Chapter IV: , VII (25)

Having settled his authority firmly, he gave his attention to
the organization of the Empire (still Republic in name) and to
the reforming of the evils which afflicted it. That he did
this work with consummate judgment and success is the opinion
of all who study his time. He gratified no resentments,
executed no revenges, proscribed no enemies. All who submitted
to his rule were safe; and it seems to be clear that the
people in general were glad to be rescued by his rule from the
old oligarchical and anarchical state. But some of Cæsar's own
partisans were dissatisfied with the autocracy which they
helped to create, or with the slenderness of their own parts
in it. They conspired with surviving leaders of the Optimates,
and Cæsar was assassinated by them, in the Senate chamber, on
the 15th of March, B. C. 44.

Professor Mommsen has expressed the estimate of Cæsar which
many thoughtful historians have formed, in the following
strong words: "In the character of Cæsar the great contrasts
of existence meet and balance each other. He was of the
mightiest creative power, and yet of the most penetrating
judgment; of the highest energy of will and the highest
capacity of execution; filled with republican ideals, and at
the same time born to be king. He was 'the entire perfect
man'; and he was this because he was the entire and perfect
Roman." This may be nearly true if we ignore the moral side of
Cæsar's character. He was of too large a nature to do evil
things unnecessarily, and so he shines even morally in
comparison with many of his kind; but he had no scruples.

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After the Murder of Cæsar.

The murderers of Cæsar were not accepted by the people as the
patriots and "liberators" which they claimed to be, and they
were soon in flight from the city. Marcus Antonius, who had
been Cæsar's associate in the consulship, now naturally and
skilfully assumed the direction of affairs, and aspired to
gather the reins of imperial power into his own hands. But
rivals were ready to dispute with him the great prize of
ambition. Among them, it is probable that Antony gave little
heed at first to the young man, Caius Octavius, or Octavianus,
who was Cæsar's nephew, adopted son and heir; for Octavius was
less than nineteen years old, he was absent in Apollonia, and
he was little known. But the young Cæsar, coming boldly though
quietly to Rome, began to push his hereditary claims with a
patient craftiness and dexterity that were marvellous in one
so young.

The Second Triumvirate.

The contestants soon resorted to arms. The result of their
first indecisive encounter was a compromise and the formation
of a triumvirate, like that of Cæsar, Pompeius and Crassus.
This second triumvirate was made up of Antonius, Octavius, and
Lepidus, lately master of the horse in Cæsar's army. Unlike
the earlier coalition, it was vengeful and bloody-minded. Its
first act was a proscription, in the terrible manner of Sulla,
which filled Rome and Italy with murders, and with terror and
mourning. Cicero, the patriot and great orator, was among the
victims cut down.

After this general slaughter of their enemies at home,
Antonius and Octavius proceeded against Brutus and Cassius,
two of the assassins of Cæsar, who had gathered a large force
in Greece. They defeated them at Philippi, and both
"liberators" perished by their own hands. The triumvirs now
divided the empire between them, Antonius ruling the East,
Octavius the West, and Lepidus taking Africa--that is, the
Carthaginian province, which included neither Egypt nor
Numidia. Unhappily for Antonius, the queen of Egypt was among
his vassals, and she ensnared him. He gave himself up to
voluptuous dalliance with Cleopatra at Alexandria, while the
cool intriguer, Octavius, at Rome, worked unceasingly to
solidify and increase his power. After six years had passed,
the young Cæsar was ready to put Lepidus out of his way, which
he did mercifully, by sending him into exile. After five years
more, he launched his legions and his war galleys against
Antonius, with the full sanction of the Roman senate and
people. The sea-fight at Actium (B. C. 31) gave Octavius the
whole empire, and both Antonius and Cleopatra committed
suicide after flying to Egypt. The kingdom of the Ptolemies
was now extinguished and became a Roman province in due form.

Octavius (Augustus) Supreme.

Octavius was now more securely absolute as the ruler of Rome
and its great empire than Sulla or Julius Cæsar had been, and
he maintained that sovereignty without challenge for
forty-five years, until his death. He received from the Senate
the honorary title of "Augustus," by which he is most commonly
known. For official titles, he took none but those which had
belonged to the institutions of the Republic, and were
familiarly known. He was Imperator, as his uncle had been. He
was Princeps, or head of the Senate; he was Censor; he was
Tribune; he was Supreme Pontiff. All the great offices of the
Republic he kept alive, and ingeniously constructed his
sovereignty by uniting their powers in himself.

Organization of the Empire.

The historical position of Augustus, as the real founder of
the Roman Empire, is unique in its grandeur; and yet History
has dealt contemptuously, for the most part, with his name.
His character has been looked upon, to use the language of De
Quincey, as "positively repulsive, in the very highest
degree." "A cool head," wrote Gibbon of him, "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." And again: "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." Yet, how can we deny surpassing
high qualities of some description to a man who set the
shattered Roman Republic, with all its democratic bases broken
up, on a new--an imperial--foundation, so gently that it
suffered no further shock, and so solidly that it endured, in
whole or in part, for a millennium and a half?

In the reign of Augustus the Empire was consolidated and
organized; it was not much extended. The frontiers were
carried to the Danube, throughout, and the subjugation of
Spain was made complete. Augustus generally discouraged wars
of conquest. His ambitious stepsons, Drusus and Tiberius,
persuaded him into several expeditions beyond the Rhine,
against the restless German nations, which perpetually menaced
the borders of Gaul; but these gained no permanent footing in
the Teutonic territory. They led, on the contrary, to a
fearful disaster (A. D. 9), near the close of the reign of
Augustus, when three legions, under Varus, were destroyed in
the Teutoburg Forest by a great combination of the tribes,
planned and conducted by a young chieftain named Hermann, or
Arminius, who is the national hero of Germany to this day.

The policy of Drusus in strongly fortifying the northern
frontier against the Germans left marks which are
conspicuously visible at the present day. From the fifty
fortresses which he is said to have built along the line
sprang many important modern cities,--Basel, Strasburg, Worms,
Mainz, Bingen, Coblenz, Bonn, Cologne, and Leyden, among the
number. From similar forts on the Danubian frontier rose
Vienna, Regensburg and Passau.

Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero.

Augustus died A. D. 11, and was succeeded in his honors, his
offices, and his powers, by his step-son, Tiberius Claudius
Nero, whom he had adopted. Tiberius, during most of his reign,
was a vigorous ruler, but a detestable man, unless his
subjects belied him, which some historians suspect. Another
attempt at the conquest of Germany was made by his nephew
Germanicus, son of Drusus; but the jealousy of the emperor
checked it, and Germanicus died soon after, believing that he
had been poisoned. A son of Germanicus, Caius, better known by
his nick-name of Caligula, succeeded to the throne on the
death of Tiberius (A. D. 37), and was the first of many
emperors to be crazed and made beast-like, in lust, cruelty
and senselessness, by the awful, unbounded power which passed
into their hands.
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The Empire bore his madness for three years, and then he was
murdered by his own guards. The Senate had thoughts now of
restoring the commonwealth, and debated the question for a
day; but the soldiers of the prætorian guard took it out of
their hands, and decided it, by proclaiming Tiberius Claudius
(A. D. 41), a brother of Germanicus, and uncle of the emperor
just slain. Claudius was weak of body and mind, but not
vicious, and his reign was distinctly one of improvement and
advance in the Empire. He began the conquest of Britain, which
the Romans had neglected since Cæsar's time, and he opened the
Senate to the provincials of Gaul. He had two wives of
infamous character, and the later one of these, Agrippina,
brought him a son, not his own, whom he adopted, and who
succeeded him (A.D. 54). This was Nero, of foul memory, who
was madman and monster in as sinister a combination as history
can show. During the reign of Nero, the spread of
Christianity, which had been silently making its way from
Judæa into all parts of the Empire, began to attract the
attention of men in public place, and the first persecution of
its disciples took place (A. D. 64). A great fire occurred in
Rome, which the hated emperor was believed to have caused; but
he found it convenient to accuse the Christians of the deed,
and large numbers of them were put to death in horrible ways.

Vespasian and his Sons.

Nero was tolerated for fourteen years, until the soldiers in
the provinces rose against him, and he committed suicide (A.
D. 68) to escape a worse death. Then followed a year of civil
war between rival emperors--Galba, Otho, Vitellius, and
Vespasian--proclaimed by different bodies of soldiers in
various parts of the Empire. The struggle ended in favor of
Vespasian, a rude, strong soldier, who purged the government,
disciplined the army, and brought society back toward simpler
and more decent ways. The great revolt of the Jews (A. D.
66-70) had broken out before he received the purple, and he
was commanding in Judæa when Nero fell. The siege, capture and
destruction of Jerusalem was accomplished by his son Titus. A
more formidable revolt in the West (A. D. 69) was begun the
Batavians, a German tribe which occupied part of the
Netherland territory, near the mouth of the Rhine. They were
joined by neighboring Gauls and by disaffected Roman
legionaries, and they received help from their German kindred
on the northern side of the Rhine. The revolt, led by a
chieftain named Civilis, who had served in the Roman army, was
overcome with extreme difficulty.

Vespasian was more than worthily succeeded (A. D. 79) by his
elder son, Titus, whose subjects so admired his many virtues
that he was called "the delight of the human race." His short
reign, however, was one of calamities: fire at Rome, a great
pestilence, and the frightful eruption of Vesuvius which
destroyed Herculaneum and Pompeii. After Titus came his
younger brother Domitian (A. D. 81), who proved to be another
creature of the monstrous species that appeared so often in
the series of Roman emperors. The conquest of southern Britain
(modern England) was completed in his reign by an able
soldier, Agricola, who fought the Caledonians of the North,
but was recalled before subduing them. Domitian was murdered
by his own servants (A. D. 96), after a reign of fifteen
years.

Nerva, Trajan and Hadrian.

Rome and the Empire were happy at last in the choice that was
made of a sovereign to succeed the hateful son of Vespasian.
Not the soldiery, but the Senate, made the choice, and it fell
on one of their number, Cocceius Nerva, who was already an
aged man. He wore the purple but sixteen months, and his
single great distinction in Roman history is, that he
introduced to the imperial succession a line of the noblest
men who ever sat in the seat of the Cæsars. The first of these
was the soldier Trajan, whom Nerva adopted and associated with
himself in authority. When Nerva died (A. D. 97), his son by
adoption ascended the throne with no opposition. The new
Emperor was simple and plain in his habits and manners of
life; he was honest and open in all his dealings with men; he
was void of suspicion, and of malice and jealousy no less. He
gave careful attention to the business of state and was wise
in his administration of affairs, improving roads, encouraging
trade, helping agriculture, and developing the resources of the
Empire in very prudent and practical ways. But he was a
soldier, fond of war, and he unwisely reopened the career of
conquest which had been almost closed for the Empire since
Pompeius came back from the East. A threatening kingdom having
risen among the Dacians, in the country north of the lower
Danube--the Transylvania and Roumania of the present day--he
attacked and crushed it, in a series of vigorous campaigns (A.
D. 101-106), and annexed the whole territory to the dominion
of Rome. He then garrisoned and colonized the country, and
Romanized it so completely that it keeps the Roman name, and
its language to this day is of the Latin stock, though Goths,
Huns, Bulgarians and Slavs have swept it in successive
invasions, and held it among their conquests for centuries at
a time. In the East, he ravaged the territory of the Parthian
king, entered his capital and added Mesopotamia, Armenia, and
Arabia Petræa to the list of Roman provinces. But he died (A.
D. 117) little satisfied with the results of his eastern
campaigns.

His successor abandoned them, and none have doubted that he
did well; because the Empire was weakened by the new frontier
in Asia which Trajan gave it to defend. His Dacian conquests
were kept, but all beyond the Euphrates in the East were given
up. The successor who did this was Hadrian, a kinsman, whom
the Emperor adopted in his last hours. Until near the close of
his life, Hadrian ranked among the best of the emperors. Rome
saw little of him, and resented his incessant travels through
every part of his great realm. His manifest preference for
Athens, where he lingered longest, and which flourished anew
under his patronage, was still more displeasing to the ancient
capital. For the Emperor was a man of cultivation, fond of
literature, philosophy and art, though busy with the cares of
State. In his later years he was afflicted with a disease
which poisoned his nature by its torments, filled his mind
with dark suspicions, and made him fitfully tyrannical and
cruel. The event most notable in his generally peaceful and
prosperous reign was the renewed and final revolt of the Jews,
under Barchochebas, which resulted in their total expulsion
from Jerusalem, and its conversion into a heathen city, with a
Roman name.

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The Antonines.

Hadrian had adopted before his death (A. D. 138) a man of
blameless character, Titus Aurelius Antoninus, who received
from his subjects, when he became Emperor, the appellation
"Pius," to signify the dutiful reverence and kindliness of his
disposition. He justified the name of Antoninus Pius, by which
he is historically known, and his reign, though disturbed by
some troubles on the distant borders of the Empire, was happy
for his subjects in nearly all respects. "No great deeds are
told of him, save this, perhaps the greatest, that he secured
the love and happiness of those he ruled" (Capes).

Like so many of the emperors, Antoninus had no son of his own;
but even before he came to the throne, and at the request of
Hadrian, he had adopted a young lad who won the heart of the
late Emperor while still a child. The family name of this son
by adoption was Verus, and he was of Spanish descent; the name
which he took, in his new relationship, was Marcus Aurelius
Antoninus. It is unquestionably the most illustrious name in
the whole imperial line, from Augustus to the last
Constantine, and made so, not so much by deeds as by
character. He gave the world the solitary example of a
philosopher upon the throne. There have been a few--a very
few--surpassingly good men in kingly places; but there has
never been another whose soul was lifted to so serene a height
above the sovereignty of his station. Unlimited power tempted
no form of selfishness in him; he saw nothing in his imperial
exaltation but the duties which it imposed. His mind was
meditative, and inclined him to the studious life; but he
compelled himself to be a man of vigor and activity in
affairs. He disliked war; but he spent years of his life in
camp on the frontiers; because it fell to his lot to encounter
the first great onset of the barbarian nations of the north,
which never ceased from that time to beat against the barriers
of the Empire until they had broken them down. His struggle
was on the line of the Danube, with the tribes of the
Marcomanni, the Quadi, the Vandals, and others of less
formidable power. He held them back, but the resources of the
Empire were overstrained and weakened lastingly by the effort.
For the first time, too, there were colonies of barbarians
brought into the Empire, from beyond its lines, to be settled
for the supply of soldiers to the armies of Rome: It was a
dangerous sign of Roman decay and a fatal policy to begin. The
decline of the great world-power was, in truth, already well
advanced, and the century of good emperors which ended when
Marcus Aurelius died (A. D. 180), only retarded, and did not
arrest, the progress of mortal maladies in the state.

From Commodus to Caracalla.

The best of emperors was followed on the throne by a son,
Commodus, who went mad, like Nero and Caligula, with the
drunkenness of power, and who was killed (A. D. 192) by his
own servants, after a reign of twelve years. The soldiers of
the prætorian guard now took upon themselves the making of
emperors, and placed two upon the throne--first, Pertinax, an
aged senator, whom they murdered the next year, and then
Didius Julianus, likewise a senator, to whom, as the highest
bidder, they sold the purple. Again, as after Nero's death,
the armies on the frontiers put forward, each, a rival
claimant, and there was war between the competitors. The
victor who became sovereign was Septimius Severus (A. D.
194-211), who had been in command on the Danube. He was an
able soldier, and waged war with success against the Parthians
in the East, and with the Caledonians in Britain, which latter
he could not subdue. Of his two sons, the elder, nicknamed
Caracalla (A. D. 211-217), killed his brother with his own
hands, and tortured the Roman world with his brutalities for
six years, when he fell under the stroke of an assassin. The
reign of this foul beast brought one striking change to the
Empire. An imperial edict wiped away the last distinction
between Romans and Provincials, giving citizenship to every
free inhabitant of the Empire. "Rome from this date became
constitutionally an empire, and ceased to be merely a
municipality. The city had become the world, or, viewed from
the other side, the world had become 'the City'" (Merivale).

Anarchy and Decay.

The period of sixty-seven years from the murder of Caracalla
to the accession of Diocletian--when a great constitutional
change occurred--demands little space in a sketch like this.
The weakening of the Empire by causes inherent in its social
and political structure,--the chief among which were the
deadly influence of its system of slavery and the paralyzing
effects of its autocracy,--went on at an increasing rate,
while disorder grew nearly to the pitch of anarchy, complete.
There were twenty-two emperors in the term, which scarcely
exceeded that of two generations of men. Nineteen of these
were taken from the throne by violent deaths, through mutiny
or murder, while one fell in battle, and another was held
captive in Persia till he died. Only five among these
twenty-two ephemeral lords of the world,--namely Alexander
Severus, Decius (who was a vigorous soldier and ruler, but who
persecuted the Christians with exceptional cruelty), Claudius,
Aurelian, and Probus,--can be credited with any personal
weight or worth in the history of the time; and they held
power too briefly to make any notable mark.

The distractions of the time were made worse by a great number
of local "tyrants," as they were called--military adventurers
who rose in different parts of the Empire and established
themselves for a time in authority over some district, large
or small. In the reign of Gallienus (A. D. 260-268) there were
nineteen of these petty "imperators," and they were spoken of
as the "thirty tyrants." The more important of the "provincial
empires" thus created were those of Postumus, in Gaul, and of
Odenatus of Palmyra. The latter, under Zenobia; queen and
successor of Odenatus, became a really imposing monarchy,
until it was overthrown by Aurelian, A. D. 273.

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The Teutonic Nations.

The Germanic nations beyond the Rhine and the Danube had, by
this time, improved their organization, and many of the tribes
formerly separated and independent were now gathered into
powerful confederations. The most formidable of these leagues
in the West was that which acquired the common name of the
Franks, or Freemen, and which was made up of the peoples
occupying territory along the course of the Lower Rhine.
Another of nearly equal power, dominating the German side of
the Upper Rhine and the headwaters of the Danube, is believed
to have absorbed the tribes which had been known in the
previous century as Boii, Marcomanni, Quadi, and others. The
general name it received was that of the Alemanni. The
Alemanni were in intimate association with the Suevi, and
little is known of the distinction that existed between the
two. They had now begun to make incursions across the Rhine,
but were driven back in 238. Farther to the East, on the Lower
Danube, a still more dangerous horde was now threatening the
flanks of the Empire in its European domain. These were Goths,
a people akin, without doubt, to the Swedes, Norsemen and
Danes; but whence and when they made their way to the
neighborhood of the Black Sea is a question in dispute. It was
in the reign of Caracalla that the Romans became first aware
of their presence in the country since known as the Ukraine. A
few years later, when Alexander Severus was on the throne, they
began to make incursions into Dacia. During the reign of
Philip the Arabian (A. D. 244-249) they passed through Dacia,
crossed the Danube, and invaded Mœsia (modern Bulgaria). In
their next invasion (A. D. 251) they passed the Balkans,
defeated the Romans in two terrible battles, the last of which
cost the reigning Emperor, Decius, his life, and destroyed the
city of Philippopolis, with 100,000 of its people. But when, a
few years later, they attempted to take possession of even
Thrace and Macedonia, they were crushingly defeated by the
Emperor Claudius, whose successor Aurelian made peace by
surrendering to them the whole province of Dacia (A. D. 270),
where they settled, giving the Empire no disturbance for
nearly a hundred years. Before this occurred, the Goths,
having acquired the little kingdom of Bosporus (the modern
Crimea) had begun to launch a piratical navy, which plundered
the coast cities of Asia Minor and Greece, including Athens
itself.

On the Asiatic side of the Empire a new power, a revived and
regenerated Persian monarchy, had risen out of the ruins of
the Parthian kingdom, which it overthrew, and had begun
without delay to contest the rule of Rome in the East.

Diocletian.

Briefly described, this was the state and situation of the
Roman Empire when Diocletian, an able Illyrian soldier, came
to the throne (A. D. 284). His accession marks a new epoch.
"From this time," says Dean Merivale, "the old names of the
Republic, the consuls, the tribunes, and the Senate itself,
cease, even if still existing, to have any political
significance." "The empire of Rome is henceforth an Oriental
sovereignty." But the changes which Diocletian made in the
organization and administration of the Empire, if they did
weigh it down with a yet more crushing autocracy and
contribute to its exhaustion in the end, did also, for the
time, stop the wasting of its last energies, and gather them
in hand for potent use. It can hardly be doubted that he
lengthened the term of its career.

Finding that one man in the exercise of supreme sovereignty,
as absolute as he wished to make it, could not give sufficient
care to every part of the vast realm, he first associated one
Maximian with himself, on equal terms, as Emperor, or
Augustus, and six years later (A. D. 292) he selected two
others from among his generals and invested them with a
subordinate sovereignty, giving them the title of "Cæsars."
The arrangement appears to have worked satisfactorily while
Diocletian remained at the head of his imperial college. But
in 305 he wearied of the splendid burden that he bore, and
abdicated the throne, unwillingly followed by his associate,
Maximian. The two Cæsars, Constantius and Galerius, were then
advanced to the imperial rank, and two new Cæsars were named.

Jealousies, quarrels, and civil war were soon rending the
Empire again. The details are unimportant.

Constantine and Christianity.

After nine years of struggle, two competitors emerged (A. D.
314) alone, and divided the Empire between them. They were
Constantine, son of Constantius, the Cæsar, and one Licinius.
After nine years more, Licinius had disappeared, defeated and
put to death, and Constantine (A. D. 323) shared the
sovereignty of Rome with none. In its final stages, the
contest had become, practically, a trial of strength between
expiring Paganism in the Roman world and militant
Christianity, now grown to great strength. The shrewd
adventurer Constantine saw the political importance to which
the Christian Church had risen, and identified himself with it
by a "conversion" which has glorified his name most
undeservedly. If to be a Christian with sincerity is to be a
good man, then Constantine was none; for his life was full of
evil deeds, after he professed the religion of Christ, even
more than before. "He poured out the best and noblest blood in
torrents, more especially of those nearly connected with
himself. ... In a palace which he had made a desert, the
murderer of his father-in-law, his brothers-in-law, his
sister, his wife, his son, and his nephew, must have felt the
stings of remorse, if hypocritical priests and courtier
bishops had not lulled his conscience to rest" (Sismondi).

But the so-called "conversion" of Constantine was an event of
vast import in history. It changed immensely, and with
suddenness, the position, the state, the influence, and very
considerably the character and spirit of the Christian Church.
The hierarchy of the Church became, almost at once, the
greatest power in the Empire, next to the Emperor himself, and
its political associations, which were dangerous from the
beginning, soon proved nearly fatal to its spiritual
integrity. "Both the purity and the freedom of the Church were
in danger of being lost. State and Church were beginning an
amalgamation fraught with peril. The State was becoming a kind
of Church, and the Church a kind of State. The Emperor
preached and summoned councils, called himself, though half in
jest, a 'bishop,' and the bishops had become State officials,
who, like the high dignitaries of the Empire, travelled by the
imperial courier-service, and frequented the ante-chambers of
the palaces in Constantinople." "The Emperor determined what
doctrines were to prevail in the Church, and banished Arius
to-day and Athanasius to-morrow." "The Church was surfeited
with property and privileges. The Emperor, a poor financier,
impoverished the Empire to enrich" it (Uhlhorn). That
Christianity had shared the gain of the Christian Church from
these great changes, is very questionable.

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By another event of his reign, Constantine marked it in
history with lasting effect. He rebuilt with magnificence the
Greek city of Byzantium on the Bosphorus, transferred to it
his imperial residence, and raised it to a nominal equality
with Rome, but to official find practical superiority, as the
capital of the Empire. The old Rome dwindled in rank and
prestige from that day; the new Rome--the city of Constantine,
or Constantinople--rose to the supreme place in the eyes and
the imaginations of men.

Julian and the Pagan Revival.

That Constantine added the abilities of a statesman to the
unscrupulous cleverness of an adventurer is not to be
disputed; but he failed to give proof of this when he divided
the Empire between his three sons at his death (A. D. 337).
The inevitable civil wars ensued, until, after sixteen years,
one survivor gathered the whole realm under his scepter again.
He (Constantius), who debased and disgraced the Church more
than his father had done, was succeeded (A. D. 361) by his
cousin, Julian, an honest, thoughtful, strong man, who, not
unnaturally, preferred the old pagan Greek philosophy to the
kind of Christianity which he had seen flourishing at the
Byzantine court. He publicly restored the worship of the
ancient gods of Greece and Rome; he excluded Christians from
the schools, and bestowed his favor on those who scorned the
Church; but he entered on no violent persecution. His reign
was brief, lasting only two years. He perished in a hapless
expedition against the Persians, by whom the Empire was now
almost incessantly harassed.

Valentinian and Valens.

His successor, Jovian, whom the army elected, died in seven
months; but Valentinian, another soldier, raised by his
comrades to the throne, reigned vigorously for eleven years.
He associated his brother, Valens, with him in the
sovereignty, assigning the latter to the East, while he took
the administration of the West.

Until the death of Valentinian, in 375, the northern frontiers
of the Empire, along the Rhine and the Danube, were well
defended. Julian had commanded in Gaul, with Paris for his
capital, six years before he became Emperor, and had organized
its defence most effectively. Valentinian maintained the line
with success against the Alemanni; while his lieutenant,
Theodosius, delivered Roman Britain from the ruinous attacks
of the Scots and Picts of its northern region. On the Danube,
there continued to be peace with the Goths, who held back all
other barbarians from that northeastern border.

The Goths in the Empire.

But the death of Valentinian was the beginning of fatal
calamities. His brother, Valens, had none of his capability or
his vigor, and was unequal to such a crisis as now occurred.
The terrible nation of the Huns had entered Europe from the
Asiatic steppes, and the Western Goths, or Visigoths, fled
before them. These fugitives begged to be permitted to cross
the Danube and settle on vacant lands in Mœsia and Thrace.
Valens consented, and the whole Visigothic nation, 200,000
warriors, with their women and children, passed the river (A.
D. 376). It is possible that they might, by fair treatment,
have been converted into loyal citizens, and useful defenders
of the land. But the corrupt officials of the court took
advantage of their dependent state, and wrung extortionate
prices from them for disgusting food, until they rose in
desperation and wasted Thrace with fire and sword. Fresh
bodies of Ostrogoths (Eastern Goths) and other barbarians came
over to join them (A. D. 378); the Roman armies were beaten in
two great battles, and Valens, the Emperor, was slain. The
victorious Goths swept on to the very walls of Constantinople,
which they could not surmount, and the whole open country,
from the Black Sea to the Adriatic, was ravaged by them at
will.

Theodosius.

In the meantime, the western division of the Empire had
passed, on the death of Valentinian, under the nominal rule of
his two young sons, Gratian, aged sixteen, and Valentinian
II., aged four. Gratian had made an attempt to bring help to
his uncle Valens; but the latter fought his fatal battle while
the boy emperor was on the way, and the latter, upon hearing
of it, turned back. Then Gratian performed his one great act.
He sought a colleague, and called to the throne the most
promising young soldier of the day. This was Theodosius, whose
father, Count Theodosius, the deliverer of Britain, had been
put to death by Valens, on some jealous accusation, only three
years before. The new Emperor took the East for his realm, having
Gratian and Valentinian II. for colleagues in the West. He
speedily checked the ravages of the Goths and restored the
confidence of the Roman soldiers. Then he brought diplomacy to
bear upon the dangerous situation, and succeeded in arranging
a peace with the Gothic chieftains, which enlisted them in the
imperial service with forty thousand of their men. But they
retained their distinctive organization, under their own
chiefs, and were called "fœderati," or allies. This concession
of a semi-independence to so great a body of armed barbarians
in the heart of the Empire was a fatal mistake, as was proved
before many years.

For the time being it secured peace, and gave Theodosius
opportunity to attend to other things. The controversies of
the Church were among the subjects of his consideration, and
by taking the side of the Athanasians, whom his predecessor
had persecuted, he gave a final victory to Trinitarianism, in
the Roman world. His reign was signalized, moreover, by the
formal, official abolition of paganism at Rome.

The weak but amiable Gratian, reigning at Paris, lost his
throne and his life, in 383, as the consequence of a revolt
which began in Britain and spread to Gaul. The successful
rebel and usurper, Maximus, seemed so strong that Theodosius
made terms with him, and acknowledged his sovereignty for a
number of years. But, not content with a dominion which
embraced Britain, Gaul and Spain, Maximus sought, after a
time, to add Italy, where the youth, Valentinian II., was
still enthroned (at Milan, not Rome), under the tutelage of
his mother. Valentinian fled to Theodosius; the Eastern
Emperor adopted his cause, and restored him to his throne,
defeating the usurper and putting him to death (A. D. 388).
Four years later Valentinian II. died; another usurper arose,
and again Theodosius (A. D. 394) recovered the throne.

{1009}

Final Division of the Empire.

Theodosius was now alone in the sovereignty. The Empire was
once more, and for the last time, in its full extent, united
under a single lord. It remained so for but a few months. At
the beginning of the year 395, Theodosius died, and his two
weak sons, Arcadius and Honorius, divided the perishing Empire
between them, only to augment, in its more venerable seat, the
distress of the impending fall.

Arcadius, at the age of eighteen, took the government of the
East; Hononus, a child of eleven, gave his name to the
administration of the West. Each emperor was under the
guardianship of a minister chosen by Theodosius before he
died. Rufinus, who held authority at Constantinople, was
worthless in all ways; Stilicho, who held the reins at Milan,
was a Vandal by birth, a soldier and a statesman of vigorous
powers.

Decay of the Western Empire.

The West seemed more fortunate than the East, in this
division; yet the evil days now fast coming near fell
crushingly on the older Rome, while the New Rome lived through
them, and endured for a thousand years. No doubt the Empire
had weakened more on its elder side; had suffered more
exhaustion of vital powers. It had little organic vitality now
left in it. If no swarms of barbaric invaders had been waiting
and watching at its doors, and pressing upon it from every
point with increasing fierceness, it seems probable that it
would have gone to pieces ere long through mere decay. And if,
on the other hand, it could have kept the vigorous life of its
best republican days, it might have defied Teuton and Slav
forever. But all the diseases, political and social, which the
Republic engendered in itself, had been steadily consuming the
state, with their virulence even increased, since it took on the
imperial constitution. All that imperialism did was to gather
waning energies in hand, and make the most of them for
external use. It stopped no decay. The industrial palsy,
induced by an ever-widening system of slave-labor, continued
to spread. Production decreased; the sum of wealth shrunk in
the hands of each succeeding generation; and yet the great
fortunes and great estates grew bigger from age to age. The
gulf between rich and poor opened deeper and wider, and the
bridges once built across it by middle-class thrift were
fallen down. The burden of imperial government had become an
unendurable weight; the provincial municipalities, which had
once been healthy centers of a local political life, were
strangled by the nets of taxation flung over them. Men sought
refuge even in death from the magistracies which made them
responsible to the imperial treasury for revenues which they
could not collect. Population dwindled, year by year.
Recruiting from the body of citizens for the common needs of
the army became more impossible. The state was fully
dependent, at last, on barbaric mercenaries of one tribe for
its defence against barbaric invaders of another; and it was
no longer able, as of old, to impress its savage servitors
with awe of its majesty and its name.

Stilicho and Alaric.

Stilicho, for a time, stoutly breasted the rising flood of
disaster. He checked the Picts and Scots of Northern Britain,
and the Alemanni and their allies on the frontiers of Gaul.
But now there arose again the more dreadful barbarian host
which had footing in the Empire itself, and which Theodosius
had taken into pay. The Visigoths elected a king (A. D. 395),
and were persuaded with ease to carve a kingdom for him out of
the domain which seemed waiting to be snatched from one or
both of the feeble monarchs, who sat in mockery of state at
Constantinople and Milan. Alaric, the new Gothic king, moved
first against the capital on the Bosphorus; but Rufinus
persuaded him to pass on into Greece, where he went pillaging
and destroying for a year. Stilicho, the one manly defender of
the Empire, came over from Italy with an army to oppose him;
but he was stopped on the eve of battle by orders from the
Eastern Court, which sent him back, as an officious meddler.
This act of mischief and malice was the last that Rufinus
could do. He was murdered, soon afterwards, and Arcadius,
being free from his influence, then called upon Stilicho for
help. The latter came once more to deliver Greece, and did so
with success. But Alaric, though expelled from the peninsula,
was neither crushed nor disarmed, and the Eastern Court had
still to make terms with him. It did so for the moment by
conferring on him the government of that part of Illyricum
which the Servia and Bosnia of the present day coincide with,
very nearly. He rested there in peace for four years, and then
(A. D. 400) he called his people to arms again, and led the whole
nation, men, women and children, into Italy. The Emperor,
Honorius, fled from Milan to Ravenna, which, being a safe
shelter behind marshes and streams, became the seat of the
court for years thereafter. Stilicho, stripping Britain and
Gaul of troops, gathered forces with which, at Eastertide in
the year 402, and again in the following year, he defeated the
Goths, and forced them to retreat.

He had scarcely rested from these exertions, when the valiant
Stilicho was called upon to confront a more savage leader,
Radagaisus by name, who came from beyond the lines (A. D.
405), with a vast swarm of mixed warriors from many tribes
pouring after him across the Alps. Again Stilicho, by superior
skill, worsted the invaders, entrapping them in the mountains
near Fiesole (modern Florence), and starving them there till
they yielded themselves to slavery and their chieftain to
death.

This was the last great service to the dying Roman state which
Stilicho was permitted to do. Undermined by the jealousies of
the cowardly court at Ravenna, he seems to have lost suddenly
the power by which he held himself so high. He was accused of
treasonable designs and was seized and instantly executed, by
the Emperor's command.

{1010}

Alaric and his Goths in Rome.

Stilicho dead, there was no one in Italy for Alaric to fear,
and he promptly returned across the Alps, with the nation of
the Visigoths behind him. There was no resistance to his
march, and he advanced straight upon Rome. He did not assail
the walls, but sat down before the gates (A. D. 408), until
the starving citizens paid him a great ransom in silver and
gold and precious spices and silken robes. With this booty he
retired for the winter into Tuscany, where his army was
swelled by thousands of fugitive barbarian slaves, and by
reinforcements of Goths and Huns. From his camp he opened
negotiations with Honorius, demanding the government of
Dalmatia, Venetia and Noricum, with certain subsidies of money
and corn. The contemptible court, skulking at Ravenna, could
neither make war nor make concessions, and it soon exhausted
the patience of the barbarian by its puerilities. He marched
again to Rome (A. D. 409), seized the port of Ostia, with its
supplies of grain, and forced the helpless capital to join him
in proclaiming a rival emperor. The prefect of the city, one
Attalus, accepted the purple at his hands, and played the
puppet for a few months in imperial robes. But the scheme
proved unprofitable, Attalus was deposed, and negotiations
were reopened with Honorius. Their only result was a fresh
provocation which sent Alaric once more against Rome, and this
time with wrath and vengeance in his heart. Then the great,
august capital of the world was entered, through treachery or
by surprise, on the night of the 24th of August, 410, and
suffered all that the lust, the ferocity and the greed of a
barbarous army let loose could inflict on an unresisting city.
It was her first experience of that supreme catastrophe of
war, since Brennus and the Gauls came in; but it was not to be
the last.

From the sack of Rome, Alaric moved southward, intending to
conquer Sicily; but a sudden illness brought his career to an
end.

The Barbarians Swarming in.

The Empire was now like a dying quarry, pulled down by fierce
hunting packs and torn on every side. The Goths were at its
throat; the tribes of Germany--Sueves, Vandals, Burgundians,
Alans--had leaped the Rhine (A. D. 406) and swarmed upon its
flanks, throughout Gaul and Spain. The inrush began after
Stilicho, to defend Italy against Alaric and Radagaisus, had
stripped the frontiers of troops. Sueves, Vandals, and Alans
passed slowly through the provinces, devouring their wealth
and making havoc of their civilization as they went. After
three years, they had reached and surmounted the Pyrenees, and
were spreading the same destruction through Spain.

The confederated tribes of the Franks had already been
admitted as allies into northwestern Gaul, and were settled
there in peace. At first, they stood faithful to the Roman
alliance, and valiantly resisted the new invasion; but its
numbers overpowered them, and their fidelity gave way when
they saw the pillage of the doomed provinces going on. They
presently joined the barbarous mob, and with an energy which
secured the lion's share of plunder and domain.

The Burgundians did not follow the Vandals and Sueves to the
southwest, but took possession of the left bank of the middle
Rhine, whence they gradually spread into western Switzerland
and Savoy, and down the valleys of the Rhone and Saone,
establishing in time an important kingdom, to which they gave
their name.

No help from Ravenna or Rome came to the perishing provincials
of Gaul in the extremity of their distress; but a pretender
arose in Britain, who assumed the imperial title and promised
deliverance. He crossed over to Gaul in 407 and was welcomed
with eagerness, both there and in Spain, to which he advanced.
He gained some success, partly by enlisting and partly by
resisting the invaders; but his career was brief. Other
pretenders appeared in various provinces, of the West; but the
anarchy of the time was too great for any authority,
legitimate or revolutionary, to establish itself.

The Visigoths in Gaul.

And, now, into the tempting country of the afflicted Gauls,
already crowded with rapacious freebooters, the Visigoths made
their way. Their new king, Ataulph, or Adolphus, who succeeded
Alaric, passed into Gaul, but not commissioned, as sometimes
stated, to restore the imperial sovereignty there. He moved
with his nation, as Alaric had moved, and Italy, by his
departure, was relieved; but Narbonne, Toulouse, Bordeaux, and
the Aquitainian country at large, was soon subject to his
command (A. D. 412-419). He passed the Pyrenees and entered
Spain, where an assassin took his life. His successor, Wallia,
drove the Sueves into the mountains and the Vandals into the
South; but did not take possession of the country until a
later time. The Visigoths, returning to Aquitaine, found
there, at last, the kingdom which Alaric set out from the
Danube to seek, and they were established in it with the Roman
Emperor's consent. It was known as the kingdom of Gothia, or
Septimania, but is more commonly called, from its capital, the
kingdom of Toulouse.

The Eastern Empire.

Affairs in the Eastern Empire had never arrived at so
desperate a state as in the West. With the departure of
Alaric, it had been relieved from its most dangerous immediate
foe. There had been tumults, disorders, assassinations, court
conspiracies, fierce religious strifes, and every evidence of
a government with no settled authority and no title to
respect; but yet the Empire stood and was not yet seriously
shaken. In 408 Arcadius died. His death was no loss, though he
left an infant son to take his place; for he also left a
daughter, Pulcheria, who proved to be a woman of rare virtue
and talents, and who reigned in her brother's name.

Aetius and the Huns.

The imbecile Honorius, with whose name the failing sovereignty
of Rome had been so disastrously linked for eight and twenty
rears, died in 423. An infant nephew was his heir, and
Placidia, the mother, ruled at Ravenna for a fourth of a
century, in the name of her child. Her reign was far stronger
than her wretched brother's had been, because she gave loyal
support to a valiant and able man, who stood at her side.
Aetius, her minister, did all, perhaps, that man could do to
hold some parts of Gaul, and to play barbarian against
barbarian--Hun against Goth and Frank--in skilful diplomacy
and courageous war. But nothing that he won was any lasting
gain. In his youth, Aetius had been a hostage in the camps of
both the Goths and the Huns, and had made acquaintances among
the chieftains of both which served his policy many times.
{1011}
He had employed the terrible Huns in the early years of his
ministry, and perhaps they had learned too much of the
weakness of the Roman State. These most fearful of all the
barbarian peoples then surging in Europe had been settled, for
some years, in the region since called Hungary, under Attila,
their most formidable king. He terrorized all the surrounding
lands and exercised a lordship from the Caspian to the Baltic
and the Rhine. The imperial court at the East stooped to pay
him annual tribute for abstaining from the invasion of its
domain. But in 450, when the regent Pulcheria became Empress
of the East, by her brother's death, and married a brave old
soldier, Marcian, in order to give him the governing power, a
new tone was heard in the voice from Constantinople which
answered Attila's demands.

Defeat of Attila.

The Hun then appears to have seen that the sinking Empire of
the West offered a more certain victim to his terrors and his
arms, and he turned them to that side. First forming an
alliance with the Vandals (who had crossed from Spain to
Africa in 429, had ravaged and subdued the Roman provinces,
and had established a kingdom on the Carthaginian ground, with
a naval power in the Carthaginian Sea), Attila led his huge
army into suffering Gaul. There were Ostrogoths, and warriors
from many German tribes, as well as Huns, in the terrific
host; for Attila's arm stretched far, and his subjects were
forced to follow when he led. His coming into Gaul affrighted
Romans and barbarians alike, and united them in a common
defense. Aetius formed an alliance with Theodoric, the
Visigothic king, and their forces were joined by Burgundians
and Franks. They met Attila near Chalons, and there, on a day
in June, A. D. 451, upon the Catalaunian fields, was fought a
battle that is always counted among the few which gave shape
to all subsequent history. The Huns were beaten back, and
Europe was saved from the hopeless night that must have
followed a Tartar conquest in that age.

Attila threatening Rome.

Attila retreated to Germany, foiled but not daunted. The next
year (A. D. 452) he invaded Italy and laid siege to Aquileia,
an important city which stood in his path. It resisted for
three months and was then utterly destroyed. The few
inhabitants who escaped, with fugitives from neighboring
ports, found a refuge in some islands of the Adriatic coast,
and formed there a sheltered settlement which grew into the
great city and republican state of Venice. Aetius made
strenuous exertions to gather forces for another battle with
the Huns; but the resources of the Empire had sunk very low.
While he labored to collect troops, the effect of a pacific
embassy was despairingly tried, and it went forth to the camp
of Attila, led by the venerable bishop of Rome--the first
powerful Pope--Leo I., called the Great. The impression which
Leo made on the Hunnish king, by his venerable presence, and
by the persuasiveness of his words, appears to have been
extraordinary. At all events, Attila consented to postpone his
designs on Rome; though he demanded and received promise of an
annual tribute. The next winter he died, and Rome was troubled
by him no more.

Rome Sacked by the Vandals.

But another enemy came, who rivalled Attila in ruthlessness,
and who gave a name to barbarity which it has kept to this
day. The Vandal king, Genseric, who now swept the
Mediterranean with a piratical fleet, made his appearance in
the Tiber (A. D. 455) and found the Roman capital powerless to
resist his attack. The venerable Pope Leo again interceded for
the city, and obtained a promise that captives should not be
tortured nor buildings burned,--which was the utmost stretch
of mercy that the Vandal could afford. Once more, then, was
Rome given up, for fourteen days and nights, to pillage and
the horrors of barbaric debauch. "Whatever had survived the
former sack,--whatever the luxury of the Roman Patriciate,
during the intervening forty-five years, had accumulated in
reparation of their loss,--the treasures of the imperial
palace, the gold and silver vessels employed in the churches,
the statues of pagan divinities and men of Roman renown, the
gilded roof of the temple of Capitolian Jove, the plate and
ornaments of private individuals, were leisurely conveyed to
the Vandal fleet and shipped off to Africa" (Sheppard).

The Vandal invasion had been preceded, in the same year, by a
palace revolution which brought the dynasty of Theodosius to
an end. Placidia was dead, and her unworthy son, Valentinian
III., provoked assassination by dishonoring the wife of a
wealthy senator, Maximus, who mounted to his place. Maximus
was slain by a mob at Rome, just before the Vandals entered
the city. The Empire was now without a head, and the throne
without an heir. In former times, the Senate or the army would
have filled the vacant imperial seat; now, it was a barbarian
monarch, Theodoric, the Visigothic king, who made choice of a
successor to the Cæsars. He named a Gallic noble, Avitus by
name, who had won his esteem, and the nomination was confirmed
by Marcian, Emperor of the East.

Ricimer and Majorian.

But the influence of Theodoric in Roman affairs was soon
rivalled by that of Count Ricimer, another Goth, or Sueve, who
held high command in the imperial army, and who resented the
elevation of Avitus. The latter was deposed, after reigning a
single year; and Majorian, a soldier of really noble and
heroic character, was promoted to the throne. He was too great
and too sincere a man to be Ricimer's tool, and the same hand
which raised him threw him down, after he had reigned four
years (A. D. 457-461). He was in the midst of a powerful
undertaking against the Vandals when he perished. Majorian was
the last Emperor in the Western line who deserves to be named.

The last Emperors in the West.