Chapter XXXIX: A Half Century of Decline: Commodus to Alexander Severus (2)

His restless temper soon urged him to seek for glory in a contest with the Germans. He marched to the Rhine and obtained (by purchase as it would seem) some advantages over the confederacy of the Alamanni, whose name now first appears in history. He henceforth wonderfully affected the Germans, even wearing a blond periwig to resemble them; and he placed a number of them about him as guards. It is thought that it was on the occasion of his return to Rome from Gaul after this war (214) that he distributed among the people the long Gallic coats named _caracals_, whence he derived the appellation by which he is usually known. After his German war, he marched to the Danube (215), visited the province of Dacia, and had some skirmishes with the neighbouring barbarians. He then passed over to Asia with the intention of making war on the Parthians, and spent the winter at Nicomedia.

As he professed an especial regard for the memory of Achilles, he visited the remains of Ilium, offered sacrifices at the tomb of the hero, led his troops in arms round it, and erected a brazen statue on its summit. One of his freedmen happening to die, or being poisoned by him for the purpose, he acted over again the Homeric funeral of Patroclus, pouring, like Achilles, wine to the winds to induce them to inflame the pyre, and cutting off the hair, with which nature had furnished him most scantily, to cast into the flames. In thus honouring Achilles, he sought to follow the example of Alexander the Great, a prince of whom his admiration was such that he erected statues of him everywhere; and he formed a phalanx of sixteen thousand Macedonians armed as in the time of that prince, whom he styled the Eastern Augustus. He even persecuted the peripatetic philosophers, because Aristotle was accused of being concerned in the death of his royal pupil.

[Sidenote: [216-217 A.D.]]

In the spring (216) Caracalla set out for Antioch. The Parthians averted a war by the surrender of two persons whom he demanded. By treachery he made himself master of the persons of the king of Armenia and his sons, and of the prince of Edessa; but the Armenians defeated the troops which he sent against them under Theocritus, a common player, whom he had raised to the dignity of prætorian prefect. He then proceeded to Alexandria with the secret resolve of taking a bloody vengeance on the inhabitants for their railleries and witticisms against him on the occasion of the murder of his brother. When he approached the city the people came forth to meet him with all the marks of joy and respect, and he received them graciously, and entered the town. Then pretending a design of forming a phalanx in honour of Alexander, he directed all the youth to appear in the plain without the walls. When they had done as required, he went through them as it were to inspect them; and then retiring to the temple of Serapis, he gave the signal to his soldiers to fall on them and massacre them. The slaughter was dreadful both within and without the walls, for no age or rank was spared. Trenches were dug, and the dead and dying were flung into them in order to conceal the extent of the massacre. He deprived the city of all its privileges, and its total ruin was only averted by his death.

After this slaughter of his helpless subjects, Caracalla returned to Antioch, and in order to have a pretext for making war on the Parthians he sent to Artabanus their king, demanding his daughter in marriage. The Parthian monarch having refused this strange suit, Caracalla invaded and ravaged his territories; and having taken Arbela, where were the royal tombs, he opened them and scattered the bones of the monarchs which were deposited within them. He then took up his winter quarters in Edessa.

In the spring (217) both sides were engaged in active preparation for war; when a conspiracy in his own army terminated the life and reign of the Roman emperor. Of the two prætorian prefects, the one, Adventus, was a mere soldier, the other, Macrinus, was a civilian well versed in the laws. The rough and brutal Caracalla often ridiculed him on this account, and even menaced his life; and Macrinus, having got sure information that his destruction was designed, resolved to anticipate the tyrant. He accordingly communicated his designs to some of the officers of the guards, among whom was one Martial, whom Caracalla had mortally offended by refusing him the post of centurion, or, as others say, by putting his brother to death. Accordingly on the 8th of April, 217, as the emperor was riding from Edessa to Carrhæ in order to worship at the temple of the Moon, and had retired and alighted for a private occasion, Martial ran up as if called, and stabbed him in the throat. The emperor fell down dead. Martial mounted his horse and fled; but he was shot by a Scythian archer of the guard.

MACRINUS (M. OPILIUS MACRINUS), 217-218 A.D.

[Sidenote: [217-218 A.D.]]

When the news of the murder of the emperor was divulged, Macrinus was the first to hasten to the spot, and to deplore his death. As Caracalla had left no heir, the army was uncertain whom to proclaim emperor in his stead, and the empire was for four days without a chief. Meantime the officers who were in the interests of Macrinus used all their influence with their men, and on the fourth day he was saluted emperor. He accepted the office with feigned reluctance, and he distributed, according to custom, large sums of money among the soldiers. Adventus was the bearer of the ashes of Caracalla to Rome, where they were deposited in the tomb of the Antonines; and Macrinus and the senate were obliged to yield to the instances of the soldiers, and place the monster among the gods. The senate received with joy the letter in which Macrinus announced his elevation to the empire, and they decreed him all the usual titles and honours.

While these changes were taking place in the Roman Empire, Artabanus had passed the Tigris with a large army. Macrinus having in vain proposed terms of accommodation, led out his legions, and some fighting took place in the neighbourhood of Nisibis, in which the advantage was on the side of the Parthians; but as they now began to feel the want of supplies, and were anxious to return home, they readily listened to the renewed proposals of the Roman emperor, and a peace was concluded. Macrinus then led his troops back to Antioch for the winter.

(From a vase)]

Macrinus, as we have already observed, was not a military man. He was a native of Cæsarea in Africa (Algiers), of humble origin, and he was indebted for his elevation to his countryman Plautianus. He was a man of an amiable disposition, and a sincere lover of justice. He therefore turned his attention chiefly to civil regulations, and he made some necessary reforms and excellent laws; but he was timid by nature, and in his anxiety to serve and advance his friends, he did not sufficiently consider their fitness for the employments which he bestowed on them. He committed a great and irreparable fault in not setting out for Rome at once, and in keeping the army all together in Syria; and he further commenced too soon a necessary, but imprudent attempt at bringing back the discipline of the legions to what it had been under Severus; for though he applied it only to recruits and did not interfere with the old soldiers, these last apprehended that the reform would at length reach themselves, and they became highly discontented. This feeling of the soldiers was soon taken advantage of, and a rival set up to Macrinus.

The empress Julia was at Antioch at the time of the murder of Caracalla. Macrinus wrote to her in very obliging terms; but in the first transports of her grief at the death of her son or the loss of her power, she had given herself several blows on the breast, and thus irritated a cancer with which she was afflicted, and her death ensued. Her sister, named Mæsa, who had lived at court during the last two reigns and had acquired immense wealth, retired by order of Macrinus to her native town of Emesa. She had two daughters named Soæmias and Mamæa, each of whom was a widow with an only son; that of the former was named Bassianus; he was now a handsome youth of seventeen years of age, and the influence of his family had procured for him the lucrative priesthood of the Sun, who was worshipped at Emesa under the title of Elagabalus. The Roman troops who were encamped near the town used to frequent the temple, and they greatly admired the comely young priest, whom they knew to be a cousin of their lamented Caracalla. The artful Mæsa resolved to take advantage of that feeling, and she made no scruple to sacrifice the reputation of her daughters to the hopes of empire: she therefore declared (what was perhaps true) that Caracalla used to cohabit with her daughters in the palace, and that Bassianus was in reality his son. Her assertion, backed with large sums of money and lavish promises of more, found easy acceptance with the soldiers. On the night of the 15th of May, 218, she and her daughter and grandson, and the rest of her family, conducted by their eunuch Gannys, a man of great talent, stole out of the city and proceeded to the camp, where they were joyfully received; and Bassianus was proclaimed emperor by the title of M. Aurelius Antoninus. The camp was immediately put into a state of defence against a siege; and numbers of the other soldiers hastened to sustain the cause of the son of Caracalla.

Macrinus sent the prætorian prefect Ulpius Julianus against the rebels. This officer was successful in his first attack on their camp; but having neglected to push his advantage, he gave the enemy time for tampering with his troops, a part of whom abandoned him; and he was taken and slain. Macrinus had meantime advanced as far as Apamea, where he declared his son Diadumenianus, a boy of only ten years of age, Augustus, and took this opportunity of promising a large gratuity to the army; he also wrote against Bassianus to the senate and governors of provinces. But instead of advancing rapidly against the rebels, he fell back to Antioch, whither they speedily followed him, and he was forced to give them battle near that town. The troops of Bassianus were ably disposed by the eunuch Gannys, who now in arms for the first time in his life showed the talents of a general. But the prætorians on the side of Macrinus fought with such determined valour that the rebels were on the point of flying, when Mæsa and Soæmias rushed out and stopped them; and Bassianus, sword in hand, led them on to the combat. Still the prætorians gave not way, and victory would have declared for Macrinus had he not shamefully fled in the midst of the battle. His troops when assured of his flight declared for Bassianus.

Macrinus fled in disguise, and never stopped till he came to Chalcedon, where he was taken and put to death, and his innocent son shared his fate. His reign had lasted only fourteen months.[c]

ELAGABALUS (NARIUS AVIBUS BASSIANUS), 218-222 A.D.

[Sidenote: [218-222 A.D.]]

Bassianus now hastened to assert his claim to the succession. He was entirely successful; ascending the throne under title of M. Aurelius Antoninus Elagabalus, or, as the Latins called him, Heliogabalus. Dion Cassius[e] (as preserved by Xiphilinus[i]) has left us a picturesque account of the accession and brief reign of this effeminate youth, whose name has become a proverb for sensuality of the most degenerate type. We turn to his account, making such omissions as the restrictions of modern taste demand;--the classical writers, as we have had occasion to note heretofore, adjudged the limits between frankness and prudery by standards quite different from ours.

This narrative of Dion Cassius has the unique interest of being the account of an exact contemporary. The author was a member of the Roman senate, at the time of Elagabalus’ accession. The following year he was governor of Pergamus and Smyrna. “He had conversed with Macrinus after his elevation, and yet was in the senate when the letters of Macrinus were read on the elevation of Elagabalus” (Clinton[g]).

Here, then, is the story of Rome’s most degenerate emperor, as told by this contemporary witness. The account is the most authoritative one that has come down to us; but it will be observed that allowance must be made for current superstitions in parts of the narrative.[a]

DION CASSIUS ON THE ACCESSION AND REIGN OF ELAGABALUS

Avitus [Elagabalus], who is called pseudo Antoninus, or the Assyrian, or, again, Sardanapalus or Tiberinus (the last name having been bestowed upon him after his body was cast into the Tiber), made his entry next day [after the defeat of Macrinus] into Antioch, having promised five hundred drachmæ to the soldiers if they refrained from pillaging the city, as they greatly desired to do. This sum he of course exacted from the inhabitants. He likewise wrote a letter to Rome, in which, among other matters befitting the occasion, he heaped invectives upon Macrinus for the obscurity of his origin and his conspiracy against Antoninus, and made lavish promises, not only to the soldiers but to the senate and populace (pretending to act in all things after the example of Augustus, whose age he compared with his own, and of Marcus Antoninus); and, in allusion to the censures passed upon him by Macrinus, he added, “He took upon himself to censure my youth, he who nominated his six-year-old son emperor.”

Such was his message to the senate. To that assembly and to the legions he despatched an account of what had taken place among the soldiers, together with the letter written by Macrinus to Maximus, in order further to inflame their hatred of Macrinus and their attachment to his own person. In his letter to the senate and his address to the people he styled himself emperor, Cæsar, the son of Antoninus, the grandson of Severus, the pious, the fortunate, Augustus, proconsul, prince invested with tribunician authority. He is also reported to have said, “Let them give me no titles which have to do with war; in ‘the pious’ and ‘the fortunate’ I have enough.”

A number of persons having, in both a public and a private capacity, committed offences in word and deed against him and against Caracalla, he declared that he would punish no man whatever; nor did he punish any, although in the rest of his conduct he carried debauchery, injustice, and cruelty to such lengths that certain customs wholly unknown at Rome were practised there as having come down from our forefathers, and that crimes committed in single instances by other men and in other places there flourished freely for the three years and nine months of his reign, reckoning from the battle which put him in possession of the sovereign power.

In Syria he shed the blood of Nestor and of Fabius Agrippinus, governor of the province, and of the chief of the knights who had been about Macrinus, and at Rome he acted likewise towards those who had been most strongly attached to the cause of the late monarch; in Arabia he slew Picas Cærianus, to whom the government of that country had been committed, for not having immediately come over to his side; in Cyprus, Claudius Attalus, a former governor of Thrace, who had been expelled from the senate by Severus at the time of the war with Niger, restored to his honours by Tarantus,[44] and placed by fate at the head of the province of Cyprus, merely because he had given offence to Comazon. For while the latter was serving in Thrace Attalus had placed him among the oarsmen as a punishment for dereliction of duty.

Thus the pseudo Antoninus put Attalus to death,--though he had written concerning him to the senate saying that he had recalled him to Rome, whence he had been banished by Macrinus, together with Julius Asper,--and Sulla, a former governor of Cappadocia, because he was involved in certain intrigues and because, having been summoned to Rome, he had gone before some Celtic soldiers on their way home from Bithynia, where they had passed the winter, and had stirred up some disorders. Such were the motives from which these two personages perished, no word thereof being sent to the senate. As for Seius Carus, the grandson of Fuscianus, a former prefect of Rome, the reason was that he was rich and noble, and a man of ability; the pretext, that he had incited the soldiers of the Alban legion to mutiny.

The monarch being his only accuser, the trial of Seius was held in the palace, where he was slain. Valerianus Pætus was put to death because he had caused portraits of himself to be made in gold as ornaments for his mistresses. This action brought upon him the charge of intending to go into Cappadocia, a province bordering on his native land (for he was a Galatian) to stir up a rebellion, and having for this purpose made gold pieces bearing his own image.

Besides these, Silius Messalla and Pomponius Bassus were put to death by the senate on a charge of having disapproved of the emperor’s conduct, as he said. He did not hesitate to write to the senate, which he styled the examiner of his life and the censor of what took place in the palace: “As for the proofs of their conspiracy, I have not sent them, for it would be idle to read them, since the men are already dead.” Messalla had frequently expressed his opinions forcibly in the senate, for which reason the emperor had commanded his attendance in Syria, as though he were indispensable to him, but really lest he should cause an opinion different to his own to prevail in that assembly; as for Bassus, he had a beautiful wife of noble birth (a granddaughter of Claudius Severus and of Marcus Antoninus); whom Elagabalus himself wedded, not permitting her (such was the terror with which he inspired her) to weep for her husband’s unhappy fate. We shall presently hear of espousals in which he played the part of bridegroom and bride, for he gave himself out as man or woman indifferently, and behaved with the utmost shamelessness in either character.

The murder of Gannys, who had paved the way for the rebellion, had brought him to the camp and procured him the victory over Macrinus--of Gannys, his foster-father and guardian, which he committed in Nicomedia, caused him to be regarded from the very beginning of his reign as the most impious of men. Gannys lived an effeminate life and loved to receive presents, but, far from doing injury to any man, he conferred many benefits upon numbers of persons; and, what was still more important, he was zealously devoted to his sovereign and enjoyed the favour of Mæsa and Soæmias. But this was not the reason why the emperor put him to death. His real motive was that Gannys obliged him to observe the rules of temperance and wisdom. The monarch, with his own hand, dealt Gannys the first wound, since none of the soldiers dared to begin the attack. In such wise did matters go.

Thus much we have said of the blood that was shed. As for the things done by Elagabalus contrary to the customs of our forefathers, they were matters of small account and did no great harm; unless, indeed, it be that he introduced innovations contrary to our usage, by assuming of his own accord, as I have said, titles of office, substituting himself for Macrinus in the consulate without being elected, and so forth.

He wedded Cornelia Paula, desiring, as he said, to become a father quickly; he, who was not so much as a man. At the celebration of these nuptials, not the senate and the knights alone, but even the wives of the senators received liberal presents. There was a banquet for the populace which cost 150 drachmæ, and one for the soldiers which cost more than 100. He also gave gladiatorial shows, at which he was present clad in the toga prætexta, and he appeared in the same garb at the votive games. He likewise caused a great number of wild beasts to be slaughtered, among the rest an elephant and fifty-one tigers, a larger number than had ever been exhibited at one time. Afterwards, having put away Paula under the pretext that she had a blemish on her body, he wedded Aquilia Severa, in open violation of the laws, for with flagrant impiety he defiled a woman who was a vestal. He was bold enough to say, “I have done it that of myself, the pontifex maximus, and of her, the vestalis maxima, divine children may be born”; nor did he hesitate to boast of these sacrilegious acts, for which he should have been first scourged with rods in the Forum and then cast into prison and put to death. Nevertheless he did not keep Severa long, but took another wife, and then another and another, after which he went back to her.

(From the Capitol)]

Among his most flagrant violations of the law was the worship of the god Elagabalus, not only by reason of the introduction of a foreign divinity into Rome and the granting of new and gorgeous honours to such a divinity, but by reason of the superiority which the emperor gave him over Jupiter; and the priesthood of Elagabalus which he caused to be bestowed upon himself, by reason of his circumcision and abstinence from pork (as though this abstinence made the worship of this god purer), and also by reason of the barbarous vestments worn by Syrian priests, in which he was often to be seen, a fact which had much to do with his surname of the Assyrian.

As the height of absurdity he bestowed a wife upon Elagabalus, as though the god had need of a wife and children. Moreover, since this wife ought not to be poor or of humble birth, he chose the Urania of Carthage, had the goddess brought from thence, established her in the palace, and exacted wedding gifts for her from all the subjects of his empire, as he had done for his own wives.

Nevertheless this Sardanapalus, who must needs unite the gods by regular marriages, himself led the most irregular of lives. He married several wives, and had relations with many other women with whom he formed no legal tie.

Such was his conduct to all who had to do with him; yet this did not prevent him from playing the part of a bride to a favourite, by name Hierocles, on whom he wished to bestow the title of cæsar, himself being called imperatrix. Being opposed by his grandmother in this design, he broke out into threats against her, and by his shameful conduct no less than for other reasons incurred the hatred of the soldiery. These extravagances were the cause of his ruin.

He was destined soon to receive the due reward of his infamy. By the things he did and suffered to be done he brought upon himself the hatred of the people and of the soldiers, the main prop of his throne, and was finally assassinated by them in his own camp. The thing came to pass on this fashion. He had brought his cousin Bassianus into the senate, and, taking his place beside Mæsa and Soæmias, he adopted him as his son; he boasted of his good fortune in having become all at once the father of such a child, as though he himself were already far more advanced in years, and he declared that he had no need of any other son, since his house was henceforth safe from extinction. Elagabalus himself had commanded him to take this course and to bestow on his cousin the name of Alexander. For my own part I am convinced that these occurrences were actually the work of a god, not because of the emperor’s words but because of the saying that one Alexander, from Emesa, would succeed him, and also because of what took place in Upper Mysia and in Thrace.

Shortly before this time a genius appeared, I know not how, in the countries about the Ister, claiming to be the celebrated Alexander of Macedon, and bearing the form and all the equipments of that prince. Starting thence he traversed Mœsia and Thrace after the manner of Bacchus, accompanied by four hundred men, armed with thyrsi and wearing goatskins. They did no harm, and, as those who then dwelt in Thrace are convinced, everything was supplied them, both lodging and provisions, at the expense of the cities; for no one dared oppose him either by word or deed, neither chief, nor soldier, nor procurator, nor provincial governor; and in open daylight, as he had announced, he advanced in procession as far as Byzantium. Thence, returning upon his footsteps, he crossed over into Chalcedon, and there, having performed certain sacrifices by night and buried a wooden horse in the ground, he disappeared. These facts I learned in Asia, as I have said, before anything was done at Rome with regard to Bassianus.

As long as Sardanapalus loved his cousin he himself remained alive, but when he began to suspect all men and learned that popular favour was turning towards Alexander, he changed his purpose and did all he could to get rid of him. He was not only unsuccessful in an attempt to destroy him, but came near to perishing himself, for Alexander was jealously guarded by his mother, his grandmother, and the soldiery. The prætorian guards, becoming aware of his intentions, stirred up a fearful riot, which did not cease until Sardanapalus, coming into the camp with Alexander, appealed to them with urgent entreaties, yielded up, under compulsion, the companions of his debaucheries whose death they demanded, only pleading piteously in favour of Hierocles, and finally succeeded in mollifying them.

Afterwards, having again laid snares for Alexander, and having gone with the latter to the camp to appease a tumult which had been excited among the prætorians by this attempt, he perceived that they were watching him with intent to put him to death, and strove to flee while his mother and Alexander’s, more openly at strife than before, were endeavouring to excite the soldiers. He tried to escape by hiding in a chest, but was caught and slain at the age of eighteen. His mother perished with him. Their heads were cut off and their bodies stripped of their ornaments and dragged through the streets of the city; then that of the woman was cast forth unburied, and that of Sardanapalus thrown into the Tiber. The god Elagabalus was banished from Rome.[e] The administration has not suffered greatly through Elagabalus, for while he abandoned himself to his sensual worship, he left the government in the hands of his prudent grandmother Mæsa.[a]

ALEXANDER SEVERUS (M. AURELIUS ALEXANDER SEVERUS), 222-235 A.D.

[Sidenote: [222-232 A.D.]]

Both the senate and the army joyfully concurred in the elevation of Alexander Severus; and the former body, lest any competitor should appear, hastened to confer on him all the imperial titles and powers. On account of his youth and his extremely amiable disposition he was entirely directed by his grandmother and mother, but Mæsa dying soon after his accession, the sole direction of her son fell to Mamæa. [The statues and coins of this woman show that she was a pagan, though the contrary has been inferred from the correspondence with Origen.] Nevertheless in her guidance of public affairs she exhibited a spirit of wisdom, justice, and moderation such as had not appeared in any preceding empress. Her enemies laid to her charge the love of power and the love of money, and blamed her son for deferring too much to her; but their accusations are vague, and no act of cruelty caused by avarice stains the annals of this reign.

The first care of Mamæa was to form a wise and upright council for her son. Sixteen of the most respectable of the senate, with the learned Ulpian, the prætorian prefect, at their head, composed this council, and nothing was ever done without their consent and approbation. A general system of reformation was commenced and steadily pursued. All the absurd acts of the late tyrant were reversed. His god was sent back to Emesa; the statues of the other deities were restored to their temples; the ministers of his vices and pleasures were sold or banished, some of the worst were drowned; the unworthy persons whom he had placed in public situations were dismissed, and men of knowledge and probity put in their places.

Mamæa used the utmost care to keep away from her son all those persons by whom his morals might be corrupted, and in order to have his time fully occupied she induced him to devote the greater part of each day to the administration of justice, where none but the wise and good would be his associates. The good seed fortunately fell into a kindly soil. Alexander was naturally disposed to every virtue, and all his efforts were directed to the promotion of the welfare of the empire over which he ruled.

The first ten years of the reign of this prince were passed at Rome and devoted to civil occupations. His daily course of life has been thus transmitted to us. He usually rose early and entered his private chapel (_lararium_), in which he had caused to be placed the images of those who had been teachers and benefactors of the human race, among whom he included the divine founder of the Christian religion. Having performed his devotions he took some kind of exercise, and then applied himself for some hours to public business with his council. He then read for some time, his favourite works being the _Republics_ of Plato and Cicero, and the verses of Horace, and the _Life of Alexander the Great_, whom he greatly admired. Gymnastic exercises, in which he excelled, succeeded. He then was anointed and bathed, and took a light breakfast, usually of bread, milk, and eggs. In the afternoon he was attended by his secretaries, and he heard his letters read and signed the answers to them. The business of the day being concluded, his friends in general were admitted, and a frugal and simple dinner followed, at which the conversation was mostly of a serious instructive nature, or some literary work was read out to the emperor and his guests.

The dress of Alexander was plain and simple, his manners were free from all pride and haughtiness; he lived with the senators on a footing of friendly equality, like Augustus, Vespasian, and the wiser and better emperors. He was liberal and generous to all orders of the people, and he took an especial pleasure in assisting those persons of good family who had fallen into poverty without reproach. Among the virtues of Alexander was the somewhat rare one in that age of chastity. His mother early caused him to espouse a lady of noble birth named Memnia, whom however he afterwards divorced and even banished to Africa. The accounts of this affair differ greatly. According to one, the father of the empress formed a conspiracy against his son-in-law, which being discovered, he was put to death and his daughter divorced. Others say that as Alexander showed great respect for his father-in-law, Mamæa’s jealousy was excited, and she caused him to be slain and his daughter to be divorced or banished. It appears that Alexander soon married again.

We have already observed that a portion of the civil jurisdiction had fallen to the prætorian prefects. This imposed a necessity that one of them should be a civilian, and Mamæa had therefore caused this dignity to be conferred on Ulpian. From the love of law and order which distinguished this prefect, he naturally sought to bring back discipline in the prætorian camp; the consequence was that repeated attempts were made on his life, and the emperor more than once found it necessary to cast his purple over him to save him from the fury of the soldiers. At length (228) they fell on him in the night; he escaped from them to the palace, but they pursued and slaughtered him in the presence of the emperor and his mother.

Some slight actions on the German and Moorish frontiers were the only occupation given to the Roman arms during the early years of the reign of Alexander, but in the year 232 so powerful an enemy menaced the oriental provinces of the empire, that the presence of the emperor became absolutely requisite in the East.

The Parthians, whom we have had such frequent occasion to mention, are said to have been a Scythian (_i.e._, Turkish) people of the north of Persia, who, taking advantage of the declining power of the Macedonian kings of Syria, cast off their yoke (250 B.C.), and then gradually made themselves masters of the whole of Persia. Their dominion had now lasted for five hundred years, and their power had from the usual causes, such as family dissensions, contested successions, and such like, been long on the decline; and in the fourth year of Alexander Severus (226) a native Persian, named Artaxerxes (Ardashir), who pretended to be of the ancient royal line but who is said to have been of humble birth and a mere soldier of fortune, raised a rebellion against the Parthian king, Artabanus. Fortune favoured the rebel, and Artabanus was defeated and slain. Artaxerxes then assumed the tiara, and his line, which existed till the Mohammedan conquest, was named the Sassanian, from the name of his father.

[Sidenote: [232-235 A.D.]]

Affecting to be the descendant of the ancient Achæmenians, Artaxerxes sought to restore Persia to its condition under those princes. The Magian or Light religion resumed the rank from which it had fallen under the sway of the Parthians, and flourished in its pristine glory. As the dominions of the house of Cyrus had extended to the coasts of the Ægean Sea, Artaxerxes ordered the Romans to quit Asia, and when his mandate was unheeded he led his troops over the Tigris. But his ill fortune induced him to attack the invincible Atræ, and he was forced to retire with loss and disgrace. He then turned his arms against the Medes and some other of the more northern tribes, and when he had reduced them he again invaded Mesopotamia (232). Alexander now resolved to take the command of his troops in person. He left Rome, followed by the tears and prayers of the people, and proceeded through Illyricum to the East. On his march the strictest discipline was maintained, while every attention was paid to the wants of the soldiers and care taken that they should be abundantly supplied with clothes and arms. The emperor himself used the same fare as the men, and he caused his tent to be thrown open when he was at his meals that they might perceive his mode of life.

Alexander halted at Antioch to make preparations for the war; meantime he sent an embassy with proposals of peace to Artaxerxes. The Persian in return sent four hundred of his most stately men splendidly clothed and armed to order the Romans to quit Asia; and if we can believe Herodian (for the circumstance is almost incredible), Alexander was so regardless of the laws of nations as to seize and strip them, and send them prisoners to Phrygia. It is also said that while he was at Antioch, finding that some of the soldiers frequented the Paphian grove of Daphne, he cast them into prison; and that when a mutiny broke out in the legion to which they belonged, he ascended his tribunal, had the prisoners brought before him, and addressed their comrades, who stood around in arms, dwelling on the necessity of maintaining discipline. But when his arguments proved of no effect, and they even menaced him with their arms, he cried out, in imitation of Cæsar, “Quirites, depart, and lay down your arms.” The legion obeyed, and the men, no longer soldiers, took up their abode in the houses of the town instead of the camp. After a month the emperor was prevailed on to pardon them, but he punished their tribunes with death; and this legion was henceforth equally distinguished by valour and fidelity.

In imitation of Alexander the Great, the emperor formed six of his legions into a phalanx of thirty thousand men, to whom he gave higher pay. He also had, like that conqueror, bodies of men distinguished by gold-adorned and silver-adorned shields--chrysoaspids and argyroaspids.

The details of the war cannot be learned with any certainty. One historian says that Alexander made three divisions of his army; one of which was to enter Media through Armenia, another Persia at the junction of the Tigris and Euphrates, while the emperor was in person to lead the third through Mesopotamia, and all were to join in the enemy’s country; but that, owing to the timidity of Alexander, who loitered on the way, the second division was cut to pieces, and the first nearly all perished while retreating through Armenia in the winter. This account labours under many difficulties; for the emperor certainly triumphed on his return to Rome; and in his speech to the senate on that occasion he asserted that of 700 war elephants which were in the enemy’s array he had killed 200, and taken 300; of 1000 scythed chariots he had taken 200; and of 120,000 heavy-armed horsemen he had slain 10,000, besides taking a great number of prisoners.[c] Notwithstanding this report to the senate, the Romans were probably beaten in this war, though the Persians likewise suffered great loss. The latter made no further attempts on Mesopotamia for some years.[a]

The Germans had taken advantage of the absence of the emperor and the greater part of the troops in the East, to pass the Rhine and ravage Gaul. Alexander therefore, leaving sufficient garrisons in Syria, led home the Illyrian and other legions, and having celebrated a triumph for the Persian War at Rome, where he was received with the most abundant demonstrations of joy, he departed with a large army for the defence of Gaul. The Germans retired at his approach; he advanced to the Rhine and took up his winter quarters in the neighbourhood of Mogontiacum (Mainz), with the intention of opening the campaign beyond the river in the spring (235).

The narratives of the events of this reign are so very discordant that we cannot hope often to arrive at the real truth. In no part are they more at variance than in their account of the circumstances of the emperor’s death. We can only collect that, whether from his efforts to restore discipline, from the intrigues of Maximin, an ambitious officer who had the charge of disciplining the young troops, or from some other cause, a general discontent prevailed in the army, and that Alexander was assassinated in his tent, either by his own guards or by a party sent for the purpose by Maximin, and that his mother and several of his friends perished with him. The troops forthwith proclaimed Maximin emperor, and the senate and people of Rome, deeply lamenting the fate of the virtuous Alexander, were forced to acquiesce in the choice of the army.

Alexander had reigned thirteen years. Even the historian least partial to him acknowledges that towards his subjects his conduct was blameless, and that no bloodshed or unjust condemnations stain the annals of his reign. His fault seems to have been a certain degree of effeminacy and weakness, the consequence probably of his Syrian origin, which led to his extreme submission to his mother, against whom the charges of avarice and meanness are not perhaps wholly unfounded.[45]

Dion Cassius, whose history ends with this reign, gives the following view of the numbers and disposition of the legions, at this period. Of the twenty-five which were formed by Augustus, only nineteen remained, the rest having been broken or distributed through the others; but the emperors, from Nero to Severus inclusive, had formed thirteen new ones, and the whole now amounted to thirty-two legions. Of these, three were in Britain, one in Upper and two in Lower Germany, one in Italy, one in Spain, one in Numidia, one in Arabia, two in Palestine, one in Phœnicia, two in Syria, two in Mesopotamia, two in Cappadocia, two in Lower and one in Upper Mœsia, two in Dacia, and four in Pannonia, one in Noricum, and one in Rætia. He does not tell us where the two remaining ones were quartered, neither does he give the number of men in a legion at this time, but it is conjectured to have been five thousand.[c]

RENAN’S CHARACTERISATION OF THE PERIOD

[Sidenote: [180-235 A.D.]]

On principles less disastrous than those of unbridled military despotism, the empire might have survived the ruin of the Roman spirit in the death of Marcus Aurelius, might have given peace to Christianity a century earlier and have avoided the streams of blood shed to no purpose by Decius and Diocletian. The part of the Roman aristocracy was played out; after having worn folly threadbare in the first century, it had worn virtue threadbare in the second. But the hidden forces of the great Mediterranean confederacy were not exhausted. Thus, after the downfall of the political edifice founded on the sovereignty of the family of Augustus, a provincial dynasty, that of the Flavians, was found to restore the empire, even as after the downfall of the edifice built up by the adoptions of the Roman aristocracy, there were found provincials, Orientals and Syrians, to restore the great association in which all men found peace and profit. Septimius Severus did, without moral grandeur but not without glory, what Vespasian had done.

It is true that the representatives of this new dynasty are not to be compared to the great emperors of the second century. Even Alexander Severus, who equals Antoninus and Marcus in kindliness, is very inferior to them in intelligence and greatness of soul. The principles of the government are detestable; men outbid one another for the favour of the legions; a price is set on mutiny; none approaches the soldier except with purse in hand. Military despotism never took a more shameless form; but military despotism can be long-lived.

Side by side with hideous spectacles, under the Syrian emperors, what reforms do we find! What progress in legislation! What a day was that when, under Caracalla, all free men dwelling within the empire attained equal rights!

We must not exaggerate the advantages offered by such equality; yet in politics words are never wholly void of meaning. Many excellent things had been inherited. The philosophers of the school of Marcus Aurelius had disappeared, but their place was taken by the masters of jurisprudence. Papinian, Ulpian, Paul, Gaius, Modestinus, Florentinus, Marcian, during years of execrable evil, created masterpieces and actually brought the law of the future into being. The Syrian emperors, though far inferior to Trajan and to the Antonines as far as political traditions are concerned, inasmuch as they were not Romans and had none of the Roman prejudices, often give proof of an openness of mind which would have been impossible to the great emperors of the second century, all of whom were intensely conservative. They permitted and even encouraged colleges or syndicates. They went to extreme lengths in this matter, and they would have organised the trade guilds as castes with a distinctive garb. They flung the doors of the empire wide open. One of them, that noble and pathetic figure Alexander Severus, the son of Mamæa, almost equalled in his plebeian goodness the patrician virtues of the great age; the loftiest ideas pale before the honest effusions of his heart.

It was in religion above all that these Syrian emperors inaugurated a liberality of mind and a tolerance unknown before.[46] The Syrian women of Emesa, Julia Domna, Julia Mæsa, Julia Mamæa, Julia Soæmias, beautiful, intelligent, venturous to the point of utopianism, are hampered by no tradition or conventionality. They dared to do what no Roman woman had ever done; they entered the senate, took part in its deliberations, and practically governed the empire, dreaming of Semiramis and Nitocris. It was a thing that such a woman as Faustina would not have done for all her frivolity; she would have been checked by tact, by the sense of absurdity, by the rules of good Roman society. The Syrian women hesitated at nothing. They had a senate of women, which enacted every sort of absurdity. The Roman religion seemed to them cold and meaningless. They had no family reasons for attachment to it, and being more in harmony, imaginatively, with Christianity than with Italian paganism, they delighted in the tales of the travels of gods upon the earth. Philostratus enchanted them with his _Apollonius_; perhaps they had a secret leaning towards Christianity.

During this time the last noble ladies of the older society, such as the elderly daughter of Marcus Aurelius, honoured by all men and put to death by Caracalla, lived in obscurity, looking on at an orgy which formed so strange a contrast to the memories of their youth.

The provinces, and those of the East more particularly, which were far more active and enlightened than those of the West, gained a decided ascendency. Elagabalus was certainly a madman, but nevertheless his chimerical idea of a central monotheistic religion, established in Rome and absorbing all others, shows that the narrow circle of Antonine conceptions had been to a great extent broken through. Mamæa and Alexander Severus were to go further; whilst the jurisconsults continued to transcribe their old and ferocious maxims against liberty of conscience with the calmness of habit, the Syrian emperor and his mother studied Christianity, and manifested sympathy with it. Not content with granting security to the Christians, Alexander, with touching eclecticism, introduced the name of Jesus among his household gods. Peace seemed made, not, as under Constantine, by the abasement of one party, but by a generous reconciliation. In all this there was certainly a daring attempt at reform, inferior in rationality to that of the Antonines, but more likely to succeed because it was much more popular and took the provinces and the East more into account.

In such a democratic work, people with no ancestors, such as these Africans and Syrians, had more chance of success than rigid men of irreproachable bearing, like the aristocratic emperors. But the innate viciousness of the imperial system revealed itself for the tenth time. Alexander Severus was assassinated by the soldiers on the 19th of March, 235. It was clear that the army would tolerate none but tyrants. The empire had fallen successively from the Roman aristocracy to provincial officers, now it passed to subordinate officers and military assassins. Whereas, until the time of Commodus, the murdered emperors are intolerable monsters, it is now the good emperor, the man who desires to restore some kind of discipline and represses the crimes of the army, who is inevitably marked for death.[j] Still, it cannot be denied that there was need of strong, able commanders on the eve of the barbarian invasions. With all his virtues, Alexander was a weakling, unfit to rule at such a time. With his death the military revolution entered upon a third stage. It became more than ever necessary to strengthen the imperial office, because, it having been decided that the emperor should be a soldier, the choice of the soldiers, rival claimants of the office were threatening, by their civil strife, to break up the Roman world into a multitude of warring states.[a]

FOOTNOTES

[41] Herodian[d] tells us of a list of those destined to be put to death taken by a child, and read by Marcia, as in the case of Domitian. But he is a very inaccurate writer, and Dion[e], who was a senator and in Rome at the time, could hardly have been ignorant of the circumstance if it were true.

[42] [During this reign the disciplined legions under able commanders still protected the frontiers. Most of the empire was peaceful and prosperous. The government still carried on great public works and benevolently succoured the afflicted. The Christians were tolerated, and those of the sect who were in prison were released. The great official machine was little disturbed by the caprices of the emperor.]

[43] Severus, not content with expressing his veneration and respect for the memory of M. Aurelius, had the folly to pretend to be his son. “What most amazed us,” says Dion,[e] “was his saying that he was the son of Marcus and brother of Commodus.”

[44] [Tarantus was a nickname given to Caracalla after his death. It was the name of a gladiator of ignoble aspect.]

[45] _The Life of Alexander_, by Lampridius, in the _Augustan History_,[f] is, as Gibbon observes, “the mere idea of a perfect prince, an awkward imitation of the Cyropædia.” [The best rulers had to bear the charge of avarice.]

[46] [The substitution of the Syro-Phœnician sun-god by Elagabalus naturally recalls the monotheistic reformation of Amenhotep IV (Khun-aten) in Egypt more than sixteen centuries before. In Amenhotep’s day, Syrian influence predominated at the Egyptian court, as it did at Rome in the beginning of the third century A.D. That the culminating result of this should have been so much the same in both cases is a matter that seems to call for at least passing notice.]