated by
injuries, was advancing towards Italy, at the head of the military force
of the empire; and that their only remaining alternative was either to
meet him bravely in the field, or tamely to expect the tortures and
ignominious death reserved for unsuccessful rebellion. "We have lost,"
continued he, "two excellent princes; but unless we desert ourselves, the
hopes of the republic have not perished with the Gordians. Many are the
senators whose virtues have deserved, and whose abilities would sustain,
the Imperial dignity. Let us elect two emperors, one of whom may conduct
the war against the public enemy, whilst his colleague remains at Rome to
direct the civil administration. I cheerfully expose myself to the danger
and envy of the nomination, and give my vote in favor of Maximus and
Balbinus. Ratify my choice, conscript fathers, or appoint in their place,
others more worthy of the empire." The general apprehension silenced the
whispers of jealousy; the merit of the candidates was universally
acknowledged; and the house resounded with the sincere acclamations of
"Long life and victory to the emperors Maximus and Balbinus. You are happy
in the judgment of the senate; may the republic be happy under your
administration!"
The virtues and the reputation of the new emperors justified the most
sanguine hopes of the Romans. The various nature of their talents seemed
to appropriate to each his peculiar department of peace and war, without
leaving room for jealous emulation. Balbinus was an admired orator, a poet
of distinguished fame, and a wise magistrate, who had exercised with
innocence and applause the civil jurisdiction in almost all the interior
provinces of the empire. His birth was noble, his fortune affluent, his
manners liberal and affable. In him the love of pleasure was corrected by
a sense of dignity, nor had the habits of ease deprived him of a capacity
for business. The mind of Maximus was formed in a rougher mould. By his
valor and abilities he had raised himself from the meanest origin to the
first employments of the state and army. His victories over the Sarmatians
and the Germans, the austerity of his life, and the rigid impartiality of
his justice, while he was a Præfect of the city, commanded the
esteem of a people whose affections were engaged in favor of the more
amiable Balbinus. The two colleagues had both been consuls, (Balbinus had
twice enjoyed that honorable office,) both had been named among the twenty
lieutenants of the senate; and since the one was sixty and the other
seventy-four years old, they had both attained the full maturity of age
and experience.
After the senate had conferred on Maximus and Balbinus an equal portion of
the consular and tribunitian powers, the title of Fathers of their
country, and the joint office of Supreme Pontiff, they ascended to the
Capitol to return thanks to the gods, protectors of Rome. The solemn rites
of sacrifice were disturbed by a sedition of the people. The licentious
multitude neither loved the rigid Maximus, nor did they sufficiently fear
the mild and humane Balbinus. Their increasing numbers surrounded the
temple of Jupiter; with obstinate clamors they asserted their inherent
right of consenting to the election of their sovereign; and demanded, with
an apparent moderation, that, besides the two emperors, chosen by the
senate, a third should be added of the family of the Gordians, as a just
return of gratitude to those princes who had sacrificed their lives for
the republic. At the head of the city-guards, and the youth of the
equestrian order, Maximus and Balbinus attempted to cut their way through
the seditious multitude. The multitude, armed with sticks and stones,
drove them back into the Capitol. It is prudent to yield when the contest,
whatever may be the issue of it, must be fatal to both parties. A boy,
only thirteen years of age, the grandson of the elder, and nephew * of the
younger Gordian, was produced to the people, invested with the ornaments
and title of Cæsar. The tumult was appeased by this easy
condescension; and the two emperors, as soon as they had been peaceably
acknowledged in Rome, prepared to defend Italy against the common enemy.
Whilst in Rome and Africa, revolutions succeeded each other with such
amazing rapidity, that the mind of Maximin was agitated by the most
furious passions. He is said to have received the news of the rebellion of
the Gordians, and of the decree of the senate against him, not with the
temper of a man, but the rage of a wild beast; which, as it could not
discharge itself on the distant senate, threatened the life of his son, of
his friends, and of all who ventured to approach his person. The grateful
intelligence of the death of the Gordians was quickly followed by the
assurance that the senate, laying aside all hopes of pardon or
accommodation, had substituted in their room two emperors, with whose
merit he could not be unacquainted. Revenge was the only consolation left
to Maximin, and revenge could only be obtained by arms. The strength of
the legions had been assembled by Alexander from all parts of the empire.
Three successful campaigns against the Germans and the Sarmatians, had
raised their fame, confirmed their discipline, and even increased their
numbers, by filling the ranks with the flower of the barbarian youth. The
life of Maximin had been spent in war, and the candid severity of history
cannot refuse him the valor of a soldier, or even the abilities of an
experienced general. It might naturally be expected, that a prince of such
a character, instead of suffering the rebellion to gain stability by
delay, should immediately have marched from the banks of the Danube to
those of the Tyber, and that his victorious army, instigated by contempt
for the senate, and eager to gather the spoils of Italy, should have
burned with impatience to finish the easy and lucrative conquest. Yet as
far as we can trust to the obscure chronology of that period, it appears
that the operations of some foreign war deferred the Italian expedition
till the ensuing spring. From the prudent conduct of Maximin, we may learn
that the savage features of his character have been exaggerated by the
pencil of party, that his passions, however impetuous, submitted to the
force of reason, and that the barbarian possessed something of the
generous spirit of Sylla, who subdued the enemies of Rome before he
suffered himself to revenge his private injuries.
When the troops of Maximin, advancing in excellent order, arrived at the
foot of the Julian Alps, they were terrified by the silence and desolation
that reigned on the frontiers of Italy. The villages and open towns had
been abandoned on their approach by the inhabitants, the cattle was driven
away, the provisions removed or destroyed, the bridges broken down, nor
was any thing left which could afford either shelter or subsistence to an
invader. Such had been the wise orders of the generals of the senate:
whose design was to protract the war, to ruin the army of Maximin by the
slow operation of famine, and to consume his strength in the sieges of the
principal cities of Italy, which they had plentifully stored with men and
provisions from the deserted country. Aquileia received and withstood the
first shock of the invasion. The streams that issue from the head of the
Hadriatic Gulf, swelled by the melting of the winter snows, opposed an
unexpected obstacle to the arms of Maximin. At length, on a singular
bridge, constructed with art and difficulty, of large hogsheads, he
transported his army to the opposite bank, rooted up the beautiful
vineyards in the neighborhood of Aquileia, demolished the suburbs, and
employed the timber of the buildings in the engines and towers, with which
on every side he attacked the city. The walls, fallen to decay during the
security of a long peace, had been hastily repaired on this sudden
emergency: but the firmest defence of Aquileia consisted in the constancy
of the citizens; all ranks of whom, instead of being dismayed, were
animated by the extreme danger, and their knowledge of the tyrant's
unrelenting temper. Their courage was supported and directed by Crispinus
and Menophilus, two of the twenty lieutenants of the senate, who, with a
small body of regular troops, had thrown themselves into the besieged
place. The army of Maximin was repulsed in repeated attacks, his machines
destroyed by showers of artificial fire; and the generous enthusiasm of
the Aquileians was exalted into a confidence of success, by the opinion
that Belenus, their tutelar deity, combated in person in the defence of
his distressed worshippers.
The emperor Maximus, who had advanced as far as Ravenna, to secure that
important place, and to hasten the military preparations, beheld the event
of the war in the more faithful mirror of reason and policy. He was too
sensible, that a single town could not resist the persevering efforts of a
great army; and he dreaded, lest the enemy, tired with the obstinate
resistance of Aquileia, should on a sudden relinquish the fruitless siege,
and march directly towards Rome. The fate of the empire and the cause of
freedom must then be committed to the chance of a battle; and what arms
could he oppose to the veteran legions of the Rhine and Danube? Some
troops newly levied among the generous but enervated youth of Italy; and a
body of German auxiliaries, on whose firmness, in the hour of trial, it
was dangerous to depend. In the midst of these just alarms, the stroke of
domestic conspiracy punished the crimes of Maximin, and delivered Rome and
the senate from the calamities that would surely have attended the victory
of an enraged barbarian.
The people of Aquileia had scarcely experienced any of the common miseries
of a siege; their magazines were plentifully supplied, and several
fountains within the walls assured them of an inexhaustible resource of
fresh water. The soldiers of Maximin were, on the contrary, exposed to the
inclemency of the season, the contagion of disease, and the horrors of
famine. The open country was ruined, the rivers filled with the slain, and
polluted with blood. A spirit of despair and disaffection began to diffuse
itself among the troops; and as they were cut off from all intelligence,
they easily believed that the whole empire had embraced the cause of the
senate, and that they were left as devoted victims to perish under the
impregnable walls of Aquileia. The fierce temper of the tyrant was
exasperated by disappointments, which he imputed to the cowardice of his
army; and his wanton and ill-timed cruelty, instead of striking terror,
inspired hatred, and a just desire of revenge. A party of Prætorian
guards, who trembled for their wives and children in the camp of Alba,
near Rome, executed the sentence of the senate. Maximin, abandoned by his
guards, was slain in his tent, with his son, (whom he had associated to
the honors of the purple,) Anulinus the præfect, and the principal
ministers of his tyranny. The sight of their heads, borne on the point of
spears, convinced the citizens of Aquileia that the siege was at an end;
the gates of the city were thrown open, a liberal market was provided for
the hungry troops of Maximin, and the whole army joined in solemn
protestations of fidelity to the senate and the people of Rome, and to
their lawful emperors Maximus and Balbinus. Such was the deserved fate of
a brutal savage, destitute, as he has generally been represented, of every
sentiment that distinguishes a civilized, or even a human being. The body
was suited to the soul. The stature of Maximin exceeded the measure of
eight feet, and circumstances almost incredible are related of his
matchless strength and appetite. Had he lived in a less enlightened age,
tradition and poetry might well have described him as one of those
monstrous giants, whose supernatural power was constantly exerted for the
destruction of mankind.
It is easier to conceive than to describe the universal joy of the Roman
world on the fall of the tyrant, the news of which is said to have been
carried in four days from Aquileia to Rome. The return of Maximus was a
triumphal procession; his colleague and young Gordian went out to meet
him, and the three princes made their entry into the capital, attended by
the ambassadors of almost all the cities of Italy, saluted with the
splendid offerings of gratitude and superstition, and received with the
unfeigned acclamations of the senate and people, who persuaded themselves
that a golden age would succeed to an age of iron. The conduct of the two
emperors corresponded with these expectations. They administered justice
in person; and the rigor of the one was tempered by the other's clemency.
The oppressive taxes with which Maximin had loaded the rights of
inheritance and succession, were repealed, or at least moderated.
Discipline was revived, and with the advice of the senate many wise laws
were enacted by their imperial ministers, who endeavored to restore a
civil constitution on the ruins of military tyranny. "What reward may we
expect for delivering Rome from a monster?" was the question asked by
Maximus, in a moment of freedom and confidence. Balbinus answered it
without hesitation—"The love of the senate, of the people, and of
all mankind." "Alas!" replied his more penetrating colleague—"alas!
I dread the hatred of the soldiers, and the fatal effects of their
resentment." His apprehensions were but too well justified by the event.
Whilst Maximus was preparing to defend Italy against the common foe,
Balbinus, who remained at Rome, had been engaged in scenes of blood and
intestine discord. Distrust and jealousy reigned in the senate; and even
in the temples where they assembled, every senator carried either open or
concealed arms. In the midst of their deliberations, two veterans of the
guards, actuated either by curiosity or a sinister motive, audaciously
thrust themselves into the house, and advanced by degrees beyond the altar
of Victory. Gallicanus, a consular, and Mæcenas, a Prætorian
senator, viewed with indignation their insolent intrusion: drawing their
daggers, they laid the spies (for such they deemed them) dead at the foot
of the altar, and then, advancing to the door of the senate, imprudently
exhorted the multitude to massacre the Prætorians, as the secret
adherents of the tyrant. Those who escaped the first fury of the tumult
took refuge in the camp, which they defended with superior advantage
against the reiterated attacks of the people, assisted by the numerous
bands of gladiators, the property of opulent nobles. The civil war lasted
many days, with infinite loss and confusion on both sides. When the pipes
were broken that supplied the camp with water, the Prætorians were
reduced to intolerable distress; but in their turn they made desperate
sallies into the city, set fire to a great number of houses, and filled
the streets with the blood of the inhabitants. The emperor Balbinus
attempted, by ineffectual edicts and precarious truces, to reconcile the
factions at Rome. But their animosity, though smothered for a while, burnt
with redoubled violence. The soldiers, detesting the senate and the
people, despised the weakness of a prince, who wanted either the spirit or
the power to command the obedience of his subjects.
After the tyrant's death, his formidable army had acknowledged, from
necessity rather than from choice, the authority of Maximus, who
transported himself without delay to the camp before Aquileia. As soon as
he had received their oath of fidelity, he addressed them in terms full of
mildness and moderation; lamented, rather than arraigned the wild
disorders of the times, and assured the soldiers, that of all their past
conduct the senate would remember only their generous desertion of the
tyrant, and their voluntary return to their duty. Maximus enforced his
exhortations by a liberal donative, purified the camp by a solemn
sacrifice of expiation, and then dismissed the legions to their several
provinces, impressed, as he hoped, with a lively sense of gratitude and
obedience. But nothing could reconcile the haughty spirit of the Prætorians.
They attended the emperors on the memorable day of their public entry into
Rome; but amidst the general acclamations, the sullen, dejected
countenance of the guards sufficiently declared that they considered
themselves as the object, rather than the partners, of the triumph. When
the whole body was united in their camp, those who had served under
Maximin, and those who had remained at Rome, insensibly communicated to
each other their complaints and apprehensions. The emperors chosen by the
army had perished with ignominy; those elected by the senate were seated
on the throne. The long discord between the civil and military powers was
decided by a war, in which the former had obtained a complete victory. The
soldiers must now learn a new doctrine of submission to the senate; and
whatever clemency was affected by that politic assembly, they dreaded a
slow revenge, colored by the name of discipline, and justified by fair
pretences of the public good. But their fate was still in their own hands;
and if they had courage to despise the vain terrors of an impotent
republic, it was easy to convince the world, that those who were masters
of the arms, were masters of the authority, of the state.
When the senate elected two princes, it is probable that, besides the
declared reason of providing for the various emergencies of peace and war,
they were actuated by the secret desire of weakening by division the
despotism of the supreme magistrate. Their policy was effectual, but it
proved fatal both to their emperors and to themselves. The jealousy of
power was soon exasperated by the difference of character. Maximus
despised Balbinus as a luxurious noble, and was in his turn disdained by
his colleague as an obscure soldier. Their silent discord was understood
rather than seen; but the mutual consciousness prevented them from uniting
in any vigorous measures of defence against their common enemies of the Prætorian
camp. The whole city was employed in the Capitoline games, and the
emperors were left almost alone in the palace. On a sudden, they were
alarmed by the approach of a troop of desperate assassins. Ignorant of
each other's situation or designs, (for they already occupied very distant
apartments,) afraid to give or to receive assistance, they wasted the
important moments in idle debates and fruitless recriminations. The
arrival of the guards put an end to the vain strife. They seized on these
emperors of the senate, for such they called them with malicious contempt,
stripped them of their garments, and dragged them in insolent triumph
through the streets of Rome, with the design of inflicting a slow and
cruel death on these unfortunate princes. The fear of a rescue from the
faithful Germans of the Imperial guards, shortened their tortures; and
their bodies, mangled with a thousand wounds, were left exposed to the
insults or to the pity of the populace.
In the space of a few months, six princes had been cut off by the sword.
Gordian, who had already received the title of Cæsar, was the only
person that occurred to the soldiers as proper to fill the vacant throne.
They carried him to the camp, and unanimously saluted him Augustus and
Emperor. His name was dear to the senate and people; his tender age
promised a long impunity of military license; and the submission of Rome
and the provinces to the choice of the Prætorian guards, saved the
republic, at the expense indeed of its freedom and dignity, from the
horrors of a new civil war in the heart of the capital.
As the third Gordian was only nineteen years of age at the time of his
death, the history of his life, were it known to us with greater accuracy
than it really is, would contain little more than the account of his
education, and the conduct of the ministers, who by turns abused or guided
the simplicity of his unexperienced youth. Immediately after his
accession, he fell into the hands of his mother's eunuchs, that pernicious
vermin of the East, who, since the days of Elagabalus, had infested the
Roman palace. By the artful conspiracy of these wretches, an impenetrable
veil was drawn between an innocent prince and his oppressed subjects, the
virtuous disposition of Gordian was deceived, and the honors of the empire
sold without his knowledge, though in a very public manner, to the most
worthless of mankind. We are ignorant by what fortunate accident the
emperor escaped from this ignominious slavery, and devolved his confidence
on a minister, whose wise counsels had no object except the glory of his
sovereign and the happiness of the people. It should seem that love and
learning introduced Misitheus to the favor of Gordian. The young prince
married the daughter of his master of rhetoric, and promoted his
father-in-law to the first offices of the empire. Two admirable letters
that passed between them are still extant. The minister, with the
conscious dignity of virtue, congratulates Gordian that he is delivered
from the tyranny of the eunuchs, and still more that he is sensible of his
deliverance. The emperor acknowledges, with an amiable confusion, the
errors of his past conduct; and laments, with singular propriety, the
misfortune of a monarch, from whom a venal tribe of courtiers perpetually
labor to conceal the truth.
The life of Misitheus had been spent in the profession of letters, not of
arms; yet such was the versatile genius of that great man, that, when he
was appointed Prætorian Præfect, he discharged the military
duties of his place with vigor and ability. The Persians had invaded
Mesopotamia, and threatened Antioch. By the persuasion of his
father-in-law, the young emperor quitted the luxury of Rome, opened, for
the last time recorded in history, the temple of Janus, and marched in
person into the East. On his approach, with a great army, the Persians
withdrew their garrisons from the cities which they had already taken, and
retired from the Euphrates to the Tigris. Gordian enjoyed the pleasure of
announcing to the senate the first success of his arms, which he ascribed,
with a becoming modesty and gratitude, to the wisdom of his father and Præfect.
During the whole expedition, Misitheus watched over the safety and
discipline of the army; whilst he prevented their dangerous murmurs by
maintaining a regular plenty in the camp, and by establishing ample
magazines of vinegar, bacon, straw, barley, and wheat in all the cities of
the frontier. But the prosperity of Gordian expired with Misitheus, who
died of a flux, not with out very strong suspicions of poison. Philip, his
successor in the præfecture, was an Arab by birth, and consequently,
in the earlier part of his life, a robber by profession. His rise from so
obscure a station to the first dignities of the empire, seems to prove
that he was a bold and able leader. But his boldness prompted him to
aspire to the throne, and his abilities were employed to supplant, not to
serve, his indulgent master. The minds of the soldiers were irritated by
an artificial scarcity, created by his contrivance in the camp; and the
distress of the army was attributed to the youth and incapacity of the
prince. It is not in our power to trace the successive steps of the secret
conspiracy and open sedition, which were at length fatal to Gordian. A
sepulchral monument was erected to his memory on the spot where he was
killed, near the conflux of the Euphrates with the little river Aboras.
The fortunate Philip, raised to the empire by the votes of the soldiers,
found a ready obedience from the senate and the provinces.
We cannot forbear transcribing the ingenious, though somewhat fanciful
description, which a celebrated writer of our own times has traced of the
military government of the Roman empire. "What in that age was called the
Roman empire, was only an irregular republic, not unlike the aristocracy
of Algiers, where the militia, possessed of the sovereignty, creates and
deposes a magistrate, who is styled a Dey. Perhaps, indeed, it may be laid
down as a general rule, that a military government is, in some respects,
more republican than monarchical. Nor can it be said that the soldiers
only partook of the government by their disobedience and rebellions. The
speeches made to them by the emperors, were they not at length of the same
nature as those formerly pronounced to the people by the consuls and the
tribunes? And although the armies had no regular place or forms of
assembly; though their debates were short, their action sudden, and their
resolves seldom the result of cool reflection, did they not dispose, with
absolute sway, of the public fortune? What was the emperor, except the
minister of a violent government, elected for the private benefit of the
soldiers?
"When the army had elected Philip, who was Prætorian præfect
to the third Gordian, the latter demanded that he might remain sole
emperor; he was unable to obtain it. He requested that the power might be
equally divided between them; the army would not listen to his speech. He
consented to be degraded to the rank of Cæsar; the favor was refused
him. He desired, at least, he might be appointed Prætorian præfect;
his prayer was rejected. Finally, he pleaded for his life. The army, in
these several judgments, exercised the supreme magistracy." According to
the historian, whose doubtful narrative the President De Montesquieu has
adopted, Philip, who, during the whole transaction, had preserved a sullen
silence, was inclined to spare the innocent life of his benefactor; till,
recollecting that his innocence might excite a dangerous compassion in the
Roman world, he commanded, without regard to his suppliant cries, that he
should be seized, stripped, and led away to instant death. After a
moment's pause, the inhuman sentence was executed.
On his return from the East to Rome, Philip, desirous of obliterating the
memory of his crimes, and of captivating the affections of the people,
solemnized the secular games with infinite pomp and magnificence. Since
their institution or revival by Augustus, they had been celebrated by
Claudius, by Domitian, and by Severus, and were now renewed the fifth
time, on the accomplishment of the full period of a thousand years from
the foundation of Rome. Every circumstance of the secular games was
skillfully adapted to inspire the superstitious mind with deep and solemn
reverence. The long interval between them exceeded the term of human life;
and as none of the spectators had already seen them, none could flatter
themselves with the expectation of beholding them a second time. The
mystic sacrifices were performed, during three nights, on the banks of the
Tyber; and the Campus Martius resounded with music and dances, and was
illuminated with innumerable lamps and torches. Slaves and strangers were
excluded from any participation in these national ceremonies. A chorus of
twenty-seven youths, and as many virgins, of noble families, and whose
parents were both alive, implored the propitious gods in favor of the
present, and for the hope of the rising generation; requesting, in
religious hymns, that according to the faith of their ancient oracles,
they would still maintain the virtue, the felicity, and the empire of the
Roman people. The magnificence of Philip's shows and entertainments
dazzled the eyes of the multitude. The devout were employed in the rites
of superstition, whilst the reflecting few revolved in their anxious minds
the past history and the future fate of the empire.
Since Romulus, with a small band of shepherds and outlaws, fortified
himself on the hills near the Tyber, ten centuries had already elapsed.
During the four first ages, the Romans, in the laborious school of
poverty, had acquired the virtues of war and government: by the vigorous
exertion of those virtues, and by the assistance of fortune, they had
obtained, in the course of the three succeeding centuries, an absolute
empire over many countries of Europe, Asia, and Africa. The last three
hundred years had been consumed in apparent prosperity and internal
decline. The nation of soldiers, magistrates, and legislators, who
composed the thirty-five tribes of the Roman people, were dissolved into
the common mass of mankind, and confounded with the millions of servile
provincials, who had received the name, without adopting the spirit, of
Romans. A mercenary army, levied among the subjects and barbarians of the
frontier, was the only order of men who preserved and abused their
independence. By their tumultuary election, a Syrian, a Goth, or an Arab,
was exalted to the throne of Rome, and invested with despotic power over
the conquests and over the country of the Scipios.
The limits of the Roman empire still extended from the Western Ocean to
the Tigris, and from Mount Atlas to the Rhine and the Danube. To the
undiscerning eye of the vulgar, Philip appeared a monarch no less powerful
than Hadrian or Augustus had formerly been. The form was still the same,
but the animating health and vigor were fled. The industry of the people
was discouraged and exhausted by a long series of oppression. The
discipline of the legions, which alone, after the extinction of every
other virtue, had propped the greatness of the state, was corrupted by the
ambition, or relaxed by the weakness, of the emperors. The strength of the
frontiers, which had always consisted in arms rather than in
fortifications, was insensibly undermined; and the fairest provinces were
left exposed to the rapaciousness or ambition of the barbarians, who soon
discovered the decline of the Roman empire.
Of The State Of Persia After The Restoration Of The Monarchy By Artaxerxes.
Whenever Tacitus indulges himself in those beautiful episodes, in which he
relates some domestic transaction of the Germans or of the Parthians, his
principal object is to relieve the attention of the reader from a uniform
scene of vice and misery. From the reign of Augustus to the time of
Alexander Severus, the enemies of Rome were in her bosom—the tyrants
and the soldiers; and her prosperity had a very distant and feeble
interest in the revolutions that might happen beyond the Rhine and the
Euphrates. But when the military order had levelled, in wild anarchy, the
power of the prince, the laws of the senate, and even the discipline of
the camp, the barbarians of the North and of the East, who had long
hovered on the frontier, boldly attacked the provinces of a declining
monarchy. Their vexatious inroads were changed into formidable irruptions,
and, after a long vicissitude of mutual calamities, many tribes of the
victorious invaders established themselves in the provinces of the Roman
Empire. To obtain a clearer knowledge of these great events, we shall
endeavor to form a previous idea of the character, forces, and designs of
those nations who avenged the cause of Hannibal and Mithridates.
In the more early ages of the world, whilst the forest that covered Europe
afforded a retreat to a few wandering savages, the inhabitants of Asia
were already collected into populous cities, and reduced under extensive
empires, the seat of the arts, of luxury, and of despotism. The Assyrians
reigned over the East, till the sceptre of Ninus and Semiramis dropped
from the hands of their enervated successors. The Medes and the
Babylonians divided their power, and were themselves swallowed up in the
monarchy of the Persians, whose arms could not be confined within the
narrow limits of Asia. Followed, as it is said, by two millions of men,
Xerxes, the descendant of Cyrus, invaded Greece. Thirty thousand soldiers,
under the command of Alexander, the son of Philip, who was intrusted by
the Greeks with their glory and revenge, were sufficient to subdue Persia.
The princes of the house of Seleucus usurped and lost the Macedonian
command over the East. About the same time, that, by an ignominious
treaty, they resigned to the Romans the country on this side Mount Tarus,
they were driven by the Parthians, * an obscure horde of Scythian origin,
from all the provinces of Upper Asia. The formidable power of the
Parthians, which spread from India to the frontiers of Syria, was in its
turn subverted by Ardshir, or Artaxerxes; the founder of a new dynasty,
which, under the name of Sassanides, governed Persia till the invasion of
the Arabs. This great revolution, whose fatal influence was soon
experienced by the Romans, happened in the fourth year of Alexander
Severus, two hundred and twenty-six years after the Christian era.
Artaxerxes had served with great reputation in the armies of Artaban, the
last king of the Parthians, and it appears that he was driven into exile
and rebellion by royal ingratitude, the customary reward for superior
merit. His birth was obscure, and the obscurity equally gave room to the
aspersions of his enemies, and the flattery of his adherents. If we credit
the scandal of the former, Artaxerxes sprang from the illegitimate
commerce of a tanner's wife with a common soldier. The latter represent
him as descended from a branch of the ancient kings of Persian, though
time and misfortune had gradually reduced his ancestors to the humble
station of private citizens. As the lineal heir of the monarchy, he
asserted his right to the throne, and challenged the noble task of
delivering the Persians from the oppression under which they groaned above
five centuries since the death of Darius. The Parthians were defeated in
three great battles. * In the last of these their king Artaban was slain,
and the spirit of the nation was forever broken. The authority of
Artaxerxes was solemnly acknowledged in a great assembly held at Balch in
Khorasan. Two younger branches of the royal house of Arsaces were
confounded among the prostrate satraps. A third, more mindful of ancient
grandeur than of present necessity, attempted to retire, with a numerous
train of vessels, towards their kinsman, the king of Armenia; but this
little army of deserters was intercepted, and cut off, by the vigilance of
the conqueror, who boldly assumed the double diadem, and the title of King
of Kings, which had been enjoyed by his predecessor. But these pompous
titles, instead of gratifying the vanity of the Persian, served only to
admonish him of his duty, and to inflame in his soul and should the
ambition of restoring in their full splendor, the religion and empire of
Cyrus.
I. During the long servitude of Persia under the Macedonian and the
Parthian yoke, the nations of Europe and Asia had mutually adopted and
corrupted each other's superstitions. The Arsacides, indeed, practised the
worship of the Magi; but they disgraced and polluted it with a various
mixture of foreign idolatry. * The memory of Zoroaster, the ancient
prophet and philosopher of the Persians, was still revered in the East;
but the obsolete and mysterious language, in which the Zendavesta was
composed, opened a field of dispute to seventy sects, who variously
explained the fundamental doctrines of their religion, and were all
indifferently derided by a crowd of infidels, who rejected the divine
mission and miracles of the prophet. To suppress the idolaters, reunite
the schismatics, and confute the unbelievers, by the infallible decision
of a general council, the pious Artaxerxes summoned the Magi from all
parts of his dominions. These priests, who had so long sighed in contempt
and obscurity obeyed the welcome summons; and, on the appointed day,
appeared, to the number of about eighty thousand. But as the debates of so
tumultuous an assembly could not have been directed by the authority of
reason, or influenced by the art of policy, the Persian synod was reduced,
by successive operations, to forty thousand, to four thousand, to four
hundred, to forty, and at last to seven Magi, the most respected for their
learning and piety. One of these, Erdaviraph, a young but holy prelate,
received from the hands of his brethren three cups of soporiferous wine.
He drank them off, and instantly fell into a long and profound sleep. As
soon as he waked, he related to the king and to the believing multitude,
his journey to heaven, and his intimate conferences with the Deity. Every
doubt was silenced by this supernatural evidence; and the articles of the
faith of Zoroaster were fixed with equal authority and precision. A short
delineation of that celebrated system will be found useful, not only to
display the character of the Persian nation, but to illustrate many of
their most important transactions, both in peace and war, with the Roman
empire.
The great and fundamental article of the system, was the celebrated
doctrine of the two principles; a bold and injudicious attempt of Eastern
philosophy to reconcile the existence of moral and physical evil with the
attributes of a beneficent Creator and Governor of the world. The first
and original Being, in whom, or by whom, the universe exists, is
denominated in the writings of Zoroaster, Time without bounds;
but it must be confessed, that this infinite substance seems rather a
metaphysical, abstraction of the mind, than a real object endowed with
self-consciousness, or possessed of moral perfections. From either the
blind or the intelligent operation of this infinite Time, which bears but
too near an affinity with the chaos of the Greeks, the two secondary but
active principles of the universe, were from all eternity produced, Ormusd
and Ahriman, each of them possessed of the powers of creation, but each
disposed, by his invariable nature, to exercise them with different
designs. * The principle of good is eternally absorbed in light; the
principle of evil eternally buried in darkness. The wise benevolence of
Ormusd formed man capable of virtue, and abundantly provided his fair
habitation with the materials of happiness. By his vigilant providence,
the motion of the planets, the order of the seasons, and the temperate
mixture of the elements, are preserved. But the malice of Ahriman has long
since pierced Ormusd's egg; or, in other words, has violated the
harmony of his works. Since that fatal eruption, the most minute articles
of good and evil are intimately intermingled and agitated together; the
rankest poisons spring up amidst the most salutary plants; deluges,
earthquakes, and conflagrations attest the conflict of Nature, and the
little world of man is perpetually shaken by vice and misfortune. Whilst
the rest of human kind are led away captives in the chains of their
infernal enemy, the faithful Persian alone reserves his religious
adoration for his friend and protector Ormusd, and fights under his banner
of light, in the full confidence that he shall, in the last day, share the
glory of his triumph. At that decisive period, the enlightened wisdom of
goodness will render the power of Ormusd superior to the furious malice of
his rival. Ahriman and his followers, disarmed and subdued, will sink into
their native darkness; and virtue will maintain the eternal peace and
harmony of the universe.
The theology of Zoroaster was darkly comprehended by foreigners, and even
by the far greater number of his disciples; but the most careless
observers were struck with the philosophic simplicity of the Persian
worship. "That people," said Herodotus, "rejects the use of temples, of
altars, and of statues, and smiles at the folly of those nations who
imagine that the gods are sprung from, or bear any affinity with, the
human nature. The tops of the highest mountains are the places chosen for
sacrifices. Hymns and prayers are the principal worship; the Supreme God,
who fills the wide circle of heaven, is the object to whom they are
addressed." Yet, at the same time, in the true spirit of a polytheist, he
accuseth them of adoring Earth, Water, Fire, the Winds, and the Sun and
Moon. But the Persians of every age have denied the charge, and explained
the equivocal conduct, which might appear to give a color to it. The
elements, and more particularly Fire, Light, and the Sun, whom they called
Mithra, were the objects of their religious reverence, because they
considered them as the purest symbols, the noblest productions, and the
most powerful agents of the Divine Power and Nature.
Every mode of religion, to make a deep and lasting impression on the human
mind, must exercise our obedience, by enjoining practices of devotion, for
which we can assign no reason; and must acquire our esteem, by inculcating
moral duties analogous to the dictates of our own hearts. The religion of
Zoroaster was abundantly provided with the former and possessed a
sufficient portion of the latter. At the age of puberty, the faithful
Persian was invested with a mysterious girdle, the badge of the divine
protection; and from that moment all the actions of his life, even the
most indifferent, or the most necessary, were sanctified by their peculiar
prayers, ejaculations, or genuflections; the omission of which, under any
circumstances, was a grievous sin, not inferior in guilt to the violation
of the moral duties. The moral duties, however, of justice, mercy,
liberality, &c., were in their turn required of the disciple of
Zoroaster, who wished to escape the persecution of Ahriman, and to live
with Ormusd in a blissful eternity, where the degree of felicity will be
exactly proportioned to the degree of virtue and piety.
But there are some remarkable instances in which Zoroaster lays aside the
prophet, assumes the legislator, and discovers a liberal concern for
private and public happiness, seldom to be found among the grovelling or
visionary schemes of superstition. Fasting and celibacy, the common means
of purchasing the divine favor, he condemns with abhorrence, as a criminal
rejection of the best gifts of Providence. The saint, in the Magian
religion, is obliged to beget children, to plant useful trees, to destroy
noxious animals, to convey water to the dry lands of Persia, and to work
out his salvation by pursuing all the labors of agriculture. * We may
quote from the Zendavesta a wise and benevolent maxim, which compensates
for many an absurdity. "He who sows the ground with care and diligence
acquires a greater stock of religious merit than he could gain by the
repetition of ten thousand prayers." In the spring of every year a
festival was celebrated, destined to represent the primitive equality, and
the present connection, of mankind. The stately kings of Persia,
exchanging their vain pomp for more genuine greatness, freely mingled with
the humblest but most useful of their subjects. On that day the husbandmen
were admitted, without distinction, to the table of the king and his
satraps. The monarch accepted their petitions, inquired into their
grievances, and conversed with them on the most equal terms. "From your
labors," was he accustomed to say, (and to say with truth, if not with
sincerity,) "from your labors we receive our subsistence; you derive your
tranquillity from our vigilance: since, therefore, we are mutually
necessary to each other, let us live together like brothers in concord and
love." Such a festival must indeed have degenerated, in a wealthy and
despotic empire, into a theatrical representation; but it was at least a
comedy well worthy of a royal audience, and which might sometimes imprint
a salutary lesson on the mind of a young prince.
Had Zoroaster, in all his institutions, invariably supported this exalted
character, his name would deserve a place with those of Numa and
Confucius, and his system would be justly entitled to all the applause,
which it has pleased some of our divines, and even some of our
philosophers, to bestow on it. But in that motley composition, dictated by
reason and passion, by enthusiasm and by selfish motives, some useful and
sublime truths were disgraced by a mixture of the most abject and
dangerous superstition. The Magi, or sacerdotal order, were extremely
numerous, since, as we have already seen, fourscore thousand of them were
convened in a general council. Their forces were multiplied by discipline.
A regular hierarchy was diffused through all the provinces of Persia; and
the Archimagus, who resided at Balch, was respected as the visible head of
the church, and the lawful successor of Zoroaster. The property of the
Magi was very considerable. Besides the less invidious possession of a
large tract of the most fertile lands of Media, they levied a general tax
on the fortunes and the industry of the Persians. "Though your good
works," says the interested prophet, "exceed in number the leaves of the
trees, the drops of rain, the stars in the heaven, or the sands on the
sea-shore, they will all be unprofitable to you, unless they are accepted
by the destour, or priest. To obtain the acceptation of this
guide to salvation, you must faithfully pay him tithes of all you
possess, of your goods, of your lands, and of your money. If the destour
be satisfied, your soul will escape hell tortures; you will secure praise
in this world and happiness in the next. For the destours are the teachers
of religion; they know all things, and they deliver all men." *
These convenient maxims of reverence and implicit were doubtless imprinted
with care on the tender minds of youth; since the Magi were the masters of
education in Persia, and to their hands the children even of the royal
family were intrusted. The Persian priests, who were of a speculative
genius, preserved and investigated the secrets of Oriental philosophy; and
acquired, either by superior knowledge, or superior art, the reputation of
being well versed in some occult sciences, which have derived their
appellation from the Magi. Those of more active dispositions mixed with
the world in courts and cities; and it is observed, that the
administration of Artaxerxes was in a great measure directed by the
counsels of the sacerdotal order, whose dignity, either from policy or
devotion, that prince restored to its ancient splendor.
The first counsel of the Magi was agreeable to the unsociable genius of
their faith, to the practice of ancient kings, and even to the example of
their legislator, who had a victim to a religious war, excited by his own
intolerant zeal. By an edict of Artaxerxes, the exercise of every worship,
except that of Zoroaster, was severely prohibited. The temples of the
Parthians, and the statues of their deified monarchs, were thrown down
with ignominy. The sword of Aristotle (such was the name given by the
Orientals to the polytheism and philosophy of the Greeks) was easily
broken; the flames of persecution soon reached the more stubborn Jews and
Christians; nor did they spare the heretics of their own nation and
religion. The majesty of Ormusd, who was jealous of a rival, was seconded
by the despotism of Artaxerxes, who could not suffer a rebel; and the
schismatics within his vast empire were soon reduced to the inconsiderable
number of eighty thousand. * This spirit of persecution reflects dishonor
on the religion of Zoroaster; but as it was not productive of any civil
commotion, it served to strengthen the new monarchy, by uniting all the
various inhabitants of Persia in the bands of religious zeal.
II. Artaxerxes, by his valor and conduct, had wrested the sceptre of the
East from the ancient royal family of Parthia. There still remained the
more difficult task of establishing, throughout the vast extent of Persia,
a uniform and vigorous administration. The weak indulgence of the
Arsacides had resigned to their sons and brothers the principal provinces,
and the greatest offices of the kingdom in the nature of hereditary
possessions. The vitax, or eighteen most powerful satraps, were permitted
to assume the regal title; and the vain pride of the monarch was delighted
with a nominal dominion over so many vassal kings. Even tribes of
barbarians in their mountains, and the Greek cities of Upper Asia, within
their walls, scarcely acknowledged, or seldom obeyed. any superior; and
the Parthian empire exhibited, under other names, a lively image of the
feudal system which has since prevailed in Europe. But the active victor,
at the head of a numerous and disciplined army, visited in person every
province of Persia. The defeat of the boldest rebels, and the reduction of
the strongest fortifications, diffused the terror of his arms, and
prepared the way for the peaceful reception of his authority. An obstinate
resistance was fatal to the chiefs; but their followers were treated with
lenity. A cheerful submission was rewarded with honors and riches, but the
prudent Artaxerxes suffering no person except himself to assume the title
of king, abolished every intermediate power between the throne and the
people. His kingdom, nearly equal in extent to modern Persia, was, on
every side, bounded by the sea, or by great rivers; by the Euphrates, the
Tigris, the Araxes, the Oxus, and the Indus, by the Caspian Sea, and the
Gulf of Persia. That country was computed to contain, in the last century,
five hundred and fifty-four cities, sixty thousand villages, and about
forty millions of souls. If we compare the administration of the house of
Sassan with that of the house of Sefi, the political influence of the
Magian with that of the Mahometan religion, we shall probably infer, that
the kingdom of Artaxerxes contained at least as great a number of cities,
villages, and inhabitants. But it must likewise be confessed, that in
every age the want of harbors on the sea-coast, and the scarcity of fresh
water in the inland provinces, have been very unfavorable to the commerce
and agriculture of the Persians; who, in the calculation of their numbers,
seem to have indulged one of the nearest, though most common, artifices of
national vanity.
As soon as the ambitious mind of Artaxerxes had triumphed ever the
resistance of his vassals, he began to threaten the neighboring states,
who, during the long slumber of his predecessors, had insulted Persia with
impunity. He obtained some easy victories over the wild Scythians and the
effeminate Indians; but the Romans were an enemy, who, by their past
injuries and present power, deserved the utmost efforts of his arms. A
forty years' tranquillity, the fruit of valor and moderation, had
succeeded the victories of Trajan. During the period that elapsed from the
accession of Marcus to the reign of Alexander, the Roman and the Parthian
empires were twice engaged in war; and although the whole strength of the
Arsacides contended with a part only of the forces of Rome, the event was
most commonly in favor of the latter. Macrinus, indeed, prompted by his
precarious situation and pusillanimous temper, purchased a peace at the
expense of near two millions of our money; but the generals of Marcus, the
emperor Severus, and his son, erected many trophies in Armenia,
Mesopotamia, and Assyria. Among their exploits, the imperfect relation of
which would have unseasonably interrupted the more important series of
domestic revolutions, we shall only mention the repeated calamities of the
two great cities of Seleucia and Ctesiphon.
Seleucia, on the western bank of the Tigris, about forty-five miles to the
north of ancient Babylon, was the capital of the Macedonian conquests in
Upper Asia. Many ages after the fall of their empire, Seleucia retained
the genuine characters of a Grecian colony, arts, military virtue, and the
love of freedom. The independent republic was governed by a senate of
three hundred nobles; the people consisted of six hundred thousand
citizens; the walls were strong, and as long as concord prevailed among
the several orders of the state, they viewed with contempt the power of
the Parthian: but the madness of faction was sometimes provoked to implore
the dangerous aid of the common enemy, who was posted almost at the gates
of the colony. The Parthian monarchs, like the Mogul sovereigns of
Hindostan, delighted in the pastoral life of their Scythian ancestors; and
the Imperial camp was frequently pitched in the plain of Ctesiphon, on the
eastern bank of the Tigris, at the distance of only three miles from
Seleucia. The innumerable attendants on luxury and despotism resorted to
the court, and the little village of Ctesiphon insensibly swelled into a
great city. Under the reign of Marcus, the Roman generals penetrated as
far as Ctesiphon and Seleucia. They were received as friends by the Greek
colony; they attacked as enemies the seat of the Parthian kings; yet both
cities experienced the same treatment. The sack and conflagration of
Seleucia, with the massacre of three hundred thousand of the inhabitants,
tarnished the glory of the Roman triumph. Seleucia, already exhausted by
the neighborhood of a too powerful rival, sunk under the fatal blow; but
Ctesiphon, in about thirty-three years, had sufficiently recovered its
strength to maintain an obstinate siege against the emperor Severus. The
city was, however, taken by assault; the king, who defended it in person,
escaped with precipitation; a hundred thousand captives, and a rich booty,
rewarded the fatigues of the Roman soldiers. Notwithstanding these
misfortunes, Ctesiphon succeeded to Babylon and to Seleucia, as one of the
great capitals of the East. In summer, the monarch of Persia enjoyed at
Ecbatana the cool breezes of the mountains of Media; but the mildness of
the climate engaged him to prefer Ctesiphon for his winter residence.
From these successful inroads the Romans derived no real or lasting
benefit; nor did they attempt to preserve such distant conquests,
separated from the provinces of the empire by a large tract of
intermediate desert. The reduction of the kingdom of Osrhoene was an
acquisition of less splendor indeed, but of a far more solid advantage.
That little state occupied the northern and most fertile part of
Mesopotamia, between the Euphrates and the Tigris. Edessa, its capital,
was situated about twenty miles beyond the former of those rivers; and the
inhabitants, since the time of Alexander, were a mixed race of Greeks,
Arabs, Syrians, and Armenians. The feeble sovereigns of Osrhoene, placed
on the dangerous verge of two contending empires, were attached from
inclination to the Parthian cause; but the superior power of Rome exacted
from them a reluctant homage, which is still attested by their medals.
After the conclusion of the Parthian war under Marcus, it was judged
prudent to secure some substantia, pledges of their doubtful fidelity.
Forts were constructed in several parts of the country, and a Roman
garrison was fixed in the strong town of Nisibis. During the troubles that
followed the death of Commodus, the princes of Osrhoene attempted to shake
off the yoke; but the stern policy of Severus confirmed their dependence,
and the perfidy of Caracalla completed the easy conquest. Abgarus, the
last king of Edessa, was sent in chains to Rome, his dominions reduced
into a province, and his capital dignified with the rank of colony; and
thus the Romans, about ten years before the fall of the Parthian monarchy,
obtained a firm and permanent establishment beyond the Euphrates.
Prudence as well as glory might have justified a war on the side of
Artaxerxes, had his views been confined to the defence or acquisition of a
useful frontier. but the ambitious Persian openly avowed a far more
extensive design of conquest; and he thought himself able to support his
lofty pretensions by the arms of reason as well as by those of power.
Cyrus, he alleged, had first subdued, and his successors had for a long
time possessed, the whole extent of Asia, as far as the Propontis and the
Ægean Sea; the provinces of Caria and Ionia, under their empire, had
been governed by Persian satraps, and all Egypt, to the confines of
Æthiopia, had acknowledged their sovereignty. Their rights had been
suspended, but not destroyed, by a long usurpation; and as soon as he
received the Persian diadem, which birth and successful valor had placed
upon his head, the first great duty of his station called upon him to
restore the ancient limits and splendor of the monarchy. The Great King,
therefore, (such was the haughty style of his embassies to the emperor
Alexander,) commanded the Romans instantly to depart from all the
provinces of his ancestors, and, yielding to the Persians the empire of
Asia, to content themselves with the undisturbed possession of Europe.
This haughty mandate was delivered by four hundred of the tallest and most
beautiful of the Persians; who, by their fine horses, splendid arms, and
rich apparel, displayed the pride and greatness of their master. Such an
embassy was much less an offer of negotiation than a declaration of war.
Both Alexander Severus and Artaxerxes, collecting the military force of
the Roman and Persian monarchies, resolved in this important contest to
lead their armies in person.
If we credit what should seem the most authentic of all records, an
oration, still extant, and delivered by the emperor himself to the senate,
we must allow that the victory of Alexander Severus was not inferior to
any of those formerly obtained over the Persians by the son of Philip. The
army of the Great King consisted of one hundred and twenty thousand horse,
clothed in complete armor of steel; of seven hundred elephants, with
towers filled with archers on their backs, and of eighteen hundred
chariots armed with scythes. This formidable host, the like of which is
not to be found in eastern history, and has scarcely been imagined in
eastern romance, was discomfited in a great battle, in which the Roman
Alexander proved himself an intrepid soldier and a skilful general. The
Great King fled before his valor; an immense booty, and the conquest of
Mesopotamia, were the immediate fruits of this signal victory. Such are
the circumstances of this ostentatious and improbable relation, dictated,
as it too plainly appears, by the vanity of the monarch, adorned by the
unblushing servility of his flatterers, and received without contradiction
by a distant and obsequious senate. Far from being inclined to believe
that the arms of Alexander obtained any memorable advantage over the
Persians, we are induced to suspect that all this blaze of imaginary glory
was designed to conceal some real disgrace.
Our suspicious are confirmed by the authority of a contemporary historian,
who mentions the virtues of Alexander with respect, and his faults with
candor. He describes the judicious plan which had been formed for the
conduct of the war. Three Roman armies were destined to invade Persia at
the same time, and by different roads. But the operations of the campaign,
though wisely concerted, were not executed either with ability or success.
The first of these armies, as soon as it had entered the marshy plains of
Babylon, towards the artificial conflux of the Euphrates and the Tigris,
was encompassed by the superior numbers, and destroyed by the arrows of
the enemy. The alliance of Chosroes, king of Armenia, and the long tract
of mountainous country, in which the Persian cavalry was of little
service, opened a secure entrance into the heart of Media, to the second
of the Roman armies. These brave troops laid waste the adjacent provinces,
and by several successful actions against Artaxerxes, gave a faint color
to the emperor's vanity. But the retreat of this victorious army was
imprudent, or at least unfortunate. In repassing the mountains, great
numbers of soldiers perished by the badness of the roads, and the severity
of the winter season. It had been resolved, that whilst these two great
detachments penetrated into the opposite extremes of the Persian
dominions, the main body, under the command of Alexander himself, should
support their attack, by invading the centre of the kingdom. But the
unexperienced youth, influenced by his mother's counsels, and perhaps by
his own fears, deserted the bravest troops, and the fairest prospect of
victory; and after consuming in Mesopotamia an inactive and inglorious
summer, he led back to Antioch an army diminished by sickness, and
provoked by disappointment. The behavior of Artaxerxes had been very
different. Flying with rapidity from the hills of Media to the marshes of
the Euphrates, he had everywhere opposed the invaders in person; and in
either fortune had united with the ablest conduct the most undaunted
resolution. But in several obstinate engagements against the veteran
legions of Rome, the Persian monarch had lost the flower of his troops.
Even his victories had weakened his power. The favorable opportunities of
the absence of Alexander, and of the confusions that followed that
emperor's death, presented themselves in vain to his ambition. Instead of
expelling the Romans, as he pretended, from the continent of Asia, he
found himself unable to wrest from their hands the little province of
Mesopotamia.
The reign of Artaxerxes, which, from the last defeat of the Parthians,
lasted only fourteen years, forms a memorable æra in the history of
the East, and even in that of Rome. His character seems to have been
marked by those bold and commanding features, that generally distinguish
the princes who conquer, from those who inherit an empire. Till the last
period of the Persian monarchy, his code of laws was respected as the
groundwork of their civil and religious policy. Several of his sayings are
preserved. One of them in particular discovers a deep insight into the
constitution of government. "The authority of the prince," said
Artaxerxes, "must be defended by a military force; that force can only be
maintained by taxes; all taxes must, at last, fall upon agriculture; and
agriculture can never flourish except under the protection of justice and
moderation." Artaxerxes bequeathed his new empire, and his ambitious
designs against the Romans, to Sapor, a son not unworthy of his great
father; but those designs were too extensive for the power of Persia, and
served only to involve both nations in a long series of destructive wars
and reciprocal calamities.
The Persians, long since civilized and corrupted, were very far from
possessing the martial independence, and the intrepid hardiness, both of
mind and body, which have rendered the northern barbarians masters of the
world. The science of war, that constituted the more rational force of
Greece and Rome, as it now does of Europe, never made any considerable
progress in the East. Those disciplined evolutions which harmonize and
animate a confused multitude, were unknown to the Persians. They were
equally unskilled in the arts of constructing, besieging, or defending
regular fortifications. They trusted more to their numbers than to their
courage; more to their courage than to their discipline. The infantry was
a half-armed, spiritless crowd of peasants, levied in haste by the
allurements of plunder, and as easily dispersed by a victory as by a
defeat. The monarch and his nobles transported into the camp the pride and
luxury of the seraglio. Their military operations were impeded by a
useless train of women, eunuchs, horses, and camels; and in the midst of a
successful campaign, the Persian host was often separated or destroyed by
an unexpected famine.
But the nobles of Persia, in the bosom of luxury and despotism, preserved
a strong sense of personal gallantry and national honor. From the age of
seven years they were taught to speak truth, to shoot with the bow, and to
ride; and it was universally confessed, that in the two last of these
arts, they had made a more than common proficiency. The most distinguished
youth were educated under the monarch's eye, practised their exercises in
the gate of his palace, and were severely trained up to the habits of
temperance and obedience, in their long and laborious parties of hunting.
In every province, the satrap maintained a like school of military virtue.
The Persian nobles (so natural is the idea of feudal tenures) received
from the king's bounty lands and houses, on the condition of their service
in war. They were ready on the first summons to mount on horseback, with a
martial and splendid train of followers, and to join the numerous bodies
of guards, who were carefully selected from among the most robust slaves,
and the bravest adventures of Asia. These armies, both of light and of
heavy cavalry, equally formidable by the impetuosity of their charge and
the rapidity of their motions, threatened, as an impending cloud, the
eastern provinces of the declining empire of Rome.
The State Of Germany Till The Invasion Of The Barbarians In The Time Of The Emperor Decius.
The government and religion of Persia have deserved some notice, from
their connection with the decline and fall of the Roman empire. We shall
occasionally mention the Scythian or Sarmatian tribes, * which, with their
arms and horses, their flocks and herds, their wives and families,
wandered over the immense plains which spread themselves from the Caspian
Sea to the Vistula, from the confines of Persia to those of Germany. But
the warlike Germans, who first resisted, then invaded, and at length
overturned the Western monarchy of Rome, will occupy a much more important
place in this history, and possess a stronger, and, if we may use the
expression, a more domestic, claim to our attention and regard. The most
civilized nations of modern Europe issued from the woods of Germany; and
in the rude institutions of those barbarians we may still distinguish the
original principles of our present laws and manners. In their primitive
state of simplicity and independence, the Germans were surveyed by the
discerning eye, and delineated by the masterly pencil, of Tacitus, the
first of historians who applied the science of philosophy to the study of
facts. The expressive conciseness of his descriptions has served to
exercise the diligence of innumerable antiquarians, and to excite the
genius and penetration of the philosophic historians of our own times. The
subject, however various and important, has already been so frequently, so
ably, and so successfully discussed, that it is now grown familiar to the
reader, and difficult to the writer. We shall therefore content ourselves
with observing, and indeed with repeating, some of the most important
circumstances of climate, of manners, and of institutions, which rendered
the wild barbarians of Germany such formidable enemies to the Roman power.
Ancient Germany, excluding from its independent limits the province
westward of the Rhine, which had submitted to the Roman yoke, extended
itself over a third part of Europe. Almost the whole of modern Germany,
Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Livonia, Prussia, and the greater part
of Poland, were peopled by the various tribes of one great nation, whose
complexion, manners, and language denoted a common origin, and preserved a
striking resemblance. On the west, ancient Germany was divided by the
Rhine from the Gallic, and on the south, by the Danube, from the Illyrian,
provinces of the empire. A ridge of hills, rising from the Danube, and
called the Carpathian Mountains, covered Germany on the side of Dacia or
Hungary. The eastern frontier was faintly marked by the mutual fears of
the Germans and the Sarmatians, and was often confounded by the mixture of
warring and confederating tribes of the two nations. In the remote
darkness of the north, the ancients imperfectly descried a frozen ocean
that lay beyond the Baltic Sea, and beyond the Peninsula, or islands of
Scandinavia.
Some ingenious writers have suspected that Europe was much colder formerly
than it is at present; and the most ancient descriptions of the climate of
Germany tend exceedingly to confirm their theory. The general complaints
of intense frost and eternal winter, are perhaps little to be regarded,
since we have no method of reducing to the accurate standard of the
thermometer, the feelings, or the expressions, of an orator born in the
happier regions of Greece or Asia. But I shall select two remarkable
circumstances of a less equivocal nature. 1. The great rivers which
covered the Roman provinces, the Rhine and the Danube, were frequently
frozen over, and capable of supporting the most enormous weights. The
barbarians, who often chose that severe season for their inroads,
transported, without apprehension or danger, their numerous armies, their
cavalry, and their heavy wagons, over a vast and solid bridge of ice.
Modern ages have not presented an instance of a like phenomenon. 2. The
reindeer, that useful animal, from whom the savage of the North derives
the best comforts of his dreary life, is of a constitution that supports,
and even requires, the most intense cold. He is found on the rock of
Spitzberg, within ten degrees of the Pole; he seems to delight in the
snows of Lapland and Siberia: but at present he cannot subsist, much less
multiply, in any country to the south of the Baltic. In the time of Cæsar
the reindeer, as well as the elk and the wild bull, was a native of the
Hercynian forest, which then overshadowed a great part of Germany and
Poland. The modern improvements sufficiently explain the causes of the
diminution of the cold. These immense woods have been gradually cleared,
which intercepted from the earth the rays of the sun. The morasses have
been drained, and, in proportion as the soil has been cultivated, the air
has become more temperate. Canada, at this day, is an exact picture of
ancient Germany. Although situated in the same parallel with the finest
provinces of France and England, that country experiences the most
rigorous cold. The reindeer are very numerous, the ground is covered with
deep and lasting snow, and the great river of St. Lawrence is regularly
frozen, in a season when the waters of the Seine and the Thames are
usually free from ice.
It is difficult to ascertain, and easy to exaggerate, the influence of the
climate of ancient Germany over the minds and bodies of the natives. Many
writers have supposed, and most have allowed, though, as it should seem,
without any adequate proof, that the rigorous cold of the North was
favorable to long life and generative vigor, that the women were more
fruitful, and the human species more prolific, than in warmer or more
temperate climates. We may assert, with greater confidence, that the keen
air of Germany formed the large and masculine limbs of the natives, who
were, in general, of a more lofty stature than the people of the South,
gave them a kind of strength better adapted to violent exertions than to
patient labor, and inspired them with constitutional bravery, which is the
result of nerves and spirits. The severity of a winter campaign, that
chilled the courage of the Roman troops, was scarcely felt by these hardy
children of the North, who, in their turn, were unable to resist the
summer heats, and dissolved away in languor and sickness under the beams
of an Italian sun.
There is not any where upon the globe a large tract of country, which we
have discovered destitute of inhabitants, or whose first population can be
fixed with any degree of historical certainty. And yet, as the most
philosophic minds can seldom refrain from investigating the infancy of
great nations, our curiosity consumes itself in toilsome and disappointed
efforts. When Tacitus considered the purity of the German blood, and the
forbidding aspect of the country, he was disposed to pronounce those
barbarians Indigen, or natives of the soil. We may allow with
safety, and perhaps with truth, that ancient Germany was not originally
peopled by any foreign colonies already formed into a political society;
but that the name and nation received their existence from the gradual
union of some wandering savages of the Hercynian woods. To assert those
savages to have been the spontaneous production of the earth which they
inhabited would be a rash inference, condemned by religion, and
unwarranted by reason.
Such rational doubt is but ill suited with the genius of popular vanity.
Among the nations who have adopted the Mosaic history of the world, the
ark of Noah has been of the same use, as was formerly to the Greeks and
Romans the siege of Troy. On a narrow basis of acknowledged truth, an
immense but rude superstructure of fable has been erected; and the wild
Irishman, as well as the wild Tartar, could point out the individual son
of Japhet, from whose loins his ancestors were lineally descended. The
last century abounded with antiquarians of profound learning and easy
faith, who, by the dim light of legends and traditions, of conjectures and
etymologies, conducted the great grandchildren of Noah from the Tower of
Babel to the extremities of the globe. Of these judicious critics, one of
the most entertaining was Oaus Rudbeck, professor in the university of
Upsal. Whatever is celebrated either in history or fable, this zealous
patriot ascribes to his country. From Sweden (which formed so considerable
a part of ancient Germany) the Greeks themselves derived their
alphabetical characters, their astronomy, and their religion. Of that
delightful region (for such it appeared to the eyes of a native) the
Atlantis of Plato, the country of the Hyperboreans, the gardens of the
Hesperides, the Fortunate Islands, and even the Elysian Fields, were all
but faint and imperfect transcripts. A clime so profusely favored by
Nature could not long remain desert after the flood. The learned Rudbeck
allows the family of Noah a few years to multiply from eight to about
twenty thousand persons. He then disperses them into small colonies to
replenish the earth, and to propagate the human species. The German or
Swedish detachment (which marched, if I am not mistaken, under the command
of Askenaz, the son of Gomer, the son of Japhet) distinguished itself by a
more than common diligence in the prosecution of this great work. The
northern hive cast its swarms over the greatest part of Europe, Africa,
and Asia; and (to use the author's metaphor) the blood circulated from the
extremities to the heart.
But all this well-labored system of German antiquities is annihilated by a
single fact, too well attested to admit of any doubt, and of too decisive
a nature to leave room for any reply. The Germans, in the age of Tacitus,
were unacquainted with the use of letters; and the use of letters is the
principal circumstance that distinguishes a civilized people from a herd
of savages incapable of knowledge or reflection. Without that artificial
help, the human memory soon dissipates or corrupts the ideas intrusted to
her charge; and the nobler faculties of the mind, no longer supplied with
models or with materials, gradually forget their powers; the judgment
becomes feeble and lethargic, the imagination languid or irregular. Fully
to apprehend this important truth, let us attempt, in an improved society,
to calculate the immense distance between the man of learning and the illiterate
peasant. The former, by reading and reflection, multiplies his own
experience, and lives in distant ages and remote countries; whilst the
latter, rooted to a single spot, and confined to a few years of existence,
surpasses but very little his fellow-laborer, the ox, in the exercise of
his mental faculties. The same, and even a greater, difference will be
found between nations than between individuals; and we may safely
pronounce, that without some species of writing, no people has ever
preserved the faithful annals of their history, ever made any considerable
progress in the abstract sciences, or ever possessed, in any tolerable
degree of perfection, the useful and agreeable arts of life.
Of these arts, the ancient Germans were wretchedly destitute. They passed
their lives in a state of ignorance and poverty, which it has pleased some
declaimers to dignify with the appellation of virtuous simplicity. *
Modern Germany is said to contain about two thousand three hundred walled
towns. In a much wider extent of country, the geographer Ptolemy could
discover no more than ninety places which he decorates with the name of
cities; though, according to our ideas, they would but ill deserve that
splendid title. We can only suppose them to have been rude fortifications,
constructed in the centre of the woods, and designed to secure the women,
children, and cattle, whilst the warriors of the tribe marched out to
repel a sudden invasion. But Tacitus asserts, as a well-known fact, that
the Germans, in his time, had no cities; and that they affected
to despise the works of Roman industry, as places of confinement rather
than of security. Their edifices were not even contiguous, or formed into
regular villas; each barbarian fixed his independent dwelling on the spot
to which a plain, a wood, or a stream of fresh water, had induced him to
give the preference. Neither stone, nor brick, nor tiles, were employed in
these slight habitations. They were indeed no more than low huts, of a
circular figure, built of rough timber, thatched with straw, and pierced
at the top to leave a free passage for the smoke. In the most inclement
winter, the hardy German was satisfied with a scanty garment made of the
skin of some animal. The nations who dwelt towards the North clothed
themselves in furs; and the women manufactured for their own use a coarse
kind of linen. The game of various sorts, with which the forests of
Germany were plentifully stocked, supplied its inhabitants with food and
exercise. Their monstrous herds of cattle, less remarkable indeed for
their beauty than for their utility, formed the principal object of their
wealth. A small quantity of corn was the only produce exacted from the
earth; the use of orchards or artificial meadows was unknown to the
Germans; nor can we expect any improvements in agriculture from a people,
whose prosperity every year experienced a general change by a new division
of the arable lands, and who, in that strange operation, avoided disputes,
by suffering a great part of their territory to lie waste and without
tillage.
Gold, silver, and iron, were extremely scarce in Germany. Its barbarous
inhabitants wanted both skill and patience to investigate those rich veins
of silver, which have so liberally rewarded the attention of the princes
of Brunswick and Saxony. Sweden, which now supplies Europe with iron, was
equally ignorant of its own riches; and the appearance of the arms of the
Germans furnished a sufficient proof how little iron they were able to
bestow on what they must have deemed the noblest use of that metal. The
various transactions of peace and war had introduced some Roman coins
(chiefly silver) among the borderers of the Rhine and Danube; but the more
distant tribes were absolutely unacquainted with the use of money, carried
on their confined traffic by the exchange of commodities, and prized their
rude earthen vessels as of equal value with the silver vases, the presents
of Rome to their princes and ambassadors. To a mind capable of reflection,
such leading facts convey more instruction, than a tedious detail of
subordinate circumstances. The value of money has been settled by general
consent to express our wants and our property, as letters were invented to
express our ideas; and both these institutions, by giving a more active
energy to the powers and passions of human nature, have contributed to
multiply the objects they were designed to represent. The use of gold and
silver is in a great measure factitious; but it would be impossible to
enumerate the important and various services which agriculture, and all
the arts, have received from iron, when tempered and fashioned by the
operation of fire, and the dexterous hand of man. Money, in a word, is the
most universal incitement, iron the most powerful instrument, of human
industry; and it is very difficult to conceive by what means a people,
neither actuated by the one, nor seconded by the other, could emerge from
the grossest barbarism.
If we contemplate a savage nation in any part of the globe, a supine
indolence and a carelessness of futurity will be found to constitute their
general character. In a civilized state, every faculty of man is expanded
and exercised; and the great chain of mutual dependence connects and
embraces the several members of society. The most numerous portion of it
is employed in constant and useful labor. The select few, placed by
fortune above that necessity, can, however, fill up their time by the
pursuits of interest or glory, by the improvement of their estate or of
their understanding, by the duties, the pleasures, and even the follies of
social life. The Germans were not possessed of these varied resources. The
care of the house and family, the management of the land and cattle, were
delegated to the old and the infirm, to women and slaves. The lazy
warrior, destitute of every art that might employ his leisure hours,
consumed his days and nights in the animal gratifications of sleep and
food. And yet, by a wonderful diversity of nature, (according to the
remark of a writer who had pierced into its darkest recesses,) the same
barbarians are by turns the most indolent and the most restless of
mankind. They delight in sloth, they detest tranquility. The languid soul,
oppressed with its own weight, anxiously required some new and powerful
sensation; and war and danger were the only amusements adequate to its
fierce temper. The sound that summoned the German to arms was grateful to
his ear. It roused him from his uncomfortable lethargy, gave him an active
pursuit, and, by strong exercise of the body, and violent emotions of the
mind, restored him to a more lively sense of his existence. In the dull
intervals of peace, these barbarians were immoderately addicted to deep
gaming and excessive drinking; both of which, by different means, the one
by inflaming their passions, the other by extinguishing their reason,
alike relieved them from the pain of thinking. They gloried in passing
whole days and nights at table; and the blood of friends and relations
often stained their numerous and drunken assemblies. Their debts of honor
(for in that light they have transmitted to us those of play) they
discharged with the most romantic fidelity. The desperate gamester, who
had staked his person and liberty on a last throw of the dice, patiently
submitted to the decision of fortune, and suffered himself to be bound,
chastised, and sold into remote slavery, by his weaker but more lucky
antagonist.
Strong beer, a liquor extracted with very little art from wheat or barley,
and corrupted (as it is strongly expressed by Tacitus) into a
certain semblance of wine, was sufficient for the gross purposes of German
debauchery. But those who had tasted the rich wines of Italy, and
afterwards of Gaul, sighed for that more delicious species of
intoxication. They attempted not, however, (as has since been executed
with so much success,) to naturalize the vine on the banks of the Rhine
and Danube; nor did they endeavor to procure by industry the materials of
an advantageous commerce. To solicit by labor what might be ravished by
arms, was esteemed unworthy of the German spirit. The intemperate thirst
of strong liquors often urged the barbarians to invade the provinces on
which art or nature had bestowed those much envied presents. The Tuscan
who betrayed his country to the Celtic nations, attracted them into Italy
by the prospect of the rich fruits and delicious wines, the productions of
a happier climate. And in the same manner the German auxiliaries, invited
into France during the civil wars of the sixteenth century, were allured
by the promise of plenteous quarters in the provinces of Champaigne and
Burgundy. Drunkenness, the most illiberal, but not the most dangerous of
our vices, was sometimes capable, in a less civilized state of
mankind, of occasioning a battle, a war, or a revolution.
The climate of ancient Germany has been modified, and the soil fertilized,
by the labor of ten centuries from the time of Charlemagne. The same
extent of ground which at present maintains, in ease and plenty, a million
of husbandmen and artificers, was unable to supply a hundred thousand lazy
warriors with the simple necessaries of life. The Germans abandoned their
immense forests to the exercise of hunting, employed in pasturage the most
considerable part of their lands, bestowed on the small remainder a rude
and careless cultivation, and then accused the scantiness and sterility of
a country that refused to maintain the multitude of its inhabitants. When
the return of famine severely admonished them of the importance of the
arts, the national distress was sometimes alleviated by the emigration of
a third, perhaps, or a fourth part of their youth. The possession and the
enjoyment of property are the pledges which bind a civilized people to an
improved country. But the Germans, who carried with them what they most
valued, their arms, their cattle, and their women, cheerfully abandoned
the vast silence of their woods for the unbounded hopes of plunder and
conquest. The innumerable swarms that issued, or seemed to issue, from the
great storehouse of nations, were multiplied by the fears of the
vanquished, and by the credulity of succeeding ages. And from facts thus
exaggerated, an opinion was gradually established, and has been supported
by writers of distinguished reputation, that, in the age of Cæsar
and Tacitus, the inhabitants of the North were far more numerous than they
are in our days. A more serious inquiry into the causes of population
seems to have convinced modern philosophers of the falsehood, and indeed
the impossibility, of the supposition. To the names of Mariana and of
Machiavel, we can oppose the equal names of Robertson and Hume.
A warlike nation like the Germans, without either cities, letters, arts,
or money, found some compensation for this savage state in the enjoyment
of liberty. Their poverty secured their freedom, since our desires and our
possessions are the strongest fetters of despotism. "Among the Suiones
(says Tacitus) riches are held in honor. They are therefore
subject to an absolute monarch, who, instead of intrusting his people with
the free use of arms, as is practised in the rest of Germany, commits them
to the safe custody, not of a citizen, or even of a freedman, but of a
slave. The neighbors of the Suiones, the Sitones, are sunk even below
servitude; they obey a woman." In the mention of these exceptions, the
great historian sufficiently acknowledges the general theory of
government. We are only at a loss to conceive by what means riches and
despotism could penetrate into a remote corner of the North, and
extinguish the generous flame that blazed with such fierceness on the
frontier of the Roman provinces, or how the ancestors of those Danes and
Norwegians, so distinguished in latter ages by their unconquered spirit,
could thus tamely resign the great character of German liberty. Some
tribes, however, on the coast of the Baltic, acknowledged the authority of
kings, though without relinquishing the rights of men, but in the far
greater part of Germany, the form of government was a democracy, tempered,
indeed, and controlled, not so much by general and positive laws, as by
the occasional ascendant of birth or valor, of eloquence or superstition.
Civil governments, in their first institution, are voluntary associations
for mutual defence. To obtain the desired end, it is absolutely necessary
that each individual should conceive himself obliged to submit his private
opinions and actions to the judgment of the greater number of his
associates. The German tribes were contented with this rude but liberal
outline of political society. As soon as a youth, born of free parents,
had attained the age of manhood, he was introduced into the general
council of his countrymen, solemnly invested with a shield and spear, and
adopted as an equal and worthy member of the military commonwealth. The
assembly of the warriors of the tribe was convened at stated seasons, or
on sudden emergencies. The trial of public offences, the election of
magistrates, and the great business of peace and war, were determined by
its independent voice. Sometimes indeed, these important questions were
previously considered and prepared in a more select council of the
principal chieftains. The magistrates might deliberate and persuade, the
people only could resolve and execute; and the resolutions of the Germans
were for the most part hasty and violent. Barbarians accustomed to place
their freedom in gratifying the present passion, and their courage in
overlooking all future consequences, turned away with indignant contempt
from the remonstrances of justice and policy, and it was the practice to
signify by a hollow murmur their dislike of such timid counsels. But
whenever a more popular orator proposed to vindicate the meanest citizen
from either foreign or domestic injury, whenever he called upon his
fellow-countrymen to assert the national honor, or to pursue some
enterprise full of danger and glory, a loud clashing of shields and spears
expressed the eager applause of the assembly. For the Germans always met
in arms, and it was constantly to be dreaded, lest an irregular multitude,
inflamed with faction and strong liquors, should use those arms to
enforce, as well as to declare, their furious resolves. We may recollect
how often the diets of Poland have been polluted with blood, and the more
numerous party has been compelled to yield to the more violent and
seditious.
A general of the tribe was elected on occasions of danger; and, if the
danger was pressing and extensive, several tribes concurred in the choice
of the same general. The bravest warrior was named to lead his countrymen
into the field, by his example rather than by his commands. But this
power, however limited, was still invidious. It expired with the war, and
in time of peace the German tribes acknowledged not any supreme chief.
Princes were, however, appointed, in the general assembly, to administer
justice, or rather to compose differences, in their respective districts.
In the choice of these magistrates, as much regard was shown to birth as
to merit. To each was assigned, by the public, a guard, and a council of a
hundred persons, and the first of the princes appears to have enjoyed a
preeminence of rank and honor which sometimes tempted the Romans to
compliment him with the regal title.
The comparative view of the powers of the magistrates, in two remarkable
instances, is alone sufficient to represent the whole system of German
manners. The disposal of the landed property within their district was
absolutely vested in their hands, and they distributed it every year
according to a new division. At the same time they were not authorized to
punish with death, to imprison, or even to strike a private citizen. A
people thus jealous of their persons, and careless of their possessions,
must have been totally destitute of industry and the arts, but animated
with a high sense of honor and independence.
The Germans respected only those duties which they imposed on themselves.
The most obscure soldier resisted with disdain the authority of the
magistrates. "The noblest youths blushed not to be numbered among the
faithful companions of some renowned chief, to whom they devoted their
arms and service. A noble emulation prevailed among the companions, to
obtain the first place in the esteem of their chief; amongst the chiefs,
to acquire the greatest number of valiant companions. To be ever
surrounded by a band of select youths was the pride and strength of the
chiefs, their ornament in peace, their defence in war. The glory of such
distinguished heroes diffused itself beyond the narrow limits of their own
tribe. Presents and embassies solicited their friendship, and the fame of
their arms often insured victory to the party which they espoused. In the
hour of danger it was shameful for the chief to be surpassed in valor by
his companions; shameful for the companions not to equal the valor of
their chief. To survive his fall in battle, was indelible infamy. To
protect his person, and to adorn his glory with the trophies of their own
exploits, were the most sacred of their duties. The chiefs combated for
victory, the companions for the chief. The noblest warriors, whenever
their native country was sunk into the laziness of peace, maintained their
numerous bands in some distant scene of action, to exercise their restless
spirit, and to acquire renown by voluntary dangers. Gifts worthy of
soldiers—the warlike steed, the bloody and even victorious lance—were
the rewards which the companions claimed from the liberality of their
chief. The rude plenty of his hospitable board was the only pay that hecould
bestow, or they would accept. War, rapine, and the free-will
offerings of his friends, supplied the materials of this munificence. This
institution, however it might accidentally weaken the several republics,
invigorated the general character of the Germans, and even ripened amongst
them all the virtues of which barbarians are susceptible; the faith and
valor, the hospitality and the courtesy, so conspicuous long afterwards in
the ages of chivalry. The honorable gifts, bestowed by the chief on his
brave companions, have been supposed, by an ingenious writer, to contain
the first rudiments of the fiefs, distributed after the conquest of the
Roman provinces, by the barbarian lords among their vassals, with a
similar duty of homage and military service. These conditions are,
however, very repugnant to the maxims of the ancient Germans, who
delighted in mutual presents; but without either imposing, or accepting,
the weight of obligations.
"In the days of chivalry, or more properly of romance, all the men were
brave, and all the women were chaste;" and notwithstanding the latter of
these virtues is acquired and preserved with much more difficulty than the
former, it is ascribed, almost without exception, to the wives of the
ancient Germans. Polygamy was not in use, except among the princes, and
among them only for the sake of multiplying their alliances. Divorces were
prohibited by manners rather than by laws. Adulteries were punished as
rare and inexpiable crimes; nor was seduction justified by example and
fashion. We may easily discover that Tacitus indulges an honest pleasure
in the contrast of barbarian virtue with the dissolute conduct of the
Roman ladies; yet there are some striking circumstances that give an air
of truth, or at least probability, to the conjugal faith and chastity of
the Germans.
Although the progress of civilization has undoubtedly contributed to
assuage the fiercer passions of human nature, it seems to have been less
favorable to the virtue of chastity, whose most dangerous enemy is the
softness of the mind. The refinements of life corrupt while they polish
the intercourse of the sexes. The gross appetite of love becomes most
dangerous when it is elevated, or rather, indeed, disguised by sentimental
passion. The elegance of dress, of motion, and of manners, gives a lustre
to beauty, and inflames the senses through the imagination. Luxurious
entertainments, midnight dances, and licentious spectacles, present at
once temptation and opportunity to female frailty. From such dangers the
unpolished wives of the barbarians were secured by poverty, solitude, and
the painful cares of a domestic life. The German huts, open, on every
side, to the eye of indiscretion or jealousy, were a better safeguard of
conjugal fidelity, than the walls, the bolts, and the eunuchs of a Persian
haram. To this reason another may be added, of a more honorable nature.
The Germans treated their women with esteem and confidence, consulted them
on every occasion of importance, and fondly believed, that in their
breasts resided a sanctity and wisdom more than human. Some of the
interpreters of fate, such as Velleda, in the Batavian war, governed, in
the name of the deity, the fiercest nations of Germany. The rest of the
sex, without being adored as goddesses, were respected as the free and
equal companions of soldiers; associated even by the marriage ceremony to
a life of toil, of danger, and of glory. In their great invasions, the
camps of the barbarians were filled with a multitude of women, who
remained firm and undaunted amidst the sound of arms, the various forms of
destruction, and the honorable wounds of their sons and husbands. Fainting
armies of Germans have, more than once, been driven back upon the enemy,
by the generous despair of the women, who dreaded death much less than
servitude. If the day was irrecoverably lost, they well knew how to
deliver themselves and their children, with their own hands, from an
insulting victor. Heroines of such a cast may claim our admiration; but
they were most assuredly neither lovely, nor very susceptible of love.
Whilst they affected to emulate the stern virtues of man, they
must have resigned that attractive softness, in which principally consist
the charm and weakness of woman. Conscious pride taught the
German females to suppress every tender emotion that stood in competition
with honor, and the first honor of the sex has ever been that of chastity.
The sentiments and conduct of these high-spirited matrons may, at once, be
considered as a cause, as an effect, and as a proof of the general
character of the nation. Female courage, however it may be raised by
fanaticism, or confirmed by habit, can be only a faint and imperfect
imitation of the manly valor that distinguishes the age or country in
which it may be found.
The religious system of the Germans (if the wild opinions of savages can
deserve that name) was dictated by their wants, their fears, and their
ignorance. They adored the great visible objects and agents of nature, the
Sun and the Moon, the Fire and the Earth; together with those imaginary
deities, who were supposed to preside over the most important occupations
of human life. They were persuaded, that, by some ridiculous arts of
divination, they could discover the will of the superior beings, and that
human sacrifices were the most precious and acceptable offering to their
altars. Some applause has been hastily bestowed on the sublime notion,
entertained by that people, of the Deity, whom they neither confined
within the walls of the temple, nor represented by any human figure; but
when we recollect, that the Germans were unskilled in architecture, and
totally unacquainted with the art of sculpture, we shall readily assign
the true reason of a scruple, which arose not so much from a superiority
of reason, as from a want of ingenuity. The only temples in Germany were
dark and ancient groves, consecrated by the reverence of succeeding
generations. Their secret gloom, the imagined residence of an invisible
power, by presenting no distinct object of fear or worship, impressed the
mind with a still deeper sense of religious horror; and the priests, rude
and illiterate as they were, had been taught by experience the use of
every artifice that could preserve and fortify impressions so well suited
to their own interest.
The same ignorance, which renders barbarians incapable of conceiving or
embracing the useful restraints of laws, exposes them naked and unarmed to
the blind terrors of superstition. The German priests, improving this
favorable temper of their countrymen, had assumed a jurisdiction even in
temporal concerns, which the magistrate could not venture to exercise; and
the haughty warrior patiently submitted to the lash of correction, when it
was inflicted, not by any human power, but by the immediate order of the
god of war. The defects of civil policy were sometimes supplied by the
interposition of ecclesiastical authority. The latter was constantly
exerted to maintain silence and decency in the popular assemblies; and was
sometimes extended to a more enlarged concern for the national welfare. A
solemn procession was occasionally celebrated in the present countries of
Mecklenburgh and Pomerania. The unknown symbol of the Earth,
covered with a thick veil, was placed on a carriage drawn by cows; and in
this manner the goddess, whose common residence was in the Isles of Rugen,
visited several adjacent tribes of her worshippers. During her progress
the sound of war was hushed, quarrels were suspended, arms laid aside, and
the restless Germans had an opportunity of tasting the blessings of peace
and harmony. The truce of God, so often and so ineffectually
proclaimed by the clergy of the eleventh century, was an obvious imitation
of this ancient custom.
But the influence of religion was far more powerful to inflame, than to
moderate, the fierce passions of the Germans. Interest and fanaticism
often prompted its ministers to sanctify the most daring and the most
unjust enterprises, by the approbation of Heaven, and full assurances of
success. The consecrated standards, long revered in the groves of
superstition, were placed in the front of the battle; and the hostile army
was devoted with dire execrations to the gods of war and of thunder. In
the faith of soldiers (and such were the Germans) cowardice is the most
unpardonable of sins. A brave man was the worthy favorite of their martial
deities; the wretch who had lost his shield was alike banished from the
religious and civil assemblies of his countrymen. Some tribes of the north
seem to have embraced the doctrine of transmigration, others imagined a
gross paradise of immortal drunkenness. All agreed, that a life spent in
arms, and a glorious death in battle, were the best preparations for a
happy futurity, either in this or in another world.
The immortality so vainly promised by the priests, was, in some degree,
conferred by the bards. That singular order of men has most deservedly
attracted the notice of all who have attempted to investigate the
antiquities of the Celts, the Scandinavians, and the Germans. Their genius
and character, as well as the reverence paid to that important office,
have been sufficiently illustrated. But we cannot so easily express, or
even conceive, the enthusiasm of arms and glory which they kindled in the
breast of their audience. Among a polished people, a taste for poetry is
rather an amusement of the fancy, than a passion of the soul. And yet,
when in calm retirement we peruse the combats described by Homer or Tasso,
we are insensibly seduced by the fiction, and feel a momentary glow of
martial ardor. But how faint, how cold is the sensation which a peaceful
mind can receive from solitary study! It was in the hour of battle, or in
the feast of victory, that the bards celebrated the glory of the heroes of
ancient days, the ancestors of those warlike chieftains, who listened with
transport to their artless but animated strains. The view of arms and of
danger heightened the effect of the military song; and the passions which
it tended to excite, the desire of fame, and the contempt of death, were
the habitual sentiments of a German mind. *
Such was the situation, and such were the manners of the ancient Germans.
Their climate, their want of learning, of arts, and of laws, their notions
of honor, of gallantry, and of religion, their sense of freedom,
impatience of peace, and thirst of enterprise, all contributed to form a
people of military heroes. And yet we find, that during more than two
hundred and fifty years that elapsed from the defeat of Varus to the reign
of Decius, these formidable barbarians made few considerable attempts, and
not any material impression on the luxurious and enslaved provinces of the
empire. Their progress was checked by their want of arms and discipline,
and their fury was diverted by the intestine divisions of ancient Germany.
I. It has been observed, with ingenuity, and not without truth, that the
command of iron soon gives a nation the command of gold. But the rude
tribes of Germany, alike destitute of both those valuable metals, were
reduced slowly to acquire, by their unassisted strength, the possession of
the one as well as the other. The face of a German army displayed their
poverty of iron. Swords, and the longer kind of lances, they could seldom
use. Their frame (as they called them in their own language) were long
spears headed with a sharp but narrow iron point, and which, as occasion
required, they either darted from a distance, or pushed in close onset.
With this spear, and with a shield, their cavalry was contented. A
multitude of darts, scattered with incredible force, were an additional
resource of the infantry. Their military dress, when they wore any, was
nothing more than a loose mantle. A variety of colors was the only
ornament of their wooden or osier shields. Few of the chiefs were
distinguished by cuirasses, scarcely any by helmets. Though the horses of
Germany were neither beautiful, swift, nor practised in the skilful
evolutions of the Roman manege, several of the nations obtained renown by
their cavalry; but, in general, the principal strength of the Germans
consisted in their infantry, which was drawn up in several deep columns,
according to the distinction of tribes and families. Impatient of fatigue
and delay, these half-armed warriors rushed to battle with dissonant
shouts and disordered ranks; and sometimes, by the effort of native valor,
prevailed over the constrained and more artificial bravery of the Roman
mercenaries. But as the barbarians poured forth their whole souls on the
first onset, they knew not how to rally or to retire. A repulse was a sure
defeat; and a defeat was most commonly total destruction. When we
recollect the complete armor of the Roman soldiers, their discipline,
exercises, evolutions, fortified camps, and military engines, it appears a
just matter of surprise, how the naked and unassisted valor of the
barbarians could dare to encounter, in the field, the strength of the
legions, and the various troops of the auxiliaries, which seconded their
operations. The contest was too unequal, till the introduction of luxury
had enervated the vigor, and a spirit of disobedience and sedition had
relaxed the discipline, of the Roman armies. The introduction of barbarian
auxiliaries into those armies, was a measure attended with very obvious
dangers, as it might gradually instruct the Germans in the arts of war and
of policy. Although they were admitted in small numbers and with the
strictest precaution, the example of Civilis was proper to convince the
Romans, that the danger was not imaginary, and that their precautions were
not always sufficient. During the civil wars that followed the death of
Nero, that artful and intrepid Batavian, whom his enemies condescended to
compare with Hannibal and Sertorius, formed a great design of freedom and
ambition. Eight Batavian cohorts renowned in the wars of Britain and
Italy, repaired to his standard. He introduced an army of Germans into
Gaul, prevailed on the powerful cities of Treves and Langres to embrace
his cause, defeated the legions, destroyed their fortified camps, and
employed against the Romans the military knowledge which he had acquired
in their service. When at length, after an obstinate struggle, he yielded
to the power of the empire, Civilis secured himself and his country by an
honorable treaty. The Batavians still continued to occupy the islands of
the Rhine, the allies, not the servants, of the Roman monarchy.
II. The strength of ancient Germany appears formidable, when we consider
the effects that might have been produced by its united effort. The wide
extent of country might very possibly contain a million of warriors, as
all who were of age to bear arms were of a temper to use them. But this
fierce multitude, incapable of concerting or executing any plan of
national greatness, was agitated by various and often hostile intentions.
Germany was divided into more than forty independent states; and, even in
each state, the union of the several tribes was extremely loose and
precarious. The barbarians were easily provoked; they knew not how to
forgive an injury, much less an insult; their resentments were bloody and
implacable. The casual disputes that so frequently happened in their
tumultuous parties of hunting or drinking, were sufficient to inflame the
minds of whole nations; the private feuds of any considerable chieftains
diffused itself among their followers and allies. To chastise the
insolent, or to plunder the defenceless, were alike causes of war. The
most formidable states of Germany affected to encompass their territories
with a wide frontier of solitude and devastation. The awful distance
preserved by their neighbors attested the terror of their arms, and in
some measure defended them from the danger of unexpected incursions.
"The Bructeri * (it is Tacitus who now speaks) were totally exterminated
by the neighboring tribes, provoked by their insolence, allured by the
hopes of spoil, and perhaps inspired by the tutelar deities of the empire.
Above sixty thousand barbarians were destroyed; not by the Roman arms, but
in our sight, and for our entertainment. May the nations, enemies of Rome,
ever preserve this enmity to each other! We have now attained the utmost
verge of prosperity, and have nothing left to demand of fortune, except
the discord of the barbarians."—These sentiments, less worthy of the
humanity than of the patriotism of Tacitus, express the invariable maxims
of the policy of his countrymen. They deemed it a much safer expedient to
divide than to combat the barbarians, from whose defeat they could derive
neither honor nor advantage. The money and negotiations of Rome insinuated
themselves into the heart of Germany; and every art of seduction was used
with dignity, to conciliate those nations whom their proximity to the
Rhine or Danube might render the most useful friends as well as the most
troublesome enemies. Chiefs of renown and power were flattered by the most
trifling presents, which they received either as marks of distinction, or
as the instruments of luxury. In civil dissensions the weaker faction
endeavored to strengthen its interest by entering into secret connections
with the governors of the frontier provinces. Every quarrel among the
Germans was fomented by the intrigues of Rome; and every plan of union and
public good was defeated by the stronger bias of private jealousy and
interest.
The general conspiracy which terrified the Romans under the reign of
Marcus Antoninus, comprehended almost all the nations of Germany, and even
Sarmatia, from the mouth of the Rhine to that of the Danube. It is
impossible for us to determine whether this hasty confederation was formed
by necessity, by reason, or by passion; but we may rest assured, that the
barbarians were neither allured by the indolence, nor provoked by the
ambition, of the Roman monarch. This dangerous invasion required all the
firmness and vigilance of Marcus. He fixed generals of ability in the
several stations of attack, and assumed in person the conduct of the most
important province on the Upper Danube. After a long and doubtful
conflict, the spirit of the barbarians was subdued. The Quadi and the
Marcomanni, who had taken the lead in the war, were the most severely
punished in its catastrophe. They were commanded to retire five miles from
their own banks of the Danube, and to deliver up the flower of the youth,
who were immediately sent into Britain, a remote island, where they might
be secure as hostages, and useful as soldiers. On the frequent rebellions
of the Quadi and Marcomanni, the irritated emperor resolved to reduce
their country into the form of a province. His designs were disappointed
by death. This formidable league, however, the only one that appears in
the two first centuries of the Imperial history, was entirely dissipated,
without leaving any traces behind in Germany.
In the course of this introductory chapter, we have confined ourselves to
the general outlines of the manners of Germany, without attempting to
describe or to distinguish the various tribes which filled that great
country in the time of Cæsar, of Tacitus, or of Ptolemy. As the
ancient, or as new tribes successively present themselves in the series of
this history, we shall concisely mention their origin, their situation,
and their particular character. Modern nations are fixed and permanent
societies, connected among themselves by laws and government, bound to
their native soil by arts and agriculture. The German tribes were
voluntary and fluctuating associations of soldiers, almost of savages. The
same territory often changed its inhabitants in the tide of conquest and
emigration. The same communities, uniting in a plan of defence or
invasion, bestowed a new title on their new confederacy. The dissolution
of an ancient confederacy restored to the independent tribes their
peculiar but long-forgotten appellation. A victorious state often
communicated its own name to a vanquished people. Sometimes crowds of
volunteers flocked from all parts to the standard of a favorite leader;
his camp became their country, and some circumstance of the enterprise
soon gave a common denomination to the mixed multitude. The distinctions
of the ferocious invaders were perpetually varied by themselves, and
confounded by the astonished subjects of the Roman empire.
Wars, and the administration of public affairs, are the principal subjects
of history; but the number of persons interested in these busy scenes is
very different, according to the different condition of mankind. In great
monarchies, millions of obedient subjects pursue their useful occupations
in peace and obscurity. The attention of the writer, as well as of the
reader, is solely confined to a court, a capital, a regular army, and the
districts which happen to be the occasional scene of military operations.
But a state of freedom and barbarism, the season of civil commotions, or
the situation of petty republics, raises almost every member of the
community into action, and consequently into notice. The irregular
divisions, and the restless motions, of the people of Germany, dazzle our
imagination, and seem to multiply their numbers. The profuse enumeration
of kings, of warriors, of armies and nations, inclines us to forget that
the same objects are continually repeated under a variety of appellations,
and that the most splendid appellations have been frequently lavished on
the most inconsiderable objects.
The Emperors Decius, Gallus, Æmilianus, Valerian, And Gallienus.—The General Irruption Of The Barbari Ans.—The Thirty Tyrants.
From the great secular games celebrated by Philip, to the death of the
emperor Gallienus, there elapsed twenty years of shame and misfortune.
During that calamitous period, every instant of time was marked, every
province of the Roman world was afflicted, by barbarous invaders, and
military tyrants, and the ruined empire seemed to approach the last and
fatal moment of its dissolution. The confusion of the times, and the
scarcity of authentic memorials, oppose equal difficulties to the
historian, who attempts to preserve a clear and unbroken thread of
narration. Surrounded with imperfect fragments, always concise, often
obscure, and sometimes contradictory, he is reduced to collect, to
compare, and to conjecture: and though he ought never to place his
conjectures in the rank of facts, yet the knowledge of human nature, and
of the sure operation of its fierce and unrestrained passions, might, on
some occasions, supply the want of historical materials.
There is not, for instance, any difficulty in conceiving, that the
successive murders of so many emperors had loosened all the ties of
allegiance between the prince and people; that all the generals of Philip
were disposed to imitate the example of their master; and that the caprice
of armies, long since habituated to frequent and violent revolutions,
might every day raise to the throne the most obscure of their
fellow-soldiers. History can only add, that the rebellion against the
emperor Philip broke out in the summer of the year two hundred and
forty-nine, among the legions of Mæsia; and that a subaltern
officer, named Marinus, was the object of their seditious choice. Philip
was alarmed. He dreaded lest the treason of the Mæsian army should
prove the first spark of a general conflagration. Distracted with the
consciousness of his guilt and of his danger, he communicated the
intelligence to the senate. A gloomy silence prevailed, the effect of
fear, and perhaps of disaffection; till at length Decius, one of the
assembly, assuming a spirit worthy of his noble extraction, ventured to
discover more intrepidity than the emperor seemed to possess. He treated
the whole business with contempt, as a hasty and inconsiderate tumult, and
Philip's rival as a phantom of royalty, who in a very few days would be
destroyed by the same inconstancy that had created him. The speedy
completion of the prophecy inspired Philip with a just esteem for so able
a counsellor; and Decius appeared to him the only person capable of
restoring peace and discipline to an army whose tumultuous spirit did not
immediately subside after the murder of Marinus. Decius, who long resisted
his own nomination, seems to have insinuated the danger of presenting a
leader of merit to the angry and apprehensive minds of the soldiers; and
his prediction was again confirmed by the event. The legions of Mæsia
forced their judge to become their accomplice. They left him only the
alternative of death or the purple. His subsequent conduct, after that
decisive measure, was unavoidable. He conducted, or followed, his army to
the confines of Italy, whither Philip, collecting all his force to repel
the formidable competitor whom he had raised up, advanced to meet him. The
Imperial troops were superior in number; but the rebels formed an army of
veterans, commanded by an able and experienced leader. Philip was either
killed in the battle, or put to death a few days afterwards at Verona. His
son and associate in the empire was massacred at Rome by the Prætorian
guards; and the victorious Decius, with more favorable circumstances than
the ambition of that age can usually plead, was universally acknowledged
by the senate and provinces. It is reported, that, immediately after his
reluctant acceptance of the title of Augustus, he had assured Philip, by a
private message, of his innocence and loyalty, solemnly protesting, that,
on his arrival on Italy, he would resign the Imperial ornaments, and
return to the condition of an obedient subject. His professions might be
sincere; but in the situation where fortune had placed him, it was
scarcely possible that he could either forgive or be forgiven.
The emperor Decius had employed a few months in the works of peace and the
administration of justice, when he was summoned to the banks of the Danube
by the invasion of the Goths. This is the first considerable occasion in
which history mentions that great people, who afterwards broke the Roman
power, sacked the Capitol, and reigned in Gaul, Spain, and Italy. So
memorable was the part which they acted in the subversion of the Western
empire, that the name of Goths is frequently but improperly used as a
general appellation of rude and warlike barbarism.
In the beginning of the sixth century, and after the conquest of Italy,
the Goths, in possession of present greatness, very naturally indulged
themselves in the prospect of past and of future glory. They wished to
preserve the memory of their ancestors, and to transmit to posterity their
own achievements.
The principal minister of the court of Ravenna, the learned Cassiodorus,
gratified the inclination of the conquerors in a Gothic history, which
consisted of twelve books, now reduced to the imperfect abridgment of
Jornandes. These writers passed with the most artful conciseness over the
misfortunes of the nation, celebrated its successful valor, and adorned
the triumph with many Asiatic trophies, that more properly belonged to the
people of Scythia. On the faith of ancient songs, the uncertain, but the
only memorials of barbarians, they deduced the first origin of the Goths
from the vast island, or peninsula, of Scandinavia. * That extreme country
of the North was not unknown to the conquerors of Italy: the ties of
ancient consanguinity had been strengthened by recent offices of
friendship; and a Scandinavian king had cheerfully abdicated his savage
greatness, that he might pass the remainder of his days in the peaceful
and polished court of Ravenna. Many vestiges, which cannot be ascribed to
the arts of popular vanity, attest the ancient residence of the Goths in
the countries beyond the Rhine. From the time of the geographer Ptolemy,
the southern part of Sweden seems to have continued in the possession of
the less enterprising remnant of the nation, and a large territory is even
at present divided into east and west Gothland. During the middle ages,
(from the ninth to the twelfth century,) whilst Christianity was advancing
with a slow progress into the North, the Goths and the Swedes composed two
distinct and sometimes hostile members of the same monarchy. The latter of
these two names has prevailed without extinguishing the former. The
Swedes, who might well be satisfied with their own fame in arms, have, in
every age, claimed the kindred glory of the Goths. In a moment of
discontent against the court of Rome, Charles the Twelfth insinuated, that
his victorious troops were not degenerated from their brave ancestors, who
had already subdued the mistress of the world.
Till the end of the eleventh century, a celebrated temple subsisted at
Upsal, the most considerable town of the Swedes and Goths. It was enriched
with the gold which the Scandinavians had acquired in their piratical
adventures, and sanctified by the uncouth representations of the three
principal deities, the god of war, the goddess of generation, and the god
of thunder. In the general festival, that was solemnized every ninth year,
nine animals of every species (without excepting the human) were
sacrificed, and their bleeding bodies suspended in the sacred grove
adjacent to the temple. The only traces that now subsist of this barbaric
superstition are contained in the Edda, * a system of mythology, compiled
in Iceland about the thirteenth century, and studied by the learned of
Denmark and Sweden, as the most valuable remains of their ancient
traditions.
Notwithstanding the mysterious obscurity of the Edda, we can easily
distinguish two persons confounded under the name of Odin; the god of war,
and the great legislator of Scandinavia. The latter, the Mahomet of the
North, instituted a religion adapted to the climate and to the people.
Numerous tribes on either side of the Baltic were subdued by the
invincible valor of Odin, by his persuasive eloquence, and by the fame
which he acquired of a most skilful magician. The faith that he had
propagated, during a long and prosperous life, he confirmed by a voluntary
death. Apprehensive of the ignominious approach of disease and infirmity,
he resolved to expire as became a warrior. In a solemn assembly of the
Swedes and Goths, he wounded himself in nine mortal places, hastening away
(as he asserted with his dying voice) to prepare the feast of heroes in
the palace of the God of war.
The native and proper habitation of Odin is distinguished by the
appellation of As-gard. The happy resemblance of that name with As-burg,
or As-of, words of a similar signification, has given rise to an
historical system of so pleasing a contexture, that we could almost wish
to persuade ourselves of its truth. It is supposed that Odin was the chief
of a tribe of barbarians which dwelt on the banks of the Lake Mæotis,
till the fall of Mithridates and the arms of Pompey menaced the North with
servitude. That Odin, yielding with indignant fury to a power which he was
unable to resist, conducted his tribe from the frontiers of the Asiatic
Sarmatia into Sweden, with the great design of forming, in that
inaccessible retreat of freedom, a religion and a people, which, in some
remote age, might be subservient to his immortal revenge; when his
invincible Goths, armed with martial fanaticism, should issue in numerous
swarms from the neighborhood of the Polar circle, to chastise the
oppressors of mankind.
If so many successive generations of Goths were capable of preserving a
faint tradition of their Scandinavian origin, we must not expect, from
such unlettered barbarians, any distinct account of the time and
circumstances of their emigration. To cross the Baltic was an easy and
natural attempt. The inhabitants of Sweden were masters of a sufficient
number of large vessels, with oars, and the distance is little more than
one hundred miles from Carlscroon to the nearest ports of Pomerania and
Prussia. Here, at length, we land on firm and historic ground. At least as
early as the Christian æra, and as late as the age of the Antonines,
the Goths were established towards the mouth of the Vistula, and in that
fertile province where the commercial cities of Thorn, Elbing,
Koningsberg, and Dantzick, were long afterwards founded. Westward of the
Goths, the numerous tribes of the Vandals were spread along the banks of
the Oder, and the sea-coast of Pomerania and Mecklenburgh. A striking
resemblance of manners, complexion, religion, and language, seemed to
indicate that the Vandals and the Goths were originally one great people.
The latter appear to have been subdivided into Ostrogoths, Visigoths, and
Gepidæ. The distinction among the Vandals was more strongly marked
by the independent names of Heruli, Burgundians, Lombards, and a variety
of other petty states, many of which, in a future age, expanded themselves
into powerful monarchies.
In the age of the Antonines, the Goths were still seated in Prussia. About
the reign of Alexander Severus, the Roman province of Dacia had already
experienced their proximity by frequent and destructive inroads. In this
interval, therefore, of about seventy years, we must place the second
migration of about seventy years, we must place the second migration of
the Goths from the Baltic to the Euxine; but the cause that produced it
lies concealed among the various motives which actuate the conduct of
unsettled barbarians. Either a pestilence or a famine, a victory or a
defeat, an oracle of the gods or the eloquence of a daring leader, were
sufficient to impel the Gothic arms on the milder climates of the south.
Besides the influence of a martial religion, the numbers and spirit of the
Goths were equal to the most dangerous adventures. The use of round
bucklers and short swords rendered them formidable in a close engagement;
the manly obedience which they yielded to hereditary kings, gave uncommon
union and stability to their councils; and the renowned Amala, the hero of
that age, and the tenth ancestor of Theodoric, king of Italy, enforced, by
the ascendant of personal merit, the prerogative of his birth, which he
derived from the Anses, or demi gods of the Gothic nation.
The fame of a great enterprise excited the bravest warriors from all the
Vandalic states of Germany, many of whom are seen a few years afterwards
combating under the common standard of the Goths. The first motions of the
emigrants carried them to the banks of the Prypec, a river universally
conceived by the ancients to be the southern branch of the Borysthenes.
The windings of that great stream through the plains of Poland and Russia
gave a direction to their line of march, and a constant supply of fresh
water and pasturage to their numerous herds of cattle. They followed the
unknown course of the river, confident in their valor, and careless of
whatever power might oppose their progress. The Bastarnæ and the
Venedi were the first who presented themselves; and the flower of their
youth, either from choice or compulsion, increased the Gothic army. The
Bastarnæ dwelt on the northern side of the Carpathian Mountains: the
immense tract of land that separated the Bastarnæ from the savages
of Finland was possessed, or rather wasted, by the Venedi; we have some
reason to believe that the first of these nations, which distinguished
itself in the Macedonian war, and was afterwards divided into the
formidable tribes of the Peucini, the Borani, the Carpi, &c., derived
its origin from the Germans. * With better authority, a Sarmatian
extraction may be assigned to the Venedi, who rendered themselves so
famous in the middle ages. But the confusion of blood and manners on that
doubtful frontier often perplexed the most accurate observers. As the
Goths advanced near the Euxine Sea, they encountered a purer race of
Sarmatians, the Jazyges, the Alani, and the Roxolani; and they were
probably the first Germans who saw the mouths of the Borysthenes, and of
the Tanais. If we inquire into the characteristic marks of the people of
Germany and of Sarmatia, we shall discover that those two great portions
of human kind were principally distinguished by fixed huts or movable
tents, by a close dress or flowing garments, by the marriage of one or of
several wives, by a military force, consisting, for the most part, either
of infantry or cavalry; and above all, by the use of the Teutonic, or of
the Sclavonian language; the last of which has been diffused by conquest,
from the confines of Italy to the neighborhood of Japan.
The Goths were now in possession of the Ukraine, a country of considerable
extent and uncommon fertility, intersected with navigable rivers, which,
from either side, discharge themselves into the Borysthenes; and
interspersed with large and leafy forests of oaks. The plenty of game and
fish, the innumerable bee-hives deposited in the hollow of old trees, and
in the cavities of rocks, and forming, even in that rude age, a valuable
branch of commerce, the size of the cattle, the temperature of the air,
the aptness of the soil for every species of gain, and the luxuriancy of
the vegetation, all displayed the liberality of Nature, and tempted the
industry of man. But the Goths withstood all these temptations, and still
adhered to a life of idleness, of poverty, and of rapine.
The Scythian hordes, which, towards the east, bordered on the new
settlements of the Goths, presented nothing to their arms, except the
doubtful chance of an unprofitable victory. But the prospect of the Roman
territories was far more alluring; and the fields of Dacia were covered
with rich harvests, sown by the hands of an industrious, and exposed to be
gathered by those of a warlike, people. It is probable that the conquests
of Trajan, maintained by his successors, less for any real advantage than
for ideal dignity, had contributed to weaken the empire on that side. The
new and unsettled province of Dacia was neither strong enough to resist,
nor rich enough to satiate, the rapaciousness of the barbarians. As long
as the remote banks of the Niester were considered as the boundary of the
Roman power, the fortifications of the Lower Danube were more carelessly
guarded, and the inhabitants of Mæsia lived in supine security,
fondly conceiving themselves at an inaccessible distance from any
barbarian invaders. The irruptions of the Goths, under the reign of
Philip, fatally convinced them of their mistake. The king, or leader, of
that fierce nation, traversed with contempt the province of Dacia, and
passed both the Niester and the Danube without encountering any opposition
capable of retarding his progress. The relaxed discipline of the Roman
troops betrayed the most important posts, where they were stationed, and
the fear of deserved punishment induced great numbers of them to enlist
under the Gothic standard. The various multitude of barbarians appeared,
at length, under the walls of Marcianopolis, a city built by Trajan in
honor of his sister, and at that time the capital of the second Mæsia.
The inhabitants consented to ransom their lives and property by the
payment of a large sum of money, and the invaders retreated back into
their deserts, animated, rather than satisfied, with the first success of
their arms against an opulent but feeble country. Intelligence was soon
transmitted to the emperor Decius, that Cniva, king of the Goths, had
passed the Danube a second time, with more considerable forces; that his
numerous detachments scattered devastation over the province of Mæsia,
whilst the main body of the army, consisting of seventy thousand Germans
and Sarmatians, a force equal to the most daring achievements, required
the presence of the Roman monarch, and the exertion of his military power.
Decius found the Goths engaged before Nicopolis, one of the many monuments
of Trajan's victories. On his approach they raised the siege, but with a
design only of marching away to a conquest of greater importance, the
siege of Philippopolis, a city of Thrace, founded by the father of
Alexander, near the foot of Mount Hæmus. Decius followed them
through a difficult country, and by forced marches; but when he imagined
himself at a considerable distance from the rear of the Goths, Cniva
turned with rapid fury on his pursuers. The camp of the Romans was
surprised and pillaged, and, for the first time, their emperor fled in
disorder before a troop of half-armed barbarians. After a long resistance,
Philoppopolis, destitute of succor, was taken by storm. A hundred thousand
persons are reported to have been massacred in the sack of that great
city. Many prisoners of consequence became a valuable accession to the
spoil; and Priscus, a brother of the late emperor Philip, blushed not to
assume the purple, under the protection of the barbarous enemies of Rome.
The time, however, consumed in that tedious siege, enabled Decius to
revive the courage, restore the discipline, and recruit the numbers of his
troops. He intercepted several parties of Carpi, and other Germans, who
were hastening to share the victory of their countrymen, intrusted the
passes of the mountains to officers of approved valor and fidelity,
repaired and strengthened the fortifications of the Danube, and exerted
his utmost vigilance to oppose either the progress or the retreat of the
Goths. Encouraged by the return of fortune, he anxiously waited for an
opportunity to retrieve, by a great and decisive blow, his own glory, and
that of the Roman arms.
At the same time when Decius was struggling with the violence of the
tempest, his mind, calm and deliberate amidst the tumult of war,
investigated the more general causes, that, since the age of the
Antonines, had so impetuously urged the decline of the Roman greatness. He
soon discovered that it was impossible to replace that greatness on a
permanent basis, without restoring public virtue, ancient principles and
manners, and the oppressed majesty of the laws. To execute this noble but
arduous design, he first resolved to revive the obsolete office of censor;
an office which, as long as it had subsisted in its pristine integrity,
had so much contributed to the perpetuity of the state, till it was
usurped and gradually neglected by the Cæsars. Conscious that the
favor of the sovereign may confer power, but that the esteem of the people
can alone bestow authority, he submitted the choice of the censor to the
unbiased voice of the senate. By their unanimous votes, or rather
acclamations, Valerian, who was afterwards emperor, and who then served
with distinction in the army of Decius, was declared the most worthy of
that exalted honor. As soon as the decree of the senate was transmitted to
the emperor, he assembled a great council in his camp, and before the
investiture of the censor elect, he apprised him of the difficulty and
importance of his great office. "Happy Valerian," said the prince to his
distinguished subject, "happy in the general approbation of the senate and
of the Roman republic! Accept the censorship of mankind; and judge of our
manners. You will select those who deserve to continue members of the
senate; you will restore the equestrian order to its ancient splendor; you
will improve the revenue, yet moderate the public burdens. You will
distinguish into regular classes the various and infinite multitude of
citizens, and accurately view the military strength, the wealth, the
virtue, and the resources of Rome. Your decisions shall obtain the force
of laws. The army, the palace, the ministers of justice, and the great
officers of the empire, are all subject to your tribunal. None are
exempted, excepting only the ordinary consuls, the præfect of the
city, the king of the sacrifices, and (as long as she preserves her
chastity inviolate) the eldest of the vestal virgins. Even these few, who
may not dread the severity, will anxiously solicit the esteem, of the
Roman censor."
A magistrate, invested with such extensive powers, would have appeared not
so much the minister, as the colleague of his sovereign. Valerian justly
dreaded an elevation so full of envy and of suspicion. He modestly argued
the alarming greatness of the trust, his own insufficiency, and the
incurable corruption of the times. He artfully insinuated, that the office
of censor was inseparable from the Imperial dignity, and that the feeble
hands of a subject were unequal to the support of such an immense weight
of cares and of power. The approaching event of war soon put an end to the
prosecution of a project so specious, but so impracticable; and whilst it
preserved Valerian from the danger, saved the emperor Decius from the
disappointment, which would most probably have attended it. A censor may
maintain, he can never restore, the morals of a state. It is impossible
for such a magistrate to exert his authority with benefit, or even with
effect, unless he is supported by a quick sense of honor and virtue in the
minds of the people, by a decent reverence for the public opinion, and by
a train of useful prejudices combating on the side of national manners. In
a period when these principles are annihilated, the censorial jurisdiction
must either sink into empty pageantry, or be converted into a partial
instrument of vexatious oppression. It was easier to vanquish the Goths
than to eradicate the public vices; yet even in the first of these
enterprises, Decius lost his army and his life.
The Goths were now, on every side, surrounded and pursued by the Roman
arms. The flower of their troops had perished in the long siege of
Philippopolis, and the exhausted country could no longer afford
subsistence for the remaining multitude of licentious barbarians. Reduced
to this extremity, the Goths would gladly have purchased, by the surrender
of all their booty and prisoners, the permission of an undisturbed
retreat. But the emperor, confident of victory, and resolving, by the
chastisement of these invaders, to strike a salutary terror into the
nations of the North, refused to listen to any terms of accommodation. The
high-spirited barbarians preferred death to slavery. An obscure town of Mæsia,
called Forum Terebronii, was the scene of the battle. The Gothic army was
drawn up in three lines, and either from choice or accident, the front of
the third line was covered by a morass. In the beginning of the action,
the son of Decius, a youth of the fairest hopes, and already associated to
the honors of the purple, was slain by an arrow, in the sight of his
afflicted father; who, summoning all his fortitude, admonished the
dismayed troops, that the loss of a single soldier was of little
importance to the republic. The conflict was terrible; it was the combat
of despair against grief and rage. The first line of the Goths at length
gave way in disorder; the second, advancing to sustain it, shared its
fate; and the third only remained entire, prepared to dispute the passage
of the morass, which was imprudently attempted by the presumption of the
enemy. "Here the fortune of the day turned, and all things became adverse
to the Romans; the place deep with ooze, sinking under those who stood,
slippery to such as advanced; their armor heavy, the waters deep; nor
could they wield, in that uneasy situation, their weighty javelins. The
barbarians, on the contrary, were inured to encounter in the bogs, their
persons tall, their spears long, such as could wound at a distance." In
this morass the Roman army, after an ineffectual struggle, was
irrecoverably lost; nor could the body of the emperor ever be found. Such
was the fate of Decius, in the fiftieth year of his age; an accomplished
prince, active in war and affable in peace; who, together with his son,
has deserved to be compared, both in life and death, with the brightest
examples of ancient virtue.
This fatal blow humbled, for a very little time, she insolence of the
legions. They appeared to have patiently expected, and submissively
obeyed, the decree of the senate which regulated the succession to the
throne. From a just regard for the memory of Decius, the Imperial title
was conferred on Hostilianus, his only surviving son; but an equal rank,
with more effectual power, was granted to Gallus, whose experience and
ability seemed equal to the great trust of guardian to the young prince
and the distressed empire. The first care of the new emperor was to
deliver the Illyrian provinces from the intolerable weight of the
victorious Goths. He consented to leave in their hands the rich fruits of
their invasion, an immense booty, and what was still more disgraceful, a
great number of prisoners of the highest merit and quality. He plentifully
supplied their camp with every conveniency that could assuage their angry
spirits or facilitate their so much wished-for departure; and he even
promised to pay them annually a large sum of gold, on condition they
should never afterwards infest the Roman territories by their incursions.
In the age of the Scipios, the most opulent kings of the earth, who
courted the protection of the victorious commonwealth, were gratified with
such trifling presents as could only derive a value from the hand that
bestowed them; an ivory chair, a coarse garment of purple, an
inconsiderable piece of plate, or a quantity of copper coin. After the
wealth of nations had centred in Rome, the emperors displayed their
greatness, and even their policy, by the regular exercise of a steady and
moderate liberality towards the allies of the state. They relieved the
poverty of the barbarians, honored their merit, and recompensed their
fidelity. These voluntary marks of bounty were understood to flow, not
from the fears, but merely from the generosity or the gratitude of the
Romans; and whilst presents and subsidies were liberally distributed among
friends and suppliants, they were sternly refused to such as claimed them
as a debt. But this stipulation, of an annual payment to a victorious
enemy, appeared without disguise in the light of an ignominious tribute;
the minds of the Romans were not yet accustomed to accept such unequal
laws from a tribe of barbarians; and the prince, who by a necessary
concession had probably saved his country, became the object of the
general contempt and aversion. The death of Hostiliamus, though it
happened in the midst of a raging pestilence, was interpreted as the
personal crime of Gallus; and even the defeat of the later emperor was
ascribed by the voice of suspicion to the perfidious counsels of his hated
successor. The tranquillity which the empire enjoyed during the first year
of his administration, served rather to inflame than to appease the public
discontent; and as soon as the apprehensions of war were removed, the
infamy of the peace was more deeply and more sensibly felt.
But the Romans were irritated to a still higher degree, when they
discovered that they had not even secured their repose, though at the
expense of their honor. The dangerous secret of the wealth and weakness of
the empire had been revealed to the world. New swarms of barbarians,
encouraged by the success, and not conceiving themselves bound by the
obligation of their brethren, spread devastation though the Illyrian
provinces, and terror as far as the gates of Rome. The defence of the
monarchy, which seemed abandoned by the pusillanimous emperor, was assumed
by Æmilianus, governor of Pannonia and Mæsia; who rallied the
scattered forces, and revived the fainting spirits of the troops. The
barbarians were unexpectedly attacked, routed, chased, and pursued beyond
the Danube. The victorious leader distributed as a donative the money
collected for the tribute, and the acclamations of the soldiers proclaimed
him emperor on the field of battle. Gallus, who, careless of the general
welfare, indulged himself in the pleasures of Italy, was almost in the
same instant informed of the success, of the revolt, and of the rapid
approach of his aspiring lieutenant. He advanced to meet him as far as the
plains of Spoleto. When the armies came in right of each other, the
soldiers of Gallus compared the ignominious conduct of their sovereign
with the glory of his rival. They admired the valor of Æmilianus;
they were attracted by his liberality, for he offered a considerable
increase of pay to all deserters. The murder of Gallus, and of his son
Volusianus, put an end to the civil war; and the senate gave a legal
sanction to the rights of conquest. The letters of Æmilianus to that
assembly displayed a mixture of moderation and vanity. He assured them,
that he should resign to their wisdom the civil administration; and,
contenting himself with the quality of their general, would in a short
time assert the glory of Rome, and deliver the empire from all the
barbarians both of the North and of the East. His pride was flattered by
the applause of the senate; and medals are still extant, representing him
with the name and attributes of Hercules the Victor, and Mars the Avenger.
If the new monarch possessed the abilities, he wanted the time, necessary
to fulfil these splendid promises. Less than four months intervened
between his victory and his fall. He had vanquished Gallus: he sunk under
the weight of a competitor more formidable than Gallus. That unfortunate
prince had sent Valerian, already distinguished by the honorable title of
censor, to bring the legions of Gaul and Germany to his aid. Valerian
executed that commission with zeal and fidelity; and as he arrived too
late to save his sovereign, he resolved to revenge him. The troops of
Æmilianus, who still lay encamped in the plains of Spoleto, were
awed by the sanctity of his character, but much more by the superior
strength of his army; and as they were now become as incapable of personal
attachment as they had always been of constitutional principle, they
readily imbrued their hands in the blood of a prince who so lately had
been the object of their partial choice. The guilt was theirs, * but the
advantage of it was Valerian's; who obtained the possession of the throne
by the means indeed of a civil war, but with a degree of innocence
singular in that age of revolutions; since he owed neither gratitude nor
allegiance to his predecessor, whom he dethroned.
Valerian was about sixty years of age when he was invested with the
purple, not by the caprice of the populace, or the clamors of the army,
but by the unanimous voice of the Roman world. In his gradual ascent
through the honors of the state, he had deserved the favor of virtuous
princes, and had declared himself the enemy of tyrants. His noble birth,
his mild but unblemished manners, his learning, prudence, and experience,
were revered by the senate and people; and if mankind (according to the
observation of an ancient writer) had been left at liberty to choose a
master, their choice would most assuredly have fallen on Valerian. Perhaps
the merit of this emperor was inadequate to his reputation; perhaps his
abilities, or at least his spirit, were affected by the languor and
coldness of old age. The consciousness of his decline engaged him to share
the throne with a younger and more active associate; the emergency of the
times demanded a general no less than a prince; and the experience of the
Roman censor might have directed him where to bestow the Imperial purple,
as the reward of military merit. But instead of making a judicious choice,
which would have confirmed his reign and endeared his memory, Valerian,
consulting only the dictates of affection or vanity, immediately invested
with the supreme honors his son Gallienus, a youth whose effeminate vices
had been hitherto concealed by the obscurity of a private station. The
joint government of the father and the son subsisted about seven, and the
sole administration of Gallien continued about eight, years. But the whole
period was one uninterrupted series of confusion and calamity. As the
Roman empire was at the same time, and on every side, attacked by the
blind fury of foreign invaders, and the wild ambition of domestic
usurpers, we shall consult order and perspicuity, by pursuing, not so much
the doubtful arrangement of dates, as the more natural distribution of
subjects. The most dangerous enemies of Rome, during the reigns of
Valerian and Gallienus, were, 1. The Franks; 2. The Alemanni; 3. The
Goths; and, 4. The Persians. Under these general appellations, we may
comprehend the adventures of less considerable tribes, whose obscure and
uncouth names would only serve to oppress the memory and perplex the
attention of the reader.
I. As the posterity of the Franks compose one of the greatest and most
enlightened nations of Europe, the powers of learning and ingenuity have
been exhausted in the discovery of their unlettered ancestors. To the
tales of credulity have succeeded the systems of fancy. Every passage has
been sifted, every spot has been surveyed, that might possibly reveal some
faint traces of their origin. It has been supposed that Pannonia, that
Gaul, that the northern parts of Germany, gave birth to that celebrated
colony of warriors. At length the most rational critics, rejecting the
fictitious emigrations of ideal conquerors, have acquiesced in a sentiment
whose simplicity persuades us of its truth. They suppose, that about the
year two hundred and forty, a new confederacy was formed under the name of
Franks, by the old inhabitants of the Lower Rhine and the Weser. * The
present circle of Westphalia, the Landgraviate of Hesse, and the duchies
of Brunswick and Luneburg, were the ancient of the Chauci who, in their
inaccessible morasses, defied the Roman arms; of the Cherusci, proud of
the fame of Arminius; of the Catti, formidable by their firm and intrepid
infantry; and of several other tribes of inferior power and renown. The
love of liberty was the ruling passion of these Germans; the enjoyment of
it their best treasure; the word that expressed that enjoyment, the most
pleasing to their ear. They deserved, they assumed, they maintained the
honorable appellation of Franks, or Freemen; which concealed, though it
did not extinguish, the peculiar names of the several states of the
confederacy. Tacit consent, and mutual advantage, dictated the first laws
of the union; it was gradually cemented by habit and experience. The
league of the Franks may admit of some comparison with the Helvetic body;
in which every canton, retaining its independent sovereignty, consults
with its brethren in the common cause, without acknowledging the authority
of any supreme head, or representative assembly. But the principle of the
two confederacies was extremely different. A peace of two hundred years
has rewarded the wise and honest policy of the Swiss. An inconstant
spirit, the thirst of rapine, and a disregard to the most solemn treaties,
disgraced the character of the Franks.
The Romans had long experienced the daring valor of the people of Lower
Germany. The union of their strength threatened Gaul with a more
formidable invasion, and required the presence of Gallienus, the heir and
colleague of Imperial power. Whilst that prince, and his infant son
Salonius, displayed, in the court of Treves, the majesty of the empire its
armies were ably conducted by their general, Posthumus, who, though he
afterwards betrayed the family of Valerian, was ever faithful to the great
interests of the monarchy. The treacherous language of panegyrics and
medals darkly announces a long series of victories. Trophies and titles
attest (if such evidence can attest) the fame of Posthumus, who is
repeatedly styled the Conqueror of the Germans, and the Savior of Gaul.
But a single fact, the only one indeed of which we have any distinct
knowledge, erases, in a great measure, these monuments of vanity and
adulation. The Rhine, though dignified with the title of Safeguard of the
provinces, was an imperfect barrier against the daring spirit of
enterprise with which the Franks were actuated. Their rapid devastations
stretched from the river to the foot of the Pyrenees; nor were they
stopped by those mountains. Spain, which had never dreaded, was unable to
resist, the inroads of the Germans. During twelve years, the greatest part
of the reign of Gallie nus, that opulent country was the theatre of
unequal and destructive hostilities. Tarragona, the flourishing capital of
a peaceful province, was sacked and almost destroyed; and so late as the
days of Orosius, who wrote in the fifth century, wretched cottages,
scattered amidst the ruins of magnificent cities, still recorded the rage
of the barbarians. When the exhausted country no longer supplied a variety
of plunder, the Franks seized on some vessels in the ports of Spain, and
transported themselves into Mauritania. The distant province was
astonished with the fury of these barbarians, who seemed to fall from a
new world, as their name, manners, and complexion, were equally unknown on
the coast of Africa.
II. In that part of Upper Saxony, beyond the Elbe, which is at present
called the Marquisate of Lusace, there existed, in ancient times, a sacred
wood, the awful seat of the superstition of the Suevi. None were permitted
to enter the holy precincts, without confessing, by their servile bonds
and suppliant posture, the immediate presence of the sovereign Deity.
Patriotism contributed, as well as devotion, to consecrate the Sonnenwald,
or wood of the Semnones. It was universally believed, that the nation had
received its first existence on that sacred spot. At stated periods, the
numerous tribes who gloried in the Suevic blood, resorted thither by their
ambassadors; and the memory of their common extraction was perpetrated by
barbaric rites and human sacrifices. The wide-extended name of Suevi
filled the interior countries of Germany, from the banks of the Oder to
those of the Danube. They were distinguished from the other Germans by
their peculiar mode of dressing their long hair, which they gathered into
a rude knot on the crown of the head; and they delighted in an ornament
that showed their ranks more lofty and terrible in the eyes of the enemy.
Jealous as the Germans were of military renown, they all confessed the
superior valor of the Suevi; and the tribes of the Usipetes and Tencteri,
who, with a vast army, encountered the dictator Cæsar, declared that
they esteemed it not a disgrace to have fled before a people to whose arms
the immortal gods themselves were unequal.
In the reign of the emperor Caracalla, an innumerable swarm of Suevi
appeared on the banks of the Mein, and in the neighborhood of the Roman
provinces, in quest either of food, of plunder, or of glory. The hasty
army of volunteers gradually coalesced into a great and permanent nation,
and as it was composed from so many different tribes, assumed the name of
Alemanni, * or Allmen; to denote at once their various lineage
and their common bravery. The latter was soon felt by the Romans in many a
hostile inroad. The Alemanni fought chiefly on horseback; but their
cavalry was rendered still more formidable by a mixture of light infantry,
selected from the bravest and most active of the youth, whom frequent
exercise had inured to accompany the horsemen in the longest march, the
most rapid charge, or the most precipitate retreat.
This warlike people of Germans had been astonished by the immense
preparations of Alexander Severus; they were dismayed by the arms of his
successor, a barbarian equal in valor and fierceness to themselves. But
still hovering on the frontiers of the empire, they increased the general
disorder that ensued after the death of Decius. They inflicted severe
wounds on the rich provinces of Gaul; they were the first who removed the
veil that covered the feeble majesty of Italy. A numerous body of the
Alemanni penetrated across the Danube and through the Rhætian Alps
into the plains of Lombardy, advanced as far as Ravenna, and displayed the
victorious banners of barbarians almost in sight of Rome.
The insult and the danger rekindled in the senate some sparks of their
ancient virtue. Both the emperors were engaged in far distant wars,
Valerian in the East, and Gallienus on the Rhine. All the hopes and
resources of the Romans were in themselves. In this emergency, the
senators resumed he defence of the republic, drew out the Prætorian
guards, who had been left to garrison the capital, and filled up their
numbers, by enlisting into the public service the stoutest and most
willing of the Plebeians. The Alemanni, astonished with the sudden
appearance of an army more numerous than their own, retired into Germany,
laden with spoil; and their retreat was esteemed as a victory by the
unwarlike Romans.
When Gallienus received the intelligence that his capital was delivered
from the barbarians, he was much less delighted than alarmed with the
courage of the senate, since it might one day prompt them to rescue the
public from domestic tyranny as well as from foreign invasion. His timid
ingratitude was published to his subjects, in an edict which prohibited
the senators from exercising any military employment, and even from
approaching the camps of the legions. But his fears were groundless. The
rich and luxurious nobles, sinking into their natural character, accepted,
as a favor, this disgraceful exemption from military service; and as long
as they were indulged in the enjoyment of their baths, their theatres, and
their villas, they cheerfully resigned the more dangerous cares of empire
to the rough hands of peasants and soldiers.
Another invasion of the Alemanni, of a more formidable aspect, but more
glorious event, is mentioned by a writer of the lower empire. Three
hundred thousand are said to have been vanquished, in a battle near Milan,
by Gallienus in person, at the head of only ten thousand Romans. We may,
however, with great probability, ascribe this incredible victory either to
the credulity of the historian, or to some exaggerated exploits of one of
the emperor's lieutenants. It was by arms of a very different nature, that
Gallienus endeavored to protect Italy from the fury of the Germans. He
espoused Pipa, the daughter of a king of the Marcomanni, a Suevic tribe,
which was often confounded with the Alemanni in their wars and conquests.
To the father, as the price of his alliance, he granted an ample
settlement in Pannonia. The native charms of unpolished beauty seem to
have fixed the daughter in the affections of the inconstant emperor, and
the bands of policy were more firmly connected by those of love. But the
haughty prejudice of Rome still refused the name of marriage to the
profane mixture of a citizen and a barbarian; and has stigmatized the
German princess with the opprobrious title of concubine of Gallienus.
III. We have already traced the emigration of the Goths from Scandinavia,
or at least from Prussia, to the mouth of the Borysthenes, and have
followed their victorious arms from the Borysthenes to the Danube. Under
the reigns of Valerian and Gallienus, the frontier of the last-mentioned
river was perpetually infested by the inroads of Germans and Sarmatians;
but it was defended by the Romans with more than usual firmness and
success. The provinces that were the seat of war, recruited the armies of
Rome with an inexhaustible supply of hardy soldiers; and more than one of
these Illyrian peasants attained the station, and displayed the abilities,
of a general. Though flying parties of the barbarians, who incessantly
hovered on the banks of the Danube, penetrated sometimes to the confines
of Italy and Macedonia, their progress was commonly checked, or their
return intercepted, by the Imperial lieutenants. But the great stream of
the Gothic hostilities was diverted into a very different channel. The
Goths, in their new settlement of the Ukraine, soon became masters of the
northern coast of the Euxine: to the south of that inland sea were
situated the soft and wealthy provinces of Asia Minor, which possessed all
that could attract, and nothing that could resist, a barbarian conqueror.
The banks of the Borysthenes are only sixty miles distant from the narrow
entrance of the peninsula of Crim Tartary, known to the ancients under the
name of Chersonesus Taurica. On that inhospitable shore, Euripides,
embellishing with exquisite art the tales of antiquity, has placed the
scene of one of his most affecting tragedies. The bloody sacrifices of
Diana, the arrival of Orestes and Pylades, and the triumph of virtue and
religion over savage fierceness, serve to represent an historical truth,
that the Tauri, the original inhabitants of the peninsula, were, in some
degree, reclaimed from their brutal manners by a gradual intercourse with
the Grecian colonies, which settled along the maritime coast. The little
kingdom of Bosphorus, whose capital was situated on the Straits, through
which the Mæotis communicates itself to the Euxine, was composed of
degenerate Greeks and half-civilized barbarians. It subsisted, as an
independent state, from the time of the Peloponnesian war, was at last
swallowed up by the ambition of Mithridates, and, with the rest of his
dominions, sunk under the weight of the Roman arms. From the reign of
Augustus, the kings of Bosphorus were the humble, but not useless, allies
of the empire. By presents, by arms, and by a slight fortification drawn
across the Isthmus, they effectually guarded against the roving plunderers
of Sarmatia, the access of a country, which, from its peculiar situation
and convenient harbors, commanded the Euxine Sea and Asia Minor. As long
as the sceptre was possessed by a lineal succession of kings, they
acquitted themselves of their important charge with vigilance and success.
Domestic factions, and the fears, or private interest, of obscure
usurpers, who seized on the vacant throne, admitted the Goths into the
heart of Bosphorus. With the acquisition of a superfluous waste of fertile
soil, the conquerors obtained the command of a naval force, sufficient to
transport their armies to the coast of Asia. This ships used in the
navigation of the Euxine were of a very singular construction. They were
slight flat-bottomed barks framed of timber only, without the least
mixture of iron, and occasionally covered with a shelving roof, on the
appearance of a tempest. In these floating houses, the Goths carelessly
trusted themselves to the mercy of an unknown sea, under the conduct of
sailors pressed into the service, and whose skill and fidelity were
equally suspicious. But the hopes of plunder had banished every idea of
danger, and a natural fearlessness of temper supplied in their minds the
more rational confidence, which is the just result of knowledge and
experience. Warriors of such a daring spirit must have often murmured
against the cowardice of their guides, who required the strongest
assurances of a settled calm before they would venture to embark; and
would scarcely ever be tempted to lose sight of the land. Such, at least,
is the practice of the modern Turks; and they are probably not inferior,
in the art of navigation, to the ancient inhabitants of Bosphorus.
The fleet of the Goths, leaving the coast of Circassia on the left hand,
first appeared before Pityus, the utmost limits of the Roman provinces; a
city provided with a convenient port, and fortified with a strong wall.
Here they met with a resistance more obstinate than they had reason to
expect from the feeble garrison of a distant fortress. They were repulsed;
and their disappointment seemed to diminish the terror of the Gothic name.
As long as Successianus, an officer of superior rank and merit, defended
that frontier, all their efforts were ineffectual; but as soon as he was
removed by Valerian to a more honorable but less important station, they
resumed the attack of Pityus; and by the destruction of that city,
obliterated the memory of their former disgrace.
Circling round the eastern extremity of the Euxine Sea, the navigation
from Pityus to Trebizond is about three hundred miles. The course of the
Goths carried them in sight of the country of Colchis, so famous by the
expedition of the Argonauts; and they even attempted, though without
success, to pillage a rich temple at the mouth of the River Phasis.
Trebizond, celebrated in the retreat of the ten thousand as an ancient
colony of Greeks, derived its wealth and splendor from the magnificence of
the emperor Hadrian, who had constructed an artificial port on a coast
left destitute by nature of secure harbors. The city was large and
populous; a double enclosure of walls seemed to defy the fury of the
Goths, and the usual garrison had been strengthened by a reenforcement of
ten thousand men. But there are not any advantages capable of supplying
the absence of discipline and vigilance. The numerous garrison of
Trebizond, dissolved in riot and luxury, disdained to guard their
impregnable fortifications. The Goths soon discovered the supine
negligence of the besieged, erected a lofty pile of fascines, ascended the
walls in the silence of the night, and entered the defenceless city sword
in hand. A general massacre of the people ensued, whilst the affrighted
soldiers escaped through the opposite gates of the town. The most holy
temples, and the most splendid edifices, were involved in a common
destruction. The booty that fell into the hands of the Goths was immense:
the wealth of the adjacent countries had been deposited in Trebizond, as
in a secure place of refuge. The number of captives was incredible, as the
victorious barbarians ranged without opposition through the extensive
province of Pontus. The rich spoils of Trebizond filled a great fleet of
ships that had been found in the port. The robust youth of the sea-coast
were chained to the oar; and the Goths, satisfied with the success of
their first naval expedition, returned in triumph to their new
establishment in the kingdom of Bosphorus.
The second expedition of the Goths was undertaken with greater powers of
men and ships; but they steered a different course, and, disdaining the
exhausted provinces of Pontus, followed the western coast of the Euxine,
passed before the wide mouths of the Borysthenes, the Niester, and the
Danube, and increasing their fleet by the capture of a great number of
fishing barks, they approached the narrow outlet through which the Euxine
Sea pours its waters into the Mediterranean, and divides the continents of
Europe and Asia. The garrison of Chalcedon was encamped near the temple of
Jupiter Urius, on a promontory that commanded the entrance of the Strait;
and so inconsiderable were the dreaded invasions of the barbarians that
this body of troops surpassed in number the Gothic army. But it was in
numbers alone that they surpassed it. They deserted with precipitation
their advantageous post, and abandoned the town of Chalcedon, most
plentifully stored with arms and money, to the discretion of the
conquerors. Whilst they hesitated whether they should prefer the sea or
land Europe or Asia, for the scene of their hostilities, a perfidious
fugitive pointed out Nicomedia, * once the capital of the kings of
Bithynia, as a rich and easy conquest. He guided the march which was only
sixty miles from the camp of Chalcedon, directed the resistless attack,
and partook of the booty; for the Goths had learned sufficient policy to
reward the traitor whom they detested. Nice, Prusa, Apamæa, Cius,
cities that had sometimes rivalled, or imitated, the splendor of
Nicomedia, were involved in the same calamity, which, in a few weeks,
raged without control through the whole province of Bithynia. Three
hundred years of peace, enjoyed by the soft inhabitants of Asia, had
abolished the exercise of arms, and removed the apprehension of danger.
The ancient walls were suffered to moulder away, and all the revenue of
the most opulent cities was reserved for the construction of baths,
temples, and theatres.
When the city of Cyzicus withstood the utmost effort of Mithridates, it
was distinguished by wise laws, a naval power of two hundred galleys, and
three arsenals, of arms, of military engines, and of corn. It was still
the seat of wealth and luxury; but of its ancient strength, nothing
remained except the situation, in a little island of the Propontis,
connected with the continent of Asia only by two bridges. From the recent
sack of Prusa, the Goths advanced within eighteen miles. of the city,
which they had devoted to destruction; but the ruin of Cyzicus was delayed
by a fortunate accident. The season was rainy, and the Lake Apolloniates,
the reservoir of all the springs of Mount Olympus, rose to an uncommon
height. The little river of Rhyndacus, which issues from the lake, swelled
into a broad and rapid stream, and stopped the progress of the Goths.
Their retreat to the maritime city of Heraclea, where the fleet had
probably been stationed, was attended by a long train of wagons, laden
with the spoils of Bithynia, and was marked by the flames of Nice and
Nicomedia, which they wantonly burnt. Some obscure hints are mentioned of
a doubtful combat that secured their retreat. But even a complete victory
would have been of little moment, as the approach of the autumnal equinox
summoned them to hasten their return. To navigate the Euxine before the
month of May, or after that of September, is esteemed by the modern Turks
the most unquestionable instance of rashness and folly.
When we are informed that the third fleet, equipped by the Goths in the
ports of Bosphorus, consisted of five hundred sails of ships, our ready
imagination instantly computes and multiplies the formidable armament;
but, as we are assured by the judicious Strabo, that the piratical vessels
used by the barbarians of Pontus and the Lesser Scythia, were not capable
of containing more than twenty-five or thirty men we may safely affirm,
that fifteen thousand warriors, at the most, embarked in this great
expedition. Impatient of the limits of the Euxine, they steered their
destructive course from the Cimmerian to the Thracian Bosphorus. When they
had almost gained the middle of the Straits, they were suddenly driven
back to the entrance of them; till a favorable wind, springing up the next
day, carried them in a few hours into the placid sea, or rather lake, of
the Propontis. Their landing on the little island of Cyzicus was attended
with the ruin of that ancient and noble city. From thence issuing again
through the narrow passage of the Hellespont, they pursued their winding
navigation amidst the numerous islands scattered over the Archipelago, or
the Ægean Sea. The assistance of captives and deserters must have
been very necessary to pilot their vessels, and to direct their various
incursions, as well on the coast of Greece as on that of Asia. At length
the Gothic fleet anchored in the port of Piræus, five miles distant
from Athens, which had attempted to make some preparations for a vigorous
defence. Cleodamus, one of the engineers employed by the emperor's orders
to fortify the maritime cities against the Goths, had already begun to
repair the ancient walls, fallen to decay since the time of Scylla. The
efforts of his skill were ineffectual, and the barbarians became masters
of the native seat of the muses and the arts. But while the conquerors
abandoned themselves to the license of plunder and intemperance, their
fleet, that lay with a slender guard in the harbor of Piræus, was
unexpectedly attacked by the brave Daxippus, who, flying with the engineer
Cleodamus from the sack of Athens, collected a hasty band of volunteers,
peasants as well as soldiers, and in some measure avenged the calamities
of his country.
But this exploit, whatever lustre it might shed on the declining age of
Athens, served rather to irritate than to subdue the undaunted spirit of
the northern invaders. A general conflagration blazed out at the same time
in every district of Greece. Thebes and Argos, Corinth and Sparta, which
had formerly waged such memorable wars against each other, were now unable
to bring an army into the field, or even to defend their ruined
fortifications. The rage of war, both by land and by sea, spread from the
eastern point of Sunium to the western coast of Epirus. The Goths had
already advanced within sight of Italy, when the approach of such imminent
danger awakened the indolent Gallienus from his dream of pleasure. The
emperor appeared in arms; and his presence seems to have checked the
ardor, and to have divided the strength, of the enemy. Naulobatus, a chief
of the Heruli, accepted an honorable capitulation, entered with a large
body of his countrymen into the service of Rome, and was invested with the
ornaments of the consular dignity, which had never before been profaned by
the hands of a barbarian. Great numbers of the Goths, disgusted with the
perils and hardships of a tedious voyage, broke into Mæsia, with a
design of forcing their way over the Danube to their settlements in the
Ukraine. The wild attempt would have proved inevitable destruction, if the
discord of the Roman generals had not opened to the barbarians the means
of an escape. The small remainder of this destroying host returned on
board their vessels; and measuring back their way through the Hellespont
and the Bosphorus, ravaged in their passage the shores of Troy, whose
fame, immortalized by Homer, will probably survive the memory of the
Gothic conquests. As soon as they found themselves in safety within the
basin of the Euxine, they landed at Anchialus in Thrace, near the foot of
Mount Hæmus; and, after all their toils, indulged themselves in the
use of those pleasant and salutary hot baths. What remained of the voyage
was a short and easy navigation. Such was the various fate of this third
and greatest of their naval enterprises. It may seem difficult to conceive
how the original body of fifteen thousand warriors could sustain the
losses and divisions of so bold an adventure. But as their numbers were
gradually wasted by the sword, by shipwrecks, and by the influence of a
warm climate, they were perpetually renewed by troops of banditti and
deserters, who flocked to the standard of plunder, and by a crowd of
fugitive slaves, often of German or Sarmatian extraction, who eagerly
seized the glorious opportunity of freedom and revenge. In these
expeditions, the Gothic nation claimed a superior share of honor and
danger; but the tribes that fought under the Gothic banners are sometimes
distinguished and sometimes confounded in the imperfect histories of that
age; and as the barbarian fleets seemed to issue from the mouth of the
Tanais, the vague but familiar appellation of Scythians was frequently
bestowed on the mixed multitude.
In the general calamities of mankind, the death of an individual, however
exalted, the ruin of an edifice, however famous, are passed over with
careless inattention. Yet we cannot forget that the temple of Diana at
Ephesus, after having risen with increasing splendor from seven repeated
misfortunes, was finally burnt by the Goths in their third naval invasion.
The arts of Greece, and the wealth of Asia, had conspired to erect that
sacred and magnificent structure. It was supported by a hundred and
twenty-seven marble columns of the Ionic order. They were the gifts of
devout monarchs, and each was sixty feet high. The altar was adorned with
the masterly sculptures of Praxiteles, who had, perhaps, selected from the
favorite legends of the place the birth of the divine children of Latona,
the concealment of Apollo after the slaughter of the Cyclops, and the
clemency of Bacchus to the vanquished Amazons. Yet the length of the
temple of Ephesus was only four hundred and twenty-five feet, about two
thirds of the measure of the church of St. Peter's at Rome. In the other
dimensions, it was still more inferior to that sublime production of
modern architecture. The spreading arms of a Christian cross require a
much greater breadth than the oblong temples of the Pagans; and the
boldest artists of antiquity would have been startled at the proposal of
raising in the air a dome of the size and proportions of the Pantheon. The
temple of Diana was, however, admired as one of the wonders of the world.
Successive empires, the Persian, the Macedonian, and the Roman, had
revered its sanctity and enriched its splendor. But the rude savages of
the Baltic were destitute of a taste for the elegant arts, and they
despised the ideal terrors of a foreign superstition.
Another circumstance is related of these invasions, which might deserve
our notice, were it not justly to be suspected as the fanciful conceit of
a recent sophist. We are told, that in the sack of Athens the Goths had
collected all the libraries, and were on the point of setting fire to this
funeral pile of Grecian learning, had not one of their chiefs, of more
refined policy than his brethren, dissuaded them from the design; by the
profound observation, that as long as the Greeks were addicted to the
study of books, they would never apply themselves to the exercise of arms.
The sagacious counsellor (should the truth of the fact be admitted)
reasoned like an ignorant barbarian. In the most polite and powerful
nations, genius of every kind has displayed itself about the same period;
and the age of science has generally been the age of military virtue and
success.
IV. The new sovereign of Persia, Artaxerxes and his son Sapor, had
triumphed (as we have already seen) over the house of Arsaces. Of the many
princes of that ancient race. Chosroes, king of Armenia, had alone
preserved both his life and his independence. He defended himself by the
natural strength of his country; by the perpetual resort of fugitives and
malecontents; by the alliance of the Romans, and above all, by his own
courage. Invincible in arms, during a thirty years' war, he was at length
assassinated by the emissaries of Sapor, king of Persia. The patriotic
satraps of Armenia, who asserted the freedom and dignity of the crown,
implored the protection of Rome in favor of Tiridates, the lawful heir.
But the son of Chosroes was an infant, the allies were at a distance, and
the Persian monarch advanced towards the frontier at the head of an
irresistible force. Young Tiridates, the future hope of his country, was
saved by the fidelity of a servant, and Armenia continued above
twenty-seven years a reluctant province of the great monarchy of Persia.
Elated with this easy conquest, and presuming on the distresses or the
degeneracy of the Romans, Sapor obliged the strong garrisons of Carrhæ
and Nisibis * to surrender, and spread devastation and terror on either
side of the Euphrates.
The loss of an important frontier, the ruin of a faithful and natural
ally, and the rapid success of Sapor's ambition, affected Rome with a deep
sense of the insult as well as of the danger. Valerian flattered himself,
that the vigilance of his lieutenants would sufficiently provide for the
safety of the Rhine and of the Danube; but he resolved, notwithstanding
his advanced age, to march in person to the defence of the Euphrates.
During his progress through Asia Minor, the naval enterprises of the Goths
were suspended, and the afflicted province enjoyed a transient and
fallacious calm. He passed the Euphrates, encountered the Persian monarch
near the walls of Edessa, was vanquished, and taken prisoner by Sapor. The
particulars of this great event are darkly and imperfectly represented;
yet, by the glimmering light which is afforded us, we may discover a long
series of imprudence, of error, and of deserved misfortunes on the side of
the Roman emperor. He reposed an implicit confidence in Macrianus, his Prætorian
præfect. That worthless minister rendered his master formidable only
to the oppressed subjects, and contemptible to the enemies of Rome. By his
weak or wicked counsels, the Imperial army was betrayed into a situation
where valor and military skill were equally unavailing. The vigorous
attempt of the Romans to cut their way through the Persian host was
repulsed with great slaughter; and Sapor, who encompassed the camp with
superior numbers, patiently waited till the increasing rage of famine and
pestilence had insured his victory. The licentious murmurs of the legions
soon accused Valerian as the cause of their calamities; their seditious
clamors demanded an instant capitulation. An immense sum of gold was
offered to purchase the permission of a disgraceful retreat. But the
Persian, conscious of his superiority, refused the money with disdain; and
detaining the deputies, advanced in order of battle to the foot of the
Roman rampart, and insisted on a personal conference with the emperor.
Valerian was reduced to the necessity of intrusting his life and dignity
to the faith of an enemy. The interview ended as it was natural to expect.
The emperor was made a prisoner, and his astonished troops laid down their
arms. In such a moment of triumph, the pride and policy of Sapor prompted
him to fill the vacant throne with a successor entirely dependent on his
pleasure. Cyriades, an obscure fugitive of Antioch, stained with every
vice, was chosen to dishonor the Roman purple; and the will of the Persian
victor could not fail of being ratified by the acclamations, however
reluctant, of the captive army.
The Imperial slave was eager to secure the favor of his master by an act
of treason to his native country. He conducted Sapor over the Euphrates,
and, by the way of Chalcis, to the metropolis of the East. So rapid were
the motions of the Persian cavalry, that, if we may credit a very
judicious historian, the city of Antioch was surprised when the idle
multitude was fondly gazing on the amusements of the theatre. The splendid
buildings of Antioch, private as well as public, were either pillaged or
destroyed; and the numerous inhabitants were put to the sword, or led away
into captivity. The tide of devastation was stopped for a moment by the
resolution of the high priest of Emesa. Arrayed in his sacerdotal robes,
he appeared at the head of a great body of fanatic peasants, armed only
with slings, and defended his god and his property from the sacrilegious
hands of the followers of Zoroaster. But the ruin of Tarsus, and of many
other cities, furnishes a melancholy proof that, except in this singular
instance, the conquest of Syria and Cilicia scarcely interrupted the
progress of the Persian arms. The advantages of the narrow passes of Mount
Taurus were abandoned, in which an invader, whose principal force
consisted in his cavalry, would have been engaged in a very unequal
combat: and Sapor was permitted to form the siege of Cæsarea, the
capital of Cappadocia; a city, though of the second rank, which was
supposed to contain four hundred thousand inhabitants. Demosthenes
commanded in the place, not so much by the commission of the emperor, as
in the voluntary defence of his country. For a long time he deferred its
fate; and when at last Cæsarea was betrayed by the perfidy of a
physician, he cut his way through the Persians, who had been ordered to
exert their utmost diligence to take him alive. This heroic chief escaped
the power of a foe who might either have honored or punished his obstinate
valor; but many thousands of his fellow-citizens were involved in a
general massacre, and Sapor is accused of treating his prisoners with
wanton and unrelenting cruelty. Much should undoubtedly be allowed for
national animosity, much for humbled pride and impotent revenge; yet, upon
the whole, it is certain, that the same prince, who, in Armenia, had
displayed the mild aspect of a legislator, showed himself to the Romans
under the stern features of a conqueror. He despaired of making any
permanent establishment in the empire, and sought only to leave behind him
a wasted desert, whilst he transported into Persia the people and the
treasures of the provinces.
At the time when the East trembled at the name of Sapor, he received a
present not unworthy of the greatest kings; a long train of camels, laden
with the most rare and valuable merchandises. The rich offering was
accompanied with an epistle, respectful, but not servile, from Odenathus,
one of the noblest and most opulent senators of Palmyra. "Who is this
Odenathus," (said the haughty victor, and he commanded that the present
should be cast into the Euphrates,) "that he thus insolently presumes to
write to his lord? If he entertains a hope of mitigating his punishment,
let him fall prostrate before the foot of our throne, with his hands bound
behind his back. Should he hesitate, swift destruction shall be poured on
his head, on his whole race, and on his country." The desperate extremity
to which the Palmyrenian was reduced, called into action all the latent
powers of his soul. He met Sapor; but he met him in arms. Infusing his own
spirit into a little army collected from the villages of Syria and the
tents of the desert, he hovered round the Persian host, harassed their
retreat, carried off part of the treasure, and, what was dearer than any
treasure, several of the women of the great king; who was at last obliged
to repass the Euphrates with some marks of haste and confusion. By this
exploit, Odenathus laid the foundations of his future fame and fortunes.
The majesty of Rome, oppressed by a Persian, was protected by a Syrian or
Arab of Palmyra.
The voice of history, which is often little more than the organ of hatred
or flattery, reproaches Sapor with a proud abuse of the rights of
conquest. We are told that Valerian, in chains, but invested with the
Imperial purple, was exposed to the multitude, a constant spectacle of
fallen greatness; and that whenever the Persian monarch mounted on
horseback, he placed his foot on the neck of a Roman emperor.
Notwithstanding all the remonstrances of his allies, who repeatedly
advised him to remember the vicissitudes of fortune, to dread the
returning power of Rome, and to make his illustrious captive the pledge of
peace, not the object of insult, Sapor still remained inflexible. When
Valerian sunk under the weight of shame and grief, his skin, stuffed with
straw, and formed into the likeness of a human figure, was preserved for
ages in the most celebrated temple of Persia; a more real monument of
triumph, than the fancied trophies of brass and marble so often erected by
Roman vanity. The tale is moral and pathetic, but the truth of it may very
fairly be called in question. The letters still extant from the princes of
the East to Sapor are manifest forgeries; nor is it natural to suppose
that a jealous monarch should, even in the person of a rival, thus
publicly degrade the majesty of kings. Whatever treatment the unfortunate
Valerian might experience in Persia, it is at least certain that the only
emperor of Rome who had ever fallen into the hands of the enemy,
languished away his life in hopeless captivity.
The emperor Gallienus, who had long supported with impatience the
censorial severity of his father and colleague, received the intelligence
of his misfortunes with secret pleasure and avowed indifference. "I knew
that my father was a mortal," said he; "and since he has acted as it
becomes a brave man, I am satisfied." Whilst Rome lamented the fate of her
sovereign, the savage coldness of his son was extolled by the servile
courtiers as the perfect firmness of a hero and a stoic. It is difficult
to paint the light, the various, the inconstant character of Gallienus,
which he displayed without constraint, as soon as he became sole possessor
of the empire. In every art that he attempted, his lively genius enabled
him to succeed; and as his genius was destitute of judgment, he attempted
every art, except the important ones of war and government. He was a
master of several curious, but useless sciences, a ready orator, an
elegant poet, a skilful gardener, an excellent cook, and most contemptible
prince. When the great emergencies of the state required his presence and
attention, he was engaged in conversation with the philosopher Plotinus,
wasting his time in trifling or licentious pleasures, preparing his
initiation to the Grecian mysteries, or soliciting a place in the
Arcopagus of Athens. His profuse magnificence insulted the general
poverty; the solemn ridicule of his triumphs impressed a deeper sense of
the public disgrace. The repeated intelligence of invasions, defeats, and
rebellions, he received with a careless smile; and singling out, with
affected contempt, some particular production of the lost province, he
carelessly asked, whether Rome must be ruined, unless it was supplied with
linen from Egypt, and arras cloth from Gaul. There were, however, a few
short moments in the life of Gallienus, when, exasperated by some recent
injury, he suddenly appeared the intrepid soldier and the cruel tyrant;
till, satiated with blood, or fatigued by resistance, he insensibly sunk
into the natural mildness and indolence of his character.
At the time when the reins of government were held with so loose a hand,
it is not surprising, that a crowd of usurpers should start up in every
province of the empire against the son of Valerian. It was probably some
ingenious fancy, of comparing the thirty tyrants of Rome with the thirty
tyrants of Athens, that induced the writers of the Augustan History to
select that celebrated number, which has been gradually received into a
popular appellation. But in every light the parallel is idle and
defective. What resemblance can we discover between a council of thirty
persons, the united oppressors of a single city, and an uncertain list of
independent rivals, who rose and fell in irregular succession through the
extent of a vast empire? Nor can the number of thirty be completed, unless
we include in the account the women and children who were honored with the
Imperial title. The reign of Gallienus, distracted as it was, produced
only nineteen pretenders to the throne: Cyriades, Macrianus, Balista,
Odenathus, and Zenobia, in the East; in Gaul, and the western provinces,
Posthumus, Lollianus, Victorinus, and his mother Victoria, Marius, and
Tetricus; in Illyricum and the confines of the Danube, Ingenuus,
Regillianus, and Aureolus; in Pontus, Saturninus; in Isauria,
Trebellianus; Piso in Thessaly; Valens in Achaia; Æmilianus in
Egypt; and Celsus in Africa. * To illustrate the obscure monuments of the
life and death of each individual, would prove a laborious task, alike
barren of instruction and of amusement. We may content ourselves with
investigating some general characters, that most strongly mark the
condition of the times, and the manners of the men, their pretensions,
their motives, their fate, and their destructive consequences of their
usurpation.
It is sufficiently known, that the odious appellation of Tyrant
was often employed by the ancients to express the illegal seizure of
supreme power, without any reference to the abuse of it. Several of the
pretenders, who raised the standard of rebellion against the emperor
Gallienus, were shining models of virtue, and almost all possessed a
considerable share of vigor and ability. Their merit had recommended them
to the favor of Valerian, and gradually promoted them to the most
important commands of the empire. The generals, who assumed the title of
Augustus, were either respected by their troops for their able conduct and
severe discipline, or admired for valor and success in war, or beloved for
frankness and generosity. The field of victory was often the scene of
their election; and even the armorer Marius, the most contemptible of all
the candidates for the purple, was distinguished, however by intrepid
courage, matchless strength, and blunt honesty. His mean and recent trade
cast, indeed, an air of ridicule on his elevation; * but his birth could
not be more obscure than was that of the greater part of his rivals, who
were born of peasants, and enlisted in the army as private soldiers. In
times of confusion, every active genius finds the place assigned him by
nature: in a general state of war, military merit is the road to glory and
to greatness. Of the nineteen tyrants Tetricus only was a senator; Piso
alone was a noble. The blood of Numa, through twenty-eight successive
generations, ran in the veins of Calphurnius Piso, who, by female
alliances, claimed a right of exhibiting, in his house, the images of
Crassus and of the great Pompey. His ancestors had been repeatedly
dignified with all the honors which the commonwealth could bestow; and of
all the ancient families of Rome, the Calphurnian alone had survived the
tyranny of the Cæsars. The personal qualities of Piso added new
lustre to his race. The usurper Valens, by whose order he was killed,
confessed, with deep remorse, that even an enemy ought to have respected
the sanctity of Piso; and although he died in arms against Gallienus, the
senate, with the emperor's generous permission, decreed the triumphal
ornaments to the memory of so virtuous a rebel.
[See Roman Coins: From The British Museum. Number four depicts Crassus.]
The lieutenants of Valerian were grateful to the father, whom they
esteemed. They disdained to serve the luxurious indolence of his unworthy
son. The throne of the Roman world was unsupported by any principle of
loyalty; and treason against such a prince might easily be considered as
patriotism to the state. Yet if we examine with candor the conduct of
these usurpers, it will appear, that they were much oftener driven into
rebellion by their fears, than urged to it by their ambition. They dreaded
the cruel suspicions of Gallienus; they equally dreaded the capricious
violence of their troops. If the dangerous favor of the army had
imprudently declared them deserving of the purple, they were marked for
sure destruction; and even prudence would counsel them to secure a short
enjoyment of empire, and rather to try the fortune of war than to expect
the hand of an executioner. When the clamor of the soldiers invested the
reluctant victims with the ensigns of sovereign authority, they sometimes
mourned in secret their approaching fate. "You have lost," said
Saturninus, on the day of his elevation, "you have lost a useful
commander, and you have made a very wretched emperor."
The apprehensions of Saturninus were justified by the repeated experience
of revolutions. Of the nineteen tyrants who started up under the reign of
Gallienus, there was not one who enjoyed a life of peace, or a natural
death. As soon as they were invested with the bloody purple, they inspired
their adherents with the same fears and ambition which had occasioned
their own revolt. Encompassed with domestic conspiracy, military sedition,
and civil war, they trembled on the edge of precipices, in which, after a
longer or shorter term of anxiety, they were inevitably lost. These
precarious monarchs received, however, such honors as the flattery of
their respective armies and provinces could bestow; but their claim,
founded on rebellion, could never obtain the sanction of law or history.
Italy, Rome, and the senate, constantly adhered to the cause of Gallienus,
and he alone was considered as the sovereign of the empire. That prince
condescended, indeed, to acknowledge the victorious arms of Odenathus, who
deserved the honorable distinction, by the respectful conduct which he
always maintained towards the son of Valerian. With the general applause
of the Romans, and the consent of Gallienus, the senate conferred the
title of Augustus on the brave Palmyrenian; and seemed to intrust him with
the government of the East, which he already possessed, in so independent
a manner, that, like a private succession, he bequeathed it to his
illustrious widow, Zenobia.
The rapid and perpetual transitions from the cottage to the throne, and
from the throne to the grave, might have amused an indifferent
philosopher; were it possible for a philosopher to remain indifferent
amidst the general calamities of human kind. The election of these
precarious emperors, their power and their death, were equally destructive
to their subjects and adherents. The price of their fatal elevation was
instantly discharged to the troops by an immense donative, drawn from the
bowels of the exhausted people. However virtuous was their character,
however pure their intentions, they found themselves reduced to the hard
necessity of supporting their usurpation by frequent acts of rapine and
cruelty. When they fell, they involved armies and provinces in their fall.
There is still extant a most savage mandate from Gallienus to one of his
ministers, after the suppression of Ingenuus, who had assumed the purple
in Illyricum. "It is not enough," says that soft but inhuman prince, "that
you exterminate such as have appeared in arms; the chance of battle might
have served me as effectually. The male sex of every age must be
extirpated; provided that, in the execution of the children and old men,
you can contrive means to save our reputation. Let every one die who has
dropped an expression, who has entertained a thought against me, against
me, the son of Valerian, the father and brother of so many princes.
Remember that Ingenuus was made emperor: tear, kill, hew in pieces. I
write to you with my own hand, and would inspire you with my own
feelings." Whilst the public forces of the state were dissipated in
private quarrels, the defenceless provinces lay exposed to every invader.
The bravest usurpers were compelled, by the perplexity of their situation,
to conclude ignominious treaties with the common enemy, to purchase with
oppressive tributes the neutrality or services of the Barbarians, and to
introduce hostile and independent nations into the heart of the Roman
monarchy.
Such were the barbarians, and such the tyrants, who, under the reigns of
Valerian and Gallienus, dismembered the provinces, and reduced the empire
to the lowest pitch of disgrace and ruin, from whence it seemed impossible
that it should ever emerge. As far as the barrenness of materials would
permit, we have attempted to trace, with order and perspicuity, the
general events of that calamitous period. There still remain some
particular facts; I. The disorders of Sicily; II. The tumults of
Alexandria; and, III. The rebellion of the Isaurians, which may serve to
reflect a strong light on the horrid picture.
I. Whenever numerous troops of banditti, multiplied by success and
impunity, publicly defy, instead of eluding the justice of their country,
we may safely infer, that the excessive weakness of the government is felt
and abused by the lowest ranks of the community. The situation of Sicily
preserved it from the Barbarians; nor could the disarmed province have
supported a usurper. The sufferings of that once flourishing and still
fertile island were inflicted by baser hands. A licentious crowd of slaves
and peasants reigned for a while over the plundered country, and renewed
the memory of the servile wars of more ancient times. Devastations, of
which the husbandman was either the victim or the accomplice, must have
ruined the agriculture of Sicily; and as the principal estates were the
property of the opulent senators of Rome, who often enclosed within a farm
the territory of an old republic, it is not improbable, that this private
injury might affect the capital more deeply, than all the conquests of the
Goths or the Persians.
II. The foundation of Alexandria was a noble design, at once conceived and
executed by the son of Philip. The beautiful and regular form of that
great city, second only to Rome itself, comprehended a circumference of
fifteen miles; it was peopled by three hundred thousand free inhabitants,
besides at least an equal number of slaves. The lucrative trade of Arabia
and India flowed through the port of Alexandria, to the capital and
provinces of the empire. * Idleness was unknown. Some were employed in
blowing of glass, others in weaving of linen, others again manufacturing
the papyrus. Either sex, and every age, was engaged in the pursuits of
industry, nor did even the blind or the lame want occupations suited to
their condition. But the people of Alexandria, a various mixture of
nations, united the vanity and inconstancy of the Greeks with the
superstition and obstinacy of the Egyptians. The most trifling occasion, a
transient scarcity of flesh or lentils, the neglect of an accustomed
salutation, a mistake of precedency in the public baths, or even a
religious dispute, were at any time sufficient to kindle a sedition among
that vast multitude, whose resentments were furious and implacable. After
the captivity of Valerian and the insolence of his son had relaxed the
authority of the laws, the Alexandrians abandoned themselves to the
ungoverned rage of their passions, and their unhappy country was the
theatre of a civil war, which continued (with a few short and suspicious
truces) above twelve years. All intercourse was cut off between the
several quarters of the afflicted city, every street was polluted with
blood, every building of strength converted into a citadel; nor did the
tumults subside till a considerable part of Alexandria was irretrievably
ruined. The spacious and magnificent district of Bruchion, * with its
palaces and musæum, the residence of the kings and philosophers of
Egypt, is described above a century afterwards, as already reduced to its
present state of dreary solitude.
III. The obscure rebellion of Trebellianus, who assumed the purple in
Isauria, a petty province of Asia Minor, was attended with strange and
memorable consequences. The pageant of royalty was soon destroyed by an
officer of Gallienus; but his followers, despairing of mercy, resolved to
shake off their allegiance, not only to the emperor, but to the empire,
and suddenly returned to the savage manners from which they had never
perfectly been reclaimed. Their craggy rocks, a branch of the
wide-extended Taurus, protected their inaccessible retreat. The tillage of
some fertile valleys supplied them with necessaries, and a habit of rapine
with the luxuries of life. In the heart of the Roman monarchy, the
Isaurians long continued a nation of wild barbarians. Succeeding princes,
unable to reduce them to obedience, either by arms or policy, were
compelled to acknowledge their weakness, by surrounding the hostile and
independent spot with a strong chain of fortifications, which often proved
insufficient to restrain the incursions of these domestic foes. The
Isaurians, gradually extending their territory to the sea-coast, subdued
the western and mountainous part of Cilicia, formerly the nest of those
daring pirates, against whom the republic had once been obliged to exert
its utmost force, under the conduct of the great Pompey.
Our habits of thinking so fondly connect the order of the universe with
the fate of man, that this gloomy period of history has been decorated
with inundations, earthquakes, uncommon meteors, preternatural darkness,
and a crowd of prodigies fictitious or exaggerated. But a long and general
famine was a calamity of a more serious kind. It was the inevitable
consequence of rapine and oppression, which extirpated the produce of the
present, and the hope of future harvests. Famine is almost always followed
by epidemical diseases, the effect of scanty and unwholesome food. Other
causes must, however, have contributed to the furious plague, which, from
the year two hundred and fifty to the year two hundred and sixty-five,
raged without interruption in every province, every city, and almost every
family, of the Roman empire. During some time five thousand persons died
daily in Rome; and many towns, that had escaped the hands of the
Barbarians, were entirely depopulated.
We have the knowledge of a very curious circumstance, of some use perhaps
in the melancholy calculation of human calamities. An exact register was
kept at Alexandria of all the citizens entitled to receive the
distribution of corn. It was found, that the ancient number of those
comprised between the ages of forty and seventy, had been equal to the
whole sum of claimants, from fourteen to fourscore years of age, who
remained alive after the reign of Gallienus. Applying this authentic fact
to the most correct tables of mortality, it evidently proves, that above
half the people of Alexandria had perished; and could we venture to extend
the analogy to the other provinces, we might suspect, that war,
pestilence, and famine, had consumed, in a few years, the moiety of the
human species.
Reign Of Claudius.—Defeat Of The Goths.—Victories, Triumph, And Death Of Aurelian.
Under the deplorable reigns of Valerian and Gallienus, the empire was
oppressed and almost destroyed by the soldiers, the tyrants, and the
barbarians. It was saved by a series of great princes, who derived their
obscure origin from the martial provinces of Illyricum. Within a period of
about thirty years, Claudius, Aurelian, Probus, Diocletian and his
colleagues, triumphed over the foreign and domestic enemies of the state,
reestablished, with the military discipline, the strength of the
frontiers, and deserved the glorious title of Restorers of the Roman
world.
The removal of an effeminate tyrant made way for a succession of heroes.
The indignation of the people imputed all their calamities to Gallienus,
and the far greater part were indeed, the consequence of his dissolute
manners and careless administration. He was even destitute of a sense of
honor, which so frequently supplies the absence of public virtue; and as
long as he was permitted to enjoy the possession of Italy, a victory of
the barbarians, the loss of a province, or the rebellion of a general,
seldom disturbed the tranquil course of his pleasures. At length, a
considerable army, stationed on the Upper Danube, invested with the
Imperial purple their leader Aureolus; who, disdaining a confined and
barren reign over the mountains of Rhætia, passed the Alps, occupied
Milan, threatened Rome, and challenged Gallienus to dispute in the field
the sovereignty of Italy. The emperor, provoked by the insult, and alarmed
by the instant danger, suddenly exerted that latent vigor which sometimes
broke through the indolence of his temper. Forcing himself from the luxury
of the palace, he appeared in arms at the head of his legions, and
advanced beyond the Po to encounter his competitor. The corrupted name of
Pontirolo still preserves the memory of a bridge over the Adda, which,
during the action, must have proved an object of the utmost importance to
both armies. The Rhætian usurper, after receiving a total defeat and
a dangerous wound, retired into Milan. The siege of that great city was
immediately formed; the walls were battered with every engine in use among
the ancients; and Aureolus, doubtful of his internal strength, and
hopeless of foreign succors already anticipated the fatal consequences of
unsuccessful rebellion.
His last resource was an attempt to seduce the loyalty of the besiegers.
He scattered libels through the camp, inviting the troops to desert an
unworthy master, who sacrificed the public happiness to his luxury, and
the lives of his most valuable subjects to the slightest suspicions. The
arts of Aureolus diffused fears and discontent among the principal
officers of his rival. A conspiracy was formed by Heraclianus the Prætorian
præfect, by Marcian, a general of rank and reputation, and by
Cecrops, who commanded a numerous body of Dalmatian guards. The death of
Gallienus was resolved; and notwithstanding their desire of first
terminating the siege of Milan, the extreme danger which accompanied every
moment's delay obliged them to hasten the execution of their daring
purpose. At a late hour of the night, but while the emperor still
protracted the pleasures of the table, an alarm was suddenly given, that
Aureolus, at the head of all his forces, had made a desperate sally from
the town; Gallienus, who was never deficient in personal bravery, started
from his silken couch, and without allowing himself time either to put on
his armor, or to assemble his guards, he mounted on horseback, and rode
full speed towards the supposed place of the attack. Encompassed by his
declared or concealed enemies, he soon, amidst the nocturnal tumult,
received a mortal dart from an uncertain hand. Before he expired, a
patriotic sentiment using in the mind of Gallienus, induced him to name a
deserving successor; and it was his last request, that the Imperial
ornaments should be delivered to Claudius, who then commanded a detached
army in the neighborhood of Pavia. The report at least was diligently
propagated, and the order cheerfully obeyed by the conspirators, who had
already agreed to place Claudius on the throne. On the first news of the
emperor's death, the troops expressed some suspicion and resentment, till
the one was removed, and the other assuaged, by a donative of twenty
pieces of gold to each soldier. They then ratified the election, and
acknowledged the merit of their new sovereign.
The obscurity which covered the origin of Claudius, though it was
afterwards embellished by some flattering fictions, sufficiently betrays
the meanness of his birth. We can only discover that he was a native of
one of the provinces bordering on the Danube; that his youth was spent in
arms, and that his modest valor attracted the favor and confidence of
Decius. The senate and people already considered him as an excellent
officer, equal to the most important trusts; and censured the inattention
of Valerian, who suffered him to remain in the subordinate station of a
tribune. But it was not long before that emperor distinguished the merit
of Claudius, by declaring him general and chief of the Illyrian frontier,
with the command of all the troops in Thrace, Mæsia, Dacia,
Pannonia, and Dalmatia, the appointments of the præfect of Egypt,
the establishment of the proconsul of Africa, and the sure prospect of the
consulship. By his victories over the Goths, he deserved from the senate
the honor of a statue, and excited the jealous apprehensions of Gallienus.
It was impossible that a soldier could esteem so dissolute a sovereign,
nor is it easy to conceal a just contempt. Some unguarded expressions
which dropped from Claudius were officiously transmitted to the royal ear.
The emperor's answer to an officer of confidence describes in very lively
colors his own character, and that of the times. "There is not any thing
capable of giving me more serious concern, than the intelligence contained
in your last despatch; that some malicious suggestions have indisposed
towards us the mind of our friend and parent Claudius. As you regard your
allegiance, use every means to appease his resentment, but conduct your
negotiation with secrecy; let it not reach the knowledge of the Dacian
troops; they are already provoked, and it might inflame their fury. I
myself have sent him some presents: be it your care that he accept them
with pleasure. Above all, let him not suspect that I am made acquainted
with his imprudence. The fear of my anger might urge him to desperate
counsels." The presents which accompanied this humble epistle, in which
the monarch solicited a reconciliation with his discontented subject,
consisted of a considerable sum of money, a splendid wardrobe, and a
valuable service of silver and gold plate. By such arts Gallienus softened
the indignation and dispelled the fears of his Illyrian general; and
during the remainder of that reign, the formidable sword of Claudius was
always drawn in the cause of a master whom he despised. At last, indeed,
he received from the conspirators the bloody purple of Gallienus: but he
had been absent from their camp and counsels; and however he might applaud
the deed, we may candidly presume that he was innocent of the knowledge of
it. When Claudius ascended the throne, he was about fifty-four years of
age.
The siege of Milan was still continued, and Aureolus soon discovered that
the success of his artifices had only raised up a more determined
adversary. He attempted to negotiate with Claudius a treaty of alliance
and partition. "Tell him," replied the intrepid emperor, "that such
proposals should have been made to Gallienus; he, perhaps, might
have listened to them with patience, and accepted a colleague as
despicable as himself." This stern refusal, and a last unsuccessful
effort, obliged Aureolus to yield the city and himself to the discretion
of the conqueror. The judgment of the army pronounced him worthy of death;
and Claudius, after a feeble resistance, consented to the execution of the
sentence. Nor was the zeal of the senate less ardent in the cause of their
new sovereign. They ratified, perhaps with a sincere transport of zeal,
the election of Claudius; and, as his predecessor had shown himself the
personal enemy of their order, they exercised, under the name of justice,
a severe revenge against his friends and family. The senate was permitted
to discharge the ungrateful office of punishment, and the emperor reserved
for himself the pleasure and merit of obtaining by his intercession a
general act of indemnity.
Such ostentatious clemency discovers less of the real character of
Claudius, than a trifling circumstance in which he seems to have consulted
only the dictates of his heart. The frequent rebellions of the provinces
had involved almost every person in the guilt of treason, almost every
estate in the case of confiscation; and Gallienus often displayed his
liberality by distributing among his officers the property of his
subjects. On the accession of Claudius, an old woman threw herself at his
feet, and complained that a general of the late emperor had obtained an
arbitrary grant of her patrimony. This general was Claudius himself, who
had not entirely escaped the contagion of the times. The emperor blushed
at the reproach, but deserved the confidence which she had reposed in his
equity. The confession of his fault was accompanied with immediate and
ample restitution.
In the arduous task which Claudius had undertaken, of restoring the empire
to its ancient splendor, it was first necessary to revive among his troops
a sense of order and obedience. With the authority of a veteran commander,
he represented to them that the relaxation of discipline had introduced a
long train of disorders, the effects of which were at length experienced
by the soldiers themselves; that a people ruined by oppression, and
indolent from despair, could no longer supply a numerous army with the
means of luxury, or even of subsistence; that the danger of each
individual had increased with the despotism of the military order, since
princes who tremble on the throne will guard their safety by the instant
sacrifice of every obnoxious subject. The emperor expiated on the
mischiefs of a lawless caprice, which the soldiers could only gratify at
the expense of their own blood; as their seditious elections had so
frequently been followed by civil wars, which consumed the flower of the
legions either in the field of battle, or in the cruel abuse of victory.
He painted in the most lively colors the exhausted state of the treasury,
the desolation of the provinces, the disgrace of the Roman name, and the
insolent triumph of rapacious barbarians. It was against those barbarians,
he declared, that he intended to point the first effort of their arms.
Tetricus might reign for a while over the West, and even Zenobia might
preserve the dominion of the East. These usurpers were his personal
adversaries; nor could he think of indulging any private resentment till
he had saved an empire, whose impending ruin would, unless it was timely
prevented, crush both the army and the people.
The various nations of Germany and Sarmatia, who fought under the Gothic
standard, had already collected an armament more formidable than any which
had yet issued from the Euxine. On the banks of the Niester, one of the
great rivers that discharge themselves into that sea, they constructed a
fleet of two thousand, or even of six thousand vessels; numbers which,
however incredible they may seem, would have been insufficient to
transport their pretended army of three hundred and twenty thousand
barbarians. Whatever might be the real strength of the Goths, the vigor
and success of the expedition were not adequate to the greatness of the
preparations. In their passage through the Bosphorus, the unskilful pilots
were overpowered by the violence of the current; and while the multitude
of their ships were crowded in a narrow channel, many were dashed against
each other, or against the shore. The barbarians made several descents on
the coasts both of Europe and Asia; but the open country was already
plundered, and they were repulsed with shame and loss from the fortified
cities which they assaulted. A spirit of discouragement and division arose
in the fleet, and some of their chiefs sailed away towards the islands of
Crete and Cyprus; but the main body, pursuing a more steady course,
anchored at length near the foot of Mount Athos, and assaulted the city of
Thessalonica, the wealthy capital of all the Macedonian provinces. Their
attacks, in which they displayed a fierce but artless bravery, were soon
interrupted by the rapid approach of Claudius, hastening to a scene of
action that deserved the presence of a warlike prince at the head of the
remaining powers of the empire. Impatient for battle, the Goths
immediately broke up their camp, relinquished the siege of Thessalonica,
left their navy at the foot of Mount Athos, traversed the hills of
Macedonia, and pressed forwards to engage the last defence of Italy.
We still posses an original letter addressed by Claudius to the senate and
people on this memorable occasion. "Conscript fathers," says the emperor,
"know that three hundred and twenty thousand Goths have invaded the Roman
territory. If I vanquish them, your gratitude will reward my services.
Should I fall, remember that I am the successor of Gallienus. The whole
republic is fatigued and exhausted. We shall fight after Valerian, after
Ingenuus, Regillianus, Lollianus, Posthumus, Celsus, and a thousand
others, whom a just contempt for Gallienus provoked into rebellion. We are
in want of darts, of spears, and of shields. The strength of the empire,
Gaul, and Spain, are usurped by Tetricus, and we blush to acknowledge that
the archers of the East serve under the banners of Zenobia. Whatever we
shall perform will be sufficiently great." The melancholy firmness of this
epistle announces a hero careless of his fate, conscious of his danger,
but still deriving a well-grounded hope from the resources of his own
mind.
The event surpassed his own expectations and those of the world. By the
most signal victories he delivered the empire from this host of
barbarians, and was distinguished by posterity under the glorious
appellation of the Gothic Claudius. The imperfect historians of an
irregular war do not enable as to describe the order and circumstances of
his exploits; but, if we could be indulged in the allusion, we might
distribute into three acts this memorable tragedy. I. The decisive battle
was fought near Naissus, a city of Dardania. The legions at first gave
way, oppressed by numbers, and dismayed by misfortunes. Their ruin was
inevitable, had not the abilities of their emperor prepared a seasonable
relief. A large detachment, rising out of the secret and difficult passes
of the mountains, which, by his order, they had occupied, suddenly
assailed the rear of the victorious Goths. The favorable instant was
improved by the activity of Claudius. He revived the courage of his
troops, restored their ranks, and pressed the barbarians on every side.
Fifty thousand men are reported to have been slain in the battle of
Naissus. Several large bodies of barbarians, covering their retreat with a
movable fortification of wagons, retired, or rather escaped, from the
field of slaughter. II. We may presume that some insurmountable
difficulty, the fatigue, perhaps, or the disobedience, of the conquerors,
prevented Claudius from completing in one day the destruction of the
Goths. The war was diffused over the province of Mæsia, Thrace, and
Macedonia, and its operations drawn out into a variety of marches,
surprises, and tumultuary engagements, as well by sea as by land. When the
Romans suffered any loss, it was commonly occasioned by their own
cowardice or rashness; but the superior talents of the emperor, his
perfect knowledge of the country, and his judicious choice of measures as
well as officers, assured on most occasions the success of his arms. The
immense booty, the fruit of so many victories, consisted for the greater
part of cattle and slaves. A select body of the Gothic youth was received
among the Imperial troops; the remainder was sold into servitude; and so
considerable was the number of female captives, that every soldier
obtained to his share two or three women. A circumstance from which we may
conclude, that the invaders entertained some designs of settlement as well
as of plunder; since even in a naval expedition, they were accompanied by
their families. III. The loss of their fleet, which was either taken or
sunk, had intercepted the retreat of the Goths. A vast circle of Roman
posts, distributed with skill, supported with firmness, and gradually
closing towards a common centre, forced the barbarians into the most
inaccessible parts of Mount Hæmus, where they found a safe refuge,
but a very scanty subsistence. During the course of a rigorous winter in
which they were besieged by the emperor's troops, famine and pestilence,
desertion and the sword, continually diminished the imprisoned multitude.
On the return of spring, nothing appeared in arms except a hardy and
desperate band, the remnant of that mighty host which had embarked at the
mouth of the Niester.
The pestilence which swept away such numbers of the barbarians, at length
proved fatal to their conqueror. After a short but glorious reign of two
years, Claudius expired at Sirmium, amidst the tears and acclamations of
his subjects. In his last illness, he convened the principal officers of
the state and army, and in their presence recommended Aurelian, one of his
generals, as the most deserving of the throne, and the best qualified to
execute the great design which he himself had been permitted only to
undertake. The virtues of Claudius, his valor, affability, justice, and
temperance, his love of fame and of his country, place him in that short
list of emperors who added lustre to the Roman purple. Those virtues,
however, were celebrated with peculiar zeal and complacency by the courtly
writers of the age of Constantine, who was the great grandson of Crispus,
the elder brother of Claudius. The voice of flattery was soon taught to
repeat, that gods, who so hastily had snatched Claudius from the earth,
rewarded his merit and piety by the perpetual establishment of the empire
in his family.
Notwithstanding these oracles, the greatness of the Flavian family (a name
which it had pleased them to assume) was deferred above twenty years, and
the elevation of Claudius occasioned the immediate ruin of his brother
Quintilius, who possessed not sufficient moderation or courage to descend
into the private station to which the patriotism of the late emperor had
condemned him. Without delay or reflection, he assumed the purple at
Aquileia, where he commanded a considerable force; and though his reign
lasted only seventeen days, * he had time to obtain the sanction of the
senate, and to experience a mutiny of the troops. As soon as he was
informed that the great army of the Danube had invested the well-known
valor of Aurelian with Imperial power, he sunk under the fame and merit of
his rival; and ordering his veins to be opened, prudently withdrew himself
from the unequal contest.
The general design of this work will not permit us minutely to relate the
actions of every emperor after he ascended the throne, much less to deduce
the various fortunes of his private life. We shall only observe, that the
father of Aurelian was a peasant of the territory of Sirmium, who occupied
a small farm, the property of Aurelius, a rich senator. His warlike son
enlisted in the troops as a common soldier, successively rose to the rank
of a centurion, a tribune, the præfect of a legion, the inspector of
the camp, the general, or, as it was then called, the duke, of a frontier;
and at length, during the Gothic war, exercised the important office of
commander-in-chief of the cavalry. In every station he distinguished
himself by matchless valor, rigid discipline, and successful conduct. He
was invested with the consulship by the emperor Valerian, who styles him,
in the pompous language of that age, the deliverer of Illyricum, the
restorer of Gaul, and the rival of the Scipios. At the recommendation of
Valerian, a senator of the highest rank and merit, Ulpius Crinitus, whose
blood was derived from the same source as that of Trajan, adopted the
Pannonian peasant, gave him his daughter in marriage, and relieved with
his ample fortune the honorable poverty which Aurelian had preserved
inviolate.
The reign of Aurelian lasted only four years and about nine months; but
every instant of that short period was filled by some memorable
achievement. He put an end to the Gothic war, chastised the Germans who
invaded Italy, recovered Gaul, Spain, and Britain out of the hands of
Tetricus, and destroyed the proud monarchy which Zenobia had erected in
the East on the ruins of the afflicted empire.
It was the rigid attention of Aurelian, even to the minutest articles of
discipline, which bestowed such uninterrupted success on his arms. His
military regulations are contained in a very concise epistle to one of his
inferior officers, who is commanded to enforce them, as he wishes to
become a tribune, or as he is desirous to live. Gaming, drinking, and the
arts of divination, were severely prohibited. Aurelian expected that his
soldiers should be modest, frugal, and laborous; that their armor should
be constantly kept bright, their weapons sharp, their clothing and horses
ready for immediate service; that they should live in their quarters with
chastity and sobriety, without damaging the cornfields, without stealing
even a sheep, a fowl, or a bunch of grapes, without exacting from their
landlords, either salt, or oil, or wood. "The public allowance," continues
the emperor, "is sufficient for their support; their wealth should be
collected from the spoils of the enemy, not from the tears of the
provincials." A single instance will serve to display the rigor, and even
cruelty, of Aurelian. One of the soldiers had seduced the wife of his
host. The guilty wretch was fastened to two trees forcibly drawn towards
each other, and his limbs were torn asunder by their sudden separation. A
few such examples impressed a salutary consternation. The punishments of
Aurelian were terrible; but he had seldom occasion to punish more than
once the same offence. His own conduct gave a sanction to his laws, and
the seditious legions dreaded a chief who had learned to obey, and who was
worthy to command.
The death of Claudius had revived the fainting spirit of the Goths. The
troops which guarded the passes of Mount Hæmus, and the banks of the
Danube, had been drawn away by the apprehension of a civil war; and it
seems probable that the remaining body of the Gothic and Vandalic tribes
embraced the favorable opportunity, abandoned their settlements of the
Ukraine, traversed the rivers, and swelled with new multitudes the
destroying host of their countrymen. Their united numbers were at length
encountered by Aurelian, and the bloody and doubtful conflict ended only
with the approach of night. Exhausted by so many calamities, which they
had mutually endured and inflicted during a twenty years' war, the Goths
and the Romans consented to a lasting and beneficial treaty. It was
earnestly solicited by the barbarians, and cheerfully ratified by the
legions, to whose suffrage the prudence of Aurelian referred the decision
of that important question. The Gothic nation engaged to supply the armies
of Rome with a body of two thousand auxiliaries, consisting entirely of
cavalry, and stipulated in return an undisturbed retreat, with a regular
market as far as the Danube, provided by the emperor's care, but at their
own expense. The treaty was observed with such religious fidelity, that
when a party of five hundred men straggled from the camp in quest of
plunder, the king or general of the barbarians commanded that the guilty
leader should be apprehended and shot to death with darts, as a victim
devoted to the sanctity of their engagements. * It is, however, not
unlikely, that the precaution of Aurelian, who had exacted as hostages the
sons and daughters of the Gothic chiefs, contributed something to this
pacific temper. The youths he trained in the exercise of arms, and near
his own person: to the damsels he gave a liberal and Roman education, and
by bestowing them in marriage on some of his principal officers, gradually
introduced between the two nations the closest and most endearing
connections.
But the most important condition of peace was understood rather than
expressed in the treaty. Aurelian withdrew the Roman forces from Dacia,
and tacitly relinquished that great province to the Goths and Vandals. His
manly judgment convinced him of the solid advantages, and taught him to
despise the seeming disgrace, of thus contracting the frontiers of the
monarchy. The Dacian subjects, removed from those distant possessions
which they were unable to cultivate or defend, added strength and
populousness to the southern side of the Danube. A fertile territory,
which the repetition of barbarous inroads had changed into a desert, was
yielded to their industry, and a new province of Dacia still preserved the
memory of Trajan's conquests. The old country of that name detained,
however, a considerable number of its inhabitants, who dreaded exile more
than a Gothic master. These degenerate Romans continued to serve the
empire, whose allegiance they had renounced, by introducing among their
conquerors the first notions of agriculture, the useful arts, and the
conveniences of civilized life. An intercourse of commerce and language
was gradually established between the opposite banks of the Danube; and
after Dacia became an independent state, it often proved the firmest
barrier of the empire against the invasions of the savages of the North. A
sense of interest attached these more settled barbarians to the alliance
of Rome, and a permanent interest very frequently ripens into sincere and
useful friendship. This various colony, which filled the ancient province,
and was insensibly blended into one great people, still acknowledged the
superior renown and authority of the Gothic tribe, and claimed the fancied
honor of a Scandinavian origin. At the same time, the lucky though
accidental resemblance of the name of Getæ, * infused among the
credulous Goths a vain persuasion, that in a remote age, their own
ancestors, already seated in the Dacian provinces, had received the
instructions of Zamolxis, and checked the victorious arms of Sesostris and
Darius.
While the vigorous and moderate conduct of Aurelian restored the Illyrian
frontier, the nation of the Alemanni violated the conditions of peace,
which either Gallienus had purchased, or Claudius had imposed, and,
inflamed by their impatient youth, suddenly flew to arms. Forty thousand
horse appeared in the field, and the numbers of the infantry doubled those
of the cavalry. The first objects of their avarice were a few cities of
the Rhætian frontier; but their hopes soon rising with success, the
rapid march of the Alemanni traced a line of devastation from the Danube
to the Po.
The emperor was almost at the same time informed of the irruption, and of
the retreat, of the barbarians. Collecting an active body of troops, he
marched with silence and celerity along the skirts of the Hercynian
forest; and the Alemanni, laden with the spoils of Italy, arrived at the
Danube, without suspecting, that on the opposite bank, and in an
advantageous post, a Roman army lay concealed and prepared to intercept
their return. Aurelian indulged the fatal security of the barbarians, and
permitted about half their forces to pass the river without disturbance
and without precaution. Their situation and astonishment gave him an easy
victory; his skilful conduct improved the advantage. Disposing the legions
in a semicircular form, he advanced the two horns of the crescent across
the Danube, and wheeling them on a sudden towards the centre, enclosed the
rear of the German host. The dismayed barbarians, on whatsoever side they
cast their eyes, beheld, with despair, a wasted country, a deep and rapid
stream, a victorious and implacable enemy.
Reduced to this distressed condition, the Alemanni no longer disdained to
sue for peace. Aurelian received their ambassadors at the head of his
camp, and with every circumstance of martial pomp that could display the
greatness and discipline of Rome. The legions stood to their arms in
well-ordered ranks and awful silence. The principal commanders,
distinguished by the ensigns of their rank, appeared on horseback on
either side of the Imperial throne. Behind the throne the consecrated
images of the emperor, and his predecessors, the golden eagles, and the
various titles of the legions, engraved in letters of gold, were exalted
in the air on lofty pikes covered with silver. When Aurelian assumed his
seat, his manly grace and majestic figure taught the barbarians to revere
the person as well as the purple of their conqueror. The ambassadors fell
prostrate on the ground in silence. They were commanded to rise, and
permitted to speak. By the assistance of interpreters they extenuated
their perfidy, magnified their exploits, expatiated on the vicissitudes of
fortune and the advantages of peace, and, with an ill-timed confidence,
demanded a large subsidy, as the price of the alliance which they offered
to the Romans. The answer of the emperor was stern and imperious. He
treated their offer with contempt, and their demand with indignation,
reproached the barbarians, that they were as ignorant of the arts of war
as of the laws of peace, and finally dismissed them with the choice only
of submitting to this unconditional mercy, or awaiting the utmost severity
of his resentment. Aurelian had resigned a distant province to the Goths;
but it was dangerous to trust or to pardon these perfidious barbarians,
whose formidable power kept Italy itself in perpetual alarms.
Immediately after this conference, it should seem that some unexpected
emergency required the emperor's presence in Pannonia. He devolved on his
lieutenants the care of finishing the destruction of the Alemanni, either
by the sword, or by the surer operation of famine. But an active despair
has often triumphed over the indolent assurance of success. The
barbarians, finding it impossible to traverse the Danube and the Roman
camp, broke through the posts in their rear, which were more feebly or
less carefully guarded; and with incredible diligence, but by a different
road, returned towards the mountains of Italy. Aurelian, who considered
the war as totally extinguished, received the mortifying intelligence of
the escape of the Alemanni, and of the ravage which they already committed
in the territory of Milan. The legions were commanded to follow, with as
much expedition as those heavy bodies were capable of exerting, the rapid
flight of an enemy whose infantry and cavalry moved with almost equal
swiftness. A few days afterwards, the emperor himself marched to the
relief of Italy, at the head of a chosen body of auxiliaries, (among whom
were the hostages and cavalry of the Vandals,) and of all the Prætorian
guards who had served in the wars on the Danube.
As the light troops of the Alemanni had spread themselves from the Alps to
the Apennine, the incessant vigilance of Aurelian and his officers was
exercised in the discovery, the attack, and the pursuit of the numerous
detachments. Notwithstanding this desultory war, three considerable
battles are mentioned, in which the principal force of both armies was
obstinately engaged. The success was various. In the first, fought near
Placentia, the Romans received so severe a blow, that, according to the
expression of a writer extremely partial to Aurelian, the immediate
dissolution of the empire was apprehended. The crafty barbarians, who had
lined the woods, suddenly attacked the legions in the dusk of the evening,
and, it is most probable, after the fatigue and disorder of a long march.
The fury of their charge was irresistible; but, at length, after a
dreadful slaughter, the patient firmness of the emperor rallied his
troops, and restored, in some degree, the honor of his arms. The second
battle was fought near Fano in Umbria; on the spot which, five hundred
years before, had been fatal to the brother of Hannibal. Thus far the
successful Germans had advanced along the Æmilian and Flaminian way,
with a design of sacking the defenceless mistress of the world. But
Aurelian, who, watchful for the safety of Rome, still hung on their rear,
found in this place the decisive moment of giving them a total and
irretrievable defeat. The flying remnant of their host was exterminated in
a third and last battle near Pavia; and Italy was delivered from the
inroads of the Alemanni.
Fear has been the original parent of superstition, and every new calamity
urges trembling mortals to deprecate the wrath of their invisible enemies.
Though the best hope of the republic was in the valor and conduct of
Aurelian, yet such was the public consternation, when the barbarians were
hourly expected at the gates of Rome, that, by a decree of the senate the
Sibylline books were consulted. Even the emperor himself from a motive
either of religion or of policy, recommended this salutary measure, chided
the tardiness of the senate, and offered to supply whatever expense,
whatever animals, whatever captives of any nation, the gods should
require. Notwithstanding this liberal offer, it does not appear, that any
human victims expiated with their blood the sins of the Roman people. The
Sibylline books enjoined ceremonies of a more harmless nature, processions
of priests in white robes, attended by a chorus of youths and virgins;
lustrations of the city and adjacent country; and sacrifices, whose
powerful influence disabled the barbarians from passing the mystic ground
on which they had been celebrated. However puerile in themselves, these
superstitious arts were subservient to the success of the war; and if, in
the decisive battle of Fano, the Alemanni fancied they saw an army of
spectres combating on the side of Aurelian, he received a real and
effectual aid from this imaginary reenforcement.
But whatever confidence might be placed in ideal ramparts, the experience
of the past, and the dread of the future, induced the Romans to construct
fortifications of a grosser and more substantial kind. The seven hills of
Rome had been surrounded, by the successors of Romulus, with an ancient
wall of more than thirteen miles. The vast enclosure may seem
disproportioned to the strength and numbers of the infant state. But it
was necessary to secure an ample extent of pasture and arable land,
against the frequent and sudden incursions of the tribes of Latium, the
perpetual enemies of the republic. With the progress of Roman greatness,
the city and its inhabitants gradually increased, filled up the vacant
space, pierced through the useless walls, covered the field of Mars, and,
on every side, followed the public highways in long and beautiful suburbs.
The extent of the new walls, erected by Aurelian, and finished in the
reign of Probus, was magnified by popular estimation to near fifty, but is
reduced by accurate measurement to about twenty-one miles. It was a great
but a melancholy labor, since the defence of the capital betrayed the
decline of the monarchy. The Romans of a more prosperous age, who trusted
to the arms of the legions the safety of the frontier camps, were very far
from entertaining a suspicion, that it would ever become necessary to
fortify the seat of empire against the inroads of the barbarians.
The victory of Claudius over the Goths, and the success of Aurelian
against the Alemanni, had already restored to the arms of Rome their
ancient superiority over the barbarous nations of the North. To chastise
domestic tyrants, and to reunite the dismembered parts of the empire, was
a task reserved for the second of those warlike emperors. Though he was
acknowledged by the senate and people, the frontiers of Italy, Africa,
Illyricum, and Thrace, confined the limits of his reign. Gaul, Spain, and
Britain, Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor, were still possessed by two rebels,
who alone, out of so numerous a list, had hitherto escaped the dangers of
their situation; and to complete the ignominy of Rome, these rival thrones
had been usurped by women.
A rapid succession of monarchs had arisen and fallen in the provinces of
Gaul. The rigid virtues of Posthumus served only to hasten his
destruction. After suppressing a competitor, who had assumed the purple at
Mentz, he refused to gratify his troops with the plunder of the rebellious
city; and in the seventh year of his reign, became the victim of their
disappointed avarice. The death of Victorinus, his friend and associate,
was occasioned by a less worthy cause. The shining accomplishments of that
prince were stained by a licentious passion, which he indulged in acts of
violence, with too little regard to the laws of society, or even to those
of love. He was slain at Cologne, by a conspiracy of jealous husbands,
whose revenge would have appeared more justifiable, had they spared the
innocence of his son. After the murder of so many valiant princes, it is
somewhat remarkable, that a female for a long time controlled the fierce
legions of Gaul, and still more singular, that she was the mother of the
unfortunate Victorinus. The arts and treasures of Victoria enabled her
successively to place Marius and Tetricus on the throne, and to reign with
a manly vigor under the name of those dependent emperors. Money of copper,
of silver, and of gold, was coined in her name; she assumed the titles of
Augusta and Mother of the Camps: her power ended only with her life; but
her life was perhaps shortened by the ingratitude of Tetricus.
When, at the instigation of his ambitious patroness, Tetricus assumed the
ensigns of royalty, he was governor of the peaceful province of Aquitaine,
an employment suited to his character and education. He reigned four or
five years over Gaul, Spain, and Britain, the slave and sovereign of a
licentious army, whom he dreaded, and by whom he was despised. The valor
and fortune of Aurelian at length opened the prospect of a deliverance. He
ventured to disclose his melancholy situation, and conjured the emperor to
hasten to the relief of his unhappy rival. Had this secret correspondence
reached the ears of the soldiers, it would most probably have cost
Tetricus his life; nor could he resign the sceptre of the West without
committing an act of treason against himself. He affected the appearances
of a civil war, led his forces into the field, against Aurelian, posted
them in the most disadvantageous manner, betrayed his own counsels to his
enemy, and with a few chosen friends deserted in the beginning of the
action. The rebel legions, though disordered and dismayed by the
unexpected treachery of their chief, defended themselves with desperate
valor, till they were cut in pieces almost to a man, in this bloody and
memorable battle, which was fought near Chalons in Champagne. The retreat
of the irregular auxiliaries, Franks and Batavians, whom the conqueror
soon compelled or persuaded to repass the Rhine, restored the general
tranquillity, and the power of Aurelian was acknowledged from the wall of
Antoninus to the columns of Hercules.
As early as the reign of Claudius, the city of Autun, alone and
unassisted, had ventured to declare against the legions of Gaul. After a
siege of seven months, they stormed and plundered that unfortunate city,
already wasted by famine. Lyons, on the contrary, had resisted with
obstinate disaffection the arms of Aurelian. We read of the punishment of
Lyons, but there is not any mention of the rewards of Autun. Such, indeed,
is the policy of civil war; severely to remember injuries, and to forget
the most important services. Revenge is profitable, gratitude is
expensive.
Aurelian had no sooner secured the person and provinces of Tetricus, than
he turned his arms against Zenobia, the celebrated queen of Palmyra and
the East. Modern Europe has produced several illustrious women who have
sustained with glory the weight of empire; nor is our own age destitute of
such distinguished characters. But if we except the doubtful achievements
of Semiramis, Zenobia is perhaps the only female whose superior genius
broke through the servile indolence imposed on her sex by the climate and
manners of Asia. She claimed her descent from the Macedonian kings of
Egypt, * equalled in beauty her ancestor Cleopatra, and far surpassed that
princess in chastity and valor. Zenobia was esteemed the most lovely as
well as the most heroic of her sex. She was of a dark complexion, (for in
speaking of a lady these trifles become important.) Her teeth were of a
pearly whiteness, and her large black eyes sparkled with uncommon fire,
tempered by the most attractive sweetness. Her voice was strong and
harmonious. Her manly understanding was strengthened and adorned by study.
She was not ignorant of the Latin tongue, but possessed in equal
perfection the Greek, the Syriac, and the Egyptian languages. She had
drawn up for her own use an epitome of oriental history, and familiarly
compared the beauties of Homer and Plato under the tuition of the sublime
Longinus.
This accomplished woman gave her hand to Odenathus, who, from a private
station, raised himself to the dominion of the East. She soon became the
friend and companion of a hero. In the intervals of war, Odenathus
passionately delighted in the exercise of hunting; he pursued with ardor
the wild beasts of the desert, lions, panthers, and bears; and the ardor
of Zenobia in that dangerous amusement was not inferior to his own. She
had inured her constitution to fatigue, disdained the use of a covered
carriage, generally appeared on horseback in a military habit, and
sometimes marched several miles on foot at the head of the troops. The
success of Odenathus was in a great measure ascribed to her incomparable
prudence and fortitude. Their splendid victories over the Great King, whom
they twice pursued as far as the gates of Ctesiphon, laid the foundations
of their united fame and power. The armies which they commanded, and the
provinces which they had saved, acknowledged not any other sovereigns than
their invincible chiefs. The senate and people of Rome revered a stranger
who had avenged their captive emperor, and even the insensible son of
Valerian accepted Odenathus for his legitimate colleague.
After a successful expedition against the Gothic plunderers of Asia, the
Palmyrenian prince returned to the city of Emesa in Syria. Invincible in
war, he was there cut off by domestic treason, and his favorite amusement
of hunting was the cause, or at least the occasion, of his death. His
nephew Mæonius presumed to dart his javelin before that of his
uncle; and though admonished of his error, repeated the same insolence. As
a monarch, and as a sportsman, Odenathus was provoked, took away his
horse, a mark of ignominy among the barbarians, and chastised the rash
youth by a short confinement. The offence was soon forgot, but the
punishment was remembered; and Mæonius, with a few daring
associates, assassinated his uncle in the midst of a great entertainment.
Herod, the son of Odenathus, though not of Zenobia, a young man of a soft
and effeminate temper, was killed with his father. But Mæonius
obtained only the pleasure of revenge by this bloody deed. He had scarcely
time to assume the title of Augustus, before he was sacrificed by Zenobia
to the memory of her husband.
With the assistance of his most faithful friends, she immediately filled
the vacant throne, and governed with manly counsels Palmyra, Syria, and
the East, above five years. By the death of Odenathus, that authority was
at an end which the senate had granted him only as a personal distinction;
but his martial widow, disdaining both the senate and Gallienus, obliged
one of the Roman generals, who was sent against her, to retreat into
Europe, with the loss of his army and his reputation. Instead of the
little passions which so frequently perplex a female reign, the steady
administration of Zenobia was guided by the most judicious maxims of
policy. If it was expedient to pardon, she could calm her resentment; if
it was necessary to punish, she could impose silence on the voice of pity.
Her strict economy was accused of avarice; yet on every proper occasion
she appeared magnificent and liberal. The neighboring states of Arabia,
Armenia, and Persia, dreaded her enmity, and solicited her alliance. To
the dominions of Odenathus, which extended from the Euphrates to the
frontiers of Bithynia, his widow added the inheritance of her ancestors,
the populous and fertile kingdom of Egypt. * The emperor Claudius
acknowledged her merit, and was content, that, while he pursued
the Gothic war, sheshould assert the dignity of the empire in the
East. ^61? The conduct, however, of Zenobia, was attended with some
ambiguity; not is it unlikely that she had conceived the design of
erecting an independent and hostile monarchy. She blended with the popular
manners of Roman princes the stately pomp of the courts of Asia, and
exacted from her subjects the same adoration that was paid to the
successor of Cyrus. She bestowed on her three sons a Latin education, and
often showed them to the troops adorned with the Imperial purple. For
herself she reserved the diadem, with the splendid but doubtful title of
Queen of the East.
When Aurelian passed over into Asia, against an adversary whose sex alone
could render her an object of contempt, his presence restored obedience to
the province of Bithynia, already shaken by the arms and intrigues of
Zenobia. Advancing at the head of his legions, he accepted the submission
of Ancyra, and was admitted into Tyana, after an obstinate siege, by the
help of a perfidious citizen. The generous though fierce temper of
Aurelian abandoned the traitor to the rage of the soldiers; a
superstitious reverence induced him to treat with lenity the countrymen of
Apollonius the philosopher. Antioch was deserted on his approach, till the
emperor, by his salutary edicts, recalled the fugitives, and granted a
general pardon to all, who, from necessity rather than choice, had been
engaged in the service of the Palmyrenian Queen. The unexpected mildness
of such a conduct reconciled the minds of the Syrians, and as far as the
gates of Emesa, the wishes of the people seconded the terror of his arms.
Zenobia would have ill deserved her reputation, had she indolently
permitted the emperor of the West to approach within a hundred miles of
her capital. The fate of the East was decided in two great battles; so
similar in almost every circumstance, that we can scarcely distinguish
them from each other, except by observing that the first was fought near
Antioch, and the second near Emesa. In both the queen of Palmyra animated
the armies by her presence, and devolved the execution of her orders on
Zabdas, who had already signalized his military talents by the conquest of
Egypt. The numerous forces of Zenobia consisted for the most part of light
archers, and of heavy cavalry clothed in complete steel. The Moorish and
Illyrian horse of Aurelian were unable to sustain the ponderous charge of
their antagonists. They fled in real or affected disorder, engaged the
Palmyrenians in a laborious pursuit, harassed them by a desultory combat,
and at length discomfited this impenetrable but unwieldy body of cavalry.
The light infantry, in the mean time, when they had exhausted their
quivers, remaining without protection against a closer onset, exposed
their naked sides to the swords of the legions. Aurelian had chosen these
veteran troops, who were usually stationed on the Upper Danube, and whose
valor had been severely tried in the Alemannic war. After the defeat of
Emesa, Zenobia found it impossible to collect a third army. As far as the
frontier of Egypt, the nations subject to her empire had joined the
standard of the conqueror, who detached Probus, the bravest of his
generals, to possess himself of the Egyptian provinces. Palmyra was the
last resource of the widow of Odenathus. She retired within the walls of
her capital, made every preparation for a vigorous resistance, and
declared, with the intrepidity of a heroine, that the last moment of her
reign and of her life should be the same.
Amid the barren deserts of Arabia, a few cultivated spots rise like
islands out of the sandy ocean. Even the name of Tadmor, or Palmyra, by
its signification in the Syriac as well as in the Latin language, denoted
the multitude of palm-trees which afforded shade and verdure to that
temperate region. The air was pure, and the soil, watered by some
invaluable springs, was capable of producing fruits as well as corn. A
place possessed of such singular advantages, and situated at a convenient
distance between the Gulf of Persia and the Mediterranean, was soon
frequented by the caravans which conveyed to the nations of Europe a
considerable part of the rich commodities of India. Palmyra insensibly
increased into an opulent and independent city, and connecting the Roman
and the Parthian monarchies by the mutual benefits of commerce, was
suffered to observe an humble neutrality, till at length, after the
victories of Trajan, the little republic sunk into the bosom of Rome, and
flourished more than one hundred and fifty years in the subordinate though
honorable rank of a colony. It was during that peaceful period, if we may
judge from a few remaining inscriptions, that the wealthy Palmyrenians
constructed those temples, palaces, and porticos of Grecian architecture,
whose ruins, scattered over an extent of several miles, have deserved the
curiosity of our travellers. The elevation of Odenathus and Zenobia
appeared to reflect new splendor on their country, and Palmyra, for a
while, stood forth the rival of Rome: but the competition was fatal, and
ages of prosperity were sacrificed to a moment of glory.
In his march over the sandy desert between Emesa and Palmyra, the emperor
Aurelian was perpetually harassed by the Arabs; nor could he always defend
his army, and especially his baggage, from those flying troops of active
and daring robbers, who watched the moment of surprise, and eluded the
slow pursuit of the legions. The siege of Palmyra was an object far more
difficult and important, and the emperor, who, with incessant vigor,
pressed the attacks in person, was himself wounded with a dart. "The Roman
people," says Aurelian, in an original letter, "speak with contempt of the
war which I am waging against a woman. They are ignorant both of the
character and of the power of Zenobia. It is impossible to enumerate her
warlike preparations, of stones, of arrows, and of every species of
missile weapons. Every part of the walls is provided with two or three balist
and artificial fires are thrown from her military engines. The fear of
punishment has armed her with a desperate courage. Yet still I trust in
the protecting deities of Rome, who have hitherto been favorable to all my
undertakings." Doubtful, however, of the protection of the gods, and of
the event of the siege, Aurelian judged it more prudent to offer terms of
an advantageous capitulation; to the queen, a splendid retreat; to the
citizens, their ancient privileges. His proposals were obstinately
rejected, and the refusal was accompanied with insult.
The firmness of Zenobia was supported by the hope, that in a very short
time famine would compel the Roman army to repass the desert; and by the
reasonable expectation that the kings of the East, and particularly the
Persian monarch, would arm in the defence of their most natural ally. But
fortune, and the perseverance of Aurelian, overcame every obstacle. The
death of Sapor, which happened about this time, distracted the councils of
Persia, and the inconsiderable succors that attempted to relieve Palmyra,
were easily intercepted either by the arms or the liberality of the
emperor. From every part of Syria, a regular succession of convoys safely
arrived in the camp, which was increased by the return of Probus with his
victorious troops from the conquest of Egypt. It was then that Zenobia
resolved to fly. She mounted the fleetest of her dromedaries, and had
already reached the banks of the Euphrates, about sixty miles from
Palmyra, when she was overtaken by the pursuit of Aurelian's light horse,
seized, and brought back a captive to the feet of the emperor. Her capital
soon afterwards surrendered, and was treated with unexpected lenity. The
arms, horses, and camels, with an immense treasure of gold, silver, silk,
and precious stones, were all delivered to the conqueror, who, leaving
only a garrison of six hundred archers, returned to Emesa, and employed
some time in the distribution of rewards and punishments at the end of so
memorable a war, which restored to the obedience of Rome those provinces
that had renounced their allegiance since the captivity of Valerian.
When the Syrian queen was brought into the presence of Aurelian, he
sternly asked her, How she had presumed to rise in arms against the
emperors of Rome! The answer of Zenobia was a prudent mixture of respect
and firmness. "Because I disdained to consider as Roman emperors an
Aureolus or a Gallienus. You alone I acknowledge as my conqueror and my
sovereign." But as female fortitude is commonly artificial, so it is
seldom steady or consistent. The courage of Zenobia deserted her in the
hour of trial; she trembled at the angry clamors of the soldiers, who
called aloud for her immediate execution, forgot the generous despair of
Cleopatra, which she had proposed as her model, and ignominiously
purchased life by the sacrifice of her fame and her friends. It was to
their counsels, which governed the weakness of her sex, that she imputed
the guilt of her obstinate resistance; it was on their heads that she
directed the vengeance of the cruel Aurelian. The fame of Longinus, who
was included among the numerous and perhaps innocent victims of her fear,
will survive that of the queen who betrayed, or the tyrant who condemned
him. Genius and learning were incapable of moving a fierce unlettered
soldier, but they had served to elevate and harmonize the soul of
Longinus. Without uttering a complaint, he calmly followed the
executioner, pitying his unhappy mistress, and bestowing comfort on his
afflicted friends.
Returning from the conquest of the East, Aurelian had already crossed the
Straits which divided Europe from Asia, when he was provoked by the
intelligence that the Palmyrenians had massacred the governor and garrison
which he had left among them, and again erected the standard of revolt.
Without a moment's deliberation, he once more turned his face towards
Syria. Antioch was alarmed by his rapid approach, and the helpless city of
Palmyra felt the irresistible weight of his resentment. We have a letter
of Aurelian himself, in which he acknowledges, that old men, women,
children, and peasants, had been involved in that dreadful execution,
which should have been confined to armed rebellion; and although his
principal concern seems directed to the reestablishment of a temple of the
Sun, he discovers some pity for the remnant of the Palmyrenians, to whom
he grants the permission of rebuilding and inhabiting their city. But it
is easier to destroy than to restore. The seat of commerce, of arts, and
of Zenobia, gradually sunk into an obscure town, a trifling fortress, and
at length a miserable village. The present citizens of Palmyra, consisting
of thirty or forty families, have erected their mud cottages within the
spacious court of a magnificent temple.
Another and a last labor still awaited the indefatigable Aurelian; to
suppress a dangerous though obscure rebel, who, during the revolt of
Palmyra, had arisen on the banks of the Nile. Firmus, the friend and ally,
as he proudly styled himself, of Odenathus and Zenobia, was no more than a
wealthy merchant of Egypt. In the course of his trade to India, he had
formed very intimate connections with the Saracens and the Blemmyes, whose
situation on either coast of the Red Sea gave them an easy introduction
into the Upper Egypt. The Egyptians he inflamed with the hope of freedom,
and, at the head of their furious multitude, broke into the city of
Alexandria, where he assumed the Imperial purple, coined money, published
edicts, and raised an army, which, as he vainly boasted, he was capable of
maintaining from the sole profits of his paper trade. Such troops were a
feeble defence against the approach of Aurelian; and it seems almost
unnecessary to relate, that Firmus was routed, taken, tortured, and put to
death. Aurelian might now congratulate the senate, the people, and
himself, that in little more than three years, he had restored universal
peace and order to the Roman world.
Since the foundation of Rome, no general had more nobly deserved a triumph
than Aurelian; nor was a triumph ever celebrated with superior pride and
magnificence. The pomp was opened by twenty elephants, four royal tigers,
and above two hundred of the most curious animals from every climate of
the North, the East, and the South. They were followed by sixteen hundred
gladiators, devoted to the cruel amusement of the amphitheatre. The wealth
of Asia, the arms and ensigns of so many conquered nations, and the
magnificent plate and wardrobe of the Syrian queen, were disposed in exact
symmetry or artful disorder. The ambassadors of the most remote parts of
the earth, of Æthiopia, Arabia, Persia, Bactriana, India, and China,
all remarkable by their rich or singular dresses, displayed the fame and
power of the Roman emperor, who exposed likewise to the public view the
presents that he had received, and particularly a great number of crowns
of gold, the offerings of grateful cities. The victories of Aurelian were
attested by the long train of captives who reluctantly attended his
triumph, Goths, Vandals, Sarmatians, Alemanni, Franks, Gauls, Syrians, and
Egyptians. Each people was distinguished by its peculiar inscription, and
the title of Amazons was bestowed on ten martial heroines of the Gothie
nation who had been taken in arms. But every eye, disregarding the crowd
of captives, was fixed on the emperor Tetricus and the queen of the East.
The former, as well as his son, whom he had created Augustus, was dressed
in Gallic trousers, a saffron tunic, and a robe of purple. The beauteous
figure of Zenobia was confined by fetters of gold; a slave supported the
gold chain which encircled her neck, and she almost fainted under the
intolerable weight of jewels. She preceded on foot the magnificent
chariot, in which she once hoped to enter the gates of Rome. It was
followed by two other chariots, still more sumptuous, of Odenathus and of
the Persian monarch. The triumphal car of Aurelian (it had formerly been
used by a Gothic king) was drawn, on this memorable occasion, either by
four stags or by four elephants. The most illustrious of the senate, the
people, and the army closed the solemn procession. Unfeigned joy, wonder,
and gratitude, swelled the acclamations of the multitude; but the
satisfaction of the senate was clouded by the appearance of Tetricus; nor
could they suppress a rising murmur, that the haughty emperor should thus
expose to public ignominy the person of a Roman and a magistrate.
But however, in the treatment of his unfortunate rivals, Aurelian might
indulge his pride, he behaved towards them with a generous clemency, which
was seldom exercised by the ancient conquerors. Princes who, without
success, had defended their throne or freedom, were frequently strangled
in prison, as soon as the triumphal pomp ascended the Capitol. These
usurpers, whom their defeat had convicted of the crime of treason, were
permitted to spend their lives in affluence and honorable repose. The
emperor presented Zenobia with an elegant villa at Tibur, or Tivoli, about
twenty miles from the capital; the Syrian queen insensibly sunk into a
Roman matron, her daughters married into noble families, and her race was
not yet extinct in the fifth century. Tetricus and his son were reinstated
in their rank and fortunes. They erected on the Cælian hill a
magnificent palace, and as soon as it was finished, invited Aurelian to
supper. On his entrance, he was agreeably surprised with a picture which
represented their singular history. They were delineated offering to the
emperor a civic crown and the sceptre of Gaul, and again receiving at his
hands the ornaments of the senatorial dignity. The father was afterwards
invested with the government of Lucania, and Aurelian, who soon admitted
the abdicated monarch to his friendship and conversation, familiarly asked
him, Whether it were not more desirable to administer a province of Italy,
than to reign beyond the Alps. The son long continued a respectable member
of the senate; nor was there any one of the Roman nobility more esteemed
by Aurelian, as well as by his successors.
So long and so various was the pomp of Aurelian's triumph, that although
it opened with the dawn of day, the slow majesty of the procession
ascended not the Capitol before the ninth hour; and it was already dark
when the emperor returned to the palace. The festival was protracted by
theatrical representations, the games of the circus, the hunting of wild
beasts, combats of gladiators, and naval engagements. Liberal donatives
were distributed to the army and people, and several institutions,
agreeable or beneficial to the city, contributed to perpetuate the glory
of Aurelian. A considerable portion of his oriental spoils was consecrated
to the gods of Rome; the Capitol, and every other temple, glittered with
the offerings of his ostentatious piety; and the temple of the Sun alone
received above fifteen thousand pounds of gold. This last was a
magnificent structure, erected by the emperor on the side of the Quirinal
hill, and dedicated, soon after the triumph, to that deity whom Aurelian
adored as the parent of his life and fortunes. His mother had been an
inferior priestess in a chapel of the Sun; a peculiar devotion to the god
of Light was a sentiment which the fortunate peasant imbibed in his
infancy; and every step of his elevation, every victory of his reign,
fortified superstition by gratitude.
The arms of Aurelian had vanquished the foreign and domestic foes of the
republic. We are assured, that, by his salutary rigor, crimes and
factions, mischievous arts and pernicious connivance, the luxurious growth
of a feeble and oppressive government, were eradicated throughout the
Roman world. But if we attentively reflect how much swifter is the
progress of corruption than its cure, and if we remember that the years
abandoned to public disorders exceeded the months allotted to the martial
reign of Aurelian, we must confess that a few short intervals of peace
were insufficient for the arduous work of reformation. Even his attempt to
restore the integrity of the coin was opposed by a formidable
insurrection. The emperor's vexation breaks out in one of his private
letters. "Surely," says he, "the gods have decreed that my life should be
a perpetual warfare. A sedition within the walls has just now given birth
to a very serious civil war. The workmen of the mint, at the instigation
of Felicissimus, a slave to whom I had intrusted an employment in the
finances, have risen in rebellion. They are at length suppressed; but
seven thousand of my soldiers have been slain in the contest, of those
troops whose ordinary station is in Dacia, and the camps along the
Danube." Other writers, who confirm the same fact, add likewise, that it
happened soon after Aurelian's triumph; that the decisive engagement was
fought on the Cælian hill; that the workmen of the mint had
adulterated the coin; and that the emperor restored the public credit, by
delivering out good money in exchange for the bad, which the people was
commanded to bring into the treasury.
We might content ourselves with relating this extraordinary transaction,
but we cannot dissemble how much in its present form it appears to us
inconsistent and incredible. The debasement of the coin is indeed well
suited to the administration of Gallienus; nor is it unlikely that the
instruments of the corruption might dread the inflexible justice of
Aurelian. But the guilt, as well as the profit, must have been confined to
a very few; nor is it easy to conceive by what arts they could arm a
people whom they had injured, against a monarch whom they had betrayed. We
might naturally expect that such miscreants should have shared the public
detestation with the informers and the other ministers of oppression; and
that the reformation of the coin should have been an action equally
popular with the destruction of those obsolete accounts, which by the
emperor's order were burnt in the forum of Trajan. In an age when the
principles of commerce were so imperfectly understood, the most desirable
end might perhaps be effected by harsh and injudicious means; but a
temporary grievance of such a nature can scarcely excite and support a
serious civil war. The repetition of intolerable taxes, imposed either on
the land or on the necessaries of life, may at last provoke those who will
not, or who cannot, relinquish their country. But the case is far
otherwise in every operation which, by whatsoever expedients, restores the
just value of money. The transient evil is soon obliterated by the
permanent benefit, the loss is divided among multitudes; and if a few
wealthy individuals experience a sensible diminution of treasure, with
their riches, they at the same time lose the degree of weight and
importance which they derived from the possession of them. However
Aurelian might choose to disguise the real cause of the insurrection, his
reformation of the coin could furnish only a faint pretence to a party
already powerful and discontented. Rome, though deprived of freedom, was
distracted by faction. The people, towards whom the emperor, himself a
plebeian, always expressed a peculiar fondness, lived in perpetual
dissension with the senate, the equestrian order, and the Prætorian
guards. Nothing less than the firm though secret conspiracy of those
orders, of the authority of the first, the wealth of the second, and the
arms of the third, could have displayed a strength capable of contending
in battle with the veteran legions of the Danube, which, under the conduct
of a martial sovereign, had achieved the conquest of the West and of the
East.
Whatever was the cause or the object of this rebellion, imputed with so
little probability to the workmen of the mint, Aurelian used his victory
with unrelenting rigor. He was naturally of a severe disposition. A
peasant and a soldier, his nerves yielded not easily to the impressions of
sympathy, and he could sustain without emotion the sight of tortures and
death. Trained from his earliest youth in the exercise of arms, he set too
small a value on the life of a citizen, chastised by military execution
the slightest offences, and transferred the stern discipline of the camp
into the civil administration of the laws. His love of justice often
became a blind and furious passion and whenever he deemed his own or the
public safety endangered, he disregarded the rules of evidence, and the
proportion of punishments. The unprovoked rebellion with which the Romans
rewarded his services, exasperated his haughty spirit. The noblest
families of the capital were involved in the guilt or suspicion of this
dark conspiracy. A nasty spirit of revenge urged the bloody prosecution,
and it proved fatal to one of the nephews of the emperor. The executioners
(if we may use the expression of a contemporary poet) were fatigued, the
prisons were crowded, and the unhappy senate lamented the death or absence
of its most illustrious members. Nor was the pride of Aurelian less
offensive to that assembly than his cruelty. Ignorant or impatient of the
restraints of civil institutions, he disdained to hold his power by any
other title than that of the sword, and governed by right of conquest an
empire which he had saved and subdued.
It was observed by one of the most sagacious of the Roman princes, that
the talents of his predecessor Aurelian were better suited to the command
of an army, than to the government of an empire. Conscious of the
character in which nature and experience had enabled him to excel, he
again took the field a few months after his triumph. It was expedient to
exercise the restless temper of the legions in some foreign war, and the
Persian monarch, exulting in the shame of Valerian, still braved with
impunity the offended majesty of Rome. At the head of an army, less
formidable by its numbers than by its discipline and valor, the emperor
advanced as far as the Straits which divide Europe from Asia. He there
experienced that the most absolute power is a weak defence against the
effects of despair. He had threatened one of his secretaries who was
accused of extortion; and it was known that he seldom threatened in vain.
The last hope which remained for the criminal, was to involve some of the
principal officers of the army in his danger, or at least in his fears.
Artfully counterfeiting his master's hand, he showed them, in a long and
bloody list, their own names devoted to death. Without suspecting or
examining the fraud, they resolved to secure their lives by the murder of
the emperor. On his march, between Byzanthium and Heraclea, Aurelian was
suddenly attacked by the conspirators, whose stations gave them a right to
surround his person, and after a short resistance, fell by the hand of
Mucapor, a general whom he had always loved and trusted. He died regretted
by the army, detested by the senate, but universally acknowledged as a
warlike and fortunate prince, the useful, though severe reformer of a
degenerate state.
Conduct Of The Army And Senate After The Death Of Aurelian.—Reigns Of Tacitus, Probus, Carus, And His Sons.
Such was the unhappy condition of the Roman emperors, that, whatever might
be their conduct, their fate was commonly the same. A life of pleasure or
virtue, of severity or mildness, of indolence or glory, alike led to an
untimely grave; and almost every reign is closed by the same disgusting
repetition of treason and murder. The death of Aurelian, however, is
remarkable by its extraordinary consequences. The legions admired,
lamented, and revenged their victorious chief. The artifice of his
perfidious secretary was discovered and punished. The deluded conspirators
attended the funeral of their injured sovereign, with sincere or
well-feigned contrition, and submitted to the unanimous resolution of the
military order, which was signified by the following epistle: "The brave
and fortunate armies to the senate and people of Rome.—The crime of
one man, and the error of many, have deprived us of the late emperor
Aurelian. May it please you, venerable lords and fathers! to place him in
the number of the gods, and to appoint a successor whom your judgment
shall declare worthy of the Imperial purple! None of those whose guilt or
misfortune have contributed to our loss, shall ever reign over us." The
Roman senators heard, without surprise, that another emperor had been
assassinated in his camp; they secretly rejoiced in the fall of Aurelian;
and, besides the recent notoriety of the facts, constantly draws his
materials from the Journals of the Senate, and the but the modest and
dutiful address of the legions, when it was communicated in full assembly
by the consul, diffused the most pleasing astonishment. Such honors as
fear and perhaps esteem could extort, they liberally poured forth on the
memory of their deceased sovereign. Such acknowledgments as gratitude
could inspire, they returned to the faithful armies of the republic, who
entertained so just a sense of the legal authority of the senate in the
choice of an emperor. Yet, notwithstanding this flattering appeal, the
most prudent of the assembly declined exposing their safety and dignity to
the caprice of an armed multitude. The strength of the legions was,
indeed, a pledge of their sincerity, since those who may command are
seldom reduced to the necessity of dissembling; but could it naturally be
expected, that a hasty repentance would correct the inveterate habits of
fourscore years? Should the soldiers relapse into their accustomed
seditions, their insolence might disgrace the majesty of the senate, and
prove fatal to the object of its choice. Motives like these dictated a
decree, by which the election of a new emperor was referred to the
suffrage of the military order.
The contention that ensued is one of the best attested, but most
improbable events in the history of mankind. The troops, as if satiated
with the exercise of power, again conjured the senate to invest one of its
own body with the Imperial purple. The senate still persisted in its
refusal; the army in its request. The reciprocal offer was pressed and
rejected at least three times, and, whilst the obstinate modesty of either
party was resolved to receive a master from the hands of the other, eight
months insensibly elapsed; an amazing period of tranquil anarchy, during
which the Roman world remained without a sovereign, without a usurper, and
without a sedition. * The generals and magistrates appointed by Aurelian
continued to execute their ordinary functions; and it is observed, that a
proconsul of Asia was the only considerable person removed from his office
in the whole course of the interregnum.
An event somewhat similar, but much less authentic, is supposed to have
happened after the death of Romulus, who, in his life and character, bore
some affinity with Aurelian. The throne was vacant during twelve months,
till the election of a Sabine philosopher, and the public peace was
guarded in the same manner, by the union of the several orders of the
state. But, in the time of Numa and Romulus, the arms of the people were
controlled by the authority of the Patricians; and the balance of freedom
was easily preserved in a small and virtuous community. The decline of the
Roman state, far different from its infancy, was attended with every
circumstance that could banish from an interregnum the prospect of
obedience and harmony: an immense and tumultuous capital, a wide extent of
empire, the servile equality of despotism, an army of four hundred
thousand mercenaries, and the experience of frequent revolutions. Yet,
notwithstanding all these temptations, the discipline and memory of
Aurelian still restrained the seditious temper of the troops, as well as
the fatal ambition of their leaders. The flower of the legions maintained
their stations on the banks of the Bosphorus, and the Imperial standard
awed the less powerful camps of Rome and of the provinces. A generous
though transient enthusiasm seemed to animate the military order; and we
may hope that a few real patriots cultivated the returning friendship of
the army and the senate, as the only expedient capable of restoring the
republic to its ancient beauty and vigor.
On the twenty-fifth of September, near eight months after the murder of
Aurelian, the consul convoked an assembly of the senate, and reported the
doubtful and dangerous situation of the empire. He slightly insinuated,
that the precarious loyalty of the soldiers depended on the chance of
every hour, and of every accident; but he represented, with the most
convincing eloquence, the various dangers that might attend any further
delay in the choice of an emperor. Intelligence, he said, was already
received, that the Germans had passed the Rhine, and occupied some of the
strongest and most opulent cities of Gaul. The ambition of the Persian
king kept the East in perpetual alarms; Egypt, Africa, and Illyricum, were
exposed to foreign and domestic arms, and the levity of Syria would prefer
even a female sceptre to the sanctity of the Roman laws. The consul, then
addressing himself to Tacitus, the first of the senators, required his
opinion on the important subject of a proper candidate for the vacant
throne.
If we can prefer personal merit to accidental greatness, we shall esteem
the birth of Tacitus more truly noble than that of kings. He claimed his
descent from the philosophic historian, whose writings will instruct the
last generations of mankind. The senator Tacitus was then seventy-five
years of age. The long period of his innocent life was adorned with wealth
and honors. He had twice been invested with the consular dignity, and
enjoyed with elegance and sobriety his ample patrimony of between two and
three millions sterling. The experience of so many princes, whom he had
esteemed or endured, from the vain follies of Elagabalus to the useful
rigor of Aurelian, taught him to form a just estimate of the duties, the
dangers, and the temptations of their sublime station. From the assiduous
study of his immortal ancestor, he derived the knowledge of the Roman
constitution, and of human nature. The voice of the people had already
named Tacitus as the citizen the most worthy of empire. The ungrateful
rumor reached his ears, and induced him to seek the retirement of one of
his villas in Campania. He had passed two months in the delightful privacy
of Baiæ, when he reluctantly obeyed the summons of the consul to
resume his honorable place in the senate, and to assist the republic with
his counsels on this important occasion.
He arose to speak, when from every quarter of the house, he was saluted
with the names of Augustus and emperor. "Tacitus Augustus, the gods
preserve thee! we choose thee for our sovereign; to thy care we intrust
the republic and the world. Accept the empire from the authority of the
senate. It is due to thy rank, to thy conduct, to thy manners." As soon as
the tumult of acclamations subsided, Tacitus attempted to decline the
dangerous honor, and to express his wonder, that they should elect his age
and infirmities to succeed the martial vigor of Aurelian. "Are these
limbs, conscript fathers! fitted to sustain the weight of armor, or to
practise the exercises of the camp? The variety of climates, and the
hardships of a military life, would soon oppress a feeble constitution,
which subsists only by the most tender management. My exhausted strength
scarcely enables me to discharge the duty of a senator; how insufficient
would it prove to the arduous labors of war and government! Can you hope,
that the legions will respect a weak old man, whose days have been spent
in the shade of peace and retirement? Can you desire that I should ever
find reason to regret the favorable opinion of the senate?"
The reluctance of Tacitus (and it might possibly be sincere) was
encountered by the affectionate obstinacy of the senate. Five hundred
voices repeated at once, in eloquent confusion, that the greatest of the
Roman princes, Numa, Trajan, Hadrian, and the Antonines, had ascended the
throne in a very advanced season of life; that the mind, not the body, a
sovereign, not a soldier, was the object of their choice; and that they
expected from him no more than to guide by his wisdom the valor of the
legions. These pressing though tumultuary instances were seconded by a
more regular oration of Metius Falconius, the next on the consular bench
to Tacitus himself. He reminded the assembly of the evils which Rome had
endured from the vices of headstrong and capricious youths, congratulated
them on the election of a virtuous and experienced senator, and, with a
manly, though perhaps a selfish, freedom, exhorted Tacitus to remember the
reasons of his elevation, and to seek a successor, not in his own family,
but in the republic. The speech of Falconius was enforced by a general
acclamation. The emperor elect submitted to the authority of his country,
and received the voluntary homage of his equals. The judgment of the
senate was confirmed by the consent of the Roman people, and of the Prætorian
guards.
The administration of Tacitus was not unworthy of his life and principles.
A grateful servant of the senate, he considered that national council as
the author, and himself as the subject, of the laws. He studied to heal
the wounds which Imperial pride, civil discord, and military violence, had
inflicted on the constitution, and to restore, at least, the image of the
ancient republic, as it had been preserved by the policy of Augustus, and
the virtues of Trajan and the Antonines. It may not be useless to
recapitulate some of the most important prerogatives which the senate
appeared to have regained by the election of Tacitus. 1. To invest one of
their body, under the title of emperor, with the general command of the
armies, and the government of the frontier provinces. 2. To determine the
list, or, as it was then styled, the College of Consuls. They were twelve
in number, who, in successive pairs, each, during the space of two months,
filled the year, and represented the dignity of that ancient office. The
authority of the senate, in the nomination of the consuls, was exercised
with such independent freedom, that no regard was paid to an irregular
request of the emperor in favor of his brother Florianus. "The senate,"
exclaimed Tacitus, with the honest transport of a patriot, "understand the
character of a prince whom they have chosen." 3. To appoint the proconsuls
and presidents of the provinces, and to confer on all the magistrates
their civil jurisdiction. 4. To receive appeals through the intermediate
office of the præfect of the city from all the tribunals of the
empire. 5. To give force and validity, by their decrees, to such as they
should approve of the emperor's edicts. 6. To these several branches of
authority we may add some inspection over the finances, since, even in the
stern reign of Aurelian, it was in their power to divert a part of the
revenue from the public service.
Circular epistles were sent, without delay, to all the principal cities of
the empire, Treves, Milan, Aquileia, Thessalo nica, Corinth, Athens,
Antioch, Alexandria, and Carthage, to claim their obedience, and to inform
them of the happy revolution, which had restored the Roman senate to its
ancient dignity. Two of these epistles are still extant. We likewise
possess two very singular fragments of the private correspondence of the
senators on this occasion. They discover the most excessive joy, and the
most unbounded hopes. "Cast away your indolence," it is thus that one of
the senators addresses his friend, "emerge from your retirements of Baiæ
and Puteoli. Give yourself to the city, to the senate. Rome flourishes,
the whole republic flourishes. Thanks to the Roman army, to an army truly
Roman; at length we have recovered our just authority, the end of all our
desires. We hear appeals, we appoint proconsuls, we create emperors;
perhaps too we may restrain them—to the wise a word is sufficient."
These lofty expectations were, however, soon disappointed; nor, indeed,
was it possible that the armies and the provinces should long obey the
luxurious and unwarlike nobles of Rome. On the slightest touch, the
unsupported fabric of their pride and power fell to the ground. The
expiring senate displayed a sudden lustre, blazed for a moment and was
extinguished forever.
All that had yet passed at Rome was no more than a theatrical
representation, unless it was ratified by the more substantial power of
the legions. Leaving the senators to enjoy their dream of freedom and
ambition, Tacitus proceeded to the Thracian camp, and was there, by the Prætorian
præfect, presented to the assembled troops, as the prince whom they
themselves had demanded, and whom the senate had bestowed. As soon as the
præfect was silent, the emperor addressed himself to the soldiers
with eloquence and propriety. He gratified their avarice by a liberal
distribution of treasure, under the names of pay and donative. He engaged
their esteem by a spirited declaration, that although his age might
disable him from the performance of military exploits, his counsels should
never be unworthy of a Roman general, the successor of the brave Aurelian.
Whilst the deceased emperor was making preparations for a second
expedition into the East, he had negotiated with the Alani, * a Scythian
people, who pitched their tents in the neighborhood of the Lake Moeotis.
Those barbarians, allured by presents and subsidies, had promised to
invade Persia with a numerous body of light cavalry. They were faithful to
their engagements; but when they arrived on the Roman frontier, Aurelian
was already dead, the design of the Persian war was at least suspended,
and the generals, who, during the interregnum, exercised a doubtful
authority, were unprepared either to receive or to oppose them. Provoked
by such treatment, which they considered as trifling and perfidious, the
Alani had recourse to their own valor for their payment and revenge; and
as they moved with the usual swiftness of Tartars, they had soon spread
themselves over the provinces of Pontus, Cappadocia, Cilicia, and Galatia.
The legions, who from the opposite shores of the Bosphorus could almost
distinguish the flames of the cities and villages, impatiently urged their
general to lead them against the invaders. The conduct of Tacitus was
suitable to his age and station. He convinced the barbarians of the faith,
as well as the power, of the empire. Great numbers of the Alani, appeased
by the punctual discharge of the engagements which Aurelian had contracted
with them, relinquished their booty and captives, and quietly retreated to
their own deserts, beyond the Phasis. Against the remainder, who refused
peace, the Roman emperor waged, in person, a successful war. Seconded by
an army of brave and experienced veterans, in a few weeks he delivered the
provinces of Asia from the terror of the Scythian invasion.
But the glory and life of Tacitus were of short duration. Transported, in
the depth of winter, from the soft retirement of Campania to the foot of
Mount Caucasus, he sunk under the unaccustomed hardships of a military
life. The fatigues of the body were aggravated by the cares of the mind.
For a while, the angry and selfish passions of the soldiers had been
suspended by the enthusiasm of public virtue. They soon broke out with
redoubled violence, and raged in the camp, and even in the tent of the
aged emperor. His mild and amiable character served only to inspire
contempt, and he was incessantly tormented with factions which he could
not assuage, and by demands which it was impossible to satisfy. Whatever
flattering expectations he had conceived of reconciling the public
disorders, Tacitus soon was convinced that the licentiousness of the army
disdained the feeble restraint of laws, and his last hour was hastened by
anguish and disappointment. It may be doubtful whether the soldiers
imbrued their hands in the blood of this innocent prince. It is certain
that their insolences was the cause of his death. He expired at Tyana in
Cappadocia, after a reign of only six months and about twenty days.
The eyes of Tacitus were scarcely closed, before his brother Florianus
showed himself unworthy to reign, by the hasty usurpation of the purple,
without expecting the approbation of the senate. The reverence for the
Roman constitution, which yet influenced the camp and the provinces, was
sufficiently strong to dispose them to censure, but not to provoke them to
oppose, the precipitate ambition of Florianus. The discontent would have
evaporated in idle murmurs, had not the general of the East, the heroic
Probus, boldly declared himself the avenger of the senate. The contest,
however, was still unequal; nor could the most able leader, at the head of
the effeminate troops of Egypt and Syria, encounter, with any hopes of
victory, the legions of Europe, whose irresistible strength appeared to
support the brother of Tacitus. But the fortune and activity of Probus
triumphed over every obstacle. The hardy veterans of his rival, accustomed
to cold climates, sickened and consumed away in the sultry heats of
Cilicia, where the summer proved remarkably unwholesome. Their numbers
were diminished by frequent desertion; the passes of the mountains were
feebly defended; Tarsus opened its gates; and the soldiers of Florianus,
when they had permitted him to enjoy the Imperial title about three
months, delivered the empire from civil war by the easy sacrifice of a
prince whom they despised.
The perpetual revolutions of the throne had so perfectly erased every
notion of hereditary title, that the family of an unfortunate emperor was
incapable of exciting the jealousy of his successors. The children of
Tacitus and Florianus were permitted to descend into a private station,
and to mingle with the general mass of the people. Their poverty indeed
became an additional safeguard to their innocence. When Tacitus was
elected by the senate, he resigned his ample patrimony to the public
service; an act of generosity specious in appearance, but which evidently
disclosed his intention of transmitting the empire to his descendants. The
only consolation of their fallen state was the remembrance of transient
greatness, and a distant hope, the child of a flattering prophecy, that at
the end of a thousand years, a monarch of the race of Tacitus should
arise, the protector of the senate, the restorer of Rome, and the
conqueror of the whole earth.
The peasants of Illyricum, who had already given Claudius and Aurelian to
the sinking empire, had an equal right to glory in the elevation of
Probus. Above twenty years before, the emperor Valerian, with his usual
penetration, had discovered the rising merit of the young soldier, on whom
he conferred the rank of tribune, long before the age prescribed by the
military regulations. The tribune soon justified his choice, by a victory
over a great body of Sarmatians, in which he saved the life of a near
relation of Valerian; and deserved to receive from the emperor's hand the
collars, bracelets, spears, and banners, the mural and the civic crown,
and all the honorable rewards reserved by ancient Rome for successful
valor. The third, and afterwards the tenth, legion were intrusted to the
command of Probus, who, in every step of his promotion, showed himself
superior to the station which he filled. Africa and Pontus, the Rhine, the
Danube, the Euphrates, and the Nile, by turns afforded him the most
splendid occasions of displaying his personal prowess and his conduct in
war. Aurelian was indebted for the honest courage with which he often
checked the cruelty of his master. Tacitus, who desired by the abilities
of his generals to supply his own deficiency of military talents, named
him commander-in-chief of all the eastern provinces, with five times the
usual salary, the promise of the consulship, and the hope of a triumph.
When Probus ascended the Imperial throne, he was about forty-four years of
age; in the full possession of his fame, of the love of the army, and of a
mature vigor of mind and body.
His acknowledge merit, and the success of his arms against Florianus, left
him without an enemy or a competitor. Yet, if we may credit his own
professions, very far from being desirous of the empire, he had accepted
it with the most sincere reluctance. "But it is no longer in my power,"
says Probus, in a private letter, "to lay down a title so full of envy and
of danger. I must continue to personate the character which the soldiers
have imposed upon me." His dutiful address to the senate displayed the
sentiments, or at least the language, of a Roman patriot: "When you
elected one of your order, conscript fathers! to succeed the emperor
Aurelian, you acted in a manner suitable to your justice and wisdom. For
you are the legal sovereigns of the world, and the power which you derive
from your ancestors will descend to your posterity. Happy would it have
been, if Florianus, instead of usurping the purple of his brother, like a
private inheritance, had expected what your majesty might determine,
either in his favor, or in that of other person. The prudent soldiers have
punished his rashness. To me they have offered the title of Augustus. But
I submit to your clemency my pretensions and my merits." When this
respectful epistle was read by the consul, the senators were unable to
disguise their satisfaction, that Probus should condescend thus numbly to
solicit a sceptre which he already possessed. They celebrated with the
warmest gratitude his virtues, his exploits, and above all his moderation.
A decree immediately passed, without a dissenting voice, to ratify the
election of the eastern armies, and to confer on their chief all the
several branches of the Imperial dignity: the names of Cæsar and
Augustus, the title of Father of his country, the right of making in the
same day three motions in the senate, the office of Pontifex, Maximus, the
tribunitian power, and the proconsular command; a mode of investiture,
which, though it seemed to multiply the authority of the emperor,
expressed the constitution of the ancient republic. The reign of Probus
corresponded with this fair beginning. The senate was permitted to direct
the civil administration of the empire. Their faithful general asserted
the honor of the Roman arms, and often laid at their feet crowns of gold
and barbaric trophies, the fruits of his numerous victories. Yet, whilst
he gratified their vanity, he must secretly have despised their indolence
and weakness. Though it was every moment in their power to repeal the
disgraceful edict of Gallienus, the proud successors of the Scipios
patiently acquiesced in their exclusion from all military employments.
They soon experienced, that those who refuse the sword must renounce the
sceptre.
The strength of Aurelian had crushed on every side the enemies of Rome.
After his death they seemed to revive with an increase of fury and of
numbers. They were again vanquished by the active vigor of Probus, who, in
a short reign of about six years, equalled the fame of ancient heroes, and
restored peace and order to every province of the Roman world. The
dangerous frontier of Rhætia he so firmly secured, that he left it
without the suspicion of an enemy. He broke the wandering power of the
Sarmatian tribes, and by the terror of his arms compelled those barbarians
to relinquish their spoil. The Gothic nation courted the alliance of so
warlike an emperor. He attacked the Isaurians in their mountains, besieged
and took several of their strongest castles, and flattered himself that he
had forever suppressed a domestic foe, whose independence so deeply
wounded the majesty of the empire. The troubles excited by the usurper
Firmus in the Upper Egypt had never been perfectly appeased, and the
cities of Ptolemais and Coptos, fortified by the alliance of the Blemmyes,
still maintained an obscure rebellion. The chastisement of those cities,
and of their auxiliaries the savages of the South, is said to have alarmed
the court of Persia, and the Great King sued in vain for the friendship of
Probus. Most of the exploits which distinguished his reign were achieved
by the personal valor and conduct of the emperor, insomuch that the writer
of his life expresses some amazement how, in so short a time, a single man
could be present in so many distant wars. The remaining actions he
intrusted to the care of his lieutenants, the judicious choice of whom
forms no inconsiderable part of his glory. Carus, Diocletian, Maximian,
Constantius, Galerius, Asclepiodatus, Annibalianus, and a crowd of other
chiefs, who afterwards ascended or supported the throne, were trained to
arms in the severe school of Aurelian and Probus.
But the most important service which Probus rendered to the republic was
the deliverance of Gaul, and the recovery of seventy flourishing cities
oppressed by the barbarians of Germany, who, since the death of Aurelian,
had ravaged that great province with impunity. Among the various multitude
of those fierce invaders we may distinguish, with some degree of
clearness, three great armies, or rather nations, successively vanquished
by the valor of Probus. He drove back the Franks into their morasses; a
descriptive circumstance from whence we may infer, that the confederacy
known by the manly appellation of Free, already occupied the flat
maritime country, intersected and almost overflown by the stagnating
waters of the Rhine, and that several tribes of the Frisians and Batavians
had acceded to their alliance. He vanquished the Burgundians, a
considerable people of the Vandalic race. * They had wandered in quest of
booty from the banks of the Oder to those of the Seine. They esteemed
themselves sufficiently fortunate to purchase, by the restitution of all
their booty, the permission of an undisturbed retreat. They attempted to
elude that article of the treaty. Their punishment was immediate and
terrible. But of all the invaders of Gaul, the most formidable were the
Lygians, a distant people, who reigned over a wide domain on the frontiers
of Poland and Silesia. In the Lygian nation, the Arii held the first rank
by their numbers and fierceness. "The Arii" (it is thus that they are
described by the energy of Tacitus) "study to improve by art and
circumstances the innate terrors of their barbarism. Their shields are
black, their bodies are painted black. They choose for the combat the
darkest hour of the night. Their host advances, covered as it were with a
funeral shade; nor do they often find an enemy capable of sustaining so
strange and infernal an aspect. Of all our senses, the eyes are the first
vanquished in battle." Yet the arms and discipline of the Romans easily
discomfited these horrid phantoms. The Lygii were defeated in a general
engagement, and Semno, the most renowned of their chiefs, fell alive into
the hands of Probus. That prudent emperor, unwilling to reduce a brave
people to despair, granted them an honorable capitulation, and permitted
them to return in safety to their native country. But the losses which
they suffered in the march, the battle, and the retreat, broke the power
of the nation: nor is the Lygian name ever repeated in the history either
of Germany or of the empire. The deliverance of Gaul is reported to have
cost the lives of four hundred thousand of the invaders; a work of labor
to the Romans, and of expense to the emperor, who gave a piece of gold for
the head of every barbarian. But as the fame of warriors is built on the
destruction of human kind, we may naturally suspect, that the sanguinary
account was multiplied by the avarice of the soldiers, and accepted
without any very severe examination by the liberal vanity of Probus.
Since the expedition of Maximin, the Roman generals had confined their
ambition to a defensive war against the nations of Germany, who
perpetually pressed on the frontiers of the empire. The more daring Probus
pursued his Gallic victories, passed the Rhine, and displayed his
invincible eagles on the banks of the Elbe and the Necker. He was fully
convinced that nothing could reconcile the minds of the barbarians to
peace, unless they experienced, in their own country, the calamities of
war. Germany, exhausted by the ill success of the last emigration, was
astonished by his presence. Nine of the most considerable princes repaired
to his camp, and fell prostrate at his feet. Such a treaty was humbly
received by the Germans, as it pleased the conqueror to dictate. He
exacted a strict restitution of the effects and captives which they had
carried away from the provinces; and obliged their own magistrates to
punish the more obstinate robbers who presumed to detain any part of the
spoil. A considerable tribute of corn, cattle, and horses, the only wealth
of barbarians, was reserved for the use of the garrisons which Probus
established on the limits of their territory. He even entertained some
thoughts of compelling the Germans to relinquish the exercise of arms, and
to trust their differences to the justice, their safety to the power, of
Rome. To accomplish these salutary ends, the constant residence of an
Imperial governor, supported by a numerous army, was indispensably
requisite. Probus therefore judged it more expedient to defer the
execution of so great a design; which was indeed rather of specious than
solid utility. Had Germany been reduced into the state of a province, the
Romans, with immense labor and expense, would have acquired only a more
extensive boundary to defend against the fiercer and more active
barbarians of Scythia.
Instead of reducing the warlike natives of Germany to the condition of
subjects, Probus contented himself with the humble expedient of raising a
bulwark against their inroads. The country which now forms the circle of
Swabia had been left desert in the age of Augustus by the emigration of
its ancient inhabitants. The fertility of the soil soon attracted a new
colony from the adjacent provinces of Gaul. Crowds of adventurers, of a
roving temper and of desperate fortunes, occupied the doubtful possession,
and acknowledged, by the payment of tithes the majesty of the empire. To
protect these new subjects, a line of frontier garrisons was gradually
extended from the Rhine to the Danube. About the reign of Hadrian, when
that mode of defence began to be practised, these garrisons were connected
and covered by a strong intrenchment of trees and palisades. In the place
of so rude a bulwark, the emperor Probus constructed a stone wall of a
considerable height, and strengthened it by towers at convenient
distances. From the neighborhood of Newstadt and Ratisbon on the Danube,
it stretched across hills, valleys, rivers, and morasses, as far as
Wimpfen on the Necker, and at length terminated on the banks of the Rhine,
after a winding course of near two hundred miles. This important barrier,
uniting the two mighty streams that protected the provinces of Europe,
seemed to fill up the vacant space through which the barbarians, and
particularly the Alemanni, could penetrate with the greatest facility into
the heart of the empire. But the experience of the world, from China to
Britain, has exposed the vain attempt of fortifying any extensive tract of
country. An active enemy, who can select and vary his points of attack,
must, in the end, discover some feeble spot, on some unguarded moment. The
strength, as well as the attention, of the defenders is divided; and such
are the blind effects of terror on the firmest troops, that a line broken
in a single place is almost instantly deserted. The fate of the wall which
Probus erected may confirm the general observation. Within a few years
after his death, it was overthrown by the Alemanni. Its scattered ruins,
universally ascribed to the power of the Dæmon, now serve only to
excite the wonder of the Swabian peasant.
Among the useful conditions of peace imposed by Probus on the vanquished
nations of Germany, was the obligation of supplying the Roman army with
sixteen thousand recruits, the bravest and most robust of their youth. The
emperor dispersed them through all the provinces, and distributed this
dangerous reenforcement, in small bands of fifty or sixty each, among the
national troops; judiciously observing, that the aid which the republic
derived from the barbarians should be felt but not seen. Their aid was now
become necessary. The feeble elegance of Italy and the internal provinces
could no longer support the weight of arms. The hardy frontiers of the
Rhine and Danube still produced minds and bodies equal to the labors of
the camp; but a perpetual series of wars had gradually diminished their
numbers. The infrequency of marriage, and the ruin of agriculture,
affected the principles of population, and not only destroyed the strength
of the present, but intercepted the hope of future, generations. The
wisdom of Probus embraced a great and beneficial plan of replenishing the
exhausted frontiers, by new colonies of captive or fugitive barbarians, on
whom he bestowed lands, cattle, instruments of husbandry, and every
encouragement that might engage them to educate a race of soldiers for the
service of the republic. Into Britain, and most probably into
Cambridgeshire, he transported a considerable body of Vandals. The
impossibility of an escape reconciled them to their situation, and in the
subsequent troubles of that island, they approved themselves the most
faithful servants of the state. Great numbers of Franks and Gepidæ
were settled on the banks of the Danube and the Rhine. A hundred thousand
Bastarnæ, expelled from their own country, cheerfully accepted an
establishment in Thrace, and soon imbibed the manners and sentiments of
Roman subjects. But the expectations of Probus were too often
disappointed. The impatience and idleness of the barbarians could ill
brook the slow labors of agriculture. Their unconquerable love of freedom,
rising against despotism, provoked them into hasty rebellions, alike fatal
to themselves and to the provinces; nor could these artificial supplies,
however repeated by succeeding emperors, restore the important limit of
Gaul and Illyricum to its ancient and native vigor.
Of all the barbarians who abandoned their new settlements, and disturbed
the public tranquillity, a very small number returned to their own
country. For a short season they might wander in arms through the empire;
but in the end they were surely destroyed by the power of a warlike
emperor. The successful rashness of a party of Franks was attended,
however, with such memorable consequences, that it ought not to be passed
unnoticed. They had been established by Probus, on the sea-coast of
Pontus, with a view of strengthening the frontier against the inroads of
the Alani. A fleet stationed in one of the harbors of the Euxine fell into
the hands of the Franks; and they resolved, through unknown seas, to
explore their way from the mouth of the Phasis to that of the Rhine. They
easily escaped through the Bosphorus and the Hellespont, and cruising
along the Mediterranean, indulged their appetite for revenge and plunder
by frequent descents on the unsuspecting shores of Asia, Greece, and
Africa. The opulent city of Syracuse, in whose port the natives of Athens
and Carthage had formerly been sunk, was sacked by a handful of
barbarians, who massacred the greatest part of the trembling inhabitants.
From the Island of Sicily, the Franks proceeded to the columns of
Hercules, trusted themselves to the ocean, coasted round Spain and Gaul,
and steering their triumphant course through the British Channel, at
length finished their surprising voyage, by landing in safety on the
Batavian or Frisian shores. The example of their success, instructing
their countrymen to conceive the advantages and to despise the dangers of
the sea, pointed out to their enterprising spirit a new road to wealth and
glory.
Notwithstanding the vigilance and activity of Probus, it was almost
impossible that he could at once contain in obedience every part of his
wide-extended dominions. The barbarians, who broke their chains, had
seized the favorable opportunity of a domestic war. When the emperor
marched to the relief of Gaul, he devolved the command of the East on
Saturninus. That general, a man of merit and experience, was driven into
rebellion by the absence of his sovereign, the levity of the Alexandrian
people, the pressing instances of his friends, and his own fears; but from
the moment of his elevation, he never entertained a hope of empire, or
even of life. "Alas!" he said, "the republic has lost a useful servant,
and the rashness of an hour has destroyed the services of many years. You
know not," continued he, "the misery of sovereign power; a sword is
perpetually suspended over our head. We dread our very guards, we distrust
our companions. The choice of action or of repose is no longer in our
disposition, nor is there any age, or character, or conduct, that can
protect us from the censure of envy. In thus exalting me to the throne,
you have doomed me to a life of cares, and to an untimely fate. The only
consolation which remains is, the assurance that I shall not fall alone."
But as the former part of his prediction was verified by the victory, so
the latter was disappointed by the clemency of Probus. That amiable prince
attempted even to save the unhappy Saturninus from the fury of the
soldiers. He had more than once solicited the usurper himself to place
some confidence in the mercy of a sovereign who so highly esteemed his
character, that he had punished, as a malicious informer, the first who
related the improbable news of his disaffection. Saturninus might,
perhaps, have embraced the generous offer, had he not been restrained by
the obstinate distrust of his adherents. Their guilt was deeper, and their
hopes more sanguine, than those of their experienced leader.
The revolt of Saturninus was scarcely extinguished in the East, before new
troubles were excited in the West, by the rebellion of Bonosus and
Proculus, in Gaul. The most distinguished merit of those two officers was
their respective prowess, of the one in the combats of Bacchus, of the
other in those of Venus, yet neither of them was destitute of courage and
capacity, and both sustained, with honor, the august character which the
fear of punishment had engaged them to assume, till they sunk at length
beneath the superior genius of Probus. He used the victory with his
accustomed moderation, and spared the fortune, as well as the lives of
their innocent families.
The arms of Probus had now suppressed all the foreign and domestic enemies
of the state. His mild but steady administration confirmed the
reestablishment of the public tranquillity; nor was there left in the
provinces a hostile barbarian, a tyrant, or even a robber, to revive the
memory of past disorders. It was time that the emperor should revisit
Rome, and celebrate his own glory and the general happiness. The triumph
due to the valor of Probus was conducted with a magnificence suitable to
his fortune, and the people who had so lately admired the trophies of
Aurelian, gazed with equal pleasure on those of his heroic successor. We
cannot, on this occasion, forget the desperate courage of about fourscore
gladiators, reserved, with near six hundred others, for the inhuman sports
of the amphitheatre. Disdaining to shed their blood for the amusement of
the populace, they killed their keepers, broke from the place of their
confinement, and filled the streets of Rome with blood and confusion.
After an obstinate resistance, they were overpowered and cut in pieces by
the regular forces; but they obtained at least an honorable death, and the
satisfaction of a just revenge.
The military discipline which reigned in the camps of Probus was less
cruel than that of Aurelian, but it was equally rigid and exact. The
latter had punished the irregularities of the soldiers with unrelenting
severity, the former prevented them by employing the legions in constant
and useful labors. When Probus commanded in Egypt, he executed many
considerable works for the splendor and benefit of that rich country. The
navigation of the Nile, so important to Rome itself, was improved; and
temples, buildings, porticos, and palaces were constructed by the hands of
the soldiers, who acted by turns as architects, as engineers, and as
husbandmen. It was reported of Hannibal, that in order to preserve his
troops from the dangerous temptations of idleness, he had obliged them to
form large plantations of olive-trees along the coast of Africa. From a
similar principle, Probus exercised his legions in covering with rich
vineyards the hills of Gaul and Pannonia, and two considerable spots are
described, which were entirely dug and planted by military labor. One of
these, known under the name of Mount Almo, was situated near Sirmium, the
country where Probus was born, for which he ever retained a partial
affection, and whose gratitude he endeavored to secure, by converting into
tillage a large and unhealthy tract of marshy ground. An army thus
employed constituted perhaps the most useful, as well as the bravest,
portion of Roman subjects.
But in the prosecution of a favorite scheme, the best of men, satisfied
with the rectitude of their intentions, are subject to forget the bounds
of moderation; nor did Probus himself sufficiently consult the patience
and disposition of his fierce legionaries. The dangers of the military
profession seem only to be compensated by a life of pleasure and idleness;
but if the duties of the soldier are incessantly aggravated by the labors
of the peasant, he will at last sink under the intolerable burden, or
shake it off with indignation. The imprudence of Probus is said to have
inflamed the discontent of his troops. More attentive to the interests of
mankind than to those of the army, he expressed the vain hope, that, by
the establishment of universal peace, he should soon abolish the necessity
of a standing and mercenary force. The unguarded expression proved fatal
to him. In one of the hottest days of summer, as he severely urged the
unwholesome labor of draining the marshes of Sirmium, the soldiers,
impatient of fatigue, on a sudden threw down their tools, grasped their
arms, and broke out into a furious mutiny. The emperor, conscious of his
danger, took refuge in a lofty tower, constructed for the purpose of
surveying the progress of the work. The tower was instantly forced, and a
thousand swords were plunged at once into the bosom of the unfortunate
Probus. The rage of the troops subsided as soon as it had been gratified.
They then lamented their fatal rashness, forgot the severity of the
emperor, whom they had massacred, and hastened to perpetuate, by an
honorable monument, the memory of his virtues and victories.
When the legions had indulged their grief and repentance for the death of
Probus, their unanimous consent declared Carus, his Prætorian præfect,
the most deserving of the Imperial throne. Every circumstance that relates
to this prince appears of a mixed and doubtful nature. He gloried in the
title of Roman Citizen; and affected to compare the purity of his blood
with the foreign and even barbarous origin of the preceding emperors; yet
the most inquisitive of his contemporaries, very far from admitting his
claim, have variously deduced his own birth, or that of his parents, from
Illyricum, from Gaul, or from Africa. Though a soldier, he had received a
learned education; though a senator, he was invested with the first
dignity of the army; and in an age when the civil and military professions
began to be irrecoverably separated from each other, they were united in
the person of Carus. Notwithstanding the severe justice which he exercised
against the assassins of Probus, to whose favor and esteem he was highly
indebted, he could not escape the suspicion of being accessory to a deed
from whence he derived the principal advantage. He enjoyed, at least,
before his elevation, an acknowledged character of virtue and abilities;
but his austere temper insensibly degenerated into moroseness and cruelty;
and the imperfect writers of his life almost hesitate whether they shall
not rank him in the number of Roman tyrants. When Carus assumed the
purple, he was about sixty years of age, and his two sons, Carinus and
Numerian had already attained the season of manhood.
The authority of the senate expired with Probus; nor was the repentance of
the soldiers displayed by the same dutiful regard for the civil power,
which they had testified after the unfortunate death of Aurelian. The
election of Carus was decided without expecting the approbation of the
senate, and the new emperor contented himself with announcing, in a cold
and stately epistle, that he had ascended the vacant throne. A behavior so
very opposite to that of his amiable predecessor afforded no favorable
presage of the new reign: and the Romans, deprived of power and freedom,
asserted their privilege of licentious murmurs. The voice of
congratulation and flattery was not, however, silent; and we may still
peruse, with pleasure and contempt, an eclogue, which was composed on the
accession of the emperor Carus. Two shepherds, avoiding the noontide heat,
retire into the cave of Faunus. On a spreading beech they discover some
recent characters. The rural deity had described, in prophetic verses, the
felicity promised to the empire under the reign of so great a prince.
Faunus hails the approach of that hero, who, receiving on his shoulders
the sinking weight of the Roman world, shall extinguish war and faction,
and once again restore the innocence and security of the golden age.
It is more than probable, that these elegant trifles never reached the
ears of a veteran general, who, with the consent of the legions, was
preparing to execute the long-suspended design of the Persian war. Before
his departure for this distant expedition, Carus conferred on his two
sons, Carinus and Numerian, the title of Cæsar, and investing the
former with almost an equal share of the Imperial power, directed the
young prince, first to suppress some troubles which had arisen in Gaul,
and afterwards to fix the seat of his residence at Rome, and to assume the
government of the Western provinces. The safety of Illyricum was confirmed
by a memorable defeat of the Sarmatians; sixteen thousand of those
barbarians remained on the field of battle, and the number of captives
amounted to twenty thousand. The old emperor, animated with the fame and
prospect of victory, pursued his march, in the midst of winter, through
the countries of Thrace and Asia Minor, and at length, with his younger
son, Numerian, arrived on the confines of the Persian monarchy. There,
encamping on the summit of a lofty mountain, he pointed out to his troops
the opulence and luxury of the enemy whom they were about to invade.
The successor of Artaxerxes, * Varanes, or Bahram, though he had subdued
the Segestans, one of the most warlike nations of Upper Asia, was alarmed
at the approach of the Romans, and endeavored to retard their progress by
a negotiation of peace. His ambassadors entered the camp about sunset, at
the time when the troops were satisfying their hunger with a frugal
repast. The Persians expressed their desire of being introduced to the
presence of the Roman emperor. They were at length conducted to a soldier,
who was seated on the grass. A piece of stale bacon and a few hard peas
composed his supper. A coarse woollen garment of purple was the only
circumstance that announced his dignity. The conference was conducted with
the same disregard of courtly elegance. Carus, taking off a cap which he
wore to conceal his baldness, assured the ambassadors, that, unless their
master acknowledged the superiority of Rome, he would speedily render
Persia as naked of trees as his own head was destitute of hair.
Notwithstanding some traces of art and preparation, we may discover in
this scene the manners of Carus, and the severe simplicity which the
martial princes, who succeeded Gallienus, had already restored in the
Roman camps. The ministers of the Great King trembled and retired.
The threats of Carus were not without effect. He ravaged Mesopotamia, cut
in pieces whatever opposed his passage, made himself master of the great
cities of Seleucia and Ctesiphon, (which seemed to have surrendered
without resistance,) and carried his victorious arms beyond the Tigris. He
had seized the favorable moment for an invasion. The Persian councils were
distracted by domestic factions, and the greater part of their forces were
detained on the frontiers of India. Rome and the East received with
transports the news of such important advantages. Flattery and hope
painted, in the most lively colors, the fall of Persia, the conquest of
Arabia, the submission of Egypt, and a lasting deliverance from the
inroads of the Scythian nations. But the reign of Carus was destined to
expose the vanity of predictions. They were scarcely uttered before they
were contradicted by his death; an event attended with such ambiguous
circumstances, that it may be related in a letter from his own secretary
to the præfect of the city. "Carus," says he, "our dearest emperor,
was confined by sickness to his bed, when a furious tempest arose in the
camp. The darkness which overspread the sky was so thick, that we could no
longer distinguish each other; and the incessant flashes of lightning took
from us the knowledge of all that passed in the general confusion.
Immediately after the most violent clap of thunder, we heard a sudden cry
that the emperor was dead; and it soon appeared, that his chamberlains, in
a rage of grief, had set fire to the royal pavilion; a circumstance which
gave rise to the report that Carus was killed by lightning. But, as far as
we have been able to investigate the truth, his death was the natural
effect of his disorder."
The vacancy of the throne was not productive of any disturbance. The
ambition of the aspiring generals was checked by their natural fears, and
young Numerian, with his absent brother Carinus, were unanimously
acknowledged as Roman emperors. The public expected that the successor of
Carus would pursue his father's footsteps, and, without allowing the
Persians to recover from their consternation, would advance sword in hand
to the palaces of Susa and Ecbatana. But the legions, however strong in
numbers and discipline, were dismayed by the most abject superstition.
Notwithstanding all the arts that were practised to disguise the manner of
the late emperor's death, it was found impossible to remove the opinion of
the multitude, and the power of opinion is irresistible. Places or persons
struck with lightning were considered by the ancients with pious horror,
as singularly devoted to the wrath of Heaven. An oracle was remembered,
which marked the River Tigris as the fatal boundary of the Roman arms. The
troops, terrified with the fate of Carus and with their own danger, called
aloud on young Numerian to obey the will of the gods, and to lead them
away from this inauspicious scene of war. The feeble emperor was unable to
subdue their obstinate prejudice, and the Persians wondered at the
unexpected retreat of a victorious enemy.
The intelligence of the mysterious fate of the late emperor was soon
carried from the frontiers of Persia to Rome; and the senate, as well as
the provinces, congratulated the accession of the sons of Carus. These
fortunate youths were strangers, however, to that conscious superiority,
either of birth or of merit, which can alone render the possession of a
throne easy, and as it were natural. Born and educated in a private
station, the election of their father raised them at once to the rank of
princes; and his death, which happened about sixteen months afterwards,
left them the unexpected legacy of a vast empire. To sustain with temper
this rapid elevation, an uncommon share of virtue and prudence was
requisite; and Carinus, the elder of the brothers, was more than commonly
deficient in those qualities. In the Gallic war he discovered some degree
of personal courage; but from the moment of his arrival at Rome, he
abandoned himself to the luxury of the capital, and to the abuse of his
fortune. He was soft, yet cruel; devoted to pleasure, but destitute of
taste; and though exquisitely susceptible of vanity, indifferent to the
public esteem. In the course of a few months, he successively married and
divorced nine wives, most of whom he left pregnant; and notwithstanding
this legal inconstancy, found time to indulge such a variety of irregular
appetites, as brought dishonor on himself and on the noblest houses of
Rome. He beheld with inveterate hatred all those who might remember his
former obscurity, or censure his present conduct. He banished, or put to
death, the friends and counsellors whom his father had placed about him,
to guide his inexperienced youth; and he persecuted with the meanest
revenge his school-fellows and companions who had not sufficiently
respected the latent majesty of the emperor. With the senators, Carinus
affected a lofty and regal demeanor, frequently declaring, that he
designed to distribute their estates among the populace of Rome. From the
dregs of that populace he selected his favorites, and even his ministers.
The palace, and even the Imperial table, were filled with singers,
dancers, prostitutes, and all the various retinue of vice and folly. One
of his doorkeepers he intrusted with the government of the city. In the
room of the Prætorian præfect, whom he put to death, Carinus
substituted one of the ministers of his looser pleasures. Another, who
possessed the same, or even a more infamous, title to favor, was invested
with the consulship. A confidential secretary, who had acquired uncommon
skill in the art of forgery, delivered the indolent emperor, with his own
consent from the irksome duty of signing his name.
When the emperor Carus undertook the Persian war, he was induced, by
motives of affection as well as policy, to secure the fortunes of his
family, by leaving in the hands of his eldest son the armies and provinces
of the West. The intelligence which he soon received of the conduct of
Carinus filled him with shame and regret; nor had he concealed his
resolution of satisfying the republic by a severe act of justice, and of
adopting, in the place of an unworthy son, the brave and virtuous
Constantius, who at that time was governor of Dalmatia. But the elevation
of Constantius was for a while deferred; and as soon as the father's death
had released Carinus from the control of fear or decency, he displayed to
the Romans the extravagancies of Elagabalus, aggravated by the cruelty of
Domitian.
The only merit of the administration of Carinus that history could record,
or poetry celebrate, was the uncommon splendor with which, in his own and
his brother's name, he exhibited the Roman games of the theatre, the
circus, and the amphitheatre. More than twenty years afterwards, when the
courtiers of Diocletian represented to their frugal sovereign the fame and
popularity of his munificent predecessor, he acknowledged that the reign
of Carinus had indeed been a reign of pleasure. But this vain prodigality,
which the prudence of Diocletian might justly despise, was enjoyed with
surprise and transport by the Roman people. The oldest of the citizens,
recollecting the spectacles of former days, the triumphal pomp of Probus
or Aurelian, and the secular games of the emperor Philip, acknowledged
that they were all surpassed by the superior magnificence of Carinus.
The spectacles of Carinus may therefore be best illustrated by the
observation of some particulars, which history has condescended to relate
concerning those of his predecessors. If we confine ourselves solely to
the hunting of wild beasts, however we may censure the vanity of the
design or the cruelty of the execution, we are obliged to confess that
neither before nor since the time of the Romans so much art and expense
have ever been lavished for the amusement of the people. By the order of
Probus, a great quantity of large trees, torn up by the roots, were
transplanted into the midst of the circus. The spacious and shady forest
was immediately filled with a thousand ostriches, a thousand stags, a
thousand fallow deer, and a thousand wild boars; and all this variety of
game was abandoned to the riotous impetuosity of the multitude. The
tragedy of the succeeding day consisted in the massacre of a hundred
lions, an equal number of lionesses, two hundred leopards, and three
hundred bears. The collection prepared by the younger Gordian for his
triumph, and which his successor exhibited in the secular games, was less
remarkable by the number than by the singularity of the animals. Twenty
zebras displayed their elegant forms and variegated beauty to the eyes of
the Roman people. Ten elks, and as many camelopards, the loftiest and most
harmless creatures that wander over the plains of Sarmatia and Æthiopia,
were contrasted with thirty African hyænas and ten Indian tigers,
the most implacable savages of the torrid zone. The unoffending strength
with which Nature has endowed the greater quadrupeds was admired in the
rhinoceros, the hippopotamus of the Nile, and a majestic troop of
thirty-two elephants. While the populace gazed with stupid wonder on the
splendid show, the naturalist might indeed observe the figure and
properties of so many different species, transported from every part of
the ancient world into the amphitheatre of Rome. But this accidental
benefit, which science might derive from folly, is surely insufficient to
justify such a wanton abuse of the public riches. There occurs, however, a
single instance in the first Punic war, in which the senate wisely
connected this amusement of the multitude with the interest of the state.
A considerable number of elephants, taken in the defeat of the
Carthaginian army, were driven through the circus by a few slaves, armed
only with blunt javelins. The useful spectacle served to impress the Roman
soldier with a just contempt for those unwieldy animals; and he no longer
dreaded to encounter them in the ranks of war.
The hunting or exhibition of wild beasts was conducted with a magnificence
suitable to a people who styled themselves the masters of the world; nor
was the edifice appropriated to that entertainment less expressive of
Roman greatness. Posterity admires, and will long admire, the awful
remains of the amphitheatre of Titus, which so well deserved the epithet
of Colossal. It was a building of an elliptic figure, five hundred and
sixty-four feet in length, and four hundred and sixty-seven in breadth,
founded on fourscore arches, and rising, with four successive orders of
architecture, to the height of one hundred and forty feet. The outside of
the edifice was encrusted with marble, and decorated with statues. The
slopes of the vast concave, which formed the inside, were filled and
surrounded with sixty or eighty rows of seats of marble likewise, covered
with cushions, and capable of receiving with ease about fourscore thousand
spectators. Sixty-four vomitories (for by that name the doors were very
aptly distinguished) poured forth the immense multitude; and the
entrances, passages, and staircases were contrived with such exquisite
skill, that each person, whether of the senatorial, the equestrian, or the
plebeian order, arrived at his destined place without trouble or
confusion. Nothing was omitted, which, in any respect, could be
subservient to the convenience and pleasure of the spectators. They were
protected from the sun and rain by an ample canopy, occasionally drawn
over their heads. The air was continally refreshed by the playing of
fountains, and profusely impregnated by the grateful scent of aromatics.
In the centre of the edifice, the arena, or stage, was strewed with the
finest sand, and successively assumed the most different forms. At one
moment it seemed to rise out of the earth, like the garden of the
Hesperides, and was afterwards broken into the rocks and caverns of
Thrace. The subterraneous pipes conveyed an inexhaustible supply of water;
and what had just before appeared a level plain, might be suddenly
converted into a wide lake, covered with armed vessels, and replenished
with the monsters of the deep. In the decoration of these scenes, the
Roman emperors displayed their wealth and liberality; and we read on
various occasions that the whole furniture of the amphitheatre consisted
either of silver, or of gold, or of amber. The poet who describes the
games of Carinus, in the character of a shepherd, attracted to the capital
by the fame of their magnificence, affirms that the nets designed as a
defence against the wild beasts, were of gold wire; that the porticos were
gilded; and that the belt or circle which divided the several ranks of
spectators from each other was studded with a precious mosaic of beautiful
stones.
In the midst of this glittering pageantry, the emperor Carinus, secure of
his fortune, enjoyed the acclamations of the people, the flattery of his
courtiers, and the songs of the poets, who, for want of a more essential
merit, were reduced to celebrate the divine graces of his person. In the
same hour, but at the distance of nine hundred miles from Rome, his
brother expired; and a sudden revolution transferred into the hands of a
stranger the sceptre of the house of Carus.
The sons of Carus never saw each other after their father's death. The
arrangements which their new situation required were probably deferred
till the return of the younger brother to Rome, where a triumph was
decreed to the young emperors for the glorious success of the Persian war.
It is uncertain whether they intended to divide between them the
administration, or the provinces, of the empire; but it is very unlikely
that their union would have proved of any long duration. The jealousy of
power must have been inflamed by the opposition of characters. In the most
corrupt of times, Carinus was unworthy to live: Numerian deserved to reign
in a happier period. His affable manners and gentle virtues secured him,
as soon as they became known, the regard and affections of the public. He
possessed the elegant accomplishments of a poet and orator, which dignify
as well as adorn the humblest and the most exalted station. His eloquence,
however it was applauded by the senate, was formed not so much on the
model of Cicero, as on that of the modern declaimers; but in an age very
far from being destitute of poetical merit, he contended for the prize
with the most celebrated of his contemporaries, and still remained the
friend of his rivals; a circumstance which evinces either the goodness of
his heart, or the superiority of his genius. But the talents of Numerian
were rather of the contemplative than of the active kind. When his
father's elevation reluctantly forced him from the shade of retirement,
neither his temper nor his pursuits had qualified him for the command of
armies. His constitution was destroyed by the hardships of the Persian
war; and he had contracted, from the heat of the climate, such a weakness
in his eyes, as obliged him, in the course of a long retreat, to confine
himself to the solitude and darkness of a tent or litter. The
administration of all affairs, civil as well as military, was devolved on
Arrius Aper, the Prætorian præfect, who to the power of his
important office added the honor of being father-in-law to Numerian. The
Imperial pavilion was strictly guarded by his most trusty adherents; and
during many days, Aper delivered to the army the supposed mandates of
their invisible sovereign.
It was not till eight months after the death of Carus, that the Roman
army, returning by slow marches from the banks of the Tigris, arrived on
those of the Thracian Bosphorus. The legions halted at Chalcedon in Asia,
while the court passed over to Heraclea, on the European side of the
Propontis. But a report soon circulated through the camp, at first in
secret whispers, and at length in loud clamors, of the emperor's death,
and of the presumption of his ambitious minister, who still exercised the
sovereign power in the name of a prince who was no more. The impatience of
the soldiers could not long support a state of suspense. With rude
curiosity they broke into the Imperial tent, and discovered only the
corpse of Numerian. The gradual decline of his health might have induced
them to believe that his death was natural; but the concealment was
interpreted as an evidence of guilt, and the measures which Aper had taken
to secure his election became the immediate occasion of his ruin Yet, even
in the transport of their rage and grief, the troops observed a regular
proceeding, which proves how firmly discipline had been reestablished by
the martial successors of Gallienus. A general assembly of the army was
appointed to be held at Chalcedon, whither Aper was transported in chains,
as a prisoner and a criminal. A vacant tribunal was erected in the midst
of the camp, and the generals and tribunes formed a great military
council. They soon announced to the multitude that their choice had fallen
on Diocletian, commander of the domestics or body-guards, as the person
the most capable of revenging and succeeding their beloved emperor. The
future fortunes of the candidate depended on the chance or conduct of the
present hour. Conscious that the station which he had filled exposed him
to some suspicions, Diocletian ascended the tribunal, and raising his eyes
towards the Sun, made a solemn profession of his own innocence, in the
presence of that all-seeing Deity. Then, assuming the tone of a sovereign
and a judge, he commanded that Aper should be brought in chains to the
foot of the tribunal. "This man," said he, "is the murderer of Numerian;"
and without giving him time to enter on a dangerous justification, drew
his sword, and buried it in the breast of the unfortunate præfect. A
charge supported by such decisive proof was admitted without
contradiction, and the legions, with repeated acclamations, acknowledged
the justice and authority of the emperor Diocletian.
Before we enter upon the memorable reign of that prince, it will be proper
to punish and dismiss the unworthy brother of Numerian. Carinus possessed
arms and treasures sufficient to support his legal title to the empire.
But his personal vices overbalanced every advantage of birth and
situation. The most faithful servants of the father despised the
incapacity, and dreaded the cruel arrogance, of the son. The hearts of the
people were engaged in favor of his rival, and even the senate was
inclined to prefer a usurper to a tyrant. The arts of Diocletian inflamed
the general discontent; and the winter was employed in secret intrigues,
and open preparations for a civil war. In the spring, the forces of the
East and of the West encountered each other in the plains of Margus, a
small city of Mæsia, in the neighborhood of the Danube. The troops,
so lately returned from the Persian war, had acquired their glory at the
expense of health and numbers; nor were they in a condition to contend
with the unexhausted strength of the legions of Europe. Their ranks were
broken, and, for a moment, Diocletian despaired of the purple and of life.
But the advantage which Carinus had obtained by the valor of his soldiers,
he quickly lost by the infidelity of his officers. A tribune, whose wife
he had seduced, seized the opportunity of revenge, and, by a single blow,
extinguished civil discord in the blood of the adulterer.
The Reign Of Diocletian And His Three Associates, Maximian, Galerius, And Constantius.—General Reestablishment Of Order And Tranquillity.—The Persian War, Victory, And Triumph.—The New Form Of Administration.—Abdication And Retirement Of Diocletian And Maximian.
As the reign of Diocletian was more illustrious than that of any of his
predecessors, so was his birth more abject and obscure. The strong claims
of merit and of violence had frequently superseded the ideal prerogatives
of nobility; but a distinct line of separation was hitherto preserved
between the free and the servile part of mankind. The parents of
Diocletian had been slaves in the house of Anulinus, a Roman senator; nor
was he himself distinguished by any other name than that which he derived
from a small town in Dalmatia, from whence his mother deduced her origin.
It is, however, probable that his father obtained the freedom of the
family, and that he soon acquired an office of scribe, which was commonly
exercised by persons of his condition. Favorable oracles, or rather the
consciousness of superior merit, prompted his aspiring son to pursue the
profession of arms and the hopes of fortune; and it would be extremely
curious to observe the gradation of arts and accidents which enabled him
in the end to fulfil those oracles, and to display that merit to the
world. Diocletian was successively promoted to the government of Mæsia,
the honors of the consulship, and the important command of the guards of
the palace. He distinguished his abilities in the Persian war; and after
the death of Numerian, the slave, by the confession and judgment of his
rivals, was declared the most worthy of the Imperial throne. The malice of
religious zeal, whilst it arraigns the savage fierceness of his colleague
Maximian, has affected to cast suspicions on the personal courage of the
emperor Diocletian. It would not be easy to persuade us of the cowardice
of a soldier of fortune, who acquired and preserved the esteem of the
legions as well as the favor of so many warlike princes. Yet even calumny
is sagacious enough to discover and to attack the most vulnerable part.
The valor of Diocletian was never found inadequate to his duty, or to the
occasion; but he appears not to have possessed the daring and generous
spirit of a hero, who courts danger and fame, disdains artifice, and
boldly challenges the allegiance of his equals. His abilities were useful
rather than splendid; a vigorous mind, improved by the experience and
study of mankind; dexterity and application in business; a judicious
mixture of liberality and economy, of mildness and rigor; profound
dissimulation, under the disguise of military frankness; steadiness to
pursue his ends; flexibility to vary his means; and, above all, the great
art of submitting his own passions, as well as those of others, to the
interest of his ambition, and of coloring his ambition with the most
specious pretences of justice and public utility. Like Augustus,
Diocletian may be considered as the founder of a new empire. Like the
adopted son of Cæsar, he was distinguished as a statesman rather
than as a warrior; nor did either of those princes employ force, whenever
their purpose could be effected by policy.
The victory of Diocletian was remarkable for its singular mildness. A
people accustomed to applaud the clemency of the conqueror, if the usual
punishments of death, exile, and confiscation, were inflicted with any
degree of temper and equity, beheld, with the most pleasing astonishment,
a civil war, the flames of which were extinguished in the field of battle.
Diocletian received into his confidence Aristobulus, the principal
minister of the house of Carus, respected the lives, the fortunes, and the
dignity, of his adversaries, and even continued in their respective
stations the greater number of the servants of Carinus. It is not
improbable that motives of prudence might assist the humanity of the
artful Dalmatian; of these servants, many had purchased his favor by
secret treachery; in others, he esteemed their grateful fidelity to an
unfortunate master. The discerning judgment of Aurelian, of Probus, and of
Carus, had filled the several departments of the state and army with
officers of approved merit, whose removal would have injured the public
service, without promoting the interest of his successor. Such a conduct,
however, displayed to the Roman world the fairest prospect of the new
reign, and the emperor affected to confirm this favorable prepossession,
by declaring, that, among all the virtues of his predecessors, he was the
most ambitious of imitating the humane philosophy of Marcus Antoninus.
The first considerable action of his reign seemed to evince his sincerity
as well as his moderation. After the example of Marcus, he gave himself a
colleague in the person of Maximian, on whom he bestowed at first the
title of Cæsar, and afterwards that of Augustus. But the motives of
his conduct, as well as the object of his choice, were of a very different
nature from those of his admired predecessor. By investing a luxurious
youth with the honors of the purple, Marcus had discharged a debt of
private gratitude, at the expense, indeed, of the happiness of the state.
By associating a friend and a fellow-soldier to the labors of government,
Diocletian, in a time of public danger, provided for the defence both of
the East and of the West. Maximian was born a peasant, and, like Aurelian,
in the territory of Sirmium. Ignorant of letters, careless of laws, the
rusticity of his appearance and manners still betrayed in the most
elevated fortune the meanness of his extraction. War was the only art
which he professed. In a long course of service, he had distinguished
himself on every frontier of the empire; and though his military talents
were formed to obey rather than to command, though, perhaps, he never
attained the skill of a consummate general, he was capable, by his valor,
constancy, and experience, of executing the most arduous undertakings. Nor
were the vices of Maximian less useful to his benefactor. Insensible to
pity, and fearless of consequences, he was the ready instrument of every
act of cruelty which the policy of that artful prince might at once
suggest and disclaim. As soon as a bloody sacrifice had been offered to
prudence or to revenge, Diocletian, by his seasonable intercession, saved
the remaining few whom he had never designed to punish, gently censured
the severity of his stern colleague, and enjoyed the comparison of a
golden and an iron age, which was universally applied to their opposite
maxims of government. Notwithstanding the difference of their characters,
the two emperors maintained, on the throne, that friendship which they had
contracted in a private station. The haughty, turbulent spirit of
Maximian, so fatal, afterwards, to himself and to the public peace, was
accustomed to respect the genius of Diocletian, and confessed the
ascendant of reason over brutal violence. From a motive either of pride or
superstition, the two emperors assumed the titles, the one of Jovius, the
other of Herculius. Whilst the motion of the world (such was the language
of their venal orators) was maintained by the all-seeing wisdom of
Jupiter, the invincible arm of Hercules purged the earth from monsters and
tyrants.
But even the omnipotence of Jovius and Herculius was insufficient to
sustain the weight of the public administration. The prudence of
Diocletian discovered that the empire, assailed on every side by the
barbarians, required on every side the presence of a great army, and of an
emperor. With this view, he resolved once more to divide his unwieldy
power, and with the inferior title of Cæsars, * to confer on two
generals of approved merit an unequal share of the sovereign authority.
Galerius, surnamed Armentarius, from his original profession of a
herdsman, and Constantius, who from his pale complexion had acquired the
denomination of Chlorus, were the two persons invested with the second
honors of the Imperial purple. In describing the country, extraction, and
manners of Herculius, we have already delineated those of Galerius, who
was often, and not improperly, styled the younger Maximian, though, in
many instances both of virtue and ability, he appears to have possessed a
manifest superiority over the elder. The birth of Constantius was less
obscure than that of his colleagues. Eutropius, his father, was one of the
most considerable nobles of Dardania, and his mother was the niece of the
emperor Claudius. Although the youth of Constantius had been spent in
arms, he was endowed with a mild and amiable disposition, and the popular
voice had long since acknowledged him worthy of the rank which he at last
attained. To strengthen the bonds of political, by those of domestic,
union, each of the emperors assumed the character of a father to one of
the Cæsars, Diocletian to Galerius, and Maximian to Constantius; and
each, obliging them to repudiate their former wives, bestowed his daughter
in marriage or his adopted son. These four princes distributed among
themselves the wide extent of the Roman empire. The defence of Gaul,
Spain, and Britain, was intrusted to Constantius: Galerius was stationed
on the banks of the Danube, as the safeguard of the Illyrian provinces.
Italy and Africa were considered as the department of Maximian; and for
his peculiar portion, Diocletian reserved Thrace, Egypt, and the rich
countries of Asia. Every one was sovereign with his own jurisdiction; but
their united authority extended over the whole monarchy, and each of them
was prepared to assist his colleagues with his counsels or presence. The Cæsars,
in their exalted rank, revered the majesty of the emperors, and the three
younger princes invariably acknowledged, by their gratitude and obedience,
the common parent of their fortunes. The suspicious jealousy of power
found not any place among them; and the singular happiness of their union
has been compared to a chorus of music, whose harmony was regulated and
maintained by the skilful hand of the first artist.
This important measure was not carried into execution till about six years
after the association of Maximian, and that interval of time had not been
destitute of memorable incidents. But we have preferred, for the sake of
perspicuity, first to describe the more perfect form of Diocletian's
government, and afterwards to relate the actions of his reign, following
rather the natural order of the events, than the dates of a very doubtful
chronology.
The first exploit of Maximian, though it is mentioned in a few words by
our imperfect writers, deserves, from its singularity, to be recorded in a
history of human manners. He suppressed the peasants of Gaul, who, under
the appellation of Bagaudæ, had risen in a general insurrection;
very similar to those which in the fourteenth century successively
afflicted both France and England. It should seem that very many of those
institutions, referred by an easy solution to the feudal system, are
derived from the Celtic barbarians. When Cæsar subdued the Gauls,
that great nation was already divided into three orders of men; the
clergy, the nobility, and the common people. The first governed by
superstition, the second by arms, but the third and last was not of any
weight or account in their public councils. It was very natural for the
plebeians, oppressed by debt, or apprehensive of injuries, to implore the
protection of some powerful chief, who acquired over their persons and
property the same absolute right as, among the Greeks and Romans, a master
exercised over his slaves. The greatest part of the nation was gradually
reduced into a state of servitude; compelled to perpetual labor on the
estates of the Gallic nobles, and confined to the soil, either by the real
weight of fetters, or by the no less cruel and forcible restraints of the
laws. During the long series of troubles which agitated Gaul, from the
reign of Gallienus to that of Diocletian, the condition of these servile
peasants was peculiarly miserable; and they experienced at once the
complicated tyranny of their masters, of the barbarians, of the soldiers,
and of the officers of the revenue.
Their patience was at last provoked into despair. On every side they rose
in multitudes, armed with rustic weapons, and with irresistible fury. The
ploughman became a foot soldier, the shepherd mounted on horseback, the
deserted villages and open towns were abandoned to the flames, and the
ravages of the peasants equalled those of the fiercest barbarians. They
asserted the natural rights of men, but they asserted those rights with
the most savage cruelty. The Gallic nobles, justly dreading their revenge,
either took refuge in the fortified cities, or fled from the wild scene of
anarchy. The peasants reigned without control; and two of their most
daring leaders had the folly and rashness to assume the Imperial
ornaments. Their power soon expired at the approach of the legions. The
strength of union and discipline obtained an easy victory over a
licentious and divided multitude. A severe retaliation was inflicted on
the peasants who were found in arms; the affrighted remnant returned to
their respective habitations, and their unsuccessful effort for freedom
served only to confirm their slavery. So strong and uniform is the current
of popular passions, that we might almost venture, from very scanty
materials, to relate the particulars of this war; but we are not disposed
to believe that the principal leaders, Ælianus and Amandus, were
Christians, or to insinuate, that the rebellion, as it happened in the
time of Luther, was occasioned by the abuse of those benevolent principles
of Christianity, which inculcate the natural freedom of mankind.
Maximian had no sooner recovered Gaul from the hands of the peasants, than
he lost Britain by the usurpation of Carausius. Ever since the rash but
successful enterprise of the Franks under the reign of Probus, their
daring countrymen had constructed squadrons of light brigantines, in which
they incessantly ravaged the provinces adjacent to the ocean. To repel
their desultory incursions, it was found necessary to create a naval
power; and the judicious measure was prosecuted with prudence and vigor.
Gessoriacum, or Boulogne, in the straits of the British Channel, was
chosen by the emperor for the station of the Roman fleet; and the command
of it was intrusted to Carausius, a Menapian of the meanest origin, but
who had long signalized his skill as a pilot, and his valor as a soldier.
The integrity of the new admiral corresponded not with his abilities. When
the German pirates sailed from their own harbors, he connived at their
passage, but he diligently intercepted their return, and appropriated to
his own use an ample share of the spoil which they had acquired. The
wealth of Carausius was, on this occasion, very justly considered as an
evidence of his guilt; and Maximian had already given orders for his
death. But the crafty Menapian foresaw and prevented the severity of the
emperor. By his liberality he had attached to his fortunes the fleet which
he commanded, and secured the barbarians in his interest. From the port of
Boulogne he sailed over to Britain, persuaded the legion, and the
auxiliaries which guarded that island, to embrace his party, and boldly
assuming, with the Imperial purple, the title of Augustus defied the
justice and the arms of his injured sovereign.
When Britain was thus dismembered from the empire, its importance was
sensibly felt, and its loss sincerely lamented. The Romans celebrated, and
perhaps magnified, the extent of that noble island, provided on every side
with convenient harbors; the temperature of the climate, and the fertility
of the soil, alike adapted for the production of corn or of vines; the
valuable minerals with which it abounded; its rich pastures covered with
innumerable flocks, and its woods free from wild beasts or venomous
serpents. Above all, they regretted the large amount of the revenue of
Britain, whilst they confessed, that such a province well deserved to
become the seat of an independent monarchy. During the space of seven
years it was possessed by Carausius; and fortune continued propitious to a
rebellion supported with courage and ability. The British emperor defended
the frontiers of his dominions against the Caledonians of the North,
invited, from the continent, a great number of skilful artists, and
displayed, on a variety of coins that are still extant, his taste and
opulence. Born on the confines of the Franks, he courted the friendship of
that formidable people, by the flattering imitation of their dress and
manners. The bravest of their youth he enlisted among his land or sea
forces; and, in return for their useful alliance, he communicated to the
barbarians the dangerous knowledge of military and naval arts. Carausius
still preserved the possession of Boulogne and the adjacent country. His
fleets rode triumphant in the channel, commanded the mouths of the Seine
and of the Rhine, ravaged the coasts of the ocean, and diffused beyond the
columns of Hercules the terror of his name. Under his command, Britain,
destined in a future age to obtain the empire of the sea, already assumed
its natural and respectable station of a maritime power.
By seizing the fleet of Boulogne, Carausius had deprived his master of the
means of pursuit and revenge. And when, after a vast expense of time and
labor, a new armament was launched into the water, the Imperial troops,
unaccustomed to that element, were easily baffled and defeated by the
veteran sailors of the usurper. This disappointed effort was soon
productive of a treaty of peace. Diocletian and his colleague, who justly
dreaded the enterprising spirit of Carausius, resigned to him the
sovereignty of Britain, and reluctantly admitted their perfidious servant
to a participation of the Imperial honors. But the adoption of the two Cæsars
restored new vigor to the Romans arms; and while the Rhine was guarded by
the presence of Maximian, his brave associate Constantius assumed the
conduct of the British war. His first enterprise was against the important
place of Boulogne. A stupendous mole, raised across the entrance of the
harbor, intercepted all hopes of relief. The town surrendered after an
obstinate defence; and a considerable part of the naval strength of
Carausius fell into the hands of the besiegers. During the three years
which Constantius employed in preparing a fleet adequate to the conquest
of Britain, he secured the coast of Gaul, invaded the country of the
Franks, and deprived the usurper of the assistance of those powerful
allies.
Before the preparations were finished, Constantius received the
intelligence of the tyrant's death, and it was considered as a sure
presage of the approaching victory. The servants of Carausius imitated the
example of treason which he had given. He was murdered by his first
minister, Allectus, and the assassin succeeded to his power and to his
danger. But he possessed not equal abilities either to exercise the one or
to repel the other. He beheld, with anxious terror, the opposite shores of
the continent already filled with arms, with troops, and with vessels; for
Constantius had very prudently divided his forces, that he might likewise
divide the attention and resistance of the enemy. The attack was at length
made by the principal squadron, which, under the command of the præfect
Asclepiodatus, an officer of distinguished merit, had been assembled in
the north of the Seine. So imperfect in those times was the art of
navigation, that orators have celebrated the daring courage of the Romans,
who ventured to set sail with a side-wind, and on a stormy day. The
weather proved favorable to their enterprise. Under the cover of a thick
fog, they escaped the fleet of Allectus, which had been stationed off the
Isle of Wight to receive them, landed in safety on some part of the
western coast, and convinced the Britons, that a superiority of naval
strength will not always protect their country from a foreign invasion.
Asclepiodatus had no sooner disembarked the imperial troops, then he set
fire to his ships; and, as the expedition proved fortunate, his heroic
conduct was universally admired. The usurper had posted himself near
London, to expect the formidable attack of Constantius, who commanded in
person the fleet of Boulogne; but the descent of a new enemy required his
immediate presence in the West. He performed this long march in so
precipitate a manner, that he encountered the whole force of the præfect
with a small body of harassed and disheartened troops. The engagement was
soon terminated by the total defeat and death of Allectus; a single
battle, as it has often happened, decided the fate of this great island;
and when Constantius landed on the shores of Kent, he found them covered
with obedient subjects. Their acclamations were loud and unanimous; and
the virtues of the conqueror may induce us to believe, that they sincerely
rejoiced in a revolution, which, after a separation of ten years, restored
Britain to the body of the Roman empire.
Britain had none but domestic enemies to dread; and as long as the
governors preserved their fidelity, and the troops their discipline, the
incursions of the naked savages of Scotland or Ireland could never
materially affect the safety of the province. The peace of the continent,
and the defence of the principal rivers which bounded the empire, were
objects of far greater difficulty and importance. The policy of
Diocletian, which inspired the councils of his associates, provided for
the public tranquility, by encouraging a spirit of dissension among the
barbarians, and by strengthening the fortifications of the Roman limit. In
the East he fixed a line of camps from Egypt to the Persian dominions, and
for every camp, he instituted an adequate number of stationary troops,
commanded by their respective officers, and supplied with every kind of
arms, from the new arsenals which he had formed at Antioch, Emesa, and
Damascus. Nor was the precaution of the emperor less watchful against the
well-known valor of the barbarians of Europe. From the mouth of the Rhine
to that of the Danube, the ancient camps, towns, and citidels, were
diligently reestablished, and, in the most exposed places, new ones were
skilfully constructed: the strictest vigilance was introduced among the
garrisons of the frontier, and every expedient was practised that could
render the long chain of fortifications firm and impenetrable. A barrier
so respectable was seldom violated, and the barbarians often turned
against each other their disappointed rage. The Goths, the Vandals, the
Gepidæ, the Burgundians, the Alemanni, wasted each other's strength
by destructive hostilities: and whosoever vanquished, they vanquished the
enemies of Rome. The subjects of Diocletian enjoyed the bloody spectacle,
and congratulated each other, that the mischiefs of civil war were now
experienced only by the barbarians.
Notwithstanding the policy of Diocletian, it was impossible to maintain an
equal and undisturbed tranquillity during a reign of twenty years, and
along a frontier of many hundred miles. Sometimes the barbarians suspended
their domestic animosities, and the relaxed vigilance of the garrisons
sometimes gave a passage to their strength or dexterity. Whenever the
provinces were invaded, Diocletian conducted himself with that calm
dignity which he always affected or possessed; reserved his presence for
such occasions as were worthy of his interposition, never exposed his
person or reputation to any unnecessary danger, insured his success by
every means that prudence could suggest, and displayed, with ostentation,
the consequences of his victory. In wars of a more difficult nature, and
more doubtful event, he employed the rough valor of Maximian; and that
faithful soldier was content to ascribe his own victories to the wise
counsels and auspicious influence of his benefactor. But after the
adoption of the two Cæsars, the emperors themselves, retiring to a
less laborious scene of action, devolved on their adopted sons the defence
of the Danube and of the Rhine. The vigilant Galerius was never reduced to
the necessity of vanquishing an army of barbarians on the Roman territory.
The brave and active Contsantius delivered Gaul from a very furious inroad
of the Alemanni; and his victories of Langres and Vindonissa appear to
have been actions of considerable danger and merit. As he traversed the
open country with a feeble guard, he was encompassed on a sudden by the
superior multitude of the enemy. He retreated with difficulty towards
Langres; but, in the general consternation, the citizens refused to open
their gates, and the wounded prince was drawn up the wall by the means of
a rope. But, on the news of his distress, the Roman troops hastened from
all sides to his relief, and before the evening he had satisfied his honor
and revenge by the slaughter of six thousand Alemanni. From the monuments
of those times, the obscure traces of several other victories over the
barbarians of Sarmatia and Germany might possibly be collected; but the
tedious search would not be rewarded either with amusement or with
instruction.
The conduct which the emperor Probus had adopted in the disposal of the
vanquished, was imitated by Diocletian and his associates. The captive
barbarians, exchanging death for slavery, were distributed among the
provincials, and assigned to those districts (in Gaul, the territories of
Amiens, Beauvais, Cambray, Treves, Langres, and Troyes, are particularly
specified ) which had been depopulated by the calamities of war. They were
usefully employed as shepherds and husbandmen, but were denied the
exercise of arms, except when it was found expedient to enroll them in the
military service. Nor did the emperors refuse the property of lands, with
a less servile tenure, to such of the barbarians as solicited the
protection of Rome. They granted a settlement to several colonies of the
Carpi, the Bastarnæ, and the Sarmatians; and, by a dangerous
indulgence, permitted them in some measure to retain their national
manners and independence. Among the provincials, it was a subject of
flattering exultation, that the barbarian, so lately an object of terror,
now cultivated their lands, drove their cattle to the neighboring fair,
and contributed by his labor to the public plenty. They congratulated
their masters on the powerful accession of subjects and soldiers; but they
forgot to observe, that multitudes of secret enemies, insolent from favor,
or desperate from oppression, were introduced into the heart of the
empire.
While the Cæsars exercised their valor on the banks of the Rhine and
Danube, the presence of the emperors was required on the southern confines
of the Roman world. From the Nile to Mount Atlas Africa was in arms. A
confederacy of five Moorish nations issued from their deserts to invade
the peaceful provinces. Julian had assumed the purple at Carthage.
Achilleus at Alexandria, and even the Blemmyes, renewed, or rather
continued, their incursions into the Upper Egypt. Scarcely any
circumstances have been preserved of the exploits of Maximian in the
western parts of Africa; but it appears, by the event, that the progress
of his arms was rapid and decisive, that he vanquished the fiercest
barbarians of Mauritania, and that he removed them from the mountains,
whose inaccessible strength had inspired their inhabitants with a lawless
confidence, and habituated them to a life of rapine and violence.
Diocletian, on his side, opened the campaign in Egypt by the siege of
Alexandria, cut off the aqueducts which conveyed the waters of the Nile
into every quarter of that immense city, and rendering his camp
impregnable to the sallies of the besieged multitude, he pushed his
reiterated attacks with caution and vigor. After a siege of eight months,
Alexandria, wasted by the sword and by fire, implored the clemency of the
conqueror, but it experienced the full extent of his severity. Many
thousands of the citizens perished in a promiscuous slaughter, and there
were few obnoxious persons in Egypt who escaped a sentence either of death
or at least of exile. The fate of Busiris and of Coptos was still more
melancholy than that of Alexandria: those proud cities, the former
distinguished by its antiquity, the latter enriched by the passage of the
Indian trade, were utterly destroyed by the arms and by the severe order
of Diocletian. The character of the Egyptian nation, insensible to
kindness, but extremely susceptible of fear, could alone justify this
excessive rigor. The seditions of Alexandria had often affected the
tranquillity and subsistence of Rome itself. Since the usurpation of
Firmus, the province of Upper Egypt, incessantly relapsing into rebellion,
had embraced the alliance of the savages of Æthiopia. The number of
the Blemmyes, scattered between the Island of Meroe and the Red Sea, was
very inconsiderable, their disposition was unwarlike, their weapons rude
and inoffensive. Yet in the public disorders, these barbarians, whom
antiquity, shocked with the deformity of their figure, had almost excluded
from the human species, presumed to rank themselves among the enemies of
Rome. Such had been the unworthy allies of the Egyptians; and while the
attention of the state was engaged in more serious wars, their vexations
inroads might again harass the repose of the province. With a view of
opposing to the Blemmyes a suitable adversary, Diocletian persuaded the
Nobatæ, or people of Nubia, to remove from their ancient habitations
in the deserts of Libya, and resigned to them an extensive but
unprofitable territory above Syene and the cataracts of the Nile, with the
stipulation, that they should ever respect and guard the frontier of the
empire. The treaty long subsisted; and till the establishment of
Christianity introduced stricter notions of religious worship, it was
annually ratified by a solemn sacrifice in the Isle of Elephantine, in
which the Romans, as well as the barbarians, adored the same visible or
invisible powers of the universe.
At the same time that Diocletian chastised the past crimes of the
Egyptians, he provided for their future safety and happiness by many wise
regulations, which were confirmed and enforced under the succeeding
reigns. One very remarkable edict which he published, instead of being
condemned as the effect of jealous tyranny, deserves to be applauded as an
act of prudence and humanity. He caused a diligent inquiry to be made "for
all the ancient books which treated of the admirable art of making gold
and silver, and without pity, committed them to the flames; apprehensive,
as we are assumed, lest the opulence of the Egyptians should inspire them
with confidence to rebel against the empire." But if Diocletian had been
convinced of the reality of that valuable art, far from extinguishing the
memory, he would have converted the operation of it to the benefit of the
public revenue. It is much more likely, that his good sense discovered to
him the folly of such magnificent pretensions, and that he was desirous of
preserving the reason and fortunes of his subjects from the mischievous
pursuit. It may be remarked, that these ancient books, so liberally
ascribed to Pythagoras, to Solomon, or to Hermes, were the pious frauds of
more recent adepts. The Greeks were inattentive either to the use or to
the abuse of chemistry. In that immense register, where Pliny has
deposited the discoveries, the arts, and the errors of mankind, there is
not the least mention of the transmutation of metals; and the persecution
of Diocletian is the first authentic event in the history of alchemy. The
conquest of Egypt by the Arabs diffused that vain science over the globe.
Congenial to the avarice of the human heart, it was studied in China as in
Europe, with equal eagerness, and with equal success. The darkness of the
middle ages insured a favorable reception to every tale of wonder, and the
revival of learning gave new vigor to hope, and suggested more specious
arts of deception. Philosophy, with the aid of experience, has at length
banished the study of alchemy; and the present age, however desirous of
riches, is content to seek them by the humbler means of commerce and
industry.
The reduction of Egypt was immediately followed by the Persian war. It was
reserved for the reign of Diocletian to vanquish that powerful nation, and
to extort a confession from the successors of Artaxerxes, of the superior
majesty of the Roman empire.
We have observed, under the reign of Valerian, that Armenia was subdued by
the perfidy and the arms of the Persians, and that, after the
assassination of Chosroes, his son Tiridates, the infant heir of the
monarchy, was saved by the fidelity of his friends, and educated under the
protection of the emperors. Tiridates derived from his exile such
advantages as he could never have obtained on the throne of Armenia; the
early knowledge of adversity, of mankind, and of the Roman discipline. He
signalized his youth by deeds of valor, and displayed a matchless
dexterity, as well as strength, in every martial exercise, and even in the
less honorable contests of the Olympian games. Those qualities were more
nobly exerted in the defence of his benefactor Licinius. That officer, in
the sedition which occasioned the death of Probus, was exposed to the most
imminent danger, and the enraged soldiers were forcing their way into his
tent, when they were checked by the single arm of the Armenian prince. The
gratitude of Tiridates contributed soon afterwards to his restoration.
Licinius was in every station the friend and companion of Galerius, and
the merit of Galerius, long before he was raised to the dignity of Cæsar,
had been known and esteemed by Diocletian. In the third year of that
emperor's reign Tiridates was invested with the kingdom of Armenia. The
justice of the measure was not less evident than its expediency. It was
time to rescue from the usurpation of the Persian monarch an important
territory, which, since the reign of Nero, had been always granted under
the protection of the empire to a younger branch of the house of Arsaces.
When Tiridates appeared on the frontiers of Armenia, he was received with
an unfeigned transport of joy and loyalty. During twenty-six years, the
country had experienced the real and imaginary hardships of a foreign
yoke. The Persian monarchs adorned their new conquest with magnificent
buildings; but those monuments had been erected at the expense of the
people, and were abhorred as badges of slavery. The apprehension of a
revolt had inspired the most rigorous precautions: oppression had been
aggravated by insult, and the consciousness of the public hatred had been
productive of every measure that could render it still more implacable. We
have already remarked the intolerant spirit of the Magian religion. The
statues of the deified kings of Armenia, and the sacred images of the sun
and moon, were broke in pieces by the zeal of the conqueror; and the
perpetual fire of Ormuzd was kindled and preserved upon an altar erected
on the summit of Mount Bagavan. It was natural, that a people exasperated
by so many injuries, should arm with zeal in the cause of their
independence, their religion, and their hereditary sovereign. The torrent
bore down every obstacle, and the Persian garrisons retreated before its
fury. The nobles of Armenia flew to the standard of Tiridates, all
alleging their past merit, offering their future service, and soliciting
from the new king those honors and rewards from which they had been
excluded with disdain under the foreign government. The command of the
army was bestowed on Artavasdes, whose father had saved the infancy of
Tiridates, and whose family had been massacred for that generous action.
The brother of Artavasdes obtained the government of a province. One of
the first military dignities was conferred on the satrap Otas, a man of
singular temperance and fortitude, who presented to the king his sister
and a considerable treasure, both of which, in a sequestered fortress,
Otas had preserved from violation. Among the Armenian nobles appeared an
ally, whose fortunes are too remarkable to pass unnoticed. His name was
Mamgo, his origin was Scythian, and the horde which acknowledge his
authority had encamped a very few years before on the skirts of the
Chinese empire, which at that time extended as far as the neighborhood of
Sogdiana. Having incurred the displeasure of his master, Mamgo, with his
followers, retired to the banks of the Oxus, and implored the protection
of Sapor. The emperor of China claimed the fugitive, and alleged the
rights of sovereignty. The Persian monarch pleaded the laws of
hospitality, and with some difficulty avoided a war, by the promise that
he would banish Mamgo to the uttermost parts of the West, a punishment, as
he described it, not less dreadful than death itself. Armenia was chosen
for the place of exile, and a large district was assigned to the Scythian
horde, on which they might feed their flocks and herds, and remove their
encampment from one place to another, according to the different seasons
of the year. They were employed to repel the invasion of Tiridates; but
their leader, after weighing the obligations and injuries which he had
received from the Persian monarch, resolved to abandon his party. The
Armenian prince, who was well acquainted with this merit as well as power
of Mamgo, treated him with distinguished respect; and, by admitting him
into his confidence, acquired a brave and faithful servant, who
contributed very effectually to his restoration.
For a while, fortune appeared to favor the enterprising valor of
Tiridates. He not only expelled the enemies of his family and country from
the whole extent of Armenia, but in the prosecution of his revenge he
carried his arms, or at least his incursions, into the heart of Assyria.
The historian, who has preserved the name of Tiridates from oblivion,
celebrates, with a degree of national enthusiasm, his personal prowess:
and, in the true spirit of eastern romance, describes the giants and the
elephants that fell beneath his invincible arm. It is from other
information that we discover the distracted state of the Persian monarchy,
to which the king of Armenia was indebted for some part of his advantages.
The throne was disputed by the ambition of contending brothers; and
Hormuz, after exerting without success the strength of his own party, had
recourse to the dangerous assistance of the barbarians who inhabited the
banks of the Caspian Sea. The civil war was, however, soon terminated,
either by a victor or by a reconciliation; and Narses, who was universally
acknowledged as king of Persia, directed his whole force against the
foreign enemy. The contest then became too unequal; nor was the valor of
the hero able to withstand the power of the monarch, Tiridates, a second
time expelled from the throne of Armenia, once more took refuge in the
court of the emperors. * Narses soon reestablished his authority over the
revolted province; and loudly complaining of the protection afforded by
the Romans to rebels and fugitives, aspired to the conquest of the East.
Neither prudence nor honor could permit the emperors to forsake the cause
of the Armenian king, and it was resolved to exert the force of the empire
in the Persian war. Diocletian, with the calm dignity which he constantly
assumed, fixed his own station in the city of Antioch, from whence he
prepared and directed the military operations. The conduct of the legions
was intrusted to the intrepid valor of Galerius, who, for that important
purpose, was removed from the banks of the Danube to those of the
Euphrates. The armies soon encountered each other in the plains of
Mesopotamia, and two battles were fought with various and doubtful
success; but the third engagement was of a more decisive nature; and the
Roman army received a total overthrow, which is attributed to the rashness
of Galerius, who, with an inconsiderable body of troops, attacked the
innumerable host of the Persians. But the consideration of the country
that was the scene of action, may suggest another reason for his defeat.
The same ground on which Galerius was vanquished, had been rendered
memorable by the death of Crassus, and the slaughter of ten legions. It
was a plain of more than sixty miles, which extended from the hills of
Carrhæ to the Euphrates; a smooth and barren surface of sandy
desert, without a hillock, without a tree, and without a spring of fresh
water. The steady infantry of the Romans, fainting with heat and thirst,
could neither hope for victory if they preserved their ranks, nor break
their ranks without exposing themselves to the most imminent danger. In
this situation they were gradually encompassed by the superior numbers,
harassed by the rapid evolutions, and destroyed by the arrows of the
barbarian cavalry. The king of Armenia had signalized his valor in the
battle, and acquired personal glory by the public misfortune. He was
pursued as far as the Euphrates; his horse was wounded, and it appeared
impossible for him to escape the victorious enemy. In this extremity
Tiridates embraced the only refuge which appeared before him: he
dismounted and plunged into the stream. His armor was heavy, the river
very deep, and at those parts at least half a mile in breadth; yet such
was his strength and dexterity, that he reached in safety the opposite
bank. With regard to the Roman general, we are ignorant of the
circumstances of his escape; but when he returned to Antioch, Diocletian
received him, not with the tenderness of a friend and colleague, but with
the indignation of an offended sovereign. The haughtiest of men, clothed
in his purple, but humbled by the sense of his fault and misfortune, was
obliged to follow the emperor's chariot above a mile on foot, and to
exhibit, before the whole court, the spectacle of his disgrace.
As soon as Diocletian had indulged his private resentment, and asserted
the majesty of supreme power, he yielded to the submissive entreaties of
the Cæsar, and permitted him to retrieve his own honor, as well as
that of the Roman arms. In the room of the unwarlike troops of Asia, which
had most probably served in the first expedition, a second army was drawn
from the veterans and new levies of the Illyrian frontier, and a
considerable body of Gothic auxiliaries were taken into the Imperial pay.
At the head of a chosen army of twenty-five thousand men, Galerius again
passed the Euphrates; but, instead of exposing his legions in the open
plains of Mesopotamia he advanced through the mountains of Armenia, where
he found the inhabitants devoted to his cause, and the country as
favorable to the operations of infantry as it was inconvenient for the
motions of cavalry. Adversity had confirmed the Roman discipline, while
the barbarians, elated by success, were become so negligent and remiss,
that in the moment when they least expected it, they were surprised by the
active conduct of Galerius, who, attended only by two horsemen, had with
his own eyes secretly examined the state and position of their camp. A
surprise, especially in the night time, was for the most part fatal to a
Persian army. "Their horses were tied, and generally shackled, to prevent
their running away; and if an alarm happened, a Persian had his housing to
fix, his horse to bridle, and his corselet to put on, before he could
mount." On this occasion, the impetuous attack of Galerius spread disorder
and dismay over the camp of the barbarians. A slight resistance was
followed by a dreadful carnage, and, in the general confusion, the wounded
monarch (for Narses commanded his armies in person) fled towards the
deserts of Media. His sumptuous tents, and those of his satraps, afforded
an immense booty to the conqueror; and an incident is mentioned, which
proves the rustic but martial ignorance of the legions in the elegant
superfluities of life. A bag of shining leather, filled with pearls, fell
into the hands of a private soldier; he carefully preserved the bag, but
he threw away its contents, judging that whatever was of no use could not
possibly be of any value. The principal loss of Narses was of a much more
affecting nature. Several of his wives, his sisters, and children, who had
attended the army, were made captives in the defeat. But though the
character of Galerius had in general very little affinity with that of
Alexander, he imitated, after his victory, the amiable behavior of the
Macedonian towards the family of Darius. The wives and children of Narses
were protected from violence and rapine, conveyed to a place of safety,
and treated with every mark of respect and tenderness, that was due from a
generous enemy to their age, their sex, and their royal dignity.
While the East anxiously expected the decision of this great contest, the
emperor Diocletian, having assembled in Syria a strong army of
observation, displayed from a distance the resources of the Roman power,
and reserved himself for any future emergency of the war. On the
intelligence of the victory he condescended to advance towards the
frontier, with a view of moderating, by his presence and counsels, the
pride of Galerius. The interview of the Roman princes at Nisibis was
accompanied with every expression of respect on one side, and of esteem on
the other. It was in that city that they soon afterwards gave audience to
the ambassador of the Great King. The power, or at least the spirit, of
Narses, had been broken by his last defeat; and he considered an immediate
peace as the only means that could stop the progress of the Roman arms. He
despatched Apharban, a servant who possessed his favor and confidence,
with a commission to negotiate a treaty, or rather to receive whatever
conditions the conqueror should impose. Apharban opened the conference by
expressing his master's gratitude for the generous treatment of his
family, and by soliciting the liberty of those illustrious captives. He
celebrated the valor of Galerius, without degrading the reputation of
Narses, and thought it no dishonor to confess the superiority of the
victorious Cæsar, over a monarch who had surpassed in glory all the
princes of his race. Notwithstanding the justice of the Persian cause, he
was empowered to submit the present differences to the decision of the
emperors themselves; convinced as he was, that, in the midst of
prosperity, they would not be unmindful of the vicissitudes of fortune.
Apharban concluded his discourse in the style of eastern allegory, by
observing that the Roman and Persian monarchies were the two eyes of the
world, which would remain imperfect and mutilated if either of them should
be put out.
"It well becomes the Persians," replied Galerius, with a transport of
fury, which seemed to convulse his whole frame, "it well becomes the
Persians to expatiate on the vicissitudes of fortune, and calmly to read
us lectures on the virtues of moderation. Let them remember their own moderation,
towards the unhappy Valerian. They vanquished him by fraud, they treated
him with indignity. They detained him till the last moment of his life in
shameful captivity, and after his death they exposed his body to perpetual
ignominy." Softening, however, his tone, Galerius insinuated to the
ambassador, that it had never been the practice of the Romans to trample
on a prostrate enemy; and that, on this occasion, they should consult
their own dignity rather than the Persian merit. He dismissed Apharban
with a hope that Narses would soon be informed on what conditions he might
obtain, from the clemency of the emperors, a lasting peace, and the
restoration of his wives and children. In this conference we may discover
the fierce passions of Galerius, as well as his deference to the superior
wisdom and authority of Diocletian. The ambition of the former grasped at
the conquest of the East, and had proposed to reduce Persia into the state
of a province. The prudence of the latter, who adhered to the moderate
policy of Augustus and the Antonines, embraced the favorable opportunity
of terminating a successful war by an honorable and advantageous peace.
In pursuance of their promise, the emperors soon afterwards appointed
Sicorius Probus, one of their secretaries, to acquaint the Persian court
with their final resolution. As the minister of peace, he was received
with every mark of politeness and friendship; but, under the pretence of
allowing him the necessary repose after so long a journey, the audience of
Probus was deferred from day to day; and he attended the slow motions of
the king, till at length he was admitted to his presence, near the River
Asprudus in Media. The secret motive of Narses, in this delay, had been to
collect such a military force as might enable him, though sincerely
desirous of peace, to negotiate with the greater weight and dignity. Three
persons only assisted at this important conference, the minister Apharban,
the præfect of the guards, and an officer who had commanded on the
Armenian frontier. The first condition proposed by the ambassador is not
at present of a very intelligible nature; that the city of Nisibis might
be established for the place of mutual exchange, or, as we should formerly
have termed it, for the staple of trade, between the two empires. There is
no difficulty in conceiving the intention of the Roman princes to improve
their revenue by some restraints upon commerce; but as Nisibis was
situated within their own dominions, and as they were masters both of the
imports and exports, it should seem that such restraints were the objects
of an internal law, rather than of a foreign treaty. To render them more
effectual, some stipulations were probably required on the side of the
king of Persia, which appeared so very repugnant either to his interest or
to his dignity, that Narses could not be persuaded to subscribe them. As
this was the only article to which he refused his consent, it was no
longer insisted on; and the emperors either suffered the trade to flow in
its natural channels, or contented themselves with such restrictions, as
it depended on their own authority to establish.
As soon as this difficulty was removed, a solemn peace was concluded and
ratified between the two nations. The conditions of a treaty so glorious
to the empire, and so necessary to Persia Persian, may deserve a more
peculiar attention, as the history of Rome presents very few transactions
of a similar nature; most of her wars having either been terminated by
absolute conquest, or waged against barbarians ignorant of the use of
letters. I. The Aboras, or, as it is called by Xenophon, the Araxes, was
fixed as the boundary between the two monarchies. That river, which rose
near the Tigris, was increased, a few miles below Nisibis, by the little
stream of the Mygdonius, passed under the walls of Singara, and fell into
the Euphrates at Circesium, a frontier town, which, by the care of
Diocletian, was very strongly fortified. Mesopotomia, the object of so
many wars, was ceded to the empire; and the Persians, by this treaty,
renounced all pretensions to that great province. II. They relinquished to
the Romans five provinces beyond the Tigris. Their situation formed a very
useful barrier, and their natural strength was soon improved by art and
military skill. Four of these, to the north of the river, were districts
of obscure fame and inconsiderable extent; Intiline, Zabdicene, Arzanene,
and Moxoene; but on the east of the Tigris, the empire acquired the large
and mountainous territory of Carduene, the ancient seat of the
Carduchians, who preserved for many ages their manly freedom in the heart
of the despotic monarchies of Asia. The ten thousand Greeks traversed
their country, after a painful march, or rather engagement, of seven days;
and it is confessed by their leader, in his incomparable relation of the
retreat, that they suffered more from the arrows of the Carduchians, than
from the power of the Great King. Their posterity, the Curds, with very
little alteration either of name or manners, * acknowledged the nominal
sovereignty of the Turkish sultan. III. It is almost needless to observe,
that Tiridates, the faithful ally of Rome, was restored to the throne of
his fathers, and that the rights of the Imperial supremacy were fully
asserted and secured. The limits of Armenia were extended as far as the
fortress of Sintha in Media, and this increase of dominion was not so much
an act of liberality as of justice. Of the provinces already mentioned
beyond the Tigris, the four first had been dismembered by the Parthians
from the crown of Armenia; and when the Romans acquired the possession of
them, they stipulated, at the expense of the usurpers, an ample
compensation, which invested their ally with the extensive and fertile
country of Atropatene. Its principal city, in the same situation perhaps
as the modern Tauris, was frequently honored by the residence of
Tiridates; and as it sometimes bore the name of Ecbatana, he imitated, in
the buildings and fortifications, the splendid capital of the Medes. IV.
The country of Iberia was barren, its inhabitants rude and savage. But
they were accustomed to the use of arms, and they separated from the
empire barbarians much fiercer and more formidable than themselves. The
narrow defiles of Mount Caucasus were in their hands, and it was in their
choice, either to admit or to exclude the wandering tribes of Sarmatia,
whenever a rapacious spirit urged them to penetrate into the richer climes
of the South. The nomination of the kings of Iberia, which was resigned by
the Persian monarch to the emperors, contributed to the strength and
security of the Roman power in Asia. The East enjoyed a profound
tranquillity during forty years; and the treaty between the rival
monarchies was strictly observed till the death of Tiridates; when a new
generation, animated with different views and different passions,
succeeded to the government of the world; and the grandson of Narses
undertook a long and memorable war against the princes of the house of
Constantine.
The arduous work of rescuing the distressed empire from tyrants and
barbarians had now been completely achieved by a succession of Illyrian
peasants. As soon as Diocletian entered into the twentieth year of his
reign, he celebrated that memorable æra, as well as the success of
his arms, by the pomp of a Roman triumph. Maximian, the equal partner of
his power, was his only companion in the glory of that day. The two Cæsars
had fought and conquered, but the merit of their exploits was ascribed,
according to the rigor of ancient maxims, to the auspicious influence of
their fathers and emperors. The triumph of Diocletian and Maximian was
less magnificent, perhaps, than those of Aurelian and Probus, but it was
dignified by several circumstances of superior fame and good fortune.
Africa and Britain, the Rhine, the Danube, and the Nile, furnished their
respective trophies; but the most distinguished ornament was of a more
singular nature, a Persian victory followed by an important conquest. The
representations of rivers, mountains, and provinces, were carried before
the Imperial car. The images of the captive wives, the sisters, and the
children of the Great King, afforded a new and grateful spectacle to the
vanity of the people. In the eyes of posterity, this triumph is
remarkable, by a distinction of a less honorable kind. It was the last
that Rome ever beheld. Soon after this period, the emperors ceased to
vanquish, and Rome ceased to be the capital of the empire.
The spot on which Rome was founded had been consecrated by ancient
ceremonies and imaginary miracles. The presence of some god, or the memory
of some hero, seemed to animate every part of the city, and the empire of
the world had been promised to the Capitol. The native Romans felt and
confessed the power of this agreeable illusion. It was derived from their
ancestors, had grown up with their earliest habits of life, and was
protected, in some measure, by the opinion of political utility. The form
and the seat of government were intimately blended together, nor was it
esteemed possible to transport the one without destroying the other. But
the sovereignty of the capital was gradually annihilated in the extent of
conquest; the provinces rose to the same level, and the vanquished nations
acquired the name and privileges, without imbibing the partial affections,
of Romans. During a long period, however, the remains of the ancient
constitution, and the influence of custom, preserved the dignity of Rome.
The emperors, though perhaps of African or Illyrian extraction, respected
their adopted country, as the seat of their power, and the centre of their
extensive dominions. The emergencies of war very frequently required their
presence on the frontiers; but Diocletian and Maximian were the first
Roman princes who fixed, in time of peace, their ordinary residence in the
provinces; and their conduct, however it might be suggested by private
motives, was justified by very specious considerations of policy. The
court of the emperor of the West was, for the most part, established at
Milan, whose situation, at the foot of the Alps, appeared far more
convenient than that of Rome, for the important purpose of watching the
motions of the barbarians of Germany. Milan soon assumed the splendor of
an Imperial city. The houses are described as numerous and well built; the
manners of the people as polished and liberal. A circus, a theatre, a
mint, a palace, baths, which bore the name of their founder Maximian;
porticos adorned with statues, and a double circumference of walls,
contributed to the beauty of the new capital; nor did it seem oppressed
even by the proximity of Rome. To rival the majesty of Rome was the
ambition likewise of Diocletian, who employed his leisure, and the wealth
of the East, in the embellishment of Nicomedia, a city placed on the verge
of Europe and Asia, almost at an equal distance between the Danube and the
Euphrates. By the taste of the monarch, and at the expense of the people,
Nicomedia acquired, in the space of a few years, a degree of magnificence
which might appear to have required the labor of ages, and became inferior
only to Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch, in extent of populousness. The life
of Diocletian and Maximian was a life of action, and a considerable
portion of it was spent in camps, or in the long and frequent marches; but
whenever the public business allowed them any relaxation, they seemed to
have retired with pleasure to their favorite residences of Nicomedia and
Milan. Till Diocletian, in the twentieth year of his reign, celebrated his
Roman triumph, it is extremely doubtful whether he ever visited the
ancient capital of the empire. Even on that memorable occasion his stay
did not exceed two months. Disgusted with the licentious familiarity of
the people, he quitted Rome with precipitation thirteen days before it was
expected that he should have appeared in the senate, invested with the
ensigns of the consular dignity.
The dislike expressed by Diocletian towards Rome and Roman freedom, was
not the effect of momentary caprice, but the result of the most artful
policy. That crafty prince had framed a new system of Imperial government,
which was afterwards completed by the family of Constantine; and as the
image of the old constitution was religiously preserved in the senate, he
resolved to deprive that order of its small remains of power and
consideration. We may recollect, about eight years before the elevation,
of Diocletian the transient greatness, and the ambitious hopes, of the
Roman senate. As long as that enthusiasm prevailed, many of the nobles
imprudently displayed their zeal in the cause of freedom; and after the
successes of Probus had withdrawn their countenance from the republican
party, the senators were unable to disguise their impotent resentment. As
the sovereign of Italy, Maximian was intrusted with the care of
extinguishing this troublesome, rather than dangerous spirit, and the task
was perfectly suited to his cruel temper. The most illustrious members of
the senate, whom Diocletian always affected to esteem, were involved, by
his colleague, in the accusation of imaginary plots; and the possession of
an elegant villa, or a well-cultivated estate, was interpreted as a
convincing evidence of guilt. The camp of the Prætorians, which had
so long oppressed, began to protect, the majesty of Rome; and as those
haughty troops were conscious of the decline of their power, they were
naturally disposed to unite their strength with the authority of the
senate. By the prudent measures of Diocletian, the numbers of the Prætorians
were insensibly reduced, their privileges abolished, and their place
supplied by two faithful legions of Illyricum, who, under the new titles
of Jovians and Herculians, were appointed to perform the service of the
Imperial guards. But the most fatal though secret wound, which the senate
received from the hands of Diocletian and Maximian, was inflicted by the
inevitable operation of their absence. As long as the emperors resided at
Rome, that assembly might be oppressed, but it could scarcely be
neglected. The successors of Augustus exercised the power of dictating
whatever laws their wisdom or caprice might suggest; but those laws were
ratified by the sanction of the senate. The model of ancient freedom was
preserved in its deliberations and decrees; and wise princes, who
respected the prejudices of the Roman people, were in some measure obliged
to assume the language and behavior suitable to the general and first
magistrate of the republic. In the armies and in the provinces, they
displayed the dignity of monarchs; and when they fixed their residence at
a distance from the capital, they forever laid aside the dissimulation
which Augustus had recommended to his successors. In the exercise of the
legislative as well as the executive power, the sovereign advised with his
ministers, instead of consulting the great council of the nation. The name
of the senate was mentioned with honor till the last period of the empire;
the vanity of its members was still flattered with honorary distinctions;
but the assembly which had so long been the source, and so long the
instrument of power, was respectfully suffered to sink into oblivion. The
senate of Rome, losing all connection with the Imperial court and the
actual constitution, was left a venerable but useless monument of
antiquity on the Capitoline hill.
When the Roman princes had lost sight of the senate and of their ancient
capital, they easily forgot the origin and nature of their legal power.
The civil offices of consul, of proconsul, of censor, and of tribune, by
the union of which it had been formed, betrayed to the people its
republican extraction. Those modest titles were laid aside; and if they
still distinguished their high station by the appellation of Emperor, or
Imperator, that word was understood in a new and more dignified sense, and
no longer denoted the general of the Roman armies, but the sovereign of
the Roman world. The name of Emperor, which was at first of a military
nature, was associated with another of a more servile kind. The epithet of
Dominus, or Lord, in its primitive signification, was expressive, not of
the authority of a prince over his subjects, or of a commander over his
soldiers, but of the despotic power of a master over his domestic slaves.
Viewing it in that odious light, it had been rejected with abhorrence by
the first Cæsars. Their resistance insensibly became more feeble,
and the name less odious; till at length the style of our Lord
and Emperor was not only bestowed by flattery, but was
regularly admitted into the laws and public monuments. Such lofty epithets
were sufficient to elate and satisfy the most excessive vanity; and if the
successors of Diocletian still declined the title of King, it seems to
have been the effect not so much of their moderation as of their delicacy.
Wherever the Latin tongue was in use, (and it was the language of
government throughout the empire,) the Imperial title, as it was peculiar
to themselves, conveyed a more respectable idea than the name of king,
which they must have shared with a hundred barbarian chieftains; or which,
at the best, they could derive only from Romulus, or from Tarquin. But the
sentiments of the East were very different from those of the West. From
the earliest period of history, the sovereigns of Asia had been celebrated
in the Greek language by the title of Basileus, or King; and since it was
considered as the first distinction among men, it was soon employed by the
servile provincials of the East, in their humble addresses to the Roman
throne. Even the attributes, or at least the titles, of the Divinity, were
usurped by Diocletian and Maximian, who transmitted them to a succession
of Christian emperors. Such extravagant compliments, however, soon lose
their impiety by losing their meaning; and when the ear is once accustomed
to the sound, they are heard with indifference, as vague though excessive
professions of respect.
From the time of Augustus to that of Diocletian, the Roman princes,
conversing in a familiar manner among their fellow-citizens, were saluted
only with the same respect that was usually paid to senators and
magistrates. Their principal distinction was the Imperial or military robe
of purple; whilst the senatorial garment was marked by a broad, and the
equestrian by a narrow, band or stripe of the same honorable color. The
pride, or rather the policy, of Diocletian, engaged that artful prince to
introduce the stately magnificence of the court of Persia. He ventured to
assume the diadem, an ornament detested by the Romans as the odious ensign
of royalty, and the use of which had been considered as the most desperate
act of the madness of Caligula. It was no more than a broad white fillet
set with pearls, which encircled the emperor's head. The sumptuous robes
of Diocletian and his successors were of silk and gold; and it is remarked
with indignation, that even their shoes were studded with the most
precious gems. The access to their sacred person was every day rendered
more difficult by the institution of new forms and ceremonies. The avenues
of the palace were strictly guarded by the various schools,
as they began to be called, of domestic officers. The interior apartments
were intrusted to the jealous vigilance of the eunuchs, the increase of
whose numbers and influence was the most infallible symptom of the
progress of despotism. When a subject was at length admitted to the
Imperial presence, he was obliged, whatever might be his rank, to fall
prostrate on the ground, and to adore, according to the eastern fashion,
the divinity of his lord and master. Diocletian was a man of sense, who,
in the course of private as well as public life, had formed a just
estimate both of himself and of mankind: nor is it easy to conceive, that
in substituting the manners of Persia to those of Rome, he was seriously
actuated by so mean a principle as that of vanity. He flattered himself,
that an ostentation of splendor and luxury would subdue the imagination of
the multitude; that the monarch would be less exposed to the rude license
of the people and the soldiers, as his person was secluded from the public
view; and that habits of submission would insensibly be productive of
sentiments of veneration. Like the modesty affected by Augustus, the state
maintained by Diocletian was a theatrical representation; but it must be
confessed, that of the two comedies, the former was of a much more liberal
and manly character than the latter. It was the aim of the one to
disguise, and the object of the other to display, the unbounded power
which the emperors possessed over the Roman world.
Ostentation was the first principle of the new system instituted by
Diocletian. The second was division. He divided the empire, the provinces,
and every branch of the civil as well as military administration. He
multiplied the wheels of the machine of government, and rendered its
operations less rapid, but more secure. Whatever advantages and whatever
defects might attend these innovations, they must be ascribed in a very
great degree to the first inventor; but as the new frame of policy was
gradually improved and completed by succeeding princes, it will be more
satisfactory to delay the consideration of it till the season of its full
maturity and perfection. Reserving, therefore, for the reign of
Constantine a more exact picture of the new empire, we shall content
ourselves with describing the principal and decisive outline, as it was
traced by the hand of Diocletian. He had associated three colleagues in
the exercise of the supreme power; and as he was convinced that the
abilities of a single man were inadequate to the public defence, he
considered the joint administration of four princes not as a temporary
expedient, but as a fundamental law of the constitution. It was his
intention, that the two elder princes should be distinguished by the use
of the diadem, and the title of Augusti; that,
as affection or esteem might direct their choice, they should regularly
call to their assistance two subordinate colleagues; and that the Csars,
rising in their turn to the first rank, should supply an uninterrupted
succession of emperors. The empire was divided into four parts. The East
and Italy were the most honorable, the Danube and the Rhine the most
laborious stations. The former claimed the presence of the Augusti,
the latter were intrusted to the administration of the Csars.
The strength of the legions was in the hands of the four partners of
sovereignty, and the despair of successively vanquishing four formidable
rivals might intimidate the ambition of an aspiring general. In their
civil government, the emperors were supposed to exercise the undivided
power of the monarch, and their edicts, inscribed with their joint names,
were received in all the provinces, as promulgated by their mutual
councils and authority. Notwithstanding these precautions, the political
union of the Roman world was gradually dissolved, and a principle of
division was introduced, which, in the course of a few years, occasioned
the perpetual separation of the Eastern and Western Empires.
The system of Diocletian was accompanied with another very material
disadvantage, which cannot even at present be totally overlooked; a more
expensive establishment, and consequently an increase of taxes, and the
oppression of the people. Instead of a modest family of slaves and
freedmen, such as had contented the simple greatness of Augustus and
Trajan, three or four magnificent courts were established in the various
parts of the empire, and as many Roman kings
contended with each other and with the Persian monarch for the vain
superiority of pomp and luxury. The number of ministers, of magistrates,
of officers, and of servants, who filled the different departments of the
state, was multiplied beyond the example of former times; and (if we may
borrow the warm expression of a contemporary) "when the proportion of
those who received, exceeded the proportion of those who contributed, the
provinces were oppressed by the weight of tributes." From this period to
the extinction of the empire, it would be easy to deduce an uninterrupted
series of clamors and complaints. According to his religion and situation,
each writer chooses either Diocletian, or Constantine, or Valens, or
Theodosius, for the object of his invectives; but they unanimously agree
in representing the burden of the public impositions, and particularly the
land tax and capitation, as the intolerable and increasing grievance of
their own times. From such a concurrence, an impartial historian, who is
obliged to extract truth from satire, as well as from panegyric, will be
inclined to divide the blame among the princes whom they accuse, and to
ascribe their exactions much less to their personal vices, than to the
uniform system of their administration. * The emperor Diocletian was
indeed the author of that system; but during his reign, the growing evil
was confined within the bounds of modesty and discretion, and he deserves
the reproach of establishing pernicious precedents, rather than of
exercising actual oppression. It may be added, that his revenues were
managed with prudent economy; and that after all the current expenses were
discharged, there still remained in the Imperial treasury an ample
provision either for judicious liberality or for any emergency of the
state.
It was in the twenty first year of his reign that Diocletian executed his
memorable resolution of abdicating the empire; an action more naturally to
have been expected from the elder or the younger Antoninus, than from a
prince who had never practised the lessons of philosophy either in the
attainment or in the use of supreme power. Diocletian acquired the glory
of giving to the world the first example of a resignation, which has not
been very frequently imitated by succeeding monarchs. The parallel of
Charles the Fifth, however, will naturally offer itself to our mind, not
only since the eloquence of a modern historian has rendered that name so
familiar to an English reader, but from the very striking resemblance
between the characters of the two emperors, whose political abilities were
superior to their military genius, and whose specious virtues were much
less the effect of nature than of art. The abdication of Charles appears
to have been hastened by the vicissitude of fortune; and the
disappointment of his favorite schemes urged him to relinquish a power
which he found inadequate to his ambition. But the reign of Diocletian had
flowed with a tide of uninterrupted success; nor was it till after he had
vanquished all his enemies, and accomplished all his designs, that he
seems to have entertained any serious thoughts of resigning the empire.
Neither Charles nor Diocletian were arrived at a very advanced period of
life; since the one was only fifty-five, and the other was no more than
fifty-nine years of age; but the active life of those princes, their wars
and journeys, the cares of royalty, and their application to business, had
already impaired their constitution, and brought on the infirmities of a
premature old age.
Notwithstanding the severity of a very cold and rainy winter, Diocletian
left Italy soon after the ceremony of his triumph, and began his progress
towards the East round the circuit of the Illyrian provinces. From the
inclemency of the weather, and the fatigue of the journey, he soon
contracted a slow illness; and though he made easy marches, and was
generally carried in a close litter, his disorder, before he arrived at
Nicomedia, about the end of the summer, was become very serious and
alarming. During the whole winter he was confined to his palace: his
danger inspired a general and unaffected concern; but the people could
only judge of the various alterations of his health, from the joy or
consternation which they discovered in the countenances and behavior of
his attendants. The rumor of his death was for some time universally
believed, and it was supposed to be concealed with a view to prevent the
troubles that might have happened during the absence of the Cæsar
Galerius. At length, however, on the first of March, Diocletian once more
appeared in public, but so pale and emaciated, that he could scarcely have
been recognized by those to whom his person was the most familiar. It was
time to put an end to the painful struggle, which he had sustained during
more than a year, between the care of his health and that of his dignity.
The former required indulgence and relaxation, the latter compelled him to
direct, from the bed of sickness, the administration of a great empire. He
resolved to pass the remainder of his days in honorable repose, to place
his glory beyond the reach of fortune, and to relinquish the theatre of
the world to his younger and more active associates.
The ceremony of his abdication was performed in a spacious plain, about
three miles from Nicomedia. The emperor ascended a lofty throne, and in a
speech, full of reason and dignity, declared his intention, both to the
people and to the soldiers who were assembled on this extraordinary
occasion. As soon as he had divested himself of his purple, he withdrew
from the gazing multitude; and traversing the city in a covered chariot,
proceeded, without delay, to the favorite retirement which he had chosen
in his native country of Dalmatia. On the same day, which was the first of
May, Maximian, as it had been previously concerted, made his resignation
of the Imperial dignity at Milan. Even in the splendor of the Roman
triumph, Diocletian had meditated his design of abdicating the government.
As he wished to secure the obedience of Maximian, he exacted from him
either a general assurance that he would submit his actions to the
authority of his benefactor, or a particular promise that he would descend
from the throne, whenever he should receive the advice and the example.
This engagement, though it was confirmed by the solemnity of an oath
before the altar of the Capitoline Jupiter, would have proved a feeble
restraint on the fierce temper of Maximian, whose passion was the love of
power, and who neither desired present tranquility nor future reputation.
But he yielded, however reluctantly, to the ascendant which his wiser
colleague had acquired over him, and retired, immediately after his
abdication, to a villa in Lucania, where it was almost impossible that
such an impatient spirit could find any lasting tranquility.
Diocletian, who, from a servile origin, had raised himself to the throne,
passed the nine last years of his life in a private condition. Reason had
dictated, and content seems to have accompanied, his retreat, in which he
enjoyed, for a long time, the respect of those princes to whom he had
resigned the possession of the world. It is seldom that minds long
exercised in business have formed the habits of conversing with
themselves, and in the loss of power they principally regret the want of
occupation. The amusements of letters and of devotion, which afford so
many resources in solitude, were incapable of fixing the attention of
Diocletian; but he had preserved, or at least he soon recovered, a taste
for the most innocent as well as natural pleasures, and his leisure hours
were sufficiently employed in building, planting, and gardening. His
answer to Maximian is deservedly celebrated. He was solicited by that
restless old man to reassume the reins of government, and the Imperial
purple. He rejected the temptation with a smile of pity, calmly observing,
that if he could show Maximian the cabbages which he had planted with his
own hands at Salona, he should no longer be urged to relinquish the
enjoyment of happiness for the pursuit of power. In his conversations with
his friends, he frequently acknowledged, that of all arts, the most
difficult was the art of reigning; and he expressed himself on that
favorite topic with a degree of warmth which could be the result only of
experience. "How often," was he accustomed to say, "is it the interest of
four or five ministers to combine together to deceive their sovereign!
Secluded from mankind by his exalted dignity, the truth is concealed from
his knowledge; he can see only with their eyes, he hears nothing but their
misrepresentations. He confers the most important offices upon vice and
weakness, and disgraces the most virtuous and deserving among his
subjects. By such infamous arts," added Diocletian, "the best and wisest
princes are sold to the venal corruption of their courtiers." A just
estimate of greatness, and the assurance of immortal fame, improve our
relish for the pleasures of retirement; but the Roman emperor had filled
too important a character in the world, to enjoy without alloy the
comforts and security of a private condition. It was impossible that he
could remain ignorant of the troubles which afflicted the empire after his
abdication. It was impossible that he could be indifferent to their
consequences. Fear, sorrow, and discontent, sometimes pursued him into the
solitude of Salona. His tenderness, or at least his pride, was deeply
wounded by the misfortunes of his wife and daughter; and the last moments
of Diocletian were imbittered by some affronts, which Licinius and
Constantine might have spared the father of so many emperors, and the
first author of their own fortune. A report, though of a very doubtful
nature, has reached our times, that he prudently withdrew himself from
their power by a voluntary death.
Before we dismiss the consideration of the life and character of
Diocletian, we may, for a moment, direct our view to the place of his
retirement. Salona, a principal city of his native province of Dalmatia,
was near two hundred Roman miles (according to the measurement of the
public highways) from Aquileia and the confines of Italy, and about two
hundred and seventy from Sirmium, the usual residence of the emperors
whenever they visited the Illyrian frontier. A miserable village still
preserves the name of Salona; but so late as the sixteenth century, the
remains of a theatre, and a confused prospect of broken arches and marble
columns, continued to attest its ancient splendor. About six or seven
miles from the city, Diocletian constructed a magnificent palace, and we
may infer, from the greatness of the work, how long he had meditated his
design of abdicating the empire. The choice of a spot which united all
that could contribute either to health or to luxury, did not require the
partiality of a native. "The soil was dry and fertile, the air is pure and
wholesome, and though extremely hot during the summer months, this country
seldom feels those sultry and noxious winds, to which the coasts of Istria
and some parts of Italy are exposed. The views from the palace are no less
beautiful than the soil and climate were inviting. Towards the west lies
the fertile shore that stretches along the Adriatic, in which a number of
small islands are scattered in such a manner, as to give this part of the
sea the appearance of a great lake. On the north side lies the bay, which
led to the ancient city of Salona; and the country beyond it, appearing in
sight, forms a proper contrast to that more extensive prospect of water,
which the Adriatic presents both to the south and to the east. Towards the
north, the view is terminated by high and irregular mountains, situated at
a proper distance, and in many places covered with villages, woods, and
vineyards."
Though Constantine, from a very obvious prejudice, affects to mention the
palace of Diocletian with contempt, yet one of their successors, who could
only see it in a neglected and mutilated state, celebrates its
magnificence in terms of the highest admiration. It covered an extent of
ground consisting of between nine and ten English acres. The form was
quadrangular, flanked with sixteen towers. Two of the sides were near six
hundred, and the other two near seven hundred feet in length. The whole
was constructed of a beautiful freestone, extracted from the neighboring
quarries of Trau, or Tragutium, and very little inferior to marble itself.
Four streets, intersecting each other at right angles, divided the several
parts of this great edifice, and the approach to the principal apartment
was from a very stately entrance, which is still denominated the Golden
Gate. The approach was terminated by a peristylium of granite columns, on
one side of which we discover the square temple of Æsculapius, on
the other the octagon temple of Jupiter. The latter of those deities
Diocletian revered as the patron of his fortunes, the former as the
protector of his health. By comparing the present remains with the
precepts of Vitruvius, the several parts of the building, the baths,
bed-chamber, the atrium, the basilica, and the Cyzicene, Corinthian, and
Egyptian halls have been described with some degree of precision, or at
least of probability. Their forms were various, their proportions just;
but they all were attended with two imperfections, very repugnant to our
modern notions of taste and conveniency. These stately rooms had neither
windows nor chimneys. They were lighted from the top, (for the building
seems to have consisted of no more than one story,) and they received
their heat by the help of pipes that were conveyed along the walls. The
range of principal apartments was protected towards the south-west by a
portico five hundred and seventeen feet long, which must have formed a
very noble and delightful walk, when the beauties of painting and
sculpture were added to those of the prospect.
Had this magnificent edifice remained in a solitary country, it would have
been exposed to the ravages of time; but it might, perhaps, have escaped
the rapacious industry of man. The village of Aspalathus, and, long
afterwards, the provincial town of Spalatro, have grown out of its ruins.
The Golden Gate now opens into the market-place. St. John the Baptist has
usurped the honors of Æsculapius; and the temple of Jupiter, under
the protection of the Virgin, is converted into the cathedral church. For
this account of Diocletian's palace we are principally indebted to an
ingenious artist of our own time and country, whom a very liberal
curiosity carried into the heart of Dalmatia. But there is room to suspect
that the elegance of his designs and engraving has somewhat flattered the
objects which it was their purpose to represent. We are informed by a more
recent and very judicious traveller, that the awful ruins of Spalatro are
not less expressive of the decline of the art than of the greatness of the
Roman empire in the time of Diocletian. If such was indeed the state of
architecture, we must naturally believe that painting and sculpture had
experienced a still more sensible decay. The practice of architecture is
directed by a few general and even mechanical rules. But sculpture, and
above all, painting, propose to themselves the imitation not only of the
forms of nature, but of the characters and passions of the human soul. In
those sublime arts, the dexterity of the hand is of little avail, unless
it is animated by fancy, and guided by the most correct taste and
observation.
It is almost unnecessary to remark, that the civil distractions of the
empire, the license of the soldiers, the inroads of the barbarians, and
the progress of despotism, had proved very unfavorable to genius, and even
to learning. The succession of Illyrian princes restored the empire
without restoring the sciences. Their military education was not
calculated to inspire them with the love of letters; and even the mind of
Diocletian, however active and capacious in business, was totally
uninformed by study or speculation. The professions of law and physic are
of such common use and certain profit, that they will always secure a
sufficient number of practitioners, endowed with a reasonable degree of
abilities and knowledge; but it does not appear that the students in those
two faculties appeal to any celebrated masters who have flourished within
that period. The voice of poetry was silent. History was reduced to dry
and confused abridgments, alike destitute of amusement and instruction. A
languid and affected eloquence was still retained in the pay and service
of the emperors, who encouraged not any arts except those which
contributed to the gratification of their pride, or the defence of their
power.
The declining age of learning and of mankind is marked, however, by the
rise and rapid progress of the new Platonists. The school of Alexandria
silenced those of Athens; and the ancient sects enrolled themselves under
the banners of the more fashionable teachers, who recommended their system
by the novelty of their method, and the austerity of their manners.
Several of these masters, Ammonius, Plotinus, Amelius, and Porphyry, were
men of profound thought and intense application; but by mistaking the true
object of philosophy, their labors contributed much less to improve than
to corrupt the human understanding. The knowledge that is suited to our
situation and powers, the whole compass of moral, natural, and
mathematical science, was neglected by the new Platonists; whilst they
exhausted their strength in the verbal disputes of metaphysics, attempted
to explore the secrets of the invisible world, and studied to reconcile
Aristotle with Plato, on subjects of which both these philosophers were as
ignorant as the rest of mankind. Consuming their reason in these deep but
unsubstantial meditations, their minds were exposed to illusions of fancy.
They flattered themselves that they possessed the secret of disengaging
the soul from its corporal prison; claimed a familiar intercourse with
demons and spirits; and, by a very singular revolution, converted the
study of philosophy into that of magic. The ancient sages had derided the
popular superstition; after disguising its extravagance by the thin
pretence of allegory, the disciples of Plotinus and Porphyry became its
most zealous defenders. As they agreed with the Christians in a few
mysterious points of faith, they attacked the remainder of their
theological system with all the fury of civil war. The new Platonists
would scarcely deserve a place in the history of science, but in that of
the church the mention of them will very frequently occur.
Troubles After The Abdication Of Diocletian.—Death Of Constantius.—Elevation Of Constantine And Maxen Tius. Six Emperors At The Same Time.—Death Of Maximian And Galerius.— Victories Of Constantine Over Maxentius And Licinus.— Reunion Of The Empire Under The Authority Of Constantine.
The balance of power established by Diocletian subsisted no longer than
while it was sustained by the firm and dexterous hand of the founder. It
required such a fortunate mixture of different tempers and abilities, as
could scarcely be found or even expected a second time; two emperors
without jealousy, two Cæsars without ambition, and the same general
interest invariably pursued by four independent princes. The abdication of
Diocletian and Maximian was succeeded by eighteen years of discord and
confusion. The empire was afflicted by five civil wars; and the remainder
of the time was not so much a state of tranquillity as a suspension of
arms between several hostile monarchs, who, viewing each other with an eye
of fear and hatred, strove to increase their respective forces at the
expense of their subjects.
As soon as Diocletian and Maximian had resigned the purple, their station,
according to the rules of the new constitution, was filled by the two Cæsars,
Constantius and Galerius, who immediately assumed the title of Augustus.
The honors of seniority and precedence were allowed to the former of those
princes, and he continued under a new appellation to administer his
ancient department of Gaul, Spain, and Britain. The government of those
ample provinces was sufficient to exercise his talents and to satisfy his
ambition. Clemency, temperance, and moderation, distinguished the amiable
character of Constantius, and his fortunate subjects had frequently
occasion to compare the virtues of their sovereign with the passions of
Maximian, and even with the arts of Diocletian. Instead of imitating their
eastern pride and magnificence, Constantius preserved the modesty of a
Roman prince. He declared, with unaffected sincerity, that his most valued
treasure was in the hearts of his people, and that, whenever the dignity
of the throne, or the danger of the state, required any extraordinary
supply, he could depend with confidence on their gratitude and liberality.
The provincials of Gaul, Spain, and Britain, sensible of his worth, and of
their own happiness, reflected with anxiety on the declining health of the
emperor Constantius, and the tender age of his numerous family, the issue
of his second marriage with the daughter of Maximian.
The stern temper of Galerius was cast in a very different mould; and while
he commanded the esteem of his subjects, he seldom condescended to solicit
their affections. His fame in arms, and, above all, the success of the
Persian war, had elated his haughty mind, which was naturally impatient of
a superior, or even of an equal. If it were possible to rely on the
partial testimony of an injudicious writer, we might ascribe the
abdication of Diocletian to the menaces of Galerius, and relate the
particulars of a private conversation between
the two princes, in which the former discovered as much pusillanimity as
the latter displayed ingratitude and arrogance. But these obscure
anecdotes are sufficiently refuted by an impartia view of the character
and conduct of Diocletian. Whatever might otherwise have been his
intentions, if he had apprehended any danger from the violence of
Galerius, his good sense would have instructed him to prevent the
ignominious contest; and as he had held the sceptre with glory, he would
have resigned it without disgrace.
After the elevation of Constantius and Galerius to the rank of Augusti,
two new Csars were required to supply their
place, and to complete the system of the Imperial government. Diocletian,
was sincerely desirous of withdrawing himself from the world; he
considered Galerius, who had married his daughter, as the firmest support
of his family and of the empire; and he consented, without reluctance,
that his successor should assume the merit as well as the envy of the
important nomination. It was fixed without consulting the interest or
inclination of the princes of the West. Each of them had a son who was
arrived at the age of manhood, and who might have been deemed the most
natural candidates for the vacant honor. But the impotent resentment of
Maximian was no longer to be dreaded; and the moderate Constantius, though
he might despise the dangers, was humanely apprehensive of the calamities,
of civil war. The two persons whom Galerius promoted to the rank of Cæsar,
were much better suited to serve the views of his ambition; and their
principal recommendation seems to have consisted in the want of merit or
personal consequence. The first of these was Daza, or, as he was
afterwards called, Maximin, whose mother was the sister of Galerius. The
unexperienced youth still betrayed, by his manners and language, his
rustic education, when, to his own astonishment, as well as that of the
world, he was invested by Diocletian with the purple, exalted to the
dignity of Cæsar, and intrusted with the sovereign command of Egypt
and Syria. At the same time, Severus, a faithful servant, addicted to
pleasure, but not incapable of business, was sent to Milan, to receive,
from the reluctant hands of Maximian, the Cæsarian ornaments, and
the possession of Italy and Africa. According to the forms of the
constitution, Severus acknowledged the supremacy of the western emperor;
but he was absolutely devoted to the commands of his benefactor Galerius,
who, reserving to himself the intermediate countries from the confines of
Italy to those of Syria, firmly established his power over three fourths
of the monarchy. In the full confidence that the approaching death of
Constantius would leave him sole master of the Roman world, we are assured
that he had arranged in his mind a long succession of future princes, and
that he meditated his own retreat from public life, after he should have
accomplished a glorious reign of about twenty years.
But within less than eighteen months, two unexpected revolutions
overturned the ambitious schemes of Galerius. The hopes of uniting the
western provinces to his empire were disappointed by the elevation of
Constantine, whilst Italy and Africa were lost by the successful revolt of
Maxentius.
I. The fame of Constantine has rendered posterity attentive to the most
minute circumstances of his life and actions. The place of his birth, as
well as the condition of his mother Helena, have been the subject, not
only of literary, but of national disputes. Notwithstanding the recent
tradition, which assigns for her father a British king, we are obliged to
confess, that Helena was the daughter of an innkeeper; but at the same
time, we may defend the legality of her marriage, against those who have
represented her as the concubine of Constantius. The great Constantine was
most probably born at Naissus, in Dacia; and it is not surprising that, in
a family and province distinguished only by the profession of arms, the
youth should discover very little inclination to improve his mind by the
acquisition of knowledge. He was about eighteen years of age when his
father was promoted to the rank of Cæsar; but that fortunate event
was attended with his mother's divorce; and the splendor of an Imperial
alliance reduced the son of Helena to a state of disgrace and humiliation.
Instead of following Constantius in the West, he remained in the service
of Diocletian, signalized his valor in the wars of Egypt and Persia, and
gradually rose to the honorable station of a tribune of the first order.
The figure of Constantine was tall and majestic; he was dexterous in all
his exercises, intrepid in war, affable in peace; in his whole conduct,
the active spirit of youth was tempered by habitual prudence; and while
his mind was engrossed by ambition, he appeared cold and insensible to the
allurements of pleasure. The favor of the people and soldiers, who had
named him as a worthy candidate for the rank of Cæsar, served only
to exasperate the jealousy of Galerius; and though prudence might restrain
him from exercising any open violence, an absolute monarch is seldom at a
loss now to execute a sure and secret evenge. Every hour increased the
danger of Constantine, and the anxiety of his father, who, by repeated
letters, expressed the warmest desire of embracing his son. For some time
the policy of Galerius supplied him with delays and excuses; but it was
impossible long to refuse so natural a request of his associate, without
maintaining his refusal by arms. The permission of the journey was
reluctantly granted, and whatever precautions the emperor might have taken
to intercept a return, the consequences of which he, with so much reason,
apprehended, they were effectually disappointed by the incredible
diligence of Constantine. Leaving the palace of Nicomedia in the night, he
travelled post through Bithynia, Thrace, Dacia, Pannonia, Italy, and Gaul,
and, amidst the joyful acclamations of the people, reached the port of
Boulogne in the very moment when his father was preparing to embark for
Britain.
The British expedition, and an easy victory over the barbarians of
Caledonia, were the last exploits of the reign of Constantius. He ended
his life in the Imperial palace of York, fifteen months after he had
received the title of Augustus, and almost fourteen years and a half after
he had been promoted to the rank of Cæsar. His death was immediately
succeeded by the elevation of Constantine. The ideas of inheritance and
succession are so very familiar, that the generality of mankind consider
them as founded, not only in reason, but in nature itself. Our imagination
readily transfers the same principles from private property to public
dominion: and whenever a virtuous father leaves behind him a son whose
merit seems to justify the esteem, or even the hopes, of the people, the
joint influence of prejudice and of affection operates with irresistible
weight. The flower of the western armies had followed Constantius into
Britain, and the national troops were reenforced by a numerous body of
Alemanni, who obeyed the orders of Crocus, one of their hereditary
chieftains. The opinion of their own importance, and the assurance that
Britain, Gaul, and Spain would acquiesce in their nomination, were
diligently inculcated to the legions by the adherents of Constantine. The
soldiers were asked, whether they could hesitate a moment between the
honor of placing at their head the worthy son of their beloved emperor,
and the ignominy of tamely expecting the arrival of some obscure stranger,
on whom it might please the sovereign of Asia to bestow the armies and
provinces of the West. It was insinuated to them, that gratitude and
liberality held a distinguished place among the virtues of Constantine;
nor did that artful prince show himself to the troops, till they were
prepared to salute him with the names of Augustus and Emperor. The throne
was the object of his desires; and had he been less actuated by ambition,
it was his only means of safety. He was well acquainted with the character
and sentiments of Galerius, and sufficiently apprised, that if he wished
to live he must determine to reign. The decent and even obstinate
resistance which he chose to affect, was contrived to justify his
usurpation; nor did he yield to the acclamations of the army, till he had
provided the proper materials for a letter, which he immediately
despatched to the emperor of the East. Constantine informed him of the
melancholy event of his father's death, modestly asserted his natural
claim to the succession, and respectfully lamented, that the affectionate
violence of his troops had not permitted him to solicit the Imperial
purple in the regular and constitutional manner. The first emotions of
Galerius were those of surprise, disappointment, and rage; and as he could
seldom restrain his passions, he loudly threatened, that he would commit
to the flames both the letter and the messenger. But his resentment
insensibly subsided; and when he recollected the doubtful chance of war,
when he had weighed the character and strength of his adversary, he
consented to embrace the honorable accommodation which the prudence of
Constantine had left open to him. Without either condemning or ratifying
the choice of the British army, Galerius accepted the son of his deceased
colleague as the sovereign of the provinces beyond the Alps; but he gave
him only the title of Cæsar, and the fourth rank among the Roman
princes, whilst he conferred the vacant place of Augustus on his favorite
Severus. The apparent harmony of the empire was still preserved, and
Constantine, who already possessed the substance, expected, without
impatience, an opportunity of obtaining the honors, of supreme power.
The children of Constantius by his second marriage were six in number,
three of either sex, and whose Imperial descent might have solicited a
preference over the meaner extraction of the son of Helena. But
Constantine was in the thirty-second year of his age, in the full vigor
both of mind and body, at the time when the eldest of his brothers could
not possibly be more than thirteen years old. His claim of superior merit
had been allowed and ratified by the dying emperor. In his last moments
Constantius bequeathed to his eldest son the care of the safety as well as
greatness of the family; conjuring him to assume both the authority and
the sentiments of a father with regard to the children of Theodora. Their
liberal education, advantageous marriages, the secure dignity of their
lives, and the first honors of the state with which they were invested,
attest the fraternal affection of Constantine; and as those princes
possessed a mild and grateful disposition, they submitted without
reluctance to the superiority of his genius and fortune.
II. The ambitious spirit of Galerius was scarcely reconciled to the
disappointment of his views upon the Gallic provinces, before the
unexpected loss of Italy wounded his pride as well as power in a still
more sensible part. The long absence of the emperors had filled Rome with
discontent and indignation; and the people gradually discovered, that the
preference given to Nicomedia and Milan was not to be ascribed to the
particular inclination of Diocletian, but to the permanent form of
government which he had instituted. It was in vain that, a few months
after his abdication, his successors dedicated, under his name, those
magnificent baths, whose ruins still supply the ground as well as the
materials for so many churches and convents. The tranquility of those
elegant recesses of ease and luxury was disturbed by the impatient murmurs
of the Romans, and a report was insensibly circulated, that the sums
expended in erecting those buildings would soon be required at their
hands. About that time the avarice of Galerius, or perhaps the exigencies
of the state, had induced him to make a very strict and rigorous
inquisition into the property of his subjects, for the purpose of a
general taxation, both on their lands and on their persons. A very minute
survey appears to have been taken of their real estates; and wherever
there was the slightest suspicion of concealment, torture was very freely
employed to obtain a sincere declaration of their personal wealth. The
privileges which had exalted Italy above the rank of the provinces were no
longer regarded: * and the officers of the revenue already began to number
the Roman people, and to settle the proportion of the new taxes. Even when
the spirit of freedom had been utterly extinguished, the tamest subjects
have sometimes ventured to resist an unprecedented invasion of their
property; but on this occasion the injury was aggravated by the insult,
and the sense of private interest was quickened by that of national honor.
The conquest of Macedonia, as we have already observed, had delivered the
Roman people from the weight of personal taxes. Though they had
experienced every form of despotism, they had now enjoyed that exemption
near five hundred years; nor could they patiently brook the insolence of
an Illyrian peasant, who, from his distant residence in Asia, presumed to
number Rome among the tributary cities of his empire. The rising fury of
the people was encouraged by the authority, or at least the connivance, of
the senate; and the feeble remains of the Prætorian guards, who had
reason to apprehend their own dissolution, embraced so honorable a
pretence, and declared their readiness to draw their swords in the service
of their oppressed country. It was the wish, and it soon became the hope,
of every citizen, that after expelling from Italy their foreign tyrants,
they should elect a prince who, by the place of his residence, and by his
maxims of government, might once more deserve the title of Roman emperor.
The name, as well as the situation, of Maxentius determined in his favor
the popular enthusiasm.
Maxentius was the son of the emperor Maximian, and he had married the
daughter of Galerius. His birth and alliance seemed to offer him the
fairest promise of succeeding to the empire; but his vices and incapacity
procured him the same exclusion from the dignity of Cæsar, which
Constantine had deserved by a dangerous superiority of merit. The policy
of Galerius preferred such associates as would never disgrace the choice,
nor dispute the commands, of their benefactor. An obscure stranger was
therefore raised to the throne of Italy, and the son of the late emperor
of the West was left to enjoy the luxury of a private fortune in a villa a
few miles distant from the capital. The gloomy passions of his soul,
shame, vexation, and rage, were inflamed by envy on the news of
Constantine's success; but the hopes of Maxentius revived with the public
discontent, and he was easily persuaded to unite his personal injury and
pretensions with the cause of the Roman people. Two Prætorian
tribunes and a commissary of provisions undertook the management of the
conspiracy; and as every order of men was actuated by the same spirit, the
immediate event was neither doubtful nor difficult. The præfect of
the city, and a few magistrates, who maintained their fidelity to Severus,
were massacred by the guards; and Maxentius, invested with the Imperial
ornaments, was acknowledged by the applauding senate and people as the
protector of the Roman freedom and dignity. It is uncertain whether
Maximian was previously acquainted with the conspiracy; but as soon as the
standard of rebellion was erected at Rome, the old emperor broke from the
retirement where the authority of Diocletian had condemned him to pass a
life of melancholy and solitude, and concealed his returning ambition
under the disguise of paternal tenderness. At the request of his son and
of the senate, he condescended to reassume the purple. His ancient
dignity, his experience, and his fame in arms, added strength as well as
reputation to the party of Maxentius.
According to the advice, or rather the orders, of his colleague, the
emperor Severus immediately hastened to Rome, in the full confidence,
that, by his unexpected celerity, he should easily suppress the tumult of
an unwarlike populace, commanded by a licentious youth. But he found on
his arrival the gates of the city shut against him, the walls filled with
men and arms, an experienced general at the head of the rebels, and his
own troops without spirit or affection. A large body of Moors deserted to
the enemy, allured by the promise of a large donative; and, if it be true
that they had been levied by Maximian in his African war, preferring the
natural feelings of gratitude to the artificial ties of allegiance.
Anulinus, the Prætorian præfect, declared himself in favor of
Maxentius, and drew after him the most considerable part of the troops,
accustomed to obey his commands. Rome, according to the expression of an
orator, recalled her armies; and the unfortunate Severus, destitute of
force and of counsel, retired, or rather fled, with precipitation, to
Ravenna. Here he might for some time have been safe. The fortifications of
Ravenna were able to resist the attempts, and the morasses that surrounded
the town, were sufficient to prevent the approach, of the Italian army.
The sea, which Severus commanded with a powerful fleet, secured him an
inexhaustible supply of provisions, and gave a free entrance to the
legions, which, on the return of spring, would advance to his assistance
from Illyricum and the East. Maximian, who conducted the siege in person,
was soon convinced that he might waste his time and his army in the
fruitless enterprise, and that he had nothing to hope either from force or
famine. With an art more suitable to the character of Diocletian than to
his own, he directed his attack, not so much against the walls of Ravenna,
as against the mind of Severus. The treachery which he had experienced
disposed that unhappy prince to distrust the most sincere of his friends
and adherents. The emissaries of Maximian easily persuaded his credulity,
that a conspiracy was formed to betray the town, and prevailed upon his
fears not to expose himself to the discretion of an irritated conqueror,
but to accept the faith of an honorable capitulation. He was at first
received with humanity and treated with respect. Maximian conducted the
captive emperor to Rome, and gave him the most solemn assurances that he
had secured his life by the resignation of the purple. But Severus, could
obtain only an easy death and an Imperial funeral. When the sentence was
signified to him, the manner of executing it was left to his own choice;
he preferred the favorite mode of the ancients, that of opening his veins;
and as soon as he expired, his body was carried to the sepulchre which had
been constructed for the family of Gallienus.
Though the characters of Constantine and Maxentius had very little
affinity with each other, their situation and interest were the same; and
prudence seemed to require that they should unite their forces against the
common enemy. Notwithstanding the superiority of his age and dignity, the
indefatigable Maximian passed the Alps, and, courting a personal interview
with the sovereign of Gaul, carried with him his daughter Fausta as the
pledge of the new alliance. The marriage was celebrated at Arles with
every circumstance of magnificence; and the ancient colleague of
Diocletian, who again asserted his claim to the Western empire, conferred
on his son-in-law and ally the title of Augustus. By consenting to receive
that honor from Maximian, Constantine seemed to embrace the cause of Rome
and of the senate; but his professions were ambiguous, and his assistance
slow and ineffectual. He considered with attention the approaching contest
between the masters of Italy and the emperor of the East, and was prepared
to consult his own safety or ambition in the event of the war.
The importance of the occasion called for the presence and abilities of
Galerius. At the head of a powerful army, collected from Illyricum and the
East, he entered Italy, resolved to revenge the death of Severus, and to
chastise the rebellions Romans; or, as he expressed his intentions, in the
furious language of a barbarian, to extirpate the senate, and to destroy
the people by the sword. But the skill of Maximian had concerted a prudent
system of defence. The invader found every place hostile, fortified, and
inaccessible; and though he forced his way as far as Narni, within sixty
miles of Rome, his dominion in Italy was confined to the narrow limits of
his camp. Sensible of the increasing difficulties of his enterprise, the
haughty Galerius made the first advances towards a reconciliation, and
despatched two of his most considerable officers to tempt the Roman
princes by the offer of a conference, and the declaration of his paternal
regard for Maxentius, who might obtain much more from his liberality than
he could hope from the doubtful chance of war. The offers of Galerius were
rejected with firmness, his perfidious friendship refused with contempt,
and it was not long before he discovered, that, unless he provided for his
safety by a timely retreat, he had some reason to apprehend the fate of
Severus. The wealth which the Romans defended against his rapacious
tyranny, they freely contributed for his destruction. The name of
Maximian, the popular arts of his son, the secret distribution of large
sums, and the promise of still more liberal rewards, checked the ardor and
corrupted the fidelity of the Illyrian legions; and when Galerius at
length gave the signal of the retreat, it was with some difficulty that he
could prevail on his veterans not to desert a banner which had so often
conducted them to victory and honor. A contemporary writer assigns two
other causes for the failure of the expedition; but they are both of such
a nature, that a cautious historian will scarcely venture to adopt them.
We are told that Galerius, who had formed a very imperfect notion of the
greatness of Rome by the cities of the East with which he was acquainted,
found his forces inadequate to the siege of that immense capital. But the
extent of a city serves only to render it more accessible to the enemy:
Rome had long since been accustomed to submit on the approach of a
conqueror; nor could the temporary enthusiasm of the people have long
contended against the discipline and valor of the legions. We are likewise
informed that the legions themselves were struck with horror and remorse,
and that those pious sons of the republic refused to violate the sanctity
of their venerable parent. But when we recollect with how much ease, in
the more ancient civil wars, the zeal of party and the habits of military
obedience had converted the native citizens of Rome into her most
implacable enemies, we shall be inclined to distrust this extreme delicacy
of strangers and barbarians, who had never beheld Italy till they entered
it in a hostile manner. Had they not been restrained by motives of a more
interested nature, they would probably have answered Galerius in the words
of Cæsar's veterans: "If our general wishes to lead us to the banks
of the Tyber, we are prepared to trace out his camp. Whatsoever walls he
has determined to level with the ground, our hands are ready to work the
engines: nor shall we hesitate, should the name of the devoted city be
Rome itself." These are indeed the expressions of a poet; but of a poet
who has been distinguished, and even censured, for his strict adherence to
the truth of history.
The legions of Galerius exhibited a very melancholy proof of their
disposition, by the ravages which they committed in their retreat. They
murdered, they ravished, they plundered, they drove away the flocks and
herds of the Italians; they burnt the villages through which they passed,
and they endeavored to destroy the country which it had not been in their
power to subdue. During the whole march, Maxentius hung on their rear, but
he very prudently declined a general engagement with those brave and
desperate veterans. His father had undertaken a second journey into Gaul,
with the hope of persuading Constantine, who had assembled an army on the
frontier, to join in the pursuit, and to complete the victory. But the
actions of Constantine were guided by reason, and not by resentment. He
persisted in the wise resolution of maintaining a balance of power in the
divided empire, and he no longer hated Galerius, when that aspiring prince
had ceased to be an object of terror.
The mind of Galerius was the most susceptible of the sterner passions, but
it was not, however, incapable of a sincere and lasting friendship.
Licinius, whose manners as well as character, were not unlike his own,
seems to have engaged both his affection and esteem. Their intimacy had
commenced in the happier period perhaps of their youth and obscurity. It
had been cemented by the freedom and dangers of a military life; they had
advanced almost by equal steps through the successive honors of the
service; and as soon as Galerius was invested with the Imperial dignity,
he seems to have conceived the design of raising his companion to the same
rank with himself. During the short period of his prosperity, he
considered the rank of Cæsar as unworthy of the age and merit of
Licinius, and rather chose to reserve for him the place of Constantius,
and the empire of the West. While the emperor was employed in the Italian
war, he intrusted his friend with the defence of the Danube; and
immediately after his return from that unfortunate expedition, he invested
Licinius with the vacant purple of Severus, resigning to his immediate
command the provinces of Illyricum. The news of his promotion was no
sooner carried into the East, than Maximin, who governed, or rather
oppressed, the countries of Egypt and Syria, betrayed his envy and
discontent, disdained the inferior name of Cæsar, and,
notwithstanding the prayers as well as arguments of Galerius, exacted,
almost by violence, the equal title of Augustus. For the first, and indeed
for the last time, the Roman world was administered by six emperors. In
the West, Constantine and Maxentius affected to reverence their father
Maximian. In the East, Licinius and Maximin honored with more real
consideration their benefactor Galerius. The opposition of interest, and
the memory of a recent war, divided the empire into two great hostile
powers; but their mutual fears produced an apparent tranquillity, and even
a feigned reconciliation, till the death of the elder princes, of
Maximian, and more particularly of Galerius, gave a new direction to the
views and passions of their surviving associates.
When Maximian had reluctantly abdicated the empire, the venal orators of
the times applauded his philosophic moderation. When his ambition excited,
or at least encouraged, a civil war, they returned thanks to his generous
patriotism, and gently censured that love of ease and retirement which had
withdrawn him from the public service. But it was impossible that minds
like those of Maximian and his son could long possess in harmony an
undivided power. Maxentius considered himself as the legal sovereign of
Italy, elected by the Roman senate and people; nor would he endure the
control of his father, who arrogantly declared that by his name and
abilities the rash youth had been established on the throne. The cause was
solemnly pleaded before the Prætorian guards; and those troops, who
dreaded the severity of the old emperor, espoused the party of Maxentius.
The life and freedom of Maximian were, however, respected, and he retired
from Italy into Illyricum, affecting to lament his past conduct, and
secretly contriving new mischiefs. But Galerius, who was well acquainted
with his character, soon obliged him to leave his dominions, and the last
refuge of the disappointed Maximian was the court of his son-in-law
Constantine. He was received with respect by that artful prince, and with
the appearance of filial tenderness by the empress Fausta. That he might
remove every suspicion, he resigned the Imperial purple a second time,
professing himself at length convinced of the vanity of greatness and
ambition. Had he persevered in this resolution, he might have ended his
life with less dignity, indeed, than in his first retirement, yet,
however, with comfort and reputation. But the near prospect of a throne
brought back to his remembrance the state from whence he was fallen, and
he resolved, by a desperate effort either to reign or to perish. An
incursion of the Franks had summoned Constantine, with a part of his army,
to the banks of the Rhine; the remainder of the troops were stationed in
the southern provinces of Gaul, which lay exposed to the enterprises of
the Italian emperor, and a considerable treasure was deposited in the city
of Arles. Maximian either craftily invented, or easily credited, a vain
report of the death of Constantine. Without hesitation he ascended the
throne, seized the treasure, and scattering it with his accustomed
profusion among the soldiers, endeavored to awake in their minds the
memory of his ancient dignity and exploits. Before he could establish his
authority, or finish the negotiation which he appears to have entered into
with his son Maxentius, the celerity of Constantine defeated all his
hopes. On the first news of his perfidy and ingratitude, that prince
returned by rapid marches from the Rhine to the Saone, embarked on the
last mentioned river at Chalons, and at Lyons trusting himself to the
rapidity of the Rhone, arrived at the gates of Arles, with a military
force which it was impossible for Maximian to resist, and which scarcely
permitted him to take refuge in the neighboring city of Marseilles. The
narrow neck of land which joined that place to the continent was fortified
against the besiegers, whilst the sea was open, either for the escape of
Maximian, or for the succor of Maxentius, if the latter should choose to
disguise his invasion of Gaul under the honorable pretence of defending a
distressed, or, as he might allege, an injured father. Apprehensive of the
fatal consequences of delay, Constantine gave orders for an immediate
assault; but the scaling-ladders were found too short for the height of
the walls, and Marseilles might have sustained as long a siege as it
formerly did against the arms of Cæsar, if the garrison, conscious
either of their fault or of their danger, had not purchased their pardon
by delivering up the city and the person of Maximian. A secret but
irrevocable sentence of death was pronounced against the usurper; he
obtained only the same favor which he had indulged to Severus, and it was
published to the world, that, oppressed by the remorse of his repeated
crimes, he strangled himself with his own hands. After he had lost the
assistance, and disdained the moderate counsels of Diocletian, the second
period of his active life was a series of public calamities and personal
mortifications, which were terminated, in about three years, by an
ignominious death. He deserved his fate; but we should find more reason to
applaud the humanity of Constantine, if he had spared an old man, the
benefactor of his father, and the father of his wife. During the whole of
this melancholy transaction, it appears that Fausta sacrificed the
sentiments of nature to her conjugal duties.
The last years of Galerius were less shameful and unfortunate; and though
he had filled with more glory the subordinate station of Cæsar than
the superior rank of Augustus, he preserved, till the moment of his death,
the first place among the princes of the Roman world. He survived his
retreat from Italy about four years; and wisely relinquishing his views of
universal empire, he devoted the remainder of his life to the enjoyment of
pleasure, and to the execution of some works of public utility, among
which we may distinguish the discharging into the Danube the superfluous
waters of the Lake Pelso, and the cutting down the immense forests that
encompassed it; an operation worthy of a monarch, since it gave an
extensive country to the agriculture of his Pannonian subjects. His death
was occasioned by a very painful and lingering disorder. His body, swelled
by an intemperate course of life to an unwieldy corpulence, was covered
with ulcers, and devoured by innumerable swarms of those insects which
have given their name to a most loathsome disease; but as Galerius had
offended a very zealous and powerful party among his subjects, his
sufferings, instead of exciting their compassion, have been celebrated as
the visible effects of divine justice. He had no sooner expired in his
palace of Nicomedia, than the two emperors who were indebted for their
purple to his favors, began to collect their forces, with the intention
either of disputing, or of dividing, the dominions which he had left
without a master. They were persuaded, however, to desist from the former
design, and to agree in the latter. The provinces of Asia fell to the
share of Maximin, and those of Europe augmented the portion of Licinius.
The Hellespont and the Thracian Bosphorus formed their mutual boundary,
and the banks of those narrow seas, which flowed in the midst of the Roman
world, were covered with soldiers, with arms, and with fortifications. The
deaths of Maximian and of Galerius reduced the number of emperors to four.
The sense of their true interest soon connected Licinius and Constantine;
a secret alliance was concluded between Maximin and Maxentius, and their
unhappy subjects expected with terror the bloody consequences of their
inevitable dissensions, which were no longer restrained by the fear or the
respect which they had entertained for Galerius.
Among so many crimes and misfortunes, occasioned by the passions of the
Roman princes, there is some pleasure in discovering a single action which
may be ascribed to their virtue. In the sixth year of his reign,
Constantine visited the city of Autun, and generously remitted the arrears
of tribute, reducing at the same time the proportion of their assessment
from twenty-five to eighteen thousand heads, subject to the real and
personal capitation. Yet even this indulgence affords the most
unquestionable proof of the public misery. This tax was so extremely
oppressive, either in itself or in the mode of collecting it, that whilst
the revenue was increased by extortion, it was diminished by despair: a
considerable part of the territory of Autun was left uncultivated; and
great numbers of the provincials rather chose to live as exiles and
outlaws, than to support the weight of civil society. It is but too
probable, that the bountiful emperor relieved, by a partial act of
liberality, one among the many evils which he had caused by his general
maxims of administration. But even those maxims were less the effect of
choice than of necessity. And if we except the death of Maximian, the
reign of Constantine in Gaul seems to have been the most innocent and even
virtuous period of his life. The provinces were protected by his presence
from the inroads of the barbarians, who either dreaded or experienced his
active valor. After a signal victory over the Franks and Alemanni, several
of their princes were exposed by his order to the wild beasts in the
amphitheatre of Treves, and the people seem to have enjoyed the spectacle,
without discovering, in such a treatment of royal captives, any thing that
was repugnant to the laws of nations or of humanity. *
The virtues of Constantine were rendered more illustrious by the vices of
Maxentius. Whilst the Gallic provinces enjoyed as much happiness as the
condition of the times was capable of receiving, Italy and Africa groaned
under the dominion of a tyrant, as contemptible as he was odious. The zeal
of flattery and faction has indeed too frequently sacrificed the
reputation of the vanquished to the glory of their successful rivals; but
even those writers who have revealed, with the most freedom and pleasure,
the faults of Constantine, unanimously confess that Maxentius was cruel,
rapacious, and profligate. He had the good fortune to suppress a slight
rebellion in Africa. The governor and a few adherents had been guilty; the
province suffered for their crime. The flourishing cities of Cirtha and
Carthage, and the whole extent of that fertile country, were wasted by
fire and sword. The abuse of victory was followed by the abuse of law and
justice. A formidable army of sycophants and delators invaded Africa; the
rich and the noble were easily convicted of a connection with the rebels;
and those among them who experienced the emperor's clemency, were only
punished by the confiscation of their estates. So signal a victory was
celebrated by a magnificent triumph, and Maxentius exposed to the eyes of
the people the spoils and captives of a Roman province. The state of the
capital was no less deserving of compassion than that of Africa. The
wealth of Rome supplied an inexhaustible fund for his vain and prodigal
expenses, and the ministers of his revenue were skilled in the arts of
rapine. It was under his reign that the method of exacting a free
gift from the senators was first invented; and as the sum
was insensibly increased, the pretences of levying it, a victory, a birth,
a marriage, or an imperial consulship, were proportionably multiplied.
Maxentius had imbibed the same implacable aversion to the senate, which
had characterized most of the former tyrants of Rome; nor was it possible
for his ungrateful temper to forgive the generous fidelity which had
raised him to the throne, and supported him against all his enemies. The
lives of the senators were exposed to his jealous suspicions, the dishonor
of their wives and daughters heightened the gratification of his sensual
passions. It may be presumed, that an Imperial lover was seldom reduced to
sigh in vain; but whenever persuasion proved ineffectual, he had recourse
to violence; and there remains one memorable
example of a noble matron, who preserved her chastity by a voluntary
death. The soldiers were the only order of men whom he appeared to
respect, or studied to please. He filled Rome and Italy with armed troops,
connived at their tumults, suffered them with impunity to plunder, and
even to massacre, the defenceless people; and indulging them in the same
licentiousness which their emperor enjoyed, Maxentius often bestowed on
his military favorites the splendid villa, or the beautiful wife, of a
senator. A prince of such a character, alike incapable of governing,
either in peace or in war, might purchase the support, but he could never
obtain the esteem, of the army. Yet his pride was equal to his other
vices. Whilst he passed his indolent life either within the walls of his
palace, or in the neighboring gardens of Sallust, he was repeatedly heard
to declare, that he alone
was emperor, and that the other princes were no more than his lieutenants,
on whom he had devolved the defence of the frontier provinces, that he
might enjoy without interruption the elegant luxury of the capital. Rome,
which had so long regretted the absence, lamented, during the six years of
his reign, the presence of her sovereign.
Though Constantine might view the conduct of Maxentius with abhorrence,
and the situation of the Romans with compassion, we have no reason to
presume that he would have taken up arms to punish the one or to relieve
the other. But the tyrant of Italy rashly ventured to provoke a formidable
enemy, whose ambition had been hitherto restrained by considerations of
prudence, rather than by principles of justice. After the death of
Maximian, his titles, according to the established custom, had been
erased, and his statues thrown down with ignominy. His son, who had
persecuted and deserted him when alive, effected to display the most pious
regard for his memory, and gave orders that a similar treatment should be
immediately inflicted on all the statues that had been erected in Italy
and Africa to the honor of Constantine. That wise prince, who sincerely
wished to decline a war, with the difficulty and importance of which he
was sufficiently acquainted, at first dissembled the insult, and sought
for redress by the milder expedient of negotiation, till he was convinced
that the hostile and ambitious designs of the Italian emperor made it
necessary for him to arm in his own defence. Maxentius, who openly avowed
his pretensions to the whole monarchy of the West, had already prepared a
very considerable force to invade the Gallic provinces on the side of Rhætia;
and though he could not expect any assistance from Licinius, he was
flattered with the hope that the legions of Illyricum, allured by his
presents and promises, would desert the standard of that prince, and
unanimously declare themselves his soldiers and subjects. Constantine no
longer hesitated. He had deliberated with caution, he acted with vigor. He
gave a private audience to the ambassadors, who, in the name of the senate
and people, conjured him to deliver Rome from a detested tyrant; and
without regarding the timid remonstrances of his council, he resolved to
prevent the enemy, and to carry the war into the heart of Italy.
The enterprise was as full of danger as of glory; and the unsuccessful
event of two former invasions was sufficient to inspire the most serious
apprehensions. The veteran troops, who revered the name of Maximian, had
embraced in both those wars the party of his son, and were now restrained
by a sense of honor, as well as of interest, from entertaining an idea of
a second desertion. Maxentius, who considered the Prætorian guards
as the firmest defence of his throne, had increased them to their ancient
establishment; and they composed, including the rest of the Italians who
were enlisted into his service, a formidable body of fourscore thousand
men. Forty thousand Moors and Carthaginians had been raised since the
reduction of Africa. Even Sicily furnished its proportion of troops; and
the armies of Maxentius amounted to one hundred and seventy thousand foot
and eighteen thousand horse. The wealth of Italy supplied the expenses of
the war; and the adjacent provinces were exhausted, to form immense
magazines of corn and every other kind of provisions.
The whole force of Constantine consisted of ninety thousand foot and eight
thousand horse; and as the defence of the Rhine required an extraordinary
attention during the absence of the emperor, it was not in his power to
employ above half his troops in the Italian expedition, unless he
sacrificed the public safety to his private quarrel. At the head of about
forty thousand soldiers he marched to encounter an enemy whose numbers
were at least four times superior to his own. But the armies of Rome,
placed at a secure distance from danger, were enervated by indulgence and
luxury. Habituated to the baths and theatres of Rome, they took the field
with reluctance, and were chiefly composed of veterans who had almost
forgotten, or of new levies who had never acquired, the use of arms and
the practice of war. The hardy legions of Gaul had long defended the
frontiers of the empire against the barbarians of the North; and in the
performance of that laborious service, their valor was exercised and their
discipline confirmed. There appeared the same difference between the
leaders as between the armies. Caprice or flattery had tempted Maxentius
with the hopes of conquest; but these aspiring hopes soon gave way to the
habits of pleasure and the consciousness of his inexperience. The intrepid
mind of Constantine had been trained from his earliest youth to war, to
action, and to military command.
When Hannibal marched from Gaul into Italy, he was obliged, first to
discover, and then to open, a way over mountains, and through savage
nations, that had never yielded a passage to a regular army. The Alps were
then guarded by nature, they are now fortified by art. Citadels,
constructed with no less skill than labor and expense, command every
avenue into the plain, and on that side render Italy almost inaccessible
to the enemies of the king of Sardinia. But in the course of the
intermediate period, the generals, who have attempted the passage, have
seldom experienced any difficulty or resistance. In the age of
Constantine, the peasants of the mountains were civilized and obedient
subjects; the country was plentifully stocked with provisions, and the
stupendous highways, which the Romans had carried over the Alps, opened
several communications between Gaul and Italy. Constantine preferred the
road of the Cottian Alps, or, as it is now called, of Mount Cenis, and led
his troops with such active diligence, that he descended into the plain of
Piedmont before the court of Maxentius had received any certain
intelligence of his departure from the banks of the Rhine. The city of
Susa, however, which is situated at the foot of Mount Cenis, was
surrounded with walls, and provided with a garrison sufficiently numerous
to check the progress of an invader; but the impatience of Constantine's
troops disdained the tedious forms of a siege. The same day that they
appeared before Susa, they applied fire to the gates, and ladders to the
walls; and mounting to the assault amidst a shower of stones and arrows,
they entered the place sword in hand, and cut in pieces the greatest part
of the garrison. The flames were extinguished by the care of Constantine,
and the remains of Susa preserved from total destruction. About forty
miles from thence, a more severe contest awaited him. A numerous army of
Italians was assembled under the lieutenants of Maxentius, in the plains
of Turin. Its principal strength consisted in a species of heavy cavalry,
which the Romans, since the decline of their discipline, had borrowed from
the nations of the East. The horses, as well as the men, were clothed in
complete armor, the joints of which were artfully adapted to the motions
of their bodies. The aspect of this cavalry was formidable, their weight
almost irresistible; and as, on this occasion, their generals had drawn
them up in a compact column or wedge, with a sharp point, and with
spreading flanks, they flattered themselves that they could easily break
and trample down the army of Constantine. They might, perhaps, have
succeeded in their design, had not their experienced adversary embraced
the same method of defence, which in similar circumstances had been
practised by Aurelian. The skilful evolutions of Constantine divided and
baffled this massy column of cavalry. The troops of Maxentius fled in
confusion towards Turin; and as the gates of the city were shut against
them, very few escaped the sword of the victorious pursuers. By this
important service, Turin deserved to experience the clemency and even
favor of the conqueror. He made his entry into the Imperial palace of
Milan, and almost all the cities of Italy between the Alps and the Po not
only acknowledged the power, but embraced with zeal the party, of
Constantine.
From Milan to Rome, the Æmilian and Flaminian highways offered an
easy march of about four hundred miles; but though Constantine was
impatient to encounter the tyrant, he prudently directed his operations
against another army of Italians, who, by their strength and position,
might either oppose his progress, or, in case of a misfortune, might
intercept his retreat. Ruricius Pompeianus, a general distinguished by his
valor and ability, had under his command the city of Verona, and all the
troops that were stationed in the province of Venetia. As soon as he was
informed that Constantine was advancing towards him, he detached a large
body of cavalry which was defeated in an engagement near Brescia, and
pursued by the Gallic legions as far as the gates of Verona. The
necessity, the importance, and the difficulties of the siege of Verona,
immediately presented themselves to the sagacious mind of Constantine. The
city was accessible only by a narrow peninsula towards the west, as the
other three sides were surrounded by the Adige, a rapid river, which
covered the province of Venetia, from whence the besieged derived an
inexhaustible supply of men and provisions. It was not without great
difficulty, and after several fruitless attempts, that Constantine found
means to pass the river at some distance above the city, and in a place
where the torrent was less violent. He then encompassed Verona with strong
lines, pushed his attacks with prudent vigor, and repelled a desperate
sally of Pompeianus. That intrepid general, when he had used every means
of defence that the strength of the place or that of the garrison could
afford, secretly escaped from Verona, anxious not for his own, but for the
public safety. With indefatigable diligence he soon collected an army
sufficient either to meet Constantine in the field, or to attack him if he
obstinately remained within his lines. The emperor, attentive to the
motions, and informed of the approach of so formidable an enemy, left a
part of his legions to continue the operations of the siege, whilst, at
the head of those troops on whose valor and fidelity he more particularly
depended, he advanced in person to engage the general of Maxentius. The
army of Gaul was drawn up in two lines, according to the usual practice of
war; but their experienced leader, perceiving that the numbers of the
Italians far exceeded his own, suddenly changed his disposition, and,
reducing the second, extended the front of his first line to a just
proportion with that of the enemy. Such evolutions, which only veteran
troops can execute without confusion in a moment of danger, commonly prove
decisive; but as this engagement began towards the close of the day, and
was contested with great obstinacy during the whole night, there was less
room for the conduct of the generals than for the courage of the soldiers.
The return of light displayed the victory of Constantine, and a field of
carnage covered with many thousands of the vanquished Italians. Their
general, Pompeianus, was found among the slain; Verona immediately
surrendered at discretion, and the garrison was made prisoners of war.
When the officers of the victorious army congratulated their master on
this important success, they ventured to add some respectful complaints,
of such a nature, however, as the most jealous monarchs will listen to
without displeasure. They represented to Constantine, that, not contented
with all the duties of a commander, he had exposed his own person with an
excess of valor which almost degenerated into rashness; and they conjured
him for the future to pay more regard to the preservation of a life in
which the safety of Rome and of the empire was involved.
While Constantine signalized his conduct and valor in the field, the
sovereign of Italy appeared insensible of the calamities and danger of a
civil war which reigned in the heart of his dominions. Pleasure was still
the only business of Maxentius. Concealing, or at least attempting to
conceal, from the public knowledge the misfortunes of his arms, he
indulged himself in a vain confidence which deferred the remedies of the
approaching evil, without deferring the evil itself. The rapid progress of
Constantine was scarcely sufficient to awaken him from his fatal security;
he flattered himself, that his well-known liberality, and the majesty of
the Roman name, which had already delivered him from two invasions, would
dissipate with the same facility the rebellious army of Gaul. The officers
of experience and ability, who had served under the banners of Maximian,
were at length compelled to inform his effeminate son of the imminent
danger to which he was reduced; and, with a freedom that at once surprised
and convinced him, to urge the necessity of preventing his ruin, by a
vigorous exertion of his remaining power. The resources of Maxentius, both
of men and money, were still considerable. The Prætorian guards felt
how strongly their own interest and safety were connected with his cause;
and a third army was soon collected, more numerous than those which had
been lost in the battles of Turin and Verona. It was far from the
intention of the emperor to lead his troops in person. A stranger to the
exercises of war, he trembled at the apprehension of so dangerous a
contest; and as fear is commonly superstitious, he listened with
melancholy attention to the rumors of omens and presages which seemed to
menace his life and empire. Shame at length supplied the place of courage,
and forced him to take the field. He was unable to sustain the contempt of
the Roman people. The circus resounded with their indignant clamors, and
they tumultuously besieged the gates of the palace, reproaching the
pusillanimity of their indolent sovereign, and celebrating the heroic
spirit of Constantine. Before Maxentius left Rome, he consulted the
Sibylline books. The guardians of these ancient oracles were as well
versed in the arts of this world as they were ignorant of the secrets of
fate; and they returned him a very prudent answer, which might adapt
itself to the event, and secure their reputation, whatever should be the
chance of arms.
The celerity of Constantine's march has been compared to the rapid
conquest of Italy by the first of the Cæsars; nor is the flattering
parallel repugnant to the truth of history, since no more than fifty-eight
days elapsed between the surrender of Verona and the final decision of the
war. Constantine had always apprehended that the tyrant would consult the
dictates of fear, and perhaps of prudence; and that, instead of risking
his last hopes in a general engagement, he would shut himself up within
the walls of Rome. His ample magazines secured him against the danger of
famine; and as the situation of Constantine admitted not of delay, he
might have been reduced to the sad necessity of destroying with fire and
sword the Imperial city, the noblest reward of his victory, and the
deliverance of which had been the motive, or rather indeed the pretence,
of the civil war. It was with equal surprise and pleasure, that on his
arrival at a place called Saxa Rubra, about nine miles from Rome, he
discovered the army of Maxentius prepared to give him battle. Their long
front filled a very spacious plain, and their deep array reached to the
banks of the Tyber, which covered their rear, and forbade their retreat.
We are informed, and we may believe, that Constantine disposed his troops
with consummate skill, and that he chose for himself the post of honor and
danger. Distinguished by the splendor of his arms, he charged in person
the cavalry of his rival; and his irresistible attack determined the
fortune of the day. The cavalry of Maxentius was principally composed
either of unwieldy cuirassiers, or of light Moors and Numidians. They
yielded to the vigor of the Gallic horse, which possessed more activity
than the one, more firmness than the other. The defeat of the two wings
left the infantry without any protection on its flanks, and the
undisciplined Italians fled without reluctance from the standard of a
tyrant whom they had always hated, and whom they no longer feared. The Prætorians,
conscious that their offences were beyond the reach of mercy, were
animated by revenge and despair. Notwithstanding their repeated efforts,
those brave veterans were unable to recover the victory: they obtained,
however, an honorable death; and it was observed that their bodies covered
the same ground which had been occupied by their ranks. The confusion then
became general, and the dismayed troops of Maxentius, pursued by an
implacable enemy, rushed by thousands into the deep and rapid stream of
the Tyber. The emperor himself attempted to escape back into the city over
the Milvian bridge; but the crowds which pressed together through that
narrow passage forced him into the river, where he was immediately drowned
by the weight of his armor. His body, which had sunk very deep into the
mud, was found with some difficulty the next day. The sight of his head,
when it was exposed to the eyes of the people, convinced them of their
deliverance, and admonished them to receive with acclamations of loyalty
and gratitude the fortunate Constantine, who thus achieved by his valor
and ability the most splendid enterprise of his life.
In the use of victory, Constantine neither deserved the praise of
clemency, nor incurred the censure of immoderate rigor. He inflicted the
same treatment to which a defeat would have exposed his own person and
family, put to death the two sons of the tyrant, and carefully extirpated
his whole race. The most distinguished adherents of Maxentius must have
expected to share his fate, as they had shared his prosperity and his
crimes; but when the Roman people loudly demanded a greater number of
victims, the conqueror resisted with firmness and humanity, those servile
clamors, which were dictated by flattery as well as by resentment.
Informers were punished and discouraged; the innocent, who had suffered
under the late tyranny, were recalled from exile, and restored to their
estates. A general act of oblivion quieted the minds and settled the
property of the people, both in Italy and in Africa. The first time that
Constantine honored the senate with his presence, he recapitulated his own
services and exploits in a modest oration, assured that illustrious order
of his sincere regard, and promised to reestablish its ancient dignity and
privileges. The grateful senate repaid these unmeaning professions by the
empty titles of honor, which it was yet in their power to bestow; and
without presuming to ratify the authority of Constantine, they passed a
decree to assign him the first rank among the three Augusti
who governed the Roman world. Games and festivals were instituted to
preserve the fame of his victory, and several edifices, raised at the
expense of Maxentius, were dedicated to the honor of his successful rival.
The triumphal arch of Constantine still remains a melancholy proof of the
decline of the arts, and a singular testimony of the meanest vanity. As it
was not possible to find in the capital of the empire a sculptor who was
capable of adorning that public monument, the arch of Trajan, without any
respect either for his memory or for the rules of propriety, was stripped
of its most elegant figures. The difference of times and persons, of
actions and characters, was totally disregarded. The Parthian captives
appear prostrate at the feet of a prince who never carried his arms beyond
the Euphrates; and curious antiquarians can still discover the head of
Trajan on the trophies of Constantine. The new ornaments which it was
necessary to introduce between the vacancies of ancient sculpture are
executed in the rudest and most unskillful manner.
The final abolition of the Prætorian guards was a measure of
prudence as well as of revenge. Those haughty troops, whose numbers and
privileges had been restored, and even augmented, by Maxentius, were
forever suppressed by Constantine. Their fortified camp was destroyed, and
the few Prætorians who had escaped the fury of the sword were
dispersed among the legions, and banished to the frontiers of the empire,
where they might be serviceable without again becoming dangerous. By
suppressing the troops which were usually stationed in Rome, Constantine
gave the fatal blow to the dignity of the senate and people, and the
disarmed capital was exposed without protection to the insults or neglect
of its distant master. We may observe, that in this last effort to
preserve their expiring freedom, the Romans, from the apprehension of a
tribute, had raised Maxentius to the throne. He exacted that tribute from
the senate under the name of a free gift. They implored the assistance of
Constantine. He vanquished the tyrant, and converted the free gift into a
perpetual tax. The senators, according to the declaration which was
required of their property, were divided into several classes. The most
opulent paid annually eight pounds of gold, the next class paid four, the
last two, and those whose poverty might have claimed an exemption, were
assessed, however, at seven pieces of gold. Besides the regular members of
the senate, their sons, their descendants, and even their relations,
enjoyed the vain privileges, and supported the heavy burdens, of the
senatorial order; nor will it any longer excite our surprise, that
Constantine should be attentive to increase the number of persons who were
included under so useful a description. After the defeat of Maxentius, the
victorious emperor passed no more than two or three months in Rome, which
he visited twice during the remainder of his life, to celebrate the solemn
festivals of the tenth and of the twentieth years of his reign.
Constantine was almost perpetually in motion, to exercise the legions, or
to inspect the state of the provinces. Treves, Milan, Aquileia, Sirmium,
Naissus, and Thessalonica, were the occasional places of his residence,
till he founded a new Rome on the confines of Europe and Asia.
Before Constantine marched into Italy, he had secured the friendship, or
at least the neutrality, of Licinius, the Illyrian emperor. He had
promised his sister Constantia in marriage to that prince; but the
celebration of the nuptials was deferred till after the conclusion of the
war, and the interview of the two emperors at Milan, which was appointed
for that purpose, appeared to cement the union of their families and
interests. In the midst of the public festivity they were suddenly obliged
to take leave of each other. An inroad of the Franks summoned Constantine
to the Rhime, and the hostile approach of the sovereign of Asia demanded
the immediate presence of Licinius. Maximin had been the secret ally of
Maxentius, and without being discouraged by his fate, he resolved to try
the fortune of a civil war. He moved out of Syria, towards the frontiers
of Bithynia, in the depth of winter. The season was severe and
tempestuous; great numbers of men as well as horses perished in the snow;
and as the roads were broken up by incessant rains, he was obliged to
leave behind him a considerable part of the heavy baggage, which was
unable to follow the rapidity of his forced marches. By this extraordinary
effort of diligence, he arrived with a harassed but formidable army, on
the banks of the Thracian Bosphorus before the lieutenants of Licinius
were apprised of his hostile intentions. Byzantium surrendered to the
power of Maximin, after a siege of eleven days. He was detained some days
under the walls of Heraclea; and he had no sooner taken possession of that
city, than he was alarmed by the intelligence, that Licinius had pitched
his camp at the distance of only eighteen miles. After a fruitless
negotiation, in which the two princes attempted to seduce the fidelity of
each other's adherents, they had recourse to arms. The emperor of the East
commanded a disciplined and veteran army of above seventy thousand men;
and Licinius, who had collected about thirty thousand Illyrians, was at
first oppressed by the superiority of numbers. His military skill, and the
firmness of his troops, restored the day, and obtained a decisive victory.
The incredible speed which Maximin exerted in his flight is much more
celebrated than his prowess in the battle. Twenty-four hours afterwards he
was seen, pale, trembling, and without his Imperial ornaments, at
Nicomedia, one hundred and sixty miles from the place of his defeat. The
wealth of Asia was yet unexhausted; and though the flower of his veterans
had fallen in the late action, he had still power, if he could obtain
time, to draw very numerous levies from Syria and Egypt. But he survived
his misfortune only three or four months. His death, which happened at
Tarsus, was variously ascribed to despair, to poison, and to the divine
justice. As Maximin was alike destitute of abilities and of virtue, he was
lamented neither by the people nor by the soldiers. The provinces of the
East, delivered from the terrors of civil war, cheerfully acknowledged the
authority of Licinius.
The vanquished emperor left behind him two children, a boy of about eight,
and a girl of about seven, years old. Their inoffensive age might have
excited compassion; but the compassion of Licinius was a very feeble
resource, nor did it restrain him from extinguishingthe
name and memory of his adversary. The death of Severianus will admit of
less excuse, as it was dictated neither by revenge nor by policy. The
conqueror had never received any injury from the father of that unhappy
youth, and the short and obscure reign of Severus, in a distant part of
the empire, was already forgotten. But the execution of Candidianus was an
act of the blackest cruelty and ingratitude. He was the natural son of
Galerius, the friend and benefactor of Licinius. The prudent father had
judged him too young to sustain the weight of a diadem; but he hoped that,
under the protection of princes who were indebted to his favor for the
Imperial purple, Candidianus might pass a secure and honorable life. He
was now advancing towards the twentieth year of his age, and the royalty
of his birth, though unsupported either by merit or ambition, was
sufficient to exasperate the jealous mind of Licinius. To these innocent
and illustrious victims of his tyranny, we must add the wife and daughter
of the emperor Diocletian. When that prince conferred on Galerius the
title of Cæsar, he had given him in marriage his daughter Valeria,
whose melancholy adventures might furnish a very singular subject for
tragedy. She had fulfilled and even surpassed the duties of a wife. As she
had not any children herself, she condescended to adopt the illegitimate
son of her husband, and invariably displayed towards the unhappy
Candidianus the tenderness and anxiety of a real mother. After the death
of Galerius, her ample possessions provoked the avarice, and her personal
attractions excited the desires, of his successor, Maximin. He had a wife
still alive; but divorce was permitted by the Roman law, and the fierce
passions of the tyrant demanded an immediate gratification. The answer of
Valeria was such as became the daughter and widow of emperors; but it was
tempered by the prudence which her defenceless condition compelled her to
observe. She represented to the persons whom Maximin had employed on this
occasion, "that even if honor could permit a woman of her character and
dignity to entertain a thought of second nuptials, decency at least must
forbid her to listen to his addresses at a time when the ashes of her
husband, and his benefactor were still warm, and while the sorrows of her
mind were still expressed by her mourning garments. She ventured to
declare, that she could place very little confidence in the professions of
a man whose cruel inconstancy was capable of repudiating a faithful and
affectionate wife." On this repulse, the love of Maximin was converted
into fury; and as witnesses and judges were always at his disposal, it was
easy for him to cover his fury with an appearance of legal proceedings,
and to assault the reputation as well as the happiness of Valeria. Her
estates were confiscated, her eunuchs and domestics devoted to the most
inhuman tortures; and several innocent and respectable matrons, who were
honored with her friendship, suffered death, on a false accusation of
adultery. The empress herself, together with her mother Prisca, was
condemned to exile; and as they were ignominiously hurried from place to
place before they were confined to a sequestered village in the deserts of
Syria, they exposed their shame and distress to the provinces of the East,
which, during thirty years, had respected their august dignity. Diocletian
made several ineffectual efforts to alleviate the misfortunes of his
daughter; and, as the last return that he expected for the Imperial
purple, which he had conferred upon Maximin, he entreated that Valeria
might be permitted to share his retirement of Salona, and to close the
eyes of her afflicted father. He entreated; but as he could no longer
threaten, his prayers were received with coldness and disdain; and the
pride of Maximin was gratified, in treating Diocletian as a suppliant, and
his daughter as a criminal. The death of Maximin seemed to assure the
empresses of a favorable alteration in their fortune. The public disorders
relaxed the vigilance of their guard, and they easily found means to
escape from the place of their exile, and to repair, though with some
precaution, and in disguise, to the court of Licinius. His behavior, in
the first days of his reign, and the honorable reception which he gave to
young Candidianus, inspired Valeria with a secret satisfaction, both on
her own account and on that of her adopted son. But these grateful
prospects were soon succeeded by horror and astonishment; and the bloody
executions which stained the palace of Nicomedia sufficiently convinced
her that the throne of Maximin was filled by a tyrant more inhuman than
himself. Valeria consulted her safety by a hasty flight, and, still
accompanied by her mother Prisca, they wandered above fifteen months
through the provinces, concealed in the disguise of plebeian habits. They
were at length discovered at Thessalonica; and as the sentence of their
death was already pronounced, they were immediately beheaded, and their
bodies thrown into the sea. The people gazed on the melancholy spectacle;
but their grief and indignation were suppressed by the terrors of a
military guard. Such was the unworthy fate of the wife and daughter of
Diocletian. We lament their misfortunes, we cannot discover their crimes;
and whatever idea we may justly entertain of the cruelty of Licinius, it
remains a matter of surprise that he was not contented with some more
secret and decent method of revenge.
The Roman world was now divided between Constantine and Licinius, the
former of whom was master of the West, and the latter of the East. It
might perhaps have been expected that the conquerors, fatigued with civil
war, and connected by a private as well as public alliance, would have
renounced, or at least would have suspended, any further designs of
ambition. And yet a year had scarcely elapsed after the death of Maximin,
before the victorious emperors turned their arms against each other. The
genius, the success, and the aspiring temper of Constantine, may seem to
mark him out as the aggressor; but the perfidious character of Licinius
justifies the most unfavorable suspicions, and by the faint light which
history reflects on this transaction, we may discover a conspiracy
fomented by his arts against the authority of his colleague. Constantine
had lately given his sister Anastasia in marriage to Bassianus, a man of a
considerable family and fortune, and had elevated his new kinsman to the
rank of Cæsar. According to the system of government instituted by
Diocletian, Italy, and perhaps Africa, were designed for his department in
the empire. But the performance of the promised favor was either attended
with so much delay, or accompanied with so many unequal conditions, that
the fidelity of Bassianus was alienated rather than secured by the
honorable distinction which he had obtained. His nomination had been
ratified by the consent of Licinius; and that artful prince, by the means
of his emissaries, soon contrived to enter into a secret and dangerous
correspondence with the new Cæsar, to irritate his discontents, and
to urge him to the rash enterprise of extorting by violence what he might
in vain solicit from the justice of Constantine. But the vigilant emperor
discovered the conspiracy before it was ripe for execution; and after
solemnly renouncing the alliance of Bassianus, despoiled him of the
purple, and inflicted the deserved punishment on his treason and
ingratitude. The haughty refusal of Licinius, when he was required to
deliver up the criminals who had taken refuge in his dominions, confirmed
the suspicions already entertained of his perfidy; and the indignities
offered at Æmona, on the frontiers of Italy, to the statues of
Constantine, became the signal of discord between the two princes.
The first battle was fought near Cibalis, a city of Pannonia, situated on
the River Save, about fifty miles above Sirmium. From the inconsiderable
forces which in this important contest two such powerful monarchs brought
into the field, it may be inferred that the one was suddenly provoked, and
that the other was unexpectedly surprised. The emperor of the West had
only twenty thousand, and the sovereign of the East no more than five and
thirty thousand, men. The inferiority of number was, however, compensated
by the advantage of the ground. Constantine had taken post in a defile
about half a mile in breadth, between a steep hill and a deep morass, and
in that situation he steadily expected and repulsed the first attack of
the enemy. He pursued his success, and advanced into the plain. But the
veteran legions of Illyricum rallied under the standard of a leader who
had been trained to arms in the school of Probus and Diocletian. The
missile weapons on both sides were soon exhausted; the two armies, with
equal valor, rushed to a closer engagement of swords and spears, and the
doubtful contest had already lasted from the dawn of the day to a late
hour of the evening, when the right wing, which Constantine led in person,
made a vigorous and decisive charge. The judicious retreat of Licinius
saved the remainder of his troops from a total defeat; but when he
computed his loss, which amounted to more than twenty thousand men, he
thought it unsafe to pass the night in the presence of an active and
victorious enemy. Abandoning his camp and magazines, he marched away with
secrecy and diligence at the head of the greatest part of his cavalry, and
was soon removed beyond the danger of a pursuit. His diligence preserved
his wife, his son, and his treasures, which he had deposited at Sirmium.
Licinius passed through that city, and breaking down the bridge on the
Save, hastened to collect a new army in Dacia and Thrace. In his flight he
bestowed the precarious title of Cæsar on Valens, his general of the
Illyrian frontier.
The plain of Mardia in Thrace was the theatre of a second battle no less
obstinate and bloody than the former. The troops on both sides displayed
the same valor and discipline; and the victory was once more decided by
the superior abilities of Constantine, who directed a body of five
thousand men to gain an advantageous height, from whence, during the heat
of the action, they attacked the rear of the enemy, and made a very
considerable slaughter. The troops of Licinius, however, presenting a
double front, still maintained their ground, till the approach of night
put an end to the combat, and secured their retreat towards the mountains
of Macedonia. The loss of two battles, and of his bravest veterans,
reduced the fierce spirit of Licinius to sue for peace. His ambassador
Mistrianus was admitted to the audience of Constantine: he expatiated on
the common topics of moderation and humanity, which are so familiar to the
eloquence of the vanquished; represented in the most insinuating language,
that the event of the war was still doubtful, whilst its inevitable
calamities were alike pernicious to both the contending parties; and
declared that he was authorized to propose a lasting and honorable peace
in the name of the two emperors his masters.
Constantine received the mention of Valens with indignation and contempt.
"It was not for such a purpose," he sternly replied, "that we have
advanced from the shores of the western ocean in an uninterrupted course
of combats and victories, that, after rejecting an ungrateful kinsman, we
should accept for our colleague a contemptible slave. The abdication of
Valens is the first article of the treaty." It was necessary to accept
this humiliating condition; and the unhappy Valens, after a reign of a few
days, was deprived of the purple and of his life. As soon as this obstacle
was removed, the tranquillity of the Roman world was easily restored. The
successive defeats of Licinius had ruined his forces, but they had
displayed his courage and abilities. His situation was almost desperate,
but the efforts of despair are sometimes formidable, and the good sense of
Constantine preferred a great and certain advantage to a third trial of
the chance of arms. He consented to leave his rival, or, as he again
styled Licinius, his friend and brother, in the possession of Thrace, Asia
Minor, Syria, and Egypt; but the provinces of Pannonia, Dalmatia, Dacia,
Macedonia, and Greece, were yielded to the Western empire, and the
dominions of Constantine now extended from the confines of Caledonia to
the extremity of Peloponnesus. It was stipulated by the same treaty, that
three royal youths, the sons of emperors, should be called to the hopes of
the succession. Crispus and the young Constantine were soon afterwards
declared Cæsars in the West, while the younger Licinius was invested
with the same dignity in the East. In this double proportion of honors,
the conqueror asserted the superiority of his arms and power.
The reconciliation of Constantine and Licinius, though it was imbittered
by resentment and jealousy, by the remembrance of recent injuries, and by
the apprehension of future dangers, maintained, however, above eight
years, the tranquility of the Roman world. As a very regular series of the
Imperial laws commences about this period, it would not be difficult to
transcribe the civil regulations which employed the leisure of
Constantine. But the most important of his institutions are intimately
connected with the new system of policy and religion, which was not
perfectly established till the last and peaceful years of his reign. There
are many of his laws, which, as far as they concern the rights and
property of individuals, and the practice of the bar, are more properly
referred to the private than to the public jurisprudence of the empire;
and he published many edicts of so local and temporary a nature, that they
would ill deserve the notice of a general history. Two laws, however, may
be selected from the crowd; the one for its importance, the other for its
singularity; the former for its remarkable benevolence, the latter for its
excessive severity. 1. The horrid practice, so familiar to the ancients,
of exposing or murdering their new-born infants, was become every day more
frequent in the provinces, and especially in Italy. It was the effect of
distress; and the distress was principally occasioned by the intolerant
burden of taxes, and by the vexatious as well as cruel prosecutions of the
officers of the revenue against their insolvent debtors. The less opulent
or less industrious part of mankind, instead of rejoicing in an increase
of family, deemed it an act of paternal tenderness to release their
children from the impending miseries of a life which they themselves were
unable to support. The humanity of Constantine; moved, perhaps, by some
recent and extraordinary instances of despair, * engaged him to address an
edict to all the cities of Italy, and afterwards of Africa, directing
immediate and sufficient relief to be given to those parents who should
produce before the magistrates the children whom their own poverty would
not allow them to educate. But the promise was too liberal, and the
provision too vague, to effect any general or permanent benefit. The law,
though it may merit some praise, served rather to display than to
alleviate the public distress. It still remains an authentic monument to
contradict and confound those venal orators, who were too well satisfied
with their own situation to discover either vice or misery under the
government of a generous sovereign. 2. The laws of Constantine against
rapes were dictated with very little indulgence for the most amiable
weaknesses of human nature; since the description of that crime was
applied not only to the brutal violence which compelled, but even to the
gentle seduction which might persuade, an unmarried woman, under the age
of twenty-five, to leave the house of her parents. "The successful
ravisher was punished with death; and as if simple death was inadequate to
the enormity of his guilt, he was either burnt alive, or torn in pieces by
wild beasts in the amphitheatre. The virgin's declaration, that she had
been carried away with her own consent, instead of saving her lover,
exposed her to share his fate. The duty of a public prosecution was
intrusted to the parents of the guilty or unfortunate maid; and if the
sentiments of nature prevailed on them to dissemble the injury, and to
repair by a subsequent marriage the honor of their family, they were
themselves punished by exile and confiscation. The slaves, whether male or
female, who were convicted of having been accessory to rape or seduction,
were burnt alive, or put to death by the ingenious torture of pouring down
their throats a quantity of melted lead. As the crime was of a public
kind, the accusation was permitted even to strangers. The commencement of
the action was not limited to any term of years, and the consequences of
the sentence were extended to the innocent offspring of such an irregular
union." But whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment,
the rigor of penal law is obliged to give way to the common feelings of
mankind. The most odious parts of this edict were softened or repealed in
the subsequent reigns; and even Constantine himself very frequently
alleviated, by partial acts of mercy, the stern temper of his general
institutions. Such, indeed, was the singular humor of that emperor, who
showed himself as indulgent, and even remiss, in the execution of his
laws, as he was severe, and even cruel, in the enacting of them. It is
scarcely possible to observe a more decisive symptom of weakness, either
in the character of the prince, or in the constitution of the government.
The civil administration was sometimes interrupted by the military defence
of the empire. Crispus, a youth of the most amiable character, who had
received with the title of Cæsar the command of the Rhine,
distinguished his conduct, as well as valor, in several victories over the
Franks and Alemanni, and taught the barbarians of that frontier to dread
the eldest son of Constantine, and the grandson of Constantius. The
emperor himself had assumed the more difficult and important province of
the Danube. The Goths, who in the time of Claudius and Aurelian had felt
the weight of the Roman arms, respected the power of the empire, even in
the midst of its intestine divisions. But the strength of that warlike
nation was now restored by a peace of near fifty years; a new generation
had arisen, who no longer remembered the misfortunes of ancient days; the
Sarmatians of the Lake Mæotis followed the Gothic standard either as
subjects or as allies, and their united force was poured upon the
countries of Illyricum. Campona, Margus, and Benonia, appear to have been
the scenes of several memorable sieges and battles; and though Constantine
encountered a very obstinate resistance, he prevailed at length in the
contest, and the Goths were compelled to purchased an ignominious retreat,
by restoring the booty and prisoners which they had taken. Nor was this
advantage sufficient to satisfy the indignation of the emperor. He
resolved to chastise as well as to repulse the insolent barbarians who had
dared to invade the territories of Rome. At the head of his legions he
passed the Danube after repairing the bridge which had been constructed by
Trajan, penetrated into the strongest recesses of Dacia, and when he had
inflicted a severe revenge, condescended to give peace to the suppliant
Goths, on condition that, as often as they were required, they should
supply his armies with a body of forty thousand soldiers. Exploits like
these were no doubt honorable to Constantine, and beneficial to the state;
but it may surely be questioned, whether they can justify the exaggerated
assertion of Eusebius, that all Scythia, as far as the extremity of the
North, divided as it was into so many names and nations of the most
various and savage manners, had been added by his victorious arms to the
Roman empire.
In this exalted state of glory, it was impossible that Constantine should
any longer endure a partner in the empire. Confiding in the superiority of
his genius and military power, he determined, without any previous injury,
to exert them for the destruction of Licinius, whose advanced age and
unpopular vices seemed to offer a very easy conquest. But the old emperor,
awakened by the approaching danger, deceived the expectations of his
friends, as well as of his enemies. Calling forth that spirit and those
abilities by which he had deserved the friendship of Galerius and the
Imperial purple, he prepared himself for the contest, collected the forces
of the East, and soon filled the plains of Hadrianople with his troops,
and the Straits of the Hellespont with his fleet. The army consisted of
one hundred and fifty thousand foot, and fifteen thousand horse; and as
the cavalry was drawn, for the most part, from Phrygia and Cappadocia, we
may conceive a more favorable opinion of the beauty of the horses, than of
the courage and dexterity of their riders. The fleet was composed of three
hundred and fifty galleys of three ranks of oars. A hundred and thirty of
these were furnished by Egypt and the adjacent coast of Africa. A hundred
and ten sailed from the ports of Phoenicia and the Isle of Cyprus; and the
maritime countries of Bithynia, Ionia, and Caria, were likewise obliged to
provide a hundred and ten galleys. The troops of Constantine were ordered
to a rendezvous at Thessalonica; they amounted to above a hundred and
twenty thousand horse and foot. Their emperor was satisfied with their
martial appearance, and his army contained more soldiers, though fewer
men, than that of his eastern competitor. The legions of Constantine were
levied in the warlike provinces of Europe; action had confirmed their
discipline, victory had elevated their hopes, and there were among them a
great number of veterans, who, after seventeen glorious campaigns under
the same leader, prepared themselves to deserve an honorable dismission by
a last effort of their valor. But the naval preparations of Constantine
were in every respect much inferior to those of Licinius. The maritime
cities of Greece sent their respective quotas of men and ships to the
celebrated harbor of Piræus, and their united forces consisted of no
more than two hundred small vessels—a very feeble armament, if it is
compared with those formidable fleets which were equipped and maintained
by the republic of Athens during the Peloponnesian war. Since Italy was no
longer the seat of government, the naval establishments of Misenum and
Ravenna had been gradually neglected; and as the shipping and mariners of
the empire were supported by commerce rather than by war, it was natural
that they should the most abound in the industrious provinces of Egypt and
Asia. It is only surprising that the eastern emperor, who possessed so
great a superiority at sea, should have neglected the opportunity of
carrying an offensive war into the centre of his rival's dominions.
Instead of embracing such an active resolution, which might have changed
the whole face of the war, the prudent Licinius expected the approach of
his rival in a camp near Hadrianople, which he had fortified with an
anxious care, that betrayed his apprehension of the event. Constantine
directed his march from Thessalonica towards that part of Thrace, till he
found himself stopped by the broad and rapid stream of the Hebrus, and
discovered the numerous army of Licinius, which filled the steep ascent of
the hill, from the river to the city of Hadrianople. Many days were spent
in doubtful and distant skirmishes; but at length the obstacles of the
passage and of the attack were removed by the intrepid conduct of
Constantine. In this place we might relate a wonderful exploit of
Constantine, which, though it can scarcely be paralleled either in poetry
or romance, is celebrated, not by a venal orator devoted to his fortune,
but by an historian, the partial enemy of his fame. We are assured that
the valiant emperor threw himself into the River Hebrus, accompanied only
by twelve horsemen, and that by the effort or terror of his invincible
arm, he broke, slaughtered, and put to flight a host of a hundred and
fifty thousand men. The credulity of Zosimus prevailed so strongly over
his passion, that among the events of the memorable battle of Hadrianople,
he seems to have selected and embellished, not the most important, but the
most marvellous. The valor and danger of Constantine are attested by a
slight wound which he received in the thigh; but it may be discovered even
from an imperfect narration, and perhaps a corrupted text, that the
victory was obtained no less by the conduct of the general than by the
courage of the hero; that a body of five thousand archers marched round to
occupy a thick wood in the rear of the enemy, whose attention was diverted
by the construction of a bridge, and that Licinius, perplexed by so many
artful evolutions, was reluctantly drawn from his advantageous post to
combat on equal ground on the plain. The contest was no longer equal. His
confused multitude of new levies was easily vanquished by the experienced
veterans of the West. Thirty-four thousand men are reported to have been
slain. The fortified camp of Licinius was taken by assault the evening of
the battle; the greater part of the fugitives, who had retired to the
mountains, surrendered themselves the next day to the discretion of the
conqueror; and his rival, who could no longer keep the field, confined
himself within the walls of Byzantium.
The siege of Byzantium, which was immediately undertaken by Constantine,
was attended with great labor and uncertainty. In the late civil wars, the
fortifications of that place, so justly considered as the key of Europe
and Asia, had been repaired and strengthened; and as long as Licinius
remained master of the sea, the garrison was much less exposed to the
danger of famine than the army of the besiegers. The naval commanders of
Constantine were summoned to his camp, and received his positive orders to
force the passage of the Hellespont, as the fleet of Licinius, instead of
seeking and destroying their feeble enemy, continued inactive in those
narrow straits, where its superiority of numbers was of little use or
advantage. Crispus, the emperor's eldest son, was intrusted with the
execution of this daring enterprise, which he performed with so much
courage and success, that he deserved the esteem, and most probably
excited the jealousy, of his father. The engagement lasted two days; and
in the evening of the first, the contending fleets, after a considerable
and mutual loss, retired into their respective harbors of Europe and Asia.
The second day, about noon, a strong south wind sprang up, which carried
the vessels of Crispus against the enemy; and as the casual advantage was
improved by his skilful intrepidity, he soon obtained a complete victory.
A hundred and thirty vessels were destroyed, five thousand men were slain,
and Amandus, the admiral of the Asiatic fleet, escaped with the utmost
difficulty to the shores of Chalcedon. As soon as the Hellespont was open,
a plentiful convoy of provisions flowed into the camp of Constantine, who
had already advanced the operations of the siege. He constructed
artificial mounds of earth of an equal height with the ramparts of
Byzantium. The lofty towers which were erected on that foundation galled
the besieged with large stones and darts from the military engines, and
the battering rams had shaken the walls in several places. If Licinius
persisted much longer in the defence, he exposed himself to be involved in
the ruin of the place. Before he was surrounded, he prudently removed his
person and treasures to Chalcedon in Asia; and as he was always desirous
of associating companions to the hopes and dangers of his fortune, he now
bestowed the title of Cæsar on Martinianus, who exercised one of the
most important offices of the empire.
Such were still the resources, and such the abilities, of Licinius, that,
after so many successive defeats, he collected in Bithynia a new army of
fifty or sixty thousand men, while the activity of Constantine was
employed in the siege of Byzantium. The vigilant emperor did not, however,
neglect the last struggles of his antagonist. A considerable part of his
victorious army was transported over the Bosphorus in small vessels, and
the decisive engagement was fought soon after their landing on the heights
of Chrysopolis, or, as it is now called, of Scutari. The troops of
Licinius, though they were lately raised, ill armed, and worse
disciplined, made head against their conquerors with fruitless but
desperate valor, till a total defeat, and a slaughter of five and twenty
thousand men, irretrievably determined the fate of their leader. He
retired to Nicomedia, rather with the view of gaining some time for
negotiation, than with the hope of any effectual defence. Constantia, his
wife, and the sister of Constantine, interceded with her brother in favor
of her husband, and obtained from his policy, rather than from his
compassion, a solemn promise, confirmed by an oath, that after the
sacrifice of Martinianus, and the resignation of the purple, Licinius
himself should be permitted to pass the remainder of this life in peace
and affluence. The behavior of Constantia, and her relation to the
contending parties, naturally recalls the remembrance of that virtuous
matron who was the sister of Augustus, and the wife of Antony. But the
temper of mankind was altered, and it was no longer esteemed infamous for
a Roman to survive his honor and independence. Licinius solicited and
accepted the pardon of his offences, laid himself and his purple at the
feet of his lord and master, was raised from the ground with insulting
pity, was admitted the same day to the Imperial banquet, and soon
afterwards was sent away to Thessalonica, which had been chosen for the
place of his confinement. His confinement was soon terminated by death,
and it is doubtful whether a tumult of the soldiers, or a decree of the
senate, was suggested as the motive for his execution. According to the
rules of tyranny, he was accused of forming a conspiracy, and of holding a
treasonable correspondence with the barbarians; but as he was never
convicted, either by his own conduct or by any legal evidence, we may
perhaps be allowed, from his weakness, to presume his innocence. The
memory of Licinius was branded with infamy, his statues were thrown down,
and by a hasty edict, of such mischievous tendency that it was almost
immediately corrected, all his laws, and all the judicial proceedings of
his reign, were at once abolished. By this victory of Constantine, the
Roman world was again united under the authority of one emperor,
thirty-seven years after Diocletian had divided his power and provinces
with his associate Maximian.
The successive steps of the elevation of Constantine, from his first
assuming the purple at York, to the resignation of Licinius, at Nicomedia,
have been related with some minuteness and precision, not only as the
events are in themselves both interesting and important, but still more,
as they contributed to the decline of the empire by the expense of blood
and treasure, and by the perpetual increase, as well of the taxes, as of
the military establishment. The foundation of Constantinople, and the
establishment of the Christian religion, were the immediate and memorable
consequences of this revolution.
The Progress Of The Christian Religion, And The Sentiments, Manners, Numbers, And Condition Of The Primitive Christians.
A candid but rational inquiry into the progress and establishment of
Christianity may be considered as a very essential part of the history of
the Roman empire. While that great body was invaded by open violence, or
undermined by slow decay, a pure and humble religion gently insinuated
itself into the minds of men, grew up in silence and obscurity, derived
new vigor from opposition, and finally erected the triumphant banner of
the Cross on the ruins of the Capitol. Nor was the influence of
Christianity confined to the period or to the limits of the Roman empire.
After a revolution of thirteen or fourteen centuries, that religion is
still professed by the nations of Europe, the most distinguished portion
of human kind in arts and learning as well as in arms. By the industry and
zeal of the Europeans, it has been widely diffused to the most distant
shores of Asia and Africa; and by the means of their colonies has been
firmly established from Canada to Chili, in a world unknown to the
ancients.
But this inquiry, however useful or entertaining, is attended with two
peculiar difficulties. The scanty and suspicious materials of
ecclesiastical history seldom enable us to dispel the dark cloud that
hangs over the first age of the church. The great law of impartiality too
often obliges us to reveal the imperfections of the uninspired teachers
and believers of the gospel; and, to a careless observer, their faults
may seem to cast a shade on the faith which they professed. But the
scandal of the pious Christian, and the fallacious triumph of the Infidel,
should cease as soon as they recollect not only by whom,
but likewise to whom, the Divine Revelation was
given. The theologian may indulge the pleasing task of describing Religion
as she descended from Heaven, arrayed in her native purity. A more
melancholy duty is imposed on the historian. He must discover the
inevitable mixture of error and corruption, which she contracted in a long
residence upon earth, among a weak and degenerate race of beings. *
Our curiosity is naturally prompted to inquire by what means the Christian
faith obtained so remarkable a victory over the established religions of
the earth. To this inquiry, an obvious but satisfactory answer may be
returned; that it was owing to the convincing evidence of the doctrine
itself, and to the ruling providence of its great Author. But as truth and
reason seldom find so favorable a reception in the world, and as the
wisdom of Providence frequently condescends to use the passions of the
human heart, and the general circumstances of mankind, as instruments to
execute its purpose, we may still be permitted, though with becoming
submission, to ask, not indeed what were the first, but what were the
secondary causes of the rapid growth of the Christian church. It will,
perhaps, appear, that it was most effectually favored and assisted by the
five following causes: I. The inflexible, and if we may use the
expression, the intolerant zeal of the Christians, derived, it is true,
from the Jewish religion, but purified from the narrow and unsocial
spirit, which, instead of inviting, had deterred the Gentiles from
embracing the law of Moses. II. The doctrine of a future life, improved by
every additional circumstance which could give weight and efficacy to that
important truth. III. The miraculous powers ascribed to the primitive
church. IV. The pure and austere morals of the Christians. V. The union
and discipline of the Christian republic, which gradually formed an
independent and increasing state in the heart of the Roman empire.
I. We have already described the religious harmony of the ancient world,
and the facility * with which the most different and even hostile nations
embraced, or at least respected, each other's superstitions. A single
people refused to join in the common intercourse of mankind. The Jews,
who, under the Assyrian and Persian monarchies, had languished for many
ages the most despised portion of their slaves, emerged from obscurity
under the successors of Alexander; and as they multiplied to a surprising
degree in the East, and afterwards in the West, they soon excited the
curiosity and wonder of other nations. The sullen obstinacy with which
they maintained their peculiar rites and unsocial manners, seemed to mark
them out as a distinct species of men, who boldly professed, or who
faintly disguised, their implacable habits to the rest of human kind.
Neither the violence of Antiochus, nor the arts of Herod, nor the example
of the circumjacent nations, could ever persuade the Jews to associate
with the institutions of Moses the elegant mythology of the Greeks.
According to the maxims of universal toleration, the Romans protected a
superstition which they despised. The polite Augustus condescended to give
orders, that sacrifices should be offered for his prosperity in the temple
of Jerusalem; whilst the meanest of the posterity of Abraham, who should
have paid the same homage to the Jupiter of the Capitol, would have been
an object of abhorrence to himself and to his brethren. But the moderation
of the conquerors was insufficient to appease the jealous prejudices of
their subjects, who were alarmed and scandalized at the ensigns of
paganism, which necessarily introduced themselves into a Roman province.
The mad attempt of Caligula to place his own statue in the temple of
Jerusalem was defeated by the unanimous resolution of a people who dreaded
death much less than such an idolatrous profanation. Their attachment to
the law of Moses was equal to their detestation of foreign religions. The
current of zeal and devotion, as it was contracted into a narrow channel,
ran with the strength, and sometimes with the fury, of a torrent.
This inflexible perseverance, which appeared so odious or so ridiculous to
the ancient world, assumes a more awful character, since Providence has
deigned to reveal to us the mysterious history of the chosen people. But
the devout and even scrupulous attachment to the Mosaic religion, so
conspicuous among the Jews who lived under the second temple, becomes
still more surprising, if it is compared with the stubborn incredulity of
their forefathers. When the law was given in thunder from Mount Sinai,
when the tides of the ocean and the course of the planets were suspended
for the convenience of the Israelites, and when temporal rewards and
punishments were the immediate consequences of their piety or
disobedience, they perpetually relapsed into rebellion against the visible
majesty of their Divine King, placed the idols of the nations in the
sanctuary of Jehovah, and imitated every fantastic ceremony that was
practised in the tents of the Arabs, or in the cities of Phoenicia. As the
protection of Heaven was deservedly withdrawn from the ungrateful race,
their faith acquired a proportionable degree of vigor and purity. The
contemporaries of Moses and Joshua had beheld with careless indifference
the most amazing miracles. Under the pressure of every calamity, the
belief of those miracles has preserved the Jews of a later period from the
universal contagion of idolatry; and in contradiction to every known
principle of the human mind, that singular people seems to have yielded a
stronger and more ready assent to the traditions of their remote
ancestors, than to the evidence of their own senses.
The Jewish religion was admirably fitted for defence, but it was never
designed for conquest; and it seems probable that the number of proselytes
was never much superior to that of apostates. The divine promises were
originally made, and the distinguishing rite of circumcision was enjoined,
to a single family. When the posterity of Abraham had multiplied like the
sands of the sea, the Deity, from whose mouth they received a system of
laws and ceremonies, declared himself the proper and as it were the
national God of Israel and with the most jealous care separated his
favorite people from the rest of mankind. The conquest of the land of
Canaan was accompanied with so many wonderful and with so many bloody
circumstances, that the victorious Jews were left in a state of
irreconcilable hostility with all their neighbors. They had been commanded
to extirpate some of the most idolatrous tribes, and the execution of the
divine will had seldom been retarded by the weakness of humanity. With the
other nations they were forbidden to contract any marriages or alliances;
and the prohibition of receiving them into the congregation, which in some
cases was perpetual, almost always extended to the third, to the seventh,
or even to the tenth generation. The obligation of preaching to the
Gentiles the faith of Moses had never been inculcated as a precept of the
law, nor were the Jews inclined to impose it on themselves as a voluntary
duty.
In the admission of new citizens, that unsocial people was actuated by the
selfish vanity of the Greeks, rather than by the generous policy of Rome.
The descendants of Abraham were flattered by the opinion that they alone
were the heirs of the covenant, and they were apprehensive of diminishing
the value of their inheritance by sharing it too easily with the strangers
of the earth. A larger acquaintance with mankind extended their knowledge
without correcting their prejudices; and whenever the God of Israel
acquired any new votaries, he was much more indebted to the inconstant
humor of polytheism than to the active zeal of his own missionaries. The
religion of Moses seems to be instituted for a particular country as well
as for a single nation; and if a strict obedience had been paid to the
order, that every male, three times in the year, should present himself
before the Lord Jehovah, it would have been impossible that the Jews could
ever have spread themselves beyond the narrow limits of the promised land.
That obstacle was indeed removed by the destruction of the temple of
Jerusalem; but the most considerable part of the Jewish religion was
involved in its destruction; and the Pagans, who had long wondered at the
strange report of an empty sanctuary, were at a loss to discover what
could be the object, or what could be the instruments, of a worship which
was destitute of temples and of altars, of priests and of sacrifices. Yet
even in their fallen state, the Jews, still asserting their lofty and
exclusive privileges, shunned, instead of courting, the society of
strangers. They still insisted with inflexible rigor on those parts of the
law which it was in their power to practise. Their peculiar distinctions
of days, of meats, and a variety of trivial though burdensome observances,
were so many objects of disgust and aversion for the other nations, to
whose habits and prejudices they were diametrically opposite. The painful
and even dangerous rite of circumcision was alone capable of repelling a
willing proselyte from the door of the synagogue.
Under these circumstances, Christianity offered itself to the world, armed
with the strength of the Mosaic law, and delivered from the weight of its
fetters. An exclusive zeal for the truth of religion, and the unity of
God, was as carefully inculcated in the new as in the ancient system: and
whatever was now revealed to mankind concerning the nature and designs of
the Supreme Being, was fitted to increase their reverence for that
mysterious doctrine. The divine authority of Moses and the prophets was
admitted, and even established, as the firmest basis of Christianity. From
the beginning of the world, an uninterrupted series of predictions had
announced and prepared the long-expected coming of the Messiah, who, in
compliance with the gross apprehensions of the Jews, had been more
frequently represented under the character of a King and Conqueror, than
under that of a Prophet, a Martyr, and the Son of God. By his expiatory
sacrifice, the imperfect sacrifices of the temple were at once consummated
and abolished. The ceremonial law, which consisted only of types and
figures, was succeeded by a pure and spiritual worship, equally adapted to
all climates, as well as to every condition of mankind; and to the
initiation of blood was substituted a more harmless initiation of water.
The promise of divine favor, instead of being partially confined to the
posterity of Abraham, was universally proposed to the freeman and the
slave, to the Greek and to the barbarian, to the Jew and to the Gentile.
Every privilege that could raise the proselyte from earth to heaven, that
could exalt his devotion, secure his happiness, or even gratify that
secret pride which, under the semblance of devotion, insinuates itself
into the human heart, was still reserved for the members of the Christian
church; but at the same time all mankind was permitted, and even
solicited, to accept the glorious distinction, which was not only
proffered as a favor, but imposed as an obligation. It became the most
sacred duty of a new convert to diffuse among his friends and relations
the inestimable blessing which he had received, and to warn them against a
refusal that would be severely punished as a criminal disobedience to the
will of a benevolent but all-powerful Deity.
The enfranchisement of the church from the bonds of the synagogue was a
work, however, of some time and of some difficulty. The Jewish converts,
who acknowledged Jesus in the character of the Messiah foretold by their
ancient oracles, respected him as a prophetic teacher of virtue and
religion; but they obstinately adhered to the ceremonies of their
ancestors, and were desirous of imposing them on the Gentiles, who
continually augmented the number of believers. These Judaizing Christians
seem to have argued with some degree of plausibility from the divine
origin of the Mosaic law, and from the immutable perfections of its great
Author. They affirmed, that if the Being, who is
the same through all eternity, had designed to abolish those sacred rites
which had served to distinguish his chosen people, the repeal of them
would have been no less clear and solemn than their first promulgation:
that, instead of those frequent declarations,
which either suppose or assert the perpetuity of the Mosaic religion, it
would have been represented as a provisionary scheme intended to last only
to the coming of the Messiah, who should instruct mankind in a more
perfect mode of faith and of worship: that the Messiah himself, and his
disciples who conversed with him on earth, instead of authorizing by their
example the most minute observances of the Mosaic law, would have
published to the world the abolition of those useless and obsolete
ceremonies, without suffering Christianity to remain during so many years
obscurely confounded among the sects of the Jewish church. Arguments like
these appear to have been used in the defence of the expiring cause of the
Mosaic law; but the industry of our learned divines has abundantly
explained the ambiguous language of the Old Testament, and the ambiguous
conduct of the apostolic teachers. It was proper gradually to unfold the
system of the gospel, and to pronounce, with the utmost caution and
tenderness, a sentence of condemnation so repugnant to the inclination and
prejudices of the believing Jews.
The history of the church of Jerusalem affords a lively proof of the
necessity of those precautions, and of the deep impression which the
Jewish religion had made on the minds of its sectaries. The first fifteen
bishops of Jerusalem were all circumcised Jews; and the congregation over
which they presided united the law of Moses with the doctrine of Christ.
It was natural that the primitive tradition of a church which was founded
only forty days after the death of Christ, and was governed almost as many
years under the immediate inspection of his apostle, should be received as
the standard of orthodoxy. The distant churches very frequently appealed
to the authority of their venerable Parent, and relieved her distresses by
a liberal contribution of alms. But when numerous and opulent societies
were established in the great cities of the empire, in Antioch,
Alexandria, Ephesus, Corinth, and Rome, the reverence which Jerusalem had
inspired to all the Christian colonies insensibly diminished. The Jewish
converts, or, as they were afterwards called, the Nazarenes, who had laid
the foundations of the church, soon found themselves overwhelmed by the
increasing multitudes, that from all the various religions of polytheism
enlisted under the banner of Christ: and the Gentiles, who, with the
approbation of their peculiar apostle, had rejected the intolerable weight
of the Mosaic ceremonies, at length refused to their more scrupulous
brethren the same toleration which at first they had humbly solicited for
their own practice. The ruin of the temple of the city, and of the public
religion of the Jews, was severely felt by the Nazarenes; as in their
manners, though not in their faith, they maintained so intimate a
connection with their impious countrymen, whose misfortunes were
attributed by the Pagans to the contempt, and more justly ascribed by the
Christians to the wrath, of the Supreme Deity. The Nazarenes retired from
the ruins of Jerusalem * to the little town of Pella beyond the Jordan,
where that ancient church languished above sixty years in solitude and
obscurity. They still enjoyed the comfort of making frequent and devout
visits to the Holy City, and the hope of being
one day restored to those seats which both nature and religion taught them
to love as well as to revere. But at length, under the reign of Hadrian,
the desperate fanaticism of the Jews filled up the measure of their
calamities; and the Romans, exasperated by their repeated rebellions,
exercised the rights of victory with unusual rigor. The emperor founded,
under the name of Ælia Capitolina, a new city on Mount Sion, to
which he gave the privileges of a colony; and denouncing the severest
penalties against any of the Jewish people who should dare to approach its
precincts, he fixed a vigilant garrison of a Roman cohort to enforce the
execution of his orders. The Nazarenes had only one way left to escape the
common proscription, and the force of truth was on this occasion assisted
by the influence of temporal advantages. They elected Marcus for their
bishop, a prelate of the race of the Gentiles, and most probably a native
either of Italy or of some of the Latin provinces. At his persuasion, the
most considerable part of the congregation renounced the Mosaic law, in
the practice of which they had persevered above a century. By this
sacrifice of their habits and prejudices, they purchased a free admission
into the colony of Hadrian, and more firmly cemented their union with the
Catholic church.
When the name and honors of the church of Jerusalem had been restored to
Mount Sion, the crimes of heresy and schism were imputed to the obscure
remnant of the Nazarenes, which refused to accompany their Latin bishop.
They still preserved their former habitation of Pella, spread themselves
into the villages adjacent to Damascus, and formed an inconsiderable
church in the city of Beroea, or, as it is now called, of Aleppo, in
Syria. The name of Nazarenes was deemed too honorable for those Christian
Jews, and they soon received, from the supposed poverty of their
understanding, as well as of their condition, the contemptuous epithet of
Ebionites. In a few years after the return of the church of Jerusalem, it
became a matter of doubt and controversy, whether a man who sincerely
acknowledged Jesus as the Messiah, but who still continued to observe the
law of Moses, could possibly hope for salvation. The humane temper of
Justin Martyr inclined him to answer this question in the affirmative; and
though he expressed himself with the most guarded diffidence, he ventured
to determine in favor of such an imperfect Christian, if he were content
to practise the Mosaic ceremonies, without pretending to assert their
general use or necessity. But when Justin was pressed to declare the
sentiment of the church, he confessed that there were very many among the
orthodox Christians, who not only excluded their Judaizing brethren from
the hope of salvation, but who declined any intercourse with them in the
common offices of friendship, hospitality, and social life. The more
rigorous opinion prevailed, as it was natural to expect, over the milder;
and an eternal bar of separation was fixed between the disciples of Moses
and those of Christ. The unfortunate Ebionites, rejected from one religion
as apostates, and from the other as heretics, found themselves compelled
to assume a more decided character; and although some traces of that
obsolete sect may be discovered as late as the fourth century, they
insensibly melted away, either into the church or the synagogue.
While the orthodox church preserved a just medium between excessive
veneration and improper contempt for the law of Moses, the various
heretics deviated into equal but opposite extremes of error and
extravagance. From the acknowledged truth of the Jewish religion, the
Ebionites had concluded that it could never be abolished. From its
supposed imperfections, the Gnostics as hastily inferred that it never was
instituted by the wisdom of the Deity. There are some objections against
the authority of Moses and the prophets, which too readily present
themselves to the sceptical mind; though they can only be derived from our
ignorance of remote antiquity, and from our incapacity to form an adequate
judgment of the divine economy. These objections were eagerly embraced and
as petulantly urged by the vain science of the Gnostics. As those heretics
were, for the most part, averse to the pleasures of sense, they morosely
arraigned the polygamy of the patriarchs, the gallantries of David, and
the seraglio of Solomon. The conquest of the land of Canaan, and the
extirpation of the unsuspecting natives, they were at a loss how to
reconcile with the common notions of humanity and justice. * But when they
recollected the sanguinary list of murders, of executions, and of
massacres, which stain almost every page of the Jewish annals, they
acknowledged that the barbarians of Palestine had exercised as much
compassion towards their idolatrous enemies, as they had ever shown to
their friends or countrymen. Passing from the sectaries of the law to the
law itself, they asserted that it was impossible that a religion which
consisted only of bloody sacrifices and trifling ceremonies, and whose
rewards as well as punishments were all of a carnal and temporal nature,
could inspire the love of virtue, or restrain the impetuosity of passion.
The Mosaic account of the creation and fall of man was treated with
profane derision by the Gnostics, who would not listen with patience to
the repose of the Deity after six days' labor, to the rib of Adam, the
garden of Eden, the trees of life and of knowledge, the speaking serpent,
the forbidden fruit, and the condemnation pronounced against human kind
for the venial offence of their first progenitors. The God of Israel was
impiously represented by the Gnostics as a being liable to passion and to
error, capricious in his favor, implacable in his resentment, meanly
jealous of his superstitious worship, and confining his partial providence
to a single people, and to this transitory life. In such a character they
could discover none of the features of the wise and omnipotent Father of
the universe. They allowed that the religion of the Jews was somewhat less
criminal than the idolatry of the Gentiles; but it was their fundamental
doctrine, that the Christ whom they adored as the first and brightest
emanation of the Deity appeared upon earth to rescue mankind from their
various errors, and to reveal a new system of truth and perfection. The
most learned of the fathers, by a very singular condescension, have
imprudently admitted the sophistry of the Gnostics. * Acknowledging that
the literal sense is repugnant to every principle of faith as well as
reason, they deem themselves secure and invulnerable behind the ample veil
of allegory, which they carefully spread over every tender part of the
Mosaic dispensation.
It has been remarked with more ingenuity than truth, that the virgin
purity of the church was never violated by schism or heresy before the
reign of Trajan or Hadrian, about one hundred years after the death of
Christ. We may observe with much more propriety, that, during that period,
the disciples of the Messiah were indulged in a freer latitude, both of
faith and practice, than has ever been allowed in succeeding ages. As the
terms of communion were insensibly narrowed, and the spiritual authority
of the prevailing party was exercised with increasing severity, many of
its most respectable adherents, who were called upon to renounce, were
provoked to assert their private opinions, to pursue the consequences of
their mistaken principles, and openly to erect the standard of rebellion
against the unity of the church. The Gnostics were distinguished as the
most polite, the most learned, and the most wealthy of the Christian name;
and that general appellation, which expressed a superiority of knowledge,
was either assumed by their own pride, or ironically bestowed by the envy
of their adversaries. They were almost without exception of the race of
the Gentiles, and their principal founders seem to have been natives of
Syria or Egypt, where the warmth of the climate disposes both the mind and
the body to indolent and contemplative devotion. The Gnostics blended with
the faith of Christ many sublime but obscure tenets, which they derived
from oriental philosophy, and even from the religion of Zoroaster,
concerning the eternity of matter, the existence of two principles, and
the mysterious hierarchy of the invisible world. As soon as they launched
out into that vast abyss, they delivered themselves to the guidance of a
disordered imagination; and as the paths of error are various and
infinite, the Gnostics were imperceptibly divided into more than fifty
particular sects, of whom the most celebrated appear to have been the
Basilidians, the Valentinians, the Marcionites, and, in a still later
period, the Manichæans. Each of these sects could boast of its
bishops and congregations, of its doctors and martyrs; and, instead of the
Four Gospels adopted by the church, the heretics produced a multitude of
histories, in which the actions and discourses of Christ and of his
apostles were adapted to their respective tenets. The success of the
Gnostics was rapid and extensive. They covered Asia and Egypt, established
themselves in Rome, and sometimes penetrated into the provinces of the
West. For the most part they arose in the second century, flourished
during the third, and were suppressed in the fourth or fifth, by the
prevalence of more fashionable controversies, and by the superior
ascendant of the reigning power. Though they constantly disturbed the
peace, and frequently disgraced the name, of religion, they contributed to
assist rather than to retard the progress of Christianity. The Gentile
converts, whose strongest objections and prejudices were directed against
the law of Moses, could find admission into many Christian societies,
which required not from their untutored mind any belief of an antecedent
revelation. Their faith was insensibly fortified and enlarged, and the
church was ultimately benefited by the conquests of its most inveterate
enemies.
But whatever difference of opinion might subsist between the Orthodox, the
Ebionites, and the Gnostics, concerning the divinity or the obligation of
the Mosaic law, they were all equally animated by the same exclusive zeal;
and by the same abhorrence for idolatry, which had distinguished the Jews
from the other nations of the ancient world. The philosopher, who
considered the system of polytheism as a composition of human fraud and
error, could disguise a smile of contempt under the mask of devotion,
without apprehending that either the mockery, or the compliance, would
expose him to the resentment of any invisible, or, as he conceived them,
imaginary powers. But the established religions of Paganism were seen by
the primitive Christians in a much more odious and formidable light. It
was the universal sentiment both of the church and of heretics, that the dæmons
were the authors, the patrons, and the objects of idolatry. Those
rebellious spirits who had been degraded from the rank of angels, and cast
down into the infernal pit, were still permitted to roam upon earth, to
torment the bodies, and to seduce the minds, of sinful men. The dæmons
soon discovered and abused the natural propensity of the human heart
towards devotion, and artfully withdrawing the adoration of mankind from
their Creator, they usurped the place and honors of the Supreme Deity. By
the success of their malicious contrivances, they at once gratified their
own vanity and revenge, and obtained the only comfort of which they were
yet susceptible, the hope of involving the human species in the
participation of their guilt and misery. It was confessed, or at least it
was imagined, that they had distributed among themselves the most
important characters of polytheism, one dæmon assuming the name and
attributes of Jupiter, another of Æsculapius, a third of Venus, and
a fourth perhaps of Apollo; and that, by the advantage of their long
experience and ærial nature, they were enabled to execute, with
sufficient skill and dignity, the parts which they had undertaken. They
lurked in the temples, instituted festivals and sacrifices, invented
fables, pronounced oracles, and were frequently allowed to perform
miracles. The Christians, who, by the interposition of evil spirits, could
so readily explain every preternatural appearance, were disposed and even
desirous to admit the most extravagant fictions of the Pagan mythology.
But the belief of the Christian was accompanied with horror. The most
trifling mark of respect to the national worship he considered as a direct
homage yielded to the dæmon, and as an act of rebellion against the
majesty of God.
In consequence of this opinion, it was the first but arduous duty of a
Christian to preserve himself pure and undefiled by the practice of
idolatry. The religion of the nations was not merely a speculative
doctrine professed in the schools or preached in the temples. The
innumerable deities and rites of polytheism were closely interwoven with
every circumstance of business or pleasure, of public or of private life;
and it seemed impossible to escape the observance of them, without, at the
same time, renouncing the commerce of mankind, and all the offices and
amusements of society. The important transactions of peace and war were
prepared or concluded by solemn sacrifices, in which the magistrate, the
senator, and the soldier, were obliged to preside or to participate. The
public spectacles were an essential part of the cheerful devotion of the
Pagans, and the gods were supposed to accept, as the most grateful
offering, the games that the prince and people celebrated in honor of
their peculiar festivals. The Christians, who with pious horror avoided
the abomination of the circus or the theatre, found himself encompassed
with infernal snares in every convivial entertainment, as often as his
friends, invoking the hospitable deities, poured out libations to each
other's happiness. When the bride, struggling with well-affected
reluctance, was forced into hymenæal pomp over the threshold of her
new habitation, or when the sad procession of the dead slowly moved
towards the funeral pile; the Christian, on these interesting occasions,
was compelled to desert the persons who were the dearest to him, rather
than contract the guilt inherent to those impious ceremonies. Every art
and every trade that was in the least concerned in the framing or adorning
of idols was polluted by the stain of idolatry; a severe sentence, since
it devoted to eternal misery the far greater part of the community, which
is employed in the exercise of liberal or mechanic professions. If we cast
our eyes over the numerous remains of antiquity, we shall perceive, that
besides the immediate representations of the gods, and the holy
instruments of their worship, the elegant forms and agreeable fictions
consecrated by the imagination of the Greeks, were introduced as the
richest ornaments of the houses, the dress, and the furniture of the
Pagan. Even the arts of music and painting, of eloquence and poetry,
flowed from the same impure origin. In the style of the fathers, Apollo
and the Muses were the organs of the infernal spirit; Homer and Virgil
were the most eminent of his servants; and the beautiful mythology which
pervades and animates the compositions of their genius, is destined to
celebrate the glory of the dæmons. Even the common language of
Greece and Rome abounded with familiar but impious expressions, which the
imprudent Christian might too carelessly utter, or too patiently hear.
The dangerous temptations which on every side lurked in ambush to surprise
the unguarded believer, assailed him with redoubled violence on the days
of solemn festivals. So artfully were they framed and disposed throughout
the year, that superstition always wore the appearance of pleasure, and
often of virtue. Some of the most sacred festivals in the Roman ritual
were destined to salute the new calends of January with vows of public and
private felicity; to indulge the pious remembrance of the dead and living;
to ascertain the inviolable bounds of property; to hail, on the return of
spring, the genial powers of fecundity; to perpetuate the two memorable
areas of Rome, the foundation of the city and that of the republic, and to
restore, during the humane license of the Saturnalia, the primitive
equality of mankind. Some idea may be conceived of the abhorrence of the
Christians for such impious ceremonies, by the scrupulous delicacy which
they displayed on a much less alarming occasion. On days of general
festivity, it was the custom of the ancients to adorn their doors with
lamps and with branches of laurel, and to crown their heads with a garland
of flowers. This innocent and elegant practice might perhaps have been
tolerated as a mere civil institution. But it most unluckily happened that
the doors were under the protection of the household gods, that the laurel
was sacred to the lover of Daphne, and that garlands of flowers, though
frequently worn as a symbol of joy or mourning, had been dedicated in
their first origin to the service of superstition. The trembling
Christians, who were persuaded in this instance to comply with the fashion
of their country, and the commands of the magistrate, labored under the
most gloomy apprehensions, from the reproaches of his own conscience, the
censures of the church, and the denunciations of divine vengeance.
Such was the anxious diligence which was required to guard the chastity of
the gospel from the infectious breath of idolatry. The superstitious
observances of public or private rites were carelessly practised, from
education and habit, by the followers of the established religion. But as
often as they occurred, they afforded the Christians an opportunity of
declaring and confirming their zealous opposition. By these frequent
protestations their attachment to the faith was continually fortified; and
in proportion to the increase of zeal, they combated with the more ardor
and success in the holy war, which they had undertaken against the empire
of the demons.
II. The writings of Cicero represent in the most lively colors the
ignorance, the errors, and the uncertainty of the ancient philosophers
with regard to the immortality of the soul. When they are desirous of
arming their disciples against the fear of death, they inculcate, as an
obvious, though melancholy position, that the fatal stroke of our
dissolution releases us from the calamities of life; and that those can no
longer suffer, who no longer exist. Yet there were a few sages of Greece
and Rome who had conceived a more exalted, and, in some respects, a juster
idea of human nature, though it must be confessed, that in the sublime
inquiry, their reason had been often guided by their imagination, and that
their imagination had been prompted by their vanity. When they viewed with
complacency the extent of their own mental powers, when they exercised the
various faculties of memory, of fancy, and of judgment, in the most
profound speculations, or the most important labors, and when they
reflected on the desire of fame, which transported them into future ages,
far beyond the bounds of death and of the grave, they were unwilling to
confound themselves with the beasts of the field, or to suppose that a
being, for whose dignity they entertained the most sincere admiration,
could be limited to a spot of earth, and to a few years of duration. With
this favorable prepossession they summoned to their aid the science, or
rather the language, of Metaphysics. They soon discovered, that as none of
the properties of matter will apply to the operations of the mind, the
human soul must consequently be a substance distinct from the body, pure,
simple, and spiritual, incapable of dissolution, and susceptible of a much
higher degree of virtue and happiness after the release from its corporeal
prison. From these specious and noble principles, the philosophers who
trod in the footsteps of Plato deduced a very unjustifiable conclusion,
since they asserted, not only the future immortality, but the past
eternity, of the human soul, which they were too apt to consider as a
portion of the infinite and self-existing spirit, which pervades and
sustains the universe. A doctrine thus removed beyond the senses and the
experience of mankind, might serve to amuse the leisure of a philosophic
mind; or, in the silence of solitude, it might sometimes impart a ray of
comfort to desponding virtue; but the faint impression which had been
received in the schools, was soon obliterated by the commerce and business
of active life. We are sufficiently acquainted with the eminent persons
who flourished in the age of Cicero, and of the first Cæsars, with
their actions, their characters, and their motives, to be assured that
their conduct in this life was never regulated by any serious conviction
of the rewards or punishments of a future state. At the bar and in the
senate of Rome the ablest orators were not apprehensive of giving offence
to their hearers, by exposing that doctrine as an idle and extravagant
opinion, which was rejected with contempt by every man of a liberal
education and understanding.
Since therefore the most sublime efforts of philosophy can extend no
further than feebly to point out the desire, the hope, or, at most, the
probability, of a future state, there is nothing, except a divine
revelation, that can ascertain the existence, and describe the condition,
of the invisible country which is destined to receive the souls of men
after their separation from the body. But we may perceive several defects
inherent to the popular religions of Greece and Rome, which rendered them
very unequal to so arduous a task. 1. The general system
of their mythology was unsupported by any solid proofs; and the wisest
among the Pagans had already disclaimed its usurped authority. 2.
The description of the infernal regions had been abandoned to the fancy of
painters and of poets, who peopled them with so many phantoms and
monsters, who dispensed their rewards and punishments with so little
equity, that a solemn truth, the most congenial to the human heart, was
opposed and disgraced by the absurd mixture of the wildest fictions. 3.
The doctrine of a future state was scarcely considered among the devout
polytheists of Greece and Rome as a fundamental article of faith. The
providence of the gods, as it related to public communities rather than to
private individuals, was principally displayed on the visible theatre of
the present world. The petitions which were offered on the altars of
Jupiter or Apollo, expressed the anxiety of their worshippers for temporal
happiness, and their ignorance or indifference concerning a future life.
The important truth of the of the immortality of the soul was inculcated
with more diligence, as well as success, in India, in Assyria, in Egypt,
and in Gaul; and since we cannot attribute such a difference to the
superior knowledge of the barbarians, we must ascribe it to the influence
of an established priesthood, which employed the motives of virtue as the
instrument of ambition.
We might naturally expect that a principle so essential to religion, would
have been revealed in the clearest terms to the chosen people of
Palestine, and that it might safely have been intrusted to the hereditary
priesthood of Aaron. It is incumbent on us to adore the mysterious
dispensations of Providence, when we discover that the doctrine of the
immortality of the soul is omitted in the law of Moses it is darkly
insinuated by the prophets; and during the long period which clasped
between the Egyptian and the Babylonian servitudes, the hopes as well as
fears of the Jews appear to have been confined within the narrow compass
of the present life. After Cyrus had permitted the exiled nation to return
into the promised land, and after Ezra had restored the ancient records of
their religion, two celebrated sects, the Sadducees and the Pharisees,
insensibly arose at Jerusalem. The former, selected from the more opulent
and distinguished ranks of society, were strictly attached to the literal
sense of the Mosaic law, and they piously rejected the immortality of the
soul, as an opinion that received no countenance from the divine book,
which they revered as the only rule of their faith. To the authority of
Scripture the Pharisees added that of tradition, and they accepted, under
the name of traditions, several speculative tenets from the philosophy or
religion of the eastern nations. The doctrines of fate or predestination,
of angels and spirits, and of a future state of rewards and punishments,
were in the number of these new articles of belief; and as the Pharisees,
by the austerity of their manners, had drawn into their party the body of
the Jewish people, the immortality of the soul became the prevailing
sentiment of the synagogue, under the reign of the Asmonæan princes
and pontiffs. The temper of the Jews was incapable of contenting itself
with such a cold and languid assent as might satisfy the mind of a
Polytheist; and as soon as they admitted the idea of a future state, they
embraced it with the zeal which has always formed the characteristic of
the nation. Their zeal, however, added nothing to its evidence, or even
probability: and it was still necessary that the doctrine of life and
immortality, which had been dictated by nature, approved by reason, and
received by superstition, should obtain the sanction of divine truth from
the authority and example of Christ.
When the promise of eternal happiness was proposed to mankind on condition
of adopting the faith, and of observing the precepts, of the gospel, it is
no wonder that so advantageous an offer should have been accepted by great
numbers of every religion, of every rank, and of every province in the
Roman empire. The ancient Christians were animated by a contempt for their
present existence, and by a just confidence of immortality, of which the
doubtful and imperfect faith of modern ages cannot give us any adequate
notion. In the primitive church, the influence of truth was very
powerfully strengthened by an opinion, which, however it may deserve
respect for its usefulness and antiquity, has not been found agreeable to
experience. It was universally believed, that the end of the world, and
the kingdom of heaven, were at hand. * The near approach of this wonderful
event had been predicted by the apostles; the tradition of it was
preserved by their earliest disciples, and those who understood in their
literal senses the discourse of Christ himself, were obliged to expect the
second and glorious coming of the Son of Man in the clouds, before that
generation was totally extinguished, which had beheld his humble condition
upon earth, and which might still be witness of the calamities of the Jews
under Vespasian or Hadrian. The revolution of seventeen centuries has
instructed us not to press too closely the mysterious language of prophecy
and revelation; but as long as, for wise purposes, this error was
permitted to subsist in the church, it was productive of the most salutary
effects on the faith and practice of Christians, who lived in the awful
expectation of that moment, when the globe itself, and all the various
race of mankind, should tremble at the appearance of their divine Judge.
The ancient and popular doctrine of the Millennium was intimately
connected with the second coming of Christ. As the works of the creation
had been finished in six days, their duration in their present state,
according to a tradition which was attributed to the prophet Elijah, was
fixed to six thousand years. By the same analogy it was inferred, that
this long period of labor and contention, which was now almost elapsed,
would be succeeded by a joyful Sabbath of a thousand years; and that
Christ, with the triumphant band of the saints and the elect who had
escaped death, or who had been miraculously revived, would reign upon
earth till the time appointed for the last and general resurrection. So
pleasing was this hope to the mind of believers, that the New
Jerusalem, the seat of this blissful kingdom, was quickly
adorned with all the gayest colors of the imagination. A felicity
consisting only of pure and spiritual pleasure would have appeared too
refined for its inhabitants, who were still supposed to possess their
human nature and senses. A garden of Eden, with the amusements of the
pastoral life, was no longer suited to the advanced state of society which
prevailed under the Roman empire. A city was therefore erected of gold and
precious stones, and a supernatural plenty of corn and wine was bestowed
on the adjacent territory; in the free enjoyment of whose spontaneous
productions, the happy and benevolent people was never to be restrained by
any jealous laws of exclusive property. The assurance of such a Millennium
was carefully inculcated by a succession of fathers from Justin Martyr,
and Irenæus, who conversed with the immediate disciples of the
apostles, down to Lactantius, who was preceptor to the son of Constantine.
Though it might not be universally received, it appears to have been the
reigning sentiment of the orthodox believers; and it seems so well adapted
to the desires and apprehensions of mankind, that it must have contributed
in a very considerable degree to the progress of the Christian faith. But
when the edifice of the church was almost completed, the temporary support
was laid aside. The doctrine of Christ's reign upon earth was at first
treated as a profound allegory, was considered by degrees as a doubtful
and useless opinion, and was at length rejected as the absurd invention of
heresy and fanaticism. A mysterious prophecy, which still forms a part of
the sacred canon, but which was thought to favor the exploded sentiment,
has very narrowly escaped the proscription of the church.
Whilst the happiness and glory of a temporal reign were promised to the
disciples of Christ, the most dreadful calamities were denounced against
an unbelieving world. The edification of a new Jerusalem was to advance by
equal steps with the destruction of the mystic Babylon; and as long as the
emperors who reigned before Constantine persisted in the profession of
idolatry, the epithet of babylon was applied to the city and to the empire
of Rome. A regular series was prepared of all the moral and physical evils
which can afflict a flourishing nation; intestine discord, and the
invasion of the fiercest barbarians from the unknown regions of the North;
pestilence and famine, comets and eclipses, earthquakes and inundations.
All these were only so many preparatory and alarming signs of the great
catastrophe of Rome, when the country of the Scipios and Cæsars
should be consumed by a flame from Heaven, and the city of the seven
hills, with her palaces, her temples, and her triumphal arches, should be
buried in a vast lake of fire and brimstone. It might, however, afford
some consolation to Roman vanity, that the period of their empire would be
that of the world itself; which, as it had once perished by the element of
water, was destined to experience a second and a speedy destruction from
the element of fire. In the opinion of a general conflagration, the faith
of the Christian very happily coincided with the tradition of the East,
the philosophy of the Stoics, and the analogy of Nature; and even the
country, which, from religious motives, had been chosen for the origin and
principal scene of the conflagration, was the best adapted for that
purpose by natural and physical causes; by its deep caverns, beds of
sulphur, and numero is volcanoes, of which those of Ætna, of
Vesuvius, and of Lipari, exhibit a very imperfect representation. The
calmest and most intrepid sceptic could not refuse to acknowledge that the
destruction of the present system of the world by fire, was in itself
extremely probable. The Christian, who founded his belief much less on the
fallacious arguments of reason than on the authority of tradition and the
interpretation of Scripture, expected it with terror and confidence as a
certain and approaching event; and as his mind was perpetually filled with
the solemn idea, he considered every disaster that happened to the empire
as an infallible symptom of an expiring world.
The condemnation of the wisest and most virtuous of the Pagans, on account
of their ignorance or disbelief of the divine truth, seems to offend the
reason and the humanity of the present age. But the primitive church,
whose faith was of a much firmer consistence, delivered over, without
hesitation, to eternal torture, the far greater part of the human species.
A charitable hope might perhaps be indulged in favor of Socrates, or some
other sages of antiquity, who had consulted the light of reason before
that of the gospel had arisen. But it was unanimously affirmed, that those
who, since the birth or the death of Christ, had obstinately persisted in
the worship of the dæmons, neither deserved nor could expect a
pardon from the irritated justice of the Deity. These rigid sentiments,
which had been unknown to the ancient world, appear to have infused a
spirit of bitterness into a system of love and harmony. The ties of blood
and friendship were frequently torn asunder by the difference of religious
faith; and the Christians, who, in this world, found themselves oppressed
by the power of the Pagans, were sometimes seduced by resentment and
spiritual pride to delight in the prospect of their future triumph. "You
are fond of spectacles," exclaims the stern Tertullian; "expect the
greatest of all spectacles, the last and eternal judgment of the universe.
How shall I admire, how laugh, how rejoice, how exult, when I behold so
many proud monarchs, so many fancied gods, groaning in the lowest abyss of
darkness; so many magistrates, who persecuted the name of the Lord,
liquefying in fiercer fires than they ever kindled against the Christians;
so many sage philosophers blushing in red-hot flames with their deluded
scholars; so many celebrated poets trembling before the tribunal, not of
Minos, but of Christ; so many tragedians, more tuneful in the expression
of their own sufferings; so many dancers." * But the humanity of the
reader will permit me to draw a veil over the rest of this infernal
description, which the zealous African pursues in a long variety of
affected and unfeeling witticisms.
Doubtless there were many among the primitive Christians of a temper more
suitable to the meekness and charity of their profession. There were many
who felt a sincere compassion for the danger of their friends and
countrymen, and who exerted the most benevolent zeal to save them from the
impending destruction. The careless Polytheist, assailed by new and
unexpected terrors, against which neither his priests nor his philosophers
could afford him any certain protection, was very frequently terrified and
subdued by the menace of eternal tortures. His fears might assist the
progress of his faith and reason; and if he could once persuade himself to
suspect that the Christian religion might possibly be true, it became an
easy task to convince him that it was the safest and most prudent party
that he could possibly embrace.
III. The supernatural gifts, which even in this life were ascribed to the
Christians above the rest of mankind, must have conduced to their own
comfort, and very frequently to the conviction of infidels. Besides the
occasional prodigies, which might sometimes be effected by the immediate
interposition of the Deity when he suspended the laws of Nature for the
service of religion, the Christian church, from the time of the apostles
and their first disciples, has claimed an uninterrupted succession of
miraculous powers, the gift of tongues, of vision, and of prophecy, the
power of expelling dæmons, of healing the sick, and of raising the
dead. The knowledge of foreign languages was frequently communicated to
the contemporaries of Irenæus, though Irenæus himself was left
to struggle with the difficulties of a barbarous dialect, whilst he
preached the gospel to the natives of Gaul. The divine inspiration,
whether it was conveyed in the form of a waking or of a sleeping vision,
is described as a favor very liberally bestowed on all ranks of the
faithful, on women as on elders, on boys as well as upon bishops. When
their devout minds were sufficiently prepared by a course of prayer, of
fasting, and of vigils, to receive the extraordinary impulse, they were
transported out of their senses, and delivered in ecstasy what was
inspired, being mere organs of the Holy Spirit, just as a pipe or flute is
of him who blows into it. We may add, that the design of these visions
was, for the most part, either to disclose the future history, or to guide
the present administration, of the church. The expulsion of the dæmons
from the bodies of those unhappy persons whom they had been permitted to
torment, was considered as a signal though ordinary triumph of religion,
and is repeatedly alleged by the ancient apoligists, as the most
convincing evidence of the truth of Christianity. The awful ceremony was
usually performed in a public manner, and in the presence of a great
number of spectators; the patient was relieved by the power or skill of
the exorcist, and the vanquished dæmon was heard to confess that he
was one of the fabled gods of antiquity, who had impiously usurped the
adoration of mankind. But the miraculous cure of diseases of the most
inveterate or even preternatural kind, can no longer occasion any
surprise, when we recollect, that in the days of Iranæus, about the
end of the second century, the resurrection of the dead was very far from
being esteemed an uncommon event; that the miracle was frequently
performed on necessary occasions, by great fasting and the joint
supplication of the church of the place, and that the persons thus
restored to their prayers had lived afterwards among them many years. At
such a period, when faith could boast of so many wonderful victories over
death, it seems difficult to account for the scepticism of those
philosophers, who still rejected and derided the doctrine of the
resurrection. A noble Grecian had rested on this important ground the
whole controversy, and promised Theophilus, Bishop of Antioch, that if he
could be gratified with the sight of a single person who had been actually
raised from the dead, he would immediately embrace the Christian religion.
It is somewhat remarkable, that the prelate of the first eastern church,
however anxious for the conversion of his friend, thought proper to
decline this fair and reasonable challenge.
The miracles of the primitive church, after obtaining the sanction of
ages, have been lately attacked in a very free and ingenious inquiry,
which, though it has met with the most favorable reception from the
public, appears to have excited a general scandal among the divines of our
own as well as of the other Protestant churches of Europe. Our different
sentiments on this subject will be much less influenced by any particular
arguments, than by our habits of study and reflection; and, above all, by
the degree of evidence which we have accustomed ourselves to require for
the proof of a miraculous event. The duty of an historian does not call
upon him to interpose his private judgment in this nice and important
controversy; but he ought not to dissemble the difficulty of adopting such
a theory as may reconcile the interest of religion with that of reason, of
making a proper application of that theory, and of defining with precision
the limits of that happy period, exempt from error and from deceit, to
which we might be disposed to extend the gift of supernatural powers. From
the first of the fathers to the last of the popes, a succession of
bishops, of saints, of martyrs, and of miracles, is continued without
interruption; and the progress of superstition was so gradual, and almost
imperceptible, that we know not in what particular link we should break
the chain of tradition. Every age bears testimony to the wonderful events
by which it was distinguished, and its testimony appears no less weighty
and respectable than that of the preceding generation, till we are
insensibly led on to accuse our own inconsistency, if in the eighth or in
the twelfth century we deny to the venerable Bede, or to the holy Bernard,
the same degree of confidence which, in the second century, we had so
liberally granted to Justin or to Irenæus. If the truth of any of
those miracles is appreciated by their apparent use and propriety, every
age had unbelievers to convince, heretics to confute, and idolatrous
nations to convert; and sufficient motives might always be produced to
justify the interposition of Heaven. And yet, since every friend to
revelation is persuaded of the reality, and every reasonable man is
convinced of the cessation, of miraculous powers, it is evident that there
must have been some period in which they were
either suddenly or gradually withdrawn from the Christian church. Whatever
æra is chosen for that purpose, the death of the apostles, the
conversion of the Roman empire, or the extinction of the Arian heresy, the
insensibility of the Christians who lived at that time will equally afford
a just matter of surprise. They still supported their pretensions after
they had lost their power. Credulity performed the office of faith;
fanaticism was permitted to assume the language of inspiration, and the
effects of accident or contrivance were ascribed to supernatural causes.
The recent experience of genuine miracles should have instructed the
Christian world in the ways of Providence, and habituated their eye (if we
may use a very inadequate expression) to the style of the divine artist.
Should the most skilful painter of modern Italy presume to decorate his
feeble imitations with the name of Raphael or of Correggio, the insolent
fraud would be soon discovered, and indignantly rejected.
Whatever opinion may be entertained of the miracles of the primitive
church since the time of the apostles, this unresisting softness of
temper, so conspicuous among the believers of the second and third
centuries, proved of some accidental benefit to the cause of truth and
religion. In modern times, a latent and even involuntary scepticism
adheres to the most pious dispositions. Their admission of supernatural
truths is much less an active consent than a cold and passive
acquiescence. Accustomed long since to observe and to respect the variable
order of Nature, our reason, or at least our imagination, is not
sufficiently prepared to sustain the visible action of the Deity. But, in
the first ages of Christianity, the situation of mankind was extremely
different. The most curious, or the most credulous, among the Pagans, were
often persuaded to enter into a society which asserted an actual claim of
miraculous powers. The primitive Christians perpetually trod on mystic
ground, and their minds were exercised by the habits of believing the most
extraordinary events. They felt, or they fancied, that on every side they
were incessantly assaulted by dæmons, comforted by visions,
instructed by prophecy, and surprisingly delivered from danger, sickness,
and from death itself, by the supplications of the church. The real or
imaginary prodigies, of which they so frequently conceived themselves to
be the objects, the instruments, or the spectators, very happily disposed
them to adopt with the same ease, but with far greater justice, the
authentic wonders of the evangelic history; and thus miracles that
exceeded not the measure of their own experience, inspired them with the
most lively assurance of mysteries which were acknowledged to surpass the
limits of their understanding. It is this deep impression of supernatural
truths, which has been so much celebrated under the name of faith; a state
of mind described as the surest pledge of the divine favor and of future
felicity, and recommended as the first, or perhaps the only merit of a
Christian. According to the more rigid doctors, the moral virtues, which
may be equally practised by infidels, are destitute of any value or
efficacy in the work of our justification.
IV. But the primitive Christian demonstrated his faith by his virtues; and
it was very justly supposed that the divine persuasion, which enlightened
or subdued the understanding, must, at the same time, purify the heart,
and direct the actions, of the believer. The first apologists of
Christianity who justify the innocence of their brethren, and the writers
of a later period who celebrate the sanctity of their ancestors, display,
in the most lively colors, the reformation of manners which was introduced
into the world by the preaching of the gospel. As it is my intention to
remark only such human causes as were permitted to second the influence of
revelation, I shall slightly mention two motives which might naturally
render the lives of the primitive Christians much purer and more austere
than those of their Pagan contemporaries, or their degenerate successors;
repentance for their past sins, and the laudable desire of supporting the
reputation of the society in which they were engaged. *
It is a very ancient reproach, suggested by the ignorance or the malice of
infidelity, that the Christians allured into their party the most
atrocious criminals, who, as soon as they were touched by a sense of
remorse, were easily persuaded to wash away, in the water of baptism, the
guilt of their past conduct, for which the temples of the gods refused to
grant them any expiation. But this reproach, when it is cleared from
misrepresentation, contributes as much to the honor as it did to the
increase of the church. The friends of Christianity may acknowledge
without a blush, that many of the most eminent saints had been before
their baptism the most abandoned sinners. Those persons, who in the world
had followed, though in an imperfect manner, the dictates of benevolence
and propriety, derived such a calm satisfaction from the opinion of their
own rectitude, as rendered them much less susceptible of the sudden
emotions of shame, of grief, and of terror, which have given birth to so
many wonderful conversions. After the example of their divine Master, the
missionaries of the gospel disdained not the society of men, and
especially of women, oppressed by the consciousness, and very often by the
effects, of their vices. As they emerged from sin and superstition to the
glorious hope of immortality, they resolved to devote themselves to a
life, not only of virtue, but of penitence. The desire of perfection
became the ruling passion of their soul; and it is well known, that while
reason embraces a cold mediocrity, our passions hurry us, with rapid
violence, over the space which lies between the most opposite extremes.
When the new converts had been enrolled in the number of the faithful, and
were admitted to the sacraments of the church, they found themselves
restrained from relapsing into their past disorders by another
consideration of a less spiritual, but of a very innocent and respectable
nature. Any particular society that has departed from the great body of
the nation, or the religion to which it belonged, immediately becomes the
object of universal as well as invidious observation. In proportion to the
smallness of its numbers, the character of the society may be affected by
the virtues and vices of the persons who compose it; and every member is
engaged to watch with the most vigilant attention over his own behavior,
and over that of his brethren, since, as he must expect to incur a part of
the common disgrace, he may hope to enjoy a share of the common
reputation. When the Christians of Bithynia were brought before the
tribunal of the younger Pliny, they assured the proconsul, that, far from
being engaged in any unlawful conspiracy, they were bound by a solemn
obligation to abstain from the commission of those crimes which disturb
the private or public peace of society, from theft, robbery, adultery,
perjury, and fraud. Near a century afterwards, Tertullian with an honest
pride, could boast, that very few Christians had suffered by the hand of
the executioner, except on account of their religion. Their serious and
sequestered life, averse to the gay luxury of the age, inured them to
chastity, temperance, economy, and all the sober and domestic virtues. As
the greater number were of some trade or profession, it was incumbent on
them, by the strictest integrity and the fairest dealing, to remove the
suspicions which the profane are too apt to conceive against the
appearances of sanctity. The contempt of the world exercised them in the
habits of humility, meekness, and patience. The more they were persecuted,
the more closely they adhered to each other. Their mutual charity and
unsuspecting confidence has been remarked by infidels, and was too often
abused by perfidious friends.
It is a very honorable circumstance for the morals of the primitive
Christians, that even their faults, or rather errors, were derived from an
excess of virtue. The bishops and doctors of the church, whose evidence
attests, and whose authority might influence, the professions, the
principles, and even the practice of their contemporaries, had studied the
Scriptures with less skill than devotion; and they often received, in the
most literal sense, those rigid precepts of Christ and the apostles, to
which the prudence of succeeding commentators has applied a looser and
more figurative mode of interpretation. Ambitious to exalt the perfection
of the gospel above the wisdom of philosophy, the zealous fathers have
carried the duties of self-mortification, of purity, and of patience, to a
height which it is scarcely possible to attain, and much less to preserve,
in our present state of weakness and corruption. A doctrine so
extraordinary and so sublime must inevitably command the veneration of the
people; but it was ill calculated to obtain the suffrage of those worldly
philosophers, who, in the conduct of this transitory life, consult only
the feelings of nature and the interest of society.
There are two very natural propensities which we may distinguish in the
most virtuous and liberal dispositions, the love of pleasure and the love
of action. If the former is refined by art and learning, improved by the
charms of social intercourse, and corrected by a just regard to economy,
to health, and to reputation, it is productive of the greatest part of the
happiness of private life. The love of action is a principle of a much
stronger and more doubtful nature. It often leads to anger, to ambition,
and to revenge; but when it is guided by the sense of propriety and
benevolence, it becomes the parent of every virtue, and if those virtues
are accompanied with equal abilities, a family, a state, or an empire, may
be indebted for their safety and prosperity to the undaunted courage of a
single man. To the love of pleasure we may therefore ascribe most of the
agreeable, to the love of action we may attribute most of the useful and
respectable, qualifications. The character in which both the one and the
other should be united and harmonized, would seem to constitute the most
perfect idea of human nature. The insensible and inactive disposition,
which should be supposed alike destitute of both, would be rejected, by
the common consent of mankind, as utterly incapable of procuring any
happiness to the individual, or any public benefit to the world. But it
was not in this world, that the primitive Christians were desirous of
making themselves either agreeable or useful. *
The acquisition of knowledge, the exercise of our reason or fancy, and the
cheerful flow of unguarded conversation, may employ the leisure of a
liberal mind. Such amusements, however, were rejected with abhorrence, or
admitted with the utmost caution, by the severity of the fathers, who
despised all knowledge that was not useful to salvation, and who
considered all levity of discours eas a criminal abuse of the gift of
speech. In our present state of existence the body is so inseparably
connected with the soul, that it seems to be our interest to taste, with
innocence and moderation, the enjoyments of which that faithful companion
is susceptible. Very different was the reasoning of our devout
predecessors; vainly aspiring to imitate the perfection of angels, they
disdained, or they affected to disdain, every earthly and corporeal
delight. Some of our senses indeed are necessary for our preservation,
others for our subsistence, and others again for our information; and thus
far it was impossible to reject the use of them. The first sensation of
pleasure was marked as the first moment of their abuse. The unfeeling
candidate for heaven was instructed, not only to resist the grosser
allurements of the taste or smell, but even to shut his ears against the
profane harmony of sounds, and to view with indifference the most finished
productions of human art. Gay apparel, magnificent houses, and elegant
furniture, were supposed to unite the double guilt of pride and of
sensuality; a simple and mortified appearance was more suitable to the
Christian who was certain of his sins and doubtful of his salvation. In
their censures of luxury, the fathers are extremely minute and
circumstantial; and among the various articles which excite their pious
indignation, we may enumerate false hair, garments of any color except
white, instruments of music, vases of gold or silver, downy pillows, (as
Jacob reposed his head on a stone,) white bread, foreign wines, public
salutations, the use of warm baths, and the practice of shaving the beard,
which, according to the expression of Tertullian, is a lie against our own
faces, and an impious attempt to improve the works of the Creator. When
Christianity was introduced among the rich and the polite, the observation
of these singular laws was left, as it would be at present, to the few who
were ambitious of superior sanctity. But it is always easy, as well as
agreeable, for the inferior ranks of mankind to claim a merit from the
contempt of that pomp and pleasure which fortune has placed beyond their
reach. The virtue of the primitive Christians, like that of the first
Romans, was very frequently guarded by poverty and ignorance.
The chaste severity of the fathers, in whatever related to the commerce of
the two sexes, flowed from the same principle; their abhorrence of every
enjoyment which might gratify the sensual, and degrade the spiritual,
nature of man. It was their favorite opinion, that if Adam had preserved
his obedience to the Creator, he would have lived forever in a state of
virgin purity, and that some harmless mode of vegetation might have
peopled paradise with a race of innocent and immortal beings. The use of
marriage was permitted only to his fallen posterity, as a necessary
expedient to continue the human species, and as a restraint, however
imperfect, on the natural licentiousness of desire. The hesitation of the
orthodox casuists on this interesting subject, betrays the perplexity of
men, unwilling to approve an institution which they were compelled to
tolerate. The enumeration of the very whimsical laws, which they most
circumstantially imposed on the marriage-bed, would force a smile from the
young and a blush from the fair. It was their unanimous sentiment, that a
first marriage was adequate to all the purposes of nature and of society.
The sensual connection was refined into a resemblance of the mystic union
of Christ with his church, and was pronounced to be indissoluble either by
divorce or by death. The practice of second nuptials was branded with the
name of a egal adultery; and the persons who were guilty of so scandalous
an offence against Christian purity, were soon excluded from the honors,
and even from the alms, of the church. Since desire was imputed as a
crime, and marriage was tolerated as a defect, it was consistent with the
same principles to consider a state of celibacy as the nearest approach to
the divine perfection. It was with the utmost difficulty that ancient Rome
could support the institution of six vestals; but the primitive church was
filled with a great number of persons of either sex, who had devoted
themselves to the profession of perpetual chastity. A few of these, among
whom we may reckon the learned Origen, judged it the most prudent to
disarm the tempter. Some were insensible and some were invincible against
the assaults of the flesh. Disdaining an ignominious flight, the virgins
of the warm climate of Africa encountered the enemy in the closest
engagement; they permitted priests and deacons to share their bed, and
gloried amidst the flames in their unsullied purity. But insulted Nature
sometimes vindicated her rights, and this new species of martyrdom served
only to introduce a new scandal into the church. Among the Christian
ascetics, however, (a name which they soon acquired from their painful
exercise,) many, as they were less presumptuous, were probably more
successful. The loss of sensual pleasure was supplied and compensated by
spiritual pride. Even the multitude of Pagans were inclined to estimate
the merit of the sacrifice by its apparent difficulty; and it was in the
praise of these chaste spouses of Christ that the fathers have poured
forth the troubled stream of their eloquence. Such are the early traces of
monastic principles and institutions, which, in a subsequent age, have
counterbalanced all the temporal advantages of Christianity.
The Christians were not less averse to the business than to the pleasures
of this world. The defence of our persons and property they knew not how
to reconcile with the patient doctrine which enjoined an unlimited
forgiveness of past injuries, and commanded them to invite the repetition
of fresh insults. Their simplicity was offended by the use of oaths, by
the pomp of magistracy, and by the active contention of public life; nor
could their humane ignorance be convinced that it was lawful on any
occasion to shed the blood of our fellow-creatures, either by the sword of
justice, or by that of war; even though their criminal or hostile attempts
should threaten the peace and safety of the whole community. It was
acknowledged, that, under a less perfect law, the powers of the Jewish
constitution had been exercised, with the approbation of Heaven, by
inspired prophets and by anointed kings. The Christians felt and confessed
that such institutions might be necessary for the present system of the
world, and they cheerfully submitted to the authority of their Pagan
governors. But while they inculcated the maxims of passive obedience, they
refused to take any active part in the civil administration or the
military defence of the empire. Some indulgence might, perhaps, be allowed
to those persons who, before their conversion, were already engaged in
such violent and sanguinary occupations; but it was impossible that the
Christians, without renouncing a more sacred duty, could assume the
character of soldiers, of magistrates, or of princes. This indolent, or
even criminal disregard to the public welfare, exposed them to the
contempt and reproaches of the Pagans who very frequently asked, what must
be the fate of the empire, attacked on every side by the barbarians, if
all mankind should adopt the pusillanimous sentiments of the new sect. To
this insulting question the Christian apologists returned obscure and
ambiguous answers, as they were unwilling to reveal the secret cause of
their security; the expectation that, before the conversion of mankind was
accomplished, war, government, the Roman empire, and the world itself,
would be no more. It may be observed, that, in this instance likewise, the
situation of the first Christians coincided very happily with their
religious scruples, and that their aversion to an active life contributed
rather to excuse them from the service, than to exclude them from the
honors, of the state and army.
V. But the human character, however it may be exalted or depressed by a
temporary enthusiasm, will return by degrees to its proper and natural
level, and will resume those passions that seem the most adapted to its
present condition. The primitive Christians were dead to the business and
pleasures of the world; but their love of action, which could never be
entirely extinguished, soon revived, and found a new occupation in the
government of the church. A separate society, which attacked the
established religion of the empire, was obliged to adopt some form of
internal policy, and to appoint a sufficient number of ministers,
intrusted not only with the spiritual functions, but even with the
temporal direction of the Christian commonwealth. The safety of that
society, its honor, its aggrandizement, were productive, even in the most
pious minds, of a spirit of patriotism, such as the first of the Romans
had felt for the republic, and sometimes of a similar indifference, in the
use of whatever means might probably conduce to so desirable an end. The
ambition of raising themselves or their friends to the honors and offices
of the church, was disguised by the laudable intention of devoting to the
public benefit the power and consideration, which, for that purpose only,
it became their duty to solicit. In the exercise of their functions, they
were frequently called upon to detect the errors of heresy or the arts of
faction, to oppose the designs of perfidious brethren, to stigmatize their
characters with deserved infamy, and to expel them from the bosom of a
society whose peace and happiness they had attempted to disturb. The
ecclesiastical governors of the Christians were taught to unite the wisdom
of the serpent with the innocence of the dove; but as the former was
refined, so the latter was insensibly corrupted, by the habits of
government. If the church as well as in the world, the persons who were
placed in any public station rendered themselves considerable by their
eloquence and firmness, by their knowledge of mankind, and by their
dexterity in business; and while they concealed from others, and perhaps
from themselves, the secret motives of their conduct, they too frequently
relapsed into all the turbulent passions of active life, which were
tinctured with an additional degree of bitterness and obstinacy from the
infusion of spiritual zeal.
The government of the church has often been the subject, as well as the
prize, of religious contention. The hostile disputants of Rome, of Paris,
of Oxford, and of Geneva, have alike struggled to reduce the primitive and
apostolic model to the respective standards of their own policy. The few
who have pursued this inquiry with more candor and impartiality, are of
opinion, that the apostles declined the office of legislation, and rather
chose to endure some partial scandals and divisions, than to exclude the
Christians of a future age from the liberty of varying their forms of
ecclesiastical government according to the changes of times and
circumstances. The scheme of policy, which, under their approbation, was
adopted for the use of the first century, may be discovered from the
practice of Jerusalem, of Ephesus, or of Corinth. The societies which were
instituted in the cities of the Roman empire, were united only by the ties
of faith and charity. Independence and equality formed the basis of their
internal constitution. The want of discipline and human learning was
supplied by the occasional assistance of the prophets,
who were called to that function without distinction of age, of sex, * or
of natural abilities, and who, as often as they felt the divine impulse,
poured forth the effusions of the Spirit in the assembly of the faithful.
But these extraordinary gifts were frequently abused or misapplied by the
prophetic teachers. They displayed them at an improper season,
presumptuously disturbed the service of the assembly, and, by their pride
or mistaken zeal, they introduced, particularly into the apostolic church
of Corinth, a long and melancholy train of disorders. As the institution
of prophets became useless, and even pernicious, their powers were
withdrawn, and their office abolished. The public functions of religion
were solely intrusted to the established ministers of the church, the
bishops and the presbyters;
two appellations which, in their first origin, appear to have
distinguished the same office and the same order of persons. The name of
Presbyter was expressive of their age, or rather of their gravity and
wisdom. The title of Bishop denoted their inspection over the faith and
manners of the Christians who were committed to their pastoral care. In
proportion to the respective numbers of the faithful, a larger or smaller
number of these episcopal presbyters
guided each infant congregation with equal authority and with united
counsels.
But the most perfect equality of freedom requires the directing hand of a
superior magistrate: and the order of public deliberations soon introduces
the office of a president, invested at least with the authority of
collecting the sentiments, and of executing the resolutions, of the
assembly. A regard for the public tranquillity, which would so frequently
have been interrupted by annual or by occasional elections, induced the
primitive Christians to constitute an honorable and perpetual magistracy,
and to choose one of the wisest and most holy among their presbyterians to
execute, during his life, the duties of their ecclesiastical governor. It
was under these circumstances that the lofty title of Bishop began to
raise itself above the humble appellation of Presbyter; and while the
latter remained the most natural distinction for the members of every
Christian senate, the former was appropriated to the dignity of its new
president. The advantages of this episcopal form of government, which
appears to have been introduced before the end of the first century, were
so obvious, and so important for the future greatness, as well as the
present peace, of Christianity, that it was adopted without delay by all
the societies which were already scattered over the empire, had acquired
in a very early period the sanction of antiquity, and is still revered by
the most powerful churches, both of the East and of the West, as a
primitive and even as a divine establishment. It is needless to observe,
that the pious and humble presbyters, who were first dignified with the
episcopal title, could not possess, and would probably have rejected, the
power and pomp which now encircles the tiara of the Roman pontiff, or the
mitre of a German prelate. But we may define, in a few words, the narrow
limits of their original jurisdiction, which was chiefly of a spiritual,
though in some instances of a temporal nature. It consisted in the
administration of the sacraments and discipline of the church, the
superintendency of religious ceremonies, which imperceptibly increased in
number and variety, the consecration of ecclesiastical ministers, to whom
the bishop assigned their respective functions, the management of the
public fund, and the determination of all such differences as the faithful
were unwilling to expose before the tribunal of an idolatrous judge. These
powers, during a short period, were exercised according to the advice of
the presbyteral college, and with the consent and approbation of the
assembly of Christians. The primitive bishops were considered only as the
first of their equals, and the honorable servants of a free people.
Whenever the episcopal chair became vacant by death, a new president was
chosen among the presbyters by the suffrages of the whole congregation,
every member of which supposed himself invested with a sacred and
sacerdotal character.
Such was the mild and equal constitution by which the Christians were
governed more than a hundred years after the death of the apostles. Every
society formed within itself a separate and independent republic; and
although the most distant of these little states maintained a mutual as
well as friendly intercourse of letters and deputations, the Christian
world was not yet connected by any supreme authority or legislative
assembly. As the numbers of the faithful were gradually multiplied, they
discovered the advantages that might result from a closer union of their
interest and designs. Towards the end of the second century, the churches
of Greece and Asia adopted the useful institutions of provincial synods, *
and they may justly be supposed to have borrowed the model of a
representative council from the celebrated examples of their own country,
the Amphictyons, the Achæan league, or the assemblies of the Ionian
cities. It was soon established as a custom and as a law, that the bishops
of the independent churches should meet in the capital of the province at
the stated periods of spring and autumn. Their deliberations were assisted
by the advice of a few distinguished presbyters, and moderated by the
presence of a listening multitude. Their decrees, which were styled
Canons, regulated every important controversy of faith and discipline; and
it was natural to believe that a liberal effusion of the Holy Spirit would
be poured on the united assembly of the delegates of the Christian people.
The institution of synods was so well suited to private ambition, and to
public interest, that in the space of a few years it was received
throughout the whole empire. A regular correspondence was established
between the provincial councils, which mutually communicated and approved
their respective proceedings; and the catholic church soon assumed the
form, and acquired the strength, of a great foederative republic.
As the legislative authority of the particular churches was insensibly
superseded by the use of councils, the bishops obtained by their alliance
a much larger share of executive and arbitrary power; and as soon as they
were connected by a sense of their common interest, they were enabled to
attack with united vigor, the original rights of their clergy and people.
The prelates of the third century imperceptibly changed the language of
exhortation into that of command, scattered the seeds of future
usurpations, and supplied, by scripture allegories and declamatory
rhetoric, their deficiency of force and of reason. They exalted the unity
and power of the church, as it was represented in the Episcopal Office, of
which every bishop enjoyed an equal and undivided portion. Princes and
magistrates, it was often repeated, might boast an earthly claim to a
transitory dominion; it was the episcopal authority alone which was
derived from the Deity, and extended itself over this and over another
world. The bishops were the vicegerents of Christ, the successors of the
apostles, and the mystic substitutes of the high priest of the Mosaic law.
Their exclusive privilege of conferring the sacerdotal character, invaded
the freedom both of clerical and of popular elections; and if, in the
administration of the church, they still consulted the judgment of the
presbyters, or the inclination of the people, they most carefully
inculcated the merit of such a voluntary condescension. The bishops
acknowledged the supreme authority which resided in the assembly of their
brethren; but in the government of his peculiar diocese, each of them
exacted from his flock the same implicit obedience as if that favorite
metaphor had been literally just, and as if the shepherd had been of a
more exalted nature than that of his sheep. This obedience, however, was
not imposed without some efforts on one side, and some resistance on the
other. The democratical part of the constitution was, in many places, very
warmly supported by the zealous or interested opposition of the inferior
clergy. But their patriotism received the ignominious epithets of faction
and schism; and the episcopal cause was indebted for its rapid progress to
the labors of many active prelates, who, like Cyprian of Carthage, could
reconcile the arts of the most ambitious statesman with the Christian
virtues which seem adapted to the character of a saint and martyr.
The same causes which at first had destroyed the equality of the
presbyters introduced among the bishops a preeminence of rank, and from
thence a superiority of jurisdiction. As often as in the spring and autumn
they met in provincial synod, the difference of personal merit and
reputation was very sensibly felt among the members of the assembly, and
the multitude was governed by the wisdom and eloquence of the few. But the
order of public proceedings required a more regular and less invidious
distinction; the office of perpetual presidents in the councils of each
province was conferred on the bishops of the principal city; and these
aspiring prelates, who soon acquired the lofty titles of Metropolitans and
Primates, secretly prepared themselves to usurp over their episcopal
brethren the same authority which the bishops had so lately assumed above
the college of presbyters. Nor was it long before an emulation of
preeminence and power prevailed among the Metropolitans themselves, each
of them affecting to display, in the most pompous terms, the temporal
honors and advantages of the city over which he presided; the numbers and
opulence of the Christians who were subject to their pastoral care; the
saints and martyrs who had arisen among them; and the purity with which
they preserved the tradition of the faith, as it had been transmitted
through a series of orthodox bishops from the apostle or the apostolic
disciple, to whom the foundation of their church was ascribed. From every
cause, either of a civil or of an ecclesiastical nature, it was easy to
foresee that Rome must enjoy the respect, and would soon claim the
obedience of the provinces. The society of the faithful bore a just
proportion to the capital of the empire; and the Roman church was the
greatest, the most numerous, and, in regard to the West, the most ancient
of all the Christian establishments, many of which had received their
religion from the pious labors of her missionaries. Instead of oneapostolic
founder, the utmost boast of Antioch, of Ephesus, or of Corinth, the banks
of the Tyber were supposed to have been honored with the preaching and
martyrdom of the two most eminent among the
apostles; and the bishops of Rome very prudently claimed the inheritance
of whatsoever prerogatives were attributed either to the person or to the
office of St. Peter. The bishops of Italy and of the provinces were
disposed to allow them a primacy of order and association (such was their
very accurate expression) in the Christian aristocracy. But the power of a
monarch was rejected with abhorrence, and the aspiring genius of Rome
experienced from the nations of Asia and Africa a more vigorous resistance
to her spiritual, than she had formerly done to her temporal, dominion.
The patriotic Cyprian, who ruled with the most absolute sway the church of
Carthage and the provincial synods, opposed with resolution and success
the ambition of the Roman pontiff, artfully connected his own cause with
that of the eastern bishops, and, like Hannibal, sought out new allies in
the heart of Asia. If this Punic war was carried on without any effusion
of blood, it was owing much less to the moderation than to the weakness of
the contending prelates. Invectives and excommunications were their
only weapons; and these, during the progress of the whole controversy,
they hurled against each other with equal fury and devotion. The hard
necessity of censuring either a pope, or a saint and martyr, distresses
the modern Catholics whenever they are obliged to relate the particulars
of a dispute in which the champions of religion indulged such passions as
seem much more adapted to the senate or to the camp.
The progress of the ecclesiastical authority gave birth to the memorable
distinction of the laity and of the clergy, which had been unknown to the
Greeks and Romans. The former of these appellations comprehended the body
of the Christian people; the latter, according to the signification of the
word, was appropriated to the chosen portion that had been set apart for
the service of religion; a celebrated order of men, which has furnished
the most important, though not always the most edifying, subjects for
modern history. Their mutual hostilities sometimes disturbed the peace of
the infant church, but their zeal and activity were united in the common
cause, and the love of power, which (under the most artful disguises)
could insinuate itself into the breasts of bishops and martyrs, animated
them to increase the number of their subjects, and to enlarge the limits
of the Christian empire. They were destitute of any temporal force, and
they were for a long time discouraged and oppressed, rather than assisted,
by the civil magistrate; but they had acquired, and they employed within
their own society, the two most efficacious instruments of government,
rewards and punishments; the former derived from the pious liberality, the
latter from the devout apprehensions, of the faithful.
I. The community of goods, which had so agreeably amused the imagination
of Plato, and which subsisted in some degree among the austere sect of the
Essenians, was adopted for a short time in the primitive church. The
fervor of the first proselytes prompted them to sell those worldly
possessions, which they despised, to lay the price of them at the feet of
the apostles, and to content themselves with receiving an equal share out
of the general distribution. The progress of the Christian religion
relaxed, and gradually abolished, this generous institution, which, in
hands less pure than those of the apostles, would too soon have been
corrupted and abused by the returning selfishness of human nature; and the
converts who embraced the new religion were permitted to retain the
possession of their patrimony, to receive legacies and inheritances, and
to increase their separate property by all the lawful means of trade and
industry. Instead of an absolute sacrifice, a moderate proportion was
accepted by the ministers of the gospel; and in their weekly or monthly
assemblies, every believer, according to the exigency of the occasion, and
the measure of his wealth and piety, presented his voluntary offering for
the use of the common fund. Nothing, however inconsiderable, was refused;
but it was diligently inculcated; that, in the article of Tithes, the
Mosaic law was still of divine obligation; and that since the Jews, under
a less perfect discipline, had been commanded to pay a tenth part of all
that they possessed, it would become the disciples of Christ to
distinguish themselves by a superior degree of liberality, and to acquire
some merit by resigning a superfluous treasure, which must so soon be
annihilated with the world itself. It is almost unnecessary to observe,
that the revenue of each particular church, which was of so uncertain and
fluctuating a nature, must have varied with the poverty or the opulence of
the faithful, as they were dispersed in obscure villages, or collected in
the great cities of the empire. In the time of the emperor Decius, it was
the opinion of the magistrates, that the Christians of Rome were possessed
of very considerable wealth; that vessels of gold and silver were used in
their religious worship, and that many among their proselytes had sold
their lands and houses to increase the public riches of the sect, at the
expense, indeed, of their unfortunate children, who found themselves
beggars, because their parents had been saints. We should listen with
distrust to the suspicions of strangers and enemies: on this occasion,
however, they receive a very specious and probable color from the two
following circumstances, the only ones that have reached our knowledge,
which define any precise sums, or convey any distinct idea. Almost at the
same period, the bishop of Carthage, from a society less opulent than that
of Rome, collected a hundred thousand sesterces, (above eight hundred and
fifty pounds sterling,) on a sudden call of charity to redeem the brethren
of Numidia, who had been carried away captives by the barbarians of the
desert. About a hundred years before the reign of Decius, the Roman church
had received, in a single donation, the sum of two hundred thousand
sesterces from a stranger of Pontus, who proposed to fix his residence in
the capital. These oblations, for the most part, were made in money; nor
was the society of Christians either desirous or capable of acquiring, to
any considerable degree, the encumbrance of landed property. It had been
provided by several laws, which were enacted with the same design as our
statutes of mortmain, that no real estates should be given or bequeathed
to any corporate body, without either a special privilege or a particular
dispensation from the emperor or from the senate; who were seldom disposed
to grant them in favor of a sect, at first the object of their contempt,
and at last of their fears and jealousy. A transaction, however, is
related under the reign of Alexander Severus, which discovers that the
restraint was sometimes eluded or suspended, and that the Christians were
permitted to claim and to possess lands within the limits of Rome itself.
The progress of Christianity, and the civil confusion of the empire,
contributed to relax the severity of the laws; and before the close of the
third century many considerable estates were bestowed on the opulent
churches of Rome, Milan, Carthage, Antioch, Alexandria, and the other
great cities of Italy and the provinces.
The bishop was the natural steward of the church; the public stock was
intrusted to his care without account or control; the presbyters were
confined to their spiritual functions, and the more dependent order of the
deacons was solely employed in the management and distribution of the
ecclesiastical revenue. If we may give credit to the vehement declamations
of Cyprian, there were too many among his African brethren, who, in the
execution of their charge, violated every precept, not only of evangelical
perfection, but even of moral virtue. By some of these unfaithful stewards
the riches of the church were lavished in sensual pleasures; by others
they were perverted to the purposes of private gain, of fraudulent
purchases, and of rapacious usury. But as long as the contributions of the
Christian people were free and unconstrained, the abuse of their
confidence could not be very frequent, and the general uses to which their
liberality was applied reflected honor on the religious society. A decent
portion was reserved for the maintenance of the bishop and his clergy; a
sufficient sum was allotted for the expenses of the public worship, of
which the feasts of love, the agap, as they were
called, constituted a very pleasing part. The whole remainder was the
sacred patrimony of the poor. According to the discretion of the bishop,
it was distributed to support widows and orphans, the lame, the sick, and
the aged of the community; to comfort strangers and pilgrims, and to
alleviate the misfortunes of prisoners and captives, more especially when
their sufferings had been occasioned by their firm attachment to the cause
of religion. A generous intercourse of charity united the most distant
provinces, and the smaller congregations were cheerfully assisted by the
alms of their more opulent brethren. Such an institution, which paid less
regard to the merit than to the distress of the object, very materially
conduced to the progress of Christianity. The Pagans, who were actuated by
a sense of humanity, while they derided the doctrines, acknowledged the
benevolence, of the new sect. The prospect of immediate relief and of
future protection allured into its hospitable bosom many of those unhappy
persons whom the neglect of the world would have abandoned to the miseries
of want, of sickness, and of old age. There is some reason likewise to
believe that great numbers of infants, who, according to the inhuman
practice of the times, had been exposed by their parents, were frequently
rescued from death, baptized, educated, and maintained by the piety of the
Christians, and at the expense of the public treasure.
II. It is the undoubted right of every society to exclude from its
communion and benefits such among its members as reject or violate those
regulations which have been established by general consent. In the
exercise of this power, the censures of the Christian church were chiefly
directed against scandalous sinners, and particularly those who were
guilty of murder, of fraud, or of incontinence; against the authors or the
followers of any heretical opinions which had been condemned by the
judgment of the episcopal order; and against those unhappy persons, who,
whether from choice or compulsion, had polluted themselves after their
baptism by any act of idolatrous worship. The consequences of
excommunication were of a temporal as well as a spiritual nature. The
Christian against whom it was pronounced, was deprived of any part in the
oblations of the faithful. The ties both of religious and of private
friendship were dissolved: he found himself a profane object of abhorrence
to the persons whom he the most esteemed, or by whom he had been the most
tenderly beloved; and as far as an expulsion from a respectable society
could imprint on his character a mark of disgrace, he was shunned or
suspected by the generality of mankind. The situation of these unfortunate
exiles was in itself very painful and melancholy; but, as it usually
happens, their apprehensions far exceeded their sufferings. The benefits
of the Christian communion were those of eternal life; nor could they
erase from their minds the awful opinion, that to those ecclesiastical
governors by whom they were condemned, the Deity had committed the keys of
Hell and of Paradise. The heretics, indeed, who might be supported by the
consciousness of their intentions, and by the flattering hope that they
alone had discovered the true path of salvation, endeavored to regain, in
their separate assemblies, those comforts, temporal as well as spiritual,
which they no longer derived from the great society of Christians. But
almost all those who had reluctantly yielded to the power of vice or
idolatry were sensible of their fallen condition, and anxiously desirous
of being restored to the benefits of the Christian communion.
With regard to the treatment of these penitents, two opposite opinions,
the one of justice, the other of mercy, divided the primitive church. The
more rigid and inflexible casuists refused them forever, and without
exception, the meanest place in the holy community, which they had
disgraced or deserted; and leaving them to the remorse of a guilty
conscience, indulged them only with a faint ray of hope that the
contrition of their life and death might possibly be accepted by the
Supreme Being. A milder sentiment was embraced in practice as well as in
theory, by the purest and most respectable of the Christian churches. The
gates of reconciliation and of heaven were seldom shut against the
returning penitent; but a severe and solemn form of discipline was
instituted, which, while it served to expiate his crime, might powerfully
deter the spectators from the imitation of his example. Humbled by a
public confession, emaciated by fasting and clothed in sackcloth, the
penitent lay prostrate at the door of the assembly, imploring with tears
the pardon of his offences, and soliciting the prayers of the faithful. If
the fault was of a very heinous nature, whole years of penance were
esteemed an inadequate satisfaction to the divine justice; and it was
always by slow and painful gradations that the sinner, the heretic, or the
apostate, was readmitted into the bosom of the church. A sentence of
perpetual excommunication was, however, reserved for some crimes of an
extraordinary magnitude, and particularly for the inexcusable relapses of
those penitents who had already experienced and abused the clemency of
their ecclesiastical superiors. According to the circumstances or the
number of the guilty, the exercise of the Christian discipline was varied
by the discretion of the bishops. The councils of Ancyra and Illiberis
were held about the same time, the one in Galatia, the other in Spain; but
their respective canons, which are still extant, seem to breathe a very
different spirit. The Galatian, who after his baptism had repeatedly
sacrificed to idols, might obtain his pardon by a penance of seven years;
and if he had seduced others to imitate his example, only three years more
were added to the term of his exile. But the unhappy Spaniard, who had
committed the same offence, was deprived of the hope of reconciliation,
even in the article of death; and his idolatry was placed at the head of a
list of seventeen other crimes, against which a sentence no less terrible
was pronounced. Among these we may distinguish the inexpiable guilt of
calumniating a bishop, a presbyter, or even a deacon.
The well-tempered mixture of liberality and rigor, the judicious
dispensation of rewards and punishments, according to the maxims of policy
as well as justice, constituted the human
strength of the church. The Bishops, whose paternal care extended itself
to the government of both worlds, were sensible of the importance of these
prerogatives; and covering their ambition with the fair pretence of the
love of order, they were jealous of any rival in the exercise of a
discipline so necessary to prevent the desertion of those troops which had
enlisted themselves under the banner of the cross, and whose numbers every
day became more considerable. From the imperious declamations of Cyprian,
we should naturally conclude that the doctrines of excommunication and
penance formed the most essential part of religion; and that it was much
less dangerous for the disciples of Christ to neglect the observance of
the moral duties, than to despise the censures and authority of their
bishops. Sometimes we might imagine that we were listening to the voice of
Moses, when he commanded the earth to open, and to swallow up, in
consuming flames, the rebellious race which refused obedience to the
priesthood of Aaron; and we should sometimes suppose that we hear a Roman
consul asserting the majesty of the republic, and declaring his inflexible
resolution to enforce the rigor of the laws. * "If such irregularities are
suffered with impunity," (it is thus that the bishop of Carthage chides
the lenity of his colleague,) "if such irregularities are suffered, there
is an end of Episcopal Vigor; an end of the sublime and divine power of
governing the Church, an end of Christianity itself." Cyprian had
renounced those temporal honors, which it is probable he would never have
obtained; * but the acquisition of such absolute command over the
consciences and understanding of a congregation, however obscure or
despised by the world, is more truly grateful to the pride of the human
heart, than the possession of the most despotic power, imposed by arms and
conquest on a reluctant people.
In the course of this important, though perhaps tedious inquiry, I have
attempted to display the secondary causes which so efficaciously assisted
the truth of the Christian religion. If among these causes we have
discovered any artificial ornaments, any accidental circumstances, or any
mixture of error and passion, it cannot appear surprising that mankind
should be the most sensibly affected by such motives as were suited to
their imperfect nature. It was by the aid of these causes, exclusive zeal,
the immediate expectation of another world, the claim of miracles, the
practice of rigid virtue, and the constitution of the primitive church,
that Christianity spread itself with so much success in the Roman empire.
To the first of these the Christians were indebted for their invincible
valor, which disdained to capitulate with the enemy whom they were
resolved to vanquish. The three succeeding causes supplied their valor
with the most formidable arms. The last of these causes united their
courage, directed their arms, and gave their efforts that irresistible
weight, which even a small band of well-trained and intrepid volunteers
has so often possessed over an undisciplined multitude, ignorant of the
subject, and careless of the event of the war. In the various religions of
Polytheism, some wandering fanatics of Egypt and Syria, who addressed
themselves to the credulous superstition of the populace, were perhaps the
only order of priests that derived their whole support and credit from
their sacerdotal profession, and were very deeply affected by a personal
concern for the safety or prosperity of their tutelar deities. The
ministers of Polytheism, both in Rome and in the provinces, were, for the
most part, men of a noble birth, and of an affluent fortune, who received,
as an honorable distinction, the care of a celebrated temple, or of a
public sacrifice, exhibited, very frequently at their own expense, the
sacred games, and with cold indifference performed the ancient rites,
according to the laws and fashion of their country. As they were engaged
in the ordinary occupations of life, their zeal and devotion were seldom
animated by a sense of interest, or by the habits of an ecclesiastical
character. Confined to their respective temples and cities, they remained
without any connection of discipline or government; and whilst they
acknowledged the supreme jurisdiction of the senate, of the college of
pontiffs, and of the emperor, those civil magistrates contented themselves
with the easy task of maintaining in peace and dignity the general worship
of mankind. We have already seen how various, how loose, and how uncertain
were the religious sentiments of Polytheists. They were abandoned, almost
without control, to the natural workings of a superstitious fancy. The
accidental circumstances of their life and situation determined the object
as well as the degree of their devotion; and as long as their adoration
was successively prostituted to a thousand deities, it was scarcely
possible that their hearts could be susceptible of a very sincere or
lively passion for any of them.
When Christianity appeared in the world, even these faint and imperfect
impressions had lost much of their original power. Human reason, which by
its unassisted strength is incapable of perceiving the mysteries of faith,
had already obtained an easy triumph over the folly of Paganism; and when
Tertullian or Lactantius employ their labors in exposing its falsehood and
extravagance, they are obliged to transcribe the eloquence of Cicero or
the wit of Lucian. The contagion of these sceptical writings had been
diffused far beyond the number of their readers. The fashion of
incredulity was communicated from the philosopher to the man of pleasure
or business, from the noble to the plebeian, and from the master to the
menial slave who waited at his table, and who eagerly listened to the
freedom of his conversation. On public occasions the philosophic part of
mankind affected to treat with respect and decency the religious
institutions of their country; but their secret contempt penetrated
through the thin and awkward disguise; and even the people, when they
discovered that their deities were rejected and derided by those whose
rank or understanding they were accustomed to reverence, were filled with
doubts and apprehensions concerning the truth of those doctrines, to which
they had yielded the most implicit belief. The decline of ancient
prejudice exposed a very numerous portion of human kind to the danger of a
painful and comfortless situation. A state of scepticism and suspense may
amuse a few inquisitive minds. But the practice of superstition is so
congenial to the multitude, that if they are forcibly awakened, they still
regret the loss of their pleasing vision. Their love of the marvellous and
supernatural, their curiosity with regard to future events, and their
strong propensity to extend their hopes and fears beyond the limits of the
visible world, were the principal causes which favored the establishment
of Polytheism. So urgent on the vulgar is the necessity of believing, that
the fall of any system of mythology will most probably be succeeded by the
introduction of some other mode of superstition. Some deities of a more
recent and fashionable cast might soon have occupied the deserted temples
of Jupiter and Apollo, if, in the decisive moment, the wisdom of
Providence had not interposed a genuine revelation, fitted to inspire the
most rational esteem and conviction, whilst, at the same time, it was
adorned with all that could attract the curiosity, the wonder, and the
veneration of the people. In their actual disposition, as many were almost
disengaged from their artificial prejudices, but equally susceptible and
desirous of a devout attachment; an object much less deserving would have
been sufficient to fill the vacant place in their hearts, and to gratify
the uncertain eagerness of their passions. Those who are inclined to
pursue this reflection, instead of viewing with astonishment the rapid
progress of Christianity, will perhaps be surprised that its success was
not still more rapid and still more universal.
It has been observed, with truth as well as propriety, that the conquests
of Rome prepared and facilitated those of Christianity. In the second
chapter of this work we have attempted to explain in what manner the most
civilized provinces of Europe, Asia, and Africa were united under the
dominion of one sovereign, and gradually connected by the most intimate
ties of laws, of manners, and of language. The Jews of Palestine, who had
fondly expected a temporal deliverer, gave so cold a reception to the
miracles of the divine prophet, that it was found unnecessary to publish,
or at least to preserve, any Hebrew gospel. The authentic histories of the
actions of Christ were composed in the Greek language, at a considerable
distance from Jerusalem, and after the Gentile converts were grown
extremely numerous. As soon as those histories were translated into the
Latin tongue, they were perfectly intelligible to all the subjects of
Rome, excepting only to the peasants of Syria and Egypt, for whose benefit
particular versions were afterwards made. The public highways, which had
been constructed for the use of the legions, opened an easy passage for
the Christian missionaries from Damascus to Corinth, and from Italy to the
extremity of Spain or Britain; nor did those spiritual conquerors
encounter any of the obstacles which usually retard or prevent the
introduction of a foreign religion into a distant country. There is the
strongest reason to believe, that before the reigns of Diocletian and
Constantine, the faith of Christ had been preached in every province, and
in all the great cities of the empire; but the foundation of the several
congregations, the numbers of the faithful who composed them, and their
proportion to the unbelieving multitude, are now buried in obscurity, or
disguised by fiction and declamation. Such imperfect circumstances,
however, as have reached our knowledge concerning the increase of the
Christian name in Asia and Greece, in Egypt, in Italy, and in the West, we
shall now proceed to relate, without neglecting the real or imaginary
acquisitions which lay beyond the frontiers of the Roman empire.
The rich provinces that extend from the Euphrates to the Ionian Sea, were
the principal theatre on which the apostle of the Gentiles displayed his
zeal and piety. The seeds of the gospel, which he had scattered in a
fertile soil, were diligently cultivated by his disciples; and it should
seem that, during the two first centuries, the most considerable body of
Christians was contained within those limits. Among the societies which
were instituted in Syria, none were more ancient or more illustrious than
those of Damascus, of Berea or Aleppo, and of Antioch. The prophetic
introduction of the Apocalypse has described and immortalized the seven
churches of Asia; Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamus, Thyatira, Sardes, Laodicea
and Philadelphia; and their colonies were soon diffused over that populous
country. In a very early period, the islands of Cyprus and Crete, the
provinces of Thrace and Macedonia, gave a favorable reception to the new
religion; and Christian republics were soon founded in the cities of
Corinth, of Sparta, and of Athens. The antiquity of the Greek and Asiatic
churches allowed a sufficient space of time for their increase and
multiplication; and even the swarms of Gnostics and other heretics serve
to display the flourishing condition of the orthodox church, since the
appellation of hereties has always been applied to the less numerous
party. To these domestic testimonies we may add the confession, the
complaints, and the apprehensions of the Gentiles themselves. From the
writings of Lucian, a philosopher who had studied mankind, and who
describes their manners in the most lively colors, we may learn that,
under the reign of Commodus, his native country of Pontus was filled with
Epicureans and Christians. Within fourscore
years after the death of Christ, the humane Pliny laments the magnitude of
the evil which he vainly attempted to eradicate. In his very curious
epistle to the emperor Trajan, he affirms, that the temples were almost
deserted, that the sacred victims scarcely found any purchasers, and that
the superstition had not only infected the cities, but had even spread
itself into the villages and the open country of Pontus and Bithynia.
Without descending into a minute scrutiny of the expressions or of the
motives of those writers who either celebrate or lament the progress of
Christianity in the East, it may in general be observed, that none of them
have left us any grounds from whence a just estimate might be formed of
the real numbers of the faithful in those provinces. One circumstance,
however, has been fortunately preserved, which seems to cast a more
distinct light on this obscure but interesting subject. Under the reign of
Theodosius, after Christianity had enjoyed, during more than sixty years,
the sunshine of Imperial favor, the ancient and illustrious church of
Antioch consisted of one hundred thousand persons, three thousand of whom
were supported out of the public oblations. The splendor and dignity of
the queen of the East, the acknowledged populousness of Cæsarea,
Seleucia, and Alexandria, and the destruction of two hundred and fifty
thousand souls in the earthquake which afflicted Antioch under the elder
Justin, are so many convincing proofs that the whole number of its
inhabitants was not less than half a million, and that the Christians,
however multiplied by zeal and power, did not exceed a fifth part of that
great city. How different a proportion must we adopt when we compare the
persecuted with the triumphant church, the West with the East, remote
villages with populous towns, and countries recently converted to the
faith with the place where the believers first received the appellation of
Christians! It must not, however, be dissembled, that, in another passage,
Chrysostom, to whom we are indebted for this useful information, computes
the multitude of the faithful as even superior to that of the Jews and
Pagans. But the solution of this apparent difficulty is easy and obvious.
The eloquent preacher draws a parallel between the civil and the
ecclesiastical constitution of Antioch; between the list of Christians who
had acquired heaven by baptism, and the list of citizens who had a right
to share the public liberality. Slaves, strangers, and infants were
comprised in the former; they were excluded from the latter.
The extensive commerce of Alexandria, and its proximity to Palestine, gave
an easy entrance to the new religion. It was at first embraced by great
numbers of the Theraputæ, or Essenians, of the Lake Mareotis, a
Jewish sect which had abated much of its reverence for the Mosaic
ceremonies. The austere life of the Essenians, their fasts and
excommunications, the community of goods, the love of celibacy, their zeal
for martyrdom, and the warmth though not the purity of their faith,
already offered a very lively image of the primitive discipline. It was in
the school of Alexandria that the Christian theology appears to have
assumed a regular and scientific form; and when Hadrian visited Egypt, he
found a church composed of Jews and of Greeks, sufficiently important to
attract the notice of that inquisitive prince. But the progress of
Christianity was for a long time confined within the limits of a single
city, which was itself a foreign colony, and till the close of the second
century the predecessors of Demetrius were the only prelates of the
Egyptian church. Three bishops were consecrated by the hands of Demetrius,
and the number was increased to twenty by his successor Heraclas. The body
of the natives, a people distinguished by a sullen inflexibility of
temper, entertained the new doctrine with coldness and reluctance; and
even in the time of Origen, it was rare to meet with an Egyptian who had
surmounted his early prejudices in favor of the sacred animals of his
country. As soon, indeed, as Christianity ascended the throne, the zeal of
those barbarians obeyed the prevailing impulsion; the cities of Egypt were
filled with bishops, and the deserts of Thebais swarmed with hermits.
A perpetual stream of strangers and provincials flowed into the capacious
bosom of Rome. Whatever was strange or odious, whoever was guilty or
suspected, might hope, in the obscurity of that immense capital, to elude
the vigilance of the law. In such a various conflux of nations, every
teacher, either of truth or falsehood, every founder, whether of a
virtuous or a criminal association, might easily multiply his disciples or
accomplices. The Christians of Rome, at the time of the accidental
persecution of Nero, are represented by Tacitus as already amounting to a
very great multitude, and the language of that great historian is almost
similar to the style employed by Livy, when he relates the introduction
and the suppression of the rites of Bacchus. After the Bacchanals had
awakened the severity of the senate, it was likewise apprehended that a
very great multitude, as it were another people,
had been initiated into those abhorred mysteries. A more careful inquiry
soon demonstrated, that the offenders did not exceed seven thousand; a
number indeed sufficiently alarming, when considered as the object of
public justice. It is with the same candid allowance that we should
interpret the vague expressions of Tacitus, and in a former instance of
Pliny, when they exaggerate the crowds of deluded fanatics who had
forsaken the established worship of the gods. The church of Rome was
undoubtedly the first and most populous of the empire; and we are
possessed of an authentic record which attests the state of religion in
that city about the middle of the third century, and after a peace of
thirty-eight years. The clergy, at that time, consisted of a bishop,
forty-six presbyters, seven deacons, as many sub-deacons, forty-two
acolythes, and fifty readers, exorcists, and porters. The number of
widows, of the infirm, and of the poor, who were maintained by the
oblations of the faithful, amounted to fifteen hundred. From reason, as
well as from the analogy of Antioch, we may venture to estimate the
Christians of Rome at about fifty thousand. The populousness of that great
capital cannot perhaps be exactly ascertained; but the most modest
calculation will not surely reduce it lower than a million of inhabitants,
of whom the Christians might constitute at the most a twentieth part.
The western provincials appeared to have derived the knowledge of
Christianity from the same source which had diffused among them the
language, the sentiments, and the manners of Rome. In this more important
circumstance, Africa, as well as Gaul, was gradually fashioned to the
imitation of the capital. Yet notwithstanding the many favorable occasions
which might invite the Roman missionaries to visit their Latin provinces,
it was late before they passed either the sea or the Alps; nor can we
discover in those great countries any assured traces either of faith or of
persecution that ascend higher than the reign of the Antonines. The slow
progress of the gospel in the cold climate of Gaul, was extremely
different from the eagerness with which it seems to have been received on
the burning sands of Africa. The African Christians soon formed one of the
principal members of the primitive church. The practice introduced into
that province of appointing bishops to the most inconsiderable towns, and
very frequently to the most obscure villages, contributed to multiply the
splendor and importance of their religious societies, which during the
course of the third century were animated by the zeal of Tertullian,
directed by the abilities of Cyprian, and adorned by the eloquence of
Lactantius. But if, on the contrary, we turn our eyes towards Gaul, we
must content ourselves with discovering, in the time of Marcus Antoninus,
the feeble and united congregations of Lyons and Vienna; and even as late
as the reign of Decius, we are assured, that in a few cities only, Arles,
Narbonne, Thoulouse, Limoges, Clermont, Tours, and Paris, some scattered
churches were supported by the devotion of a small number of Christians.
Silence is indeed very consistent with devotion; but as it is seldom
compatible with zeal, we may perceive and lament the languid state of
Christianity in those provinces which had exchanged the Celtic for the
Latin tongue, since they did not, during the three first centuries, give
birth to a single ecclesiastical writer. From Gaul, which claimed a just
preeminence of learning and authority over all the countries on this side
of the Alps, the light of the gospel was more faintly reflected on the
remote provinces of Spain and Britain; and if we may credit the vehement
assertions of Tertullian, they had already received the first rays of the
faith, when he addressed his apology to the magistrates of the emperor
Severus. But the obscure and imperfect origin of the western churches of
Europe has been so negligently recorded, that if we would relate the time
and manner of their foundation, we must supply the silence of antiquity by
those legends which avarice or superstition long afterwards dictated to
the monks in the lazy gloom of their convents. Of these holy romances,
that of the apostle St. James can alone, by its singular extravagance,
deserve to be mentioned. From a peaceful fisherman of the Lake of
Gennesareth, he was transformed into a valorous knight, who charged at the
head of the Spanish chivalry in their battles against the Moors. The
gravest historians have celebrated his exploits; the miraculous shrine of
Compostella displayed his power; and the sword of a military order,
assisted by the terrors of the Inquisition, was sufficient to remove every
objection of profane criticism.
The progress of Christianity was not confined to the Roman empire; and
according to the primitive fathers, who interpret facts by prophecy, the
new religion, within a century after the death of its divine Author, had
already visited every part of the globe. "There exists not," says Justin
Martyr, "a people, whether Greek or Barbarian, or any other race of men,
by whatsoever appellation or manners they may be distinguished, however
ignorant of arts or agriculture, whether they dwell under tents, or wander
about in covered wagons, among whom prayers are not offered up in the name
of a crucified Jesus to the Father and Creator of all things." But this
splendid exaggeration, which even at present it would be extremely
difficult to reconcile with the real state of mankind, can be considered
only as the rash sally of a devout but careless writer, the measure of
whose belief was regulated by that of his wishes. But neither the belief
nor the wishes of the fathers can alter the truth of history. It will
still remain an undoubted fact, that the barbarians of Scythia and
Germany, who afterwards subverted the Roman monarchy, were involved in the
darkness of paganism; and that even the conversion of Iberia, of Armenia,
or of Æthiopia, was not attempted with any degree of success till
the sceptre was in the hands of an orthodox emperor. Before that time, the
various accidents of war and commerce might indeed diffuse an imperfect
knowledge of the gospel among the tribes of Caledonia, and among the
borderers of the Rhine, the Danube, and the Euphrates. Beyond the
last-mentioned river, Edessa was distinguished by a firm and early
adherence to the faith. From Edessa the principles of Christianity were
easily introduced into the Greek and Syrian cities which obeyed the
successors of Artaxerxes; but they do not appear to have made any deep
impression on the minds of the Persians, whose religious system, by the
labors of a well disciplined order of priests, had been constructed with
much more art and solidity than the uncertain mythology of Greece and
Rome.
From this impartial though imperfect survey of the progress of
Christianity, it may perhaps seem probable, that the number of its
proselytes has been excessively magnified by fear on the one side, and by
devotion on the other. According to the irreproachable testimony of
Origen, the proportion of the faithful was very inconsiderable, when
compared with the multitude of an unbelieving world; but, as we are left
without any distinct information, it is impossible to determine, and it is
difficult even to conjecture, the real numbers of the primitive
Christians. The most favorable calculation, however, that can be deduced
from the examples of Antioch and of Rome, will not permit us to imagine
that more than a themselves under the banner of the cross before the
important conversion of Constantine. But their habits of faith, of zeal,
and of union, seemed to multiply their numbers; and the same causes which
contributed to their future increase, served to render their actual
strength more apparent and more formidable.
Such is the constitution of civil society, that whilst a few persons are
distinguished by riches, by honors, and by knowledge, the body of the
people is condemned to obscurity, ignorance and poverty. The Christian
religion, which addressed itself to the whole human race, must
consequently collect a far greater number of proselytes from the lower
than from the superior ranks of life. This innocent and natural
circumstance has been improved into a very odious imputation, which seems
to be less strenuously denied by the apologists, than it is urged by the
adversaries, of the faith; that the new sect of Christians was almost
entirely composed of the dregs of the populace, of peasants and mechanics,
of boys and women, of beggars and slaves, the last of whom might sometimes
introduce the missionaries into the rich and noble families to which they
belonged. These obscure teachers (such was the charge of malice and
infidelity) are as mute in public as they are loquacious and dogmatical in
private. Whilst they cautiously avoid the dangerous encounter of
philosophers, they mingle with the rude and illiterate crowd, and
insinuate themselves into those minds, whom their age, their sex, or their
education, has the best disposed to receive the impression of
superstitious terrors.
This unfavorable picture, though not devoid of a faint resemblance,
betrays, by its dark coloring and distorted features, the pencil of an
enemy. As the humble faith of Christ diffused itself through the world, it
was embraced by several persons who derived some consequence from the
advantages of nature or fortune. Aristides, who presented an eloquent
apology to the emperor Hadrian, was an Athenian philosopher. Justin Martyr
had sought divine knowledge in the schools of Zeno, of Aristotle, of
Pythagoras, and of Plato, before he fortunately was accosted by the old
man, or rather the angel, who turned his attention to the study of the
Jewish prophets. Clemens of Alexandria had acquired much various reading
in the Greek, and Tertullian in the Latin, language. Julius Africanus and
Origen possessed a very considerable share of the learning of their times;
and although the style of Cyprian is very different from that of
Lactantius, we might almost discover that both those writers had been
public teachers of rhetoric. Even the study of philosophy was at length
introduced among the Christians, but it was not always productive of the
most salutary effects; knowledge was as often the parent of heresy as of
devotion, and the description which was designed for the followers of
Artemon, may, with equal propriety, be applied to the various sects that
resisted the successors of the apostles. "They presume to alter the Holy
Scriptures, to abandon the ancient rule of faith, and to form their
opinions according to the subtile precepts of logic. The science of the
church is neglected for the study of geometry, and they lose sight of
heaven while they are employed in measuring the earth. Euclid is
perpetually in their hands. Aristotle and Theophrastus are the objects of
their admiration; and they express an uncommon reverence for the works of
Galen. Their errors are derived from the abuse of the arts and sciences of
the infidels, and they corrupt the simplicity of the gospel by the
refinements of human reason."
Nor can it be affirmed with truth, that the advantages of birth and
fortune were always separated from the profession of Christianity. Several
Roman citizens were brought before the tribunal of Pliny, and he soon
discovered, that a great number of persons of every orderof
men in Bithynia had deserted the religion of their ancestors. His
unsuspected testimony may, in this instance, obtain more credit than the
bold challenge of Tertullian, when he addresses himself to the fears as
well as the humanity of the proconsul of Africa, by assuring him, that if
he persists in his cruel intentions, he must decimate Carthage, and that
he will find among the guilty many persons of his own rank, senators and
matrons of nobles' extraction, and the friends or relations of his most
intimate friends. It appears, however, that about forty years afterwards
the emperor Valerian was persuaded of the truth of this assertion, since
in one of his rescripts he evidently supposes, that senators, Roman
knights, and ladies of quality, were engaged in the Christian sect. The
church still continued to increase its outward splendor as it lost its
internal purity; and, in the reign of Diocletian, the palace, the courts
of justice, and even the army, concealed a multitude of Christians, who
endeavored to reconcile the interests of the present with those of a
future life.
And yet these exceptions are either too few in number, or too recent in
time, entirely to remove the imputation of ignorance and obscurity which
has been so arrogantly cast on the first proselytes of Christianity. *
Instead of employing in our defence the fictions of later ages, it will be
more prudent to convert the occasion of scandal into a subject of
edification. Our serious thoughts will suggest to us, that the apostles
themselves were chosen by Providence among the fishermen of Galilee, and
that the lower we depress the temporal condition of the first Christians,
the more reason we shall find to admire their merit and success. It is
incumbent on us diligently to remember, that the kingdom of heaven was
promised to the poor in spirit, and that minds afflicted by calamity and
the contempt of mankind, cheerfully listen to the divine promise of future
happiness; while, on the contrary, the fortunate are satisfied with the
possession of this world; and the wise abuse in doubt and dispute their
vain superiority of reason and knowledge.
We stand in need of such reflections to comfort us for the loss of some
illustrious characters, which in our eyes might have seemed the most
worthy of the heavenly present. The names of Seneca, of the elder and the
younger Pliny, of Tacitus, of Plutarch, of Galen, of the slave Epictetus,
and of the emperor Marcus Antoninus, adorn the age in which they
flourished, and exalt the dignity of human nature. They filled with glory
their respective stations, either in active or contemplative life; their
excellent understandings were improved by study; Philosophy had purified
their minds from the prejudices of the popular superstition; and their
days were spent in the pursuit of truth and the practice of virtue. Yet
all these sages (it is no less an object of surprise than of concern)
overlooked or rejected the perfection of the Christian system. Their
language or their silence equally discover their contempt for the growing
sect, which in their time had diffused itself over the Roman empire. Those
among them who condescended to mention the Christians, consider them only
as obstinate and perverse enthusiasts, who exacted an implicit submission
to their mysterious doctrines, without being able to produce a single
argument that could engage the attention of men of sense and learning.
It is at least doubtful whether any of these philosophers perused the
apologies * which the primitive Christians repeatedly published in behalf
of themselves and of their religion; but it is much to be lamented that
such a cause was not defended by abler advocates. They expose with
superfluous with and eloquence the extravagance of Polytheism. They
interest our compassion by displaying the innocence and sufferings of
their injured brethren. But when they would demonstrate the divine origin
of Christianity, they insist much more strongly on the predictions which
announced, than on the miracles which accompanied, the appearance of the
Messiah. Their favorite argument might serve to edify a Christian or to
convert a Jew, since both the one and the other acknowledge the authority
of those prophecies, and both are obliged, with devout reverence, to
search for their sense and their accomplishment. But this mode of
persuasion loses much of its weight and influence, when it is addressed to
those who neither understand nor respect the Mosaic dispensation and the
prophetic style. In the unskilful hands of Justin and of the succeeding
apologists, the sublime meaning of the Hebrew oracles evaporates in
distant types, affected conceits, and cold allegories; and even their
authenticity was rendered suspicious to an unenlightened Gentile, by the
mixture of pious forgeries, which, under the names of Orpheus, Hermes, and
the Sibyls, were obtruded on him as of equal value with the genuine
inspirations of Heaven. The adoption of fraud and sophistry in the defence
of revelation too often reminds us of the injudicious conduct of those
poets who load their invulnerable heroes with a
useless weight of cumbersome and brittle armor.
But how shall we excuse the supine inattention of the Pagan and
philosophic world, to those evidences which were represented by the hand
of Omnipotence, not to their reason, but to their senses? During the age
of Christ, of his apostles, and of their first disciples, the doctrine
which they preached was confirmed by innumerable prodigies. The lame
walked, the blind saw, the sick were healed, the dead were raised, dæmons
were expelled, and the laws of Nature were frequently suspended for the
benefit of the church. But the sages of Greece and Rome turned aside from
the awful spectacle, and, pursuing the ordinary occupations of life and
study, appeared unconscious of any alterations in the moral or physical
government of the world. Under the reign of Tiberius, the whole earth, or
at least a celebrated province of the Roman empire, was involved in a
preternatural darkness of three hours. Even this miraculous event, which
ought to have excited the wonder, the curiosity, and the devotion of
mankind, passed without notice in an age of science and history. It
happened during the lifetime of Seneca and the elder Pliny, who must have
experienced the immediate effects, or received the earliest intelligence,
of the prodigy. Each of these philosophers, in a laborious work, has
recorded all the great phenomena of Nature, earthquakes, meteors comets,
and eclipses, which his indefatigable curiosity could collect. Both the
one and the other have omitted to mention the greatest phenomenon to which
the mortal eye has been witness since the creation of the globe. A
distinct chapter of Pliny is designed for eclipses of an extraordinary
nature and unusual duration; but he contents himself with describing the
singular defect of light which followed the murder of Cæsar, when,
during the greatest part of a year, the orb of the sun appeared pale and
without splendor. The season of obscurity, which cannot surely be compared
with the preternatural darkness of the Passion, had been already
celebrated by most of the poets and historians of that memorable age.
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