Chapter XL: Confusion Worse Confounded: the Second Half of the Third (2)

Immediately on his election Aurelian hastened to Rome, whence he was speedily recalled to Pannonia by the intelligence of an irruption of the Goths. A great battle was fought, which was terminated by night without any decisive advantage on either side. Next day the Goths retired over the river and sent proposals of peace, which was cheerfully accorded, and for many years no hostilities of any account occurred between the Goths and Romans. But while Aurelian was thus occupied in Pannonia, the Alamanni, with a force of forty thousand horse and eighty thousand foot, had passed the Alps and spread their ravages to the Po. Instead of following them into Italy, Aurelian, learning that they were on their return home with their booty, marched along the Danube to intercept their retreat, and attacking them unawares, he reduced them to such straits that they sent to sue for peace.

The emperor received the envoys at the head of his legions, surrounded by his principal officers. After a silence of some moments they spoke by their interpreter, saying that it was the desire of peace and not the fear of war that had brought them thither. They spoke of the uncertainty of war, and enlarged on the number of their forces. As a condition of peace they required the usual presents, and the same annual payments in silver and gold that they had had before the war. Aurelian replied in a long speech, the sum of which was that nothing short of unconditional surrender would be accepted. The envoys returning to their countrymen reported the ill success of their embassy, and forthwith the army turned back and re-entered Italy. Aurelian followed and came up with them at Placentia. The Alamanni, who had stationed themselves in the woods, fell suddenly on the legions in the dusk of the evening, and nothing but the firmness and skill of the emperor saved the Romans from a total overthrow. A second battle was fought near Fanum in Umbria, on the spot where Hannibal’s brother Hasdrubal was defeated and slain five hundred years before. The Alamanni were totally routed, and a concluding victory at Ticinum delivered Italy from their ravages. Aurelian pursued the barbarians beyond the Alps, and then turned to Pannonia, which the Vandals had invaded. He engaged and defeated them (271). They sent to sue for peace, and he referred the matter to his soldiers, who loudly expressed their desire for an accommodation. The Vandals gave the children of their two kings and of their principal nobles for hostages, and Aurelian took two thousand of them into his service.

AURELIAN WALLS ROME AND INVADES THE EAST

[Sidenote: [267-271 A.D.]]

There had been some seditions at Rome during the time of the Alamannian War, and Aurelian on his return to the capital acted with great severity, and even cruelty, in punishing those engaged in them. He is accused of having put to death senators of high rank on the slightest evidence, and for the most trifling offences. Aware, too, that neither Alps nor Apennines could now check the barbarians, he resolved to put Rome into a posture to stand a siege, and he commenced the erection of massive walls around it, which, when completed by his successors, formed a circuit of twenty-one miles, and yielded a striking proof of the declining strength of the empire.

Aurelian, victorious against the barbarians, had still two rivals to subdue before he could be regarded as perfect master of the empire. Tetricus was acknowledged in Gaul, Spain, and Britain; Zenobia, the widow of Odenathus, ruled the East. It is uncertain against which he first turned his arms, but as the greater number of writers give the priority to the Syrian War, we will here follow their example.

Odenathus and his eldest son Herod were treacherously slain by his nephew Mæonius; but Zenobia, the widow of the murdered prince, speedily punished the traitor, and then held the government in the name of her remaining sons. This extraordinary woman claimed a descent from the Ptolemies of Egypt. In her person she displayed the beauty of the East, being of a clear dark complexion, with pearly white teeth and brilliant black eyes. Her voice was strong and harmonious; she spoke the Greek, Syrian, and Egyptian languages, and understood the Latin. She was fond of study, but at the same time she loved vigorous exercises; and she accompanied her husband to the chase of the lion, the panther, and the other wild beasts of the wood and desert, and by her counsels and her vigour of mind she greatly contributed to his success in war. To these manly qualities was united a chastity rarely to be found in the East. Viewing the union of the sexes as the appointed means of continuing the species, Zenobia would admit the embraces of her husband only in order to have offspring. She was temperate and sober, yet when needful she could quaff wine with her generals, and even vanquish in the combats of the table the wine-loving Persians and Armenians. As a sovereign Zenobia was severe or clement as the occasion required; she was frugal of her treasure beyond what was ordinary with a woman, but when her affairs called for liberality no one dispensed them more freely.

After the death of Odenathus, which occurred in the year 267, Zenobia styled her three sons Augusti, but she held the government in her own hands; she bore the title of Queen of the East, wore royal robes and the diadem, caused herself to be adored in the oriental fashion, and put the years of her reign on her coins. She defeated an army sent against her by Gallienus; she made herself mistress of Egypt, and her rule extended northwards as far as the confines of Bithynia.

Aurelian on passing over to Asia reduced to order the province of Bithynia. The city of Tyana in Cappadocia resisted him, but the treachery of one of its inhabitants put it into his hands. He pardoned the people, and he abandoned the traitor to the just indignation of the soldiers. On the banks of the Orontes he encountered the troops of the Queen of the East.[c] Let us turn to Zosimus for an account of what then took place:

ZOSIMUS DESCRIBES THE DEFEAT OF ZENOBIA

[Sidenote: [271-273 A.D.]]

Aurelian observing that the Palmyrenian cavalry placed great confidence in their armour, which was very strong and secure, and that they were much better horsemen than his soldiers, he planted his infantry by themselves on the other side the Orontes. He charged the cavalry not to engage immediately with the vigorous cavalry of the Palmyrenians, but to wait for their attack, and then, pretending to fly, to continue so doing until they had wearied both the men and their horses through excess of heat and the weight of their armour; so that they could pursue them no longer. This project succeeded, and as soon as the cavalry of the emperor saw their enemy tired and their horses scarcely able to stand under them, or themselves to move, they drew up the reins of their horses, and, wheeling round, charged them, and trod them under foot as they fell from their horses. By which means the slaughter was promiscuous, some falling by the sword and others by their own and the enemy’s horses.

After this defeat, the remains of the enemy fled into Antioch. Labdas, the general of Zenobia, fearing that the Antiochians on hearing of it should mutiny, chose a man resembling the emperor, and clothing him in a dress such as Aurelian was accustomed to wear, led him through the city as if he had taken the emperor prisoner. By this contrivance he imposed on the Antiochians, stole out of the city by night, and took with him Zenobia with the remainder of the army to Emesa. In the meantime the emperor was intent on his affairs, and as soon as it was day called the foot soldiers around him, intending to attack the defeated enemy on both sides; but, hearing of the escape of Zenobia, he entered Antioch, where he was joyfully received by the citizens. Finding that many had left the city, under apprehensions that they should suffer for having espoused the party of Zenobia, he published edicts in every place to recall them, and told them that such events had happened more through necessity than of his own inclination. When this was known to the fugitives they returned in crowds and were kindly received by the emperor, who, having arranged affairs in that city, proceeded to Emesa.

Finding that a party of the Palmyrenians had got possession of a hill above the suburbs of Daphne, thinking that its steepness would enable them to obstruct the enemy’s passage, he commanded his soldiers to march with their bucklers so near to each other, and in so compact a form, as to keep off any darts and stones that might be thrown at them. This being observed, as soon as they ascended the hill, being in all points equal to their adversaries, they put them to flight in such disorder that some of them were dashed in pieces from the precipices, and others slaughtered in the pursuit by those that were on the hill and those that were mounting it. Having gained the victory, they marched on with great satisfaction at the success of the emperor, who was liberally entertained at Apamea, Larissa, and Arethusa. Finding the Palmyrenian army drawn up before Emesa, amounting to seventy thousand men, consisting of Palmyrenians and their allies, he opposed to them the Dalmatian cavalry, the Mœsians and Pannonians, and the Celtic legions of Noricum and Rætia, and besides these the choicest of the imperial regiment selected man by man, the Mauretanian horse, the Tyanæans, the Mesopotamians, the Syrians, the Phœnicians, and the Palestinians, all men of acknowledged valour; the Palestinians besides other arms wielding clubs and staves.

At the commencement of the engagement the Roman cavalry receded, lest the Palmyrenians, who exceeded them in number and were better horsemen, should by some stratagem surround the Roman army. But the Palmyrenian cavalry pursued them so fiercely, though their ranks were broken, that the event was quite contrary to the expectation of the Roman cavalry. For they were pursued by an enemy much their superior in strength, and therefore most of them fell. The foot had to bear the brunt of the action. Observing that the Palmyrenians had broken their ranks when the horse commenced their pursuit, they wheeled about, and attacked them while they were scattered and out of order. Upon which many were killed, because the one side fought with the usual weapons, while those of Palestine brought clubs and staves against coats of mail made of iron and brass. The Palmyrenians therefore ran away with the utmost precipitation, and in their flight trod each other to pieces, as if the enemy did not make sufficient slaughter; the field was filled with dead men and horses, whilst the few that could escape took refuge in the city.

Zenobia was not a little disturbed by this defeat, and therefore consulted on what measures to adopt. It was the opinion of all her friends that it would be prudent to relinquish all pretensions to Emesa, because the Emesenians were disaffected towards her and friendly to the Romans. They advised her to remain within Palmyra, and when they were in security in that strong city, they would deliberate at leisure on their important affairs. This was no sooner proposed than done, with the concurrence of the whole assembly. Aurelian, upon hearing of the flight of Zenobia, entered Emesa, where he was cordially welcomed by the citizens, and found a treasure which Zenobia could not carry along with her. He then marched immediately to Palmyra, which he invested on every side, while his troops were supplied with provisions of every kind by the neighbouring country.

THE FALL OF PALMYRA

[Sidenote: [273 A.D.]]

Meantime [continues Zosimus] the Palmyrenians only derided the Romans, as if they thought it impossible for them to take the city; and one man spoke in very indecent terms of the emperor’s own person. Upon this, a Persian who stood by the emperor said, “If you will allow me, sir, you shall see me kill that insolent soldier,” to which the emperor consented, and the Persian, placing himself behind some other men that he might not be seen, shot at the man while in the act of looking over the battlements, and hit him whilst still uttering his insulting language, so that he fell down from the wall before the soldiers and the emperor. The besieged however still held out, in hopes that the enemy would withdraw for want of provisions, and persisted in their resolution, until they were themselves without necessaries. They then called a council, in which it was determined to fly to the Euphrates, and request aid of the Persians against the Romans. Having thus determined, they set Zenobia on a female camel, which is the swiftest of that kind of animals, and much more swift than horses, and conveyed her out of the city.

Aurelian was much displeased at the escape of Zenobia; and therefore exerted all his industry to send out horsemen in pursuit of her. They succeeded in taking her, as she was crossing the Euphrates in a boat, and brought her to Aurelian. Though much pleased at this sight, yet being of an ambitious disposition, he became uneasy at the reflection that in future ages it would not redound to his honour to have conquered a woman. Meantime some of the Palmyrenians, that were shut up in the town, resolved to expose themselves courageously, and to hazard their being made captives in defence of their city. While others on the contrary employed humble and submissive gestures from the walls, and entreated pardon for what was past. The emperor accepting these tokens, and commanding them to fear nothing, they poured out of the town with presents and sacrifices in their hands. Aurelian paid due respect to the holy things, received their gifts, and sent them away without injury.

But having made himself master of the city, with all the treasure it contained, he returned to Emesa, where he brought Zenobia and her accomplices to a judiciary trial. Zenobia coming into court pleaded strongly in excuse of herself, and produced many persons, who had seduced her as a simple woman, and among the rest Longinus, whose writings are highly beneficial to all lovers of learning. Being found guilty of the crimes laid to his charge, he received from the emperor sentence of death, which he bore with so much courage as to console his friends, who were much concerned at his misfortunes. Several besides Longinus suffered upon the accusation of Zenobia.

I cannot here omit to mention [Zosimus continues] what happened before the ruin of Palmyra, though I profess only to write a transient history. For as Polybius informs us by what means the Romans in a short space of time attained a vast empire, it is my purpose to show, on the other hand, that by their ill management in as short a time they lost it. But I am now speaking of the Palmyrenians who, having as I related acquired a large portion of the Roman Empire, were warned by several declarations from the gods of the overthrow which they afterwards sustained. For example, at Seleucia in Cilicia there was a temple of Apollo (called there Sarpedonius) and in that temple an oracle. It is reported of this deity that he used to give to those that were infested with locusts a species of birds, called seleuciades, which used to hover about his temple, and would send them along with any that desired it; that these birds would fly amongst the locusts, catch them in their mouths, and in a moment destroy a vast number of them, thus delivering the people from the mischief they produced. This I ascribe to the felicity of that age; our own generation has not merited such kindness from heaven.[48] The Palmyrenians, having consulted this oracle, to learn if they should ever gain the empire of the East, received this answer:

“Accursed race! avoid my sacred fane,
Whose treach’rous deeds the angry gods disdain.”

And some persons inquiring there concerning the success of the expedition of Aurelian against the Palmyrenians, the gods told them,

“One falcon many doves commands, whose end
On his destructive pounces must depend.”

Another story was likewise much circulated of the Palmyrenians. Between Heliopolis and Byblus is a place called Aphaca, where is a temple dedicated to Venus Aphacitis, and near it a pond resembling an artificial cistern. Here is frequently seen, near the temple and in the adjacent places, a fire in the air, resembling a lamp, of a round figure, which has appeared even in our time, as often as people have assembled there on particular days. Whoever resorted hither, brought to the pond some offering for the goddess, either in gold, silver, linen, silk, or anything of like value. If she accepted it, the cloth sunk to the bottom, like substances of greater weight; but if rejected, they would float on the water; and not only cloth and such substances, but even gold, silver, or any other of those materials which usually sink. For an experiment of this miracle, the Palmyrenians, in the year before their overthrow, assembled on a festival, and threw into the pond several presents of gold, silver, and cloth, in honour of the goddess, all of which sank to the bottom. In the following year, at the same festival, they were all seen floating on the surface; by which the goddess foretold what would happen. In this manner was the regard of heaven shown to the Romans, so long as they kept up their sacred rites. But it is my lot to speak of these times, wherein the Roman Empire degenerated to a species of barbarity, and fell to decay.[d]

AURELIAN QUELLS REVOLTS; ATTEMPTS REFORMS; IS MURDERED

[Sidenote: [273-274 A.D.]]

Aurelian had passed the Bosporus on his return to Rome when intelligence reached him that the Palmyrenians had risen on and massacred the small garrison he had left in their city. He instantly retraced his steps, arrived at Antioch before it was known that he had set out, hastened to Palmyra, took the city, and massacred men, women, and children, citizens and peasants, without distinction. As he was on his way back to Europe, news came that Egypt had revolted and made a wealthy merchant named Firmus emperor, and that the export of corn to Rome had been stopped. The indefatigable Aurelian soon appeared on the banks of the Nile, defeated the usurper, and took and put him to death.

The overthrow of Tetricus left Aurelian without a rival. Tetricus, it is said, was so wearied with the state of thraldom in which he was held by his mutinous troops, that he secretly wrote to Aurelian to come to his deliverance. When the emperor entered Gaul, Tetricus found it necessary to affect the alacrity of one determined to conquer or die; but when the armies encountered in the territory of the Catalauni on the plains of Châlons, he betrayed his troops, and deserted in the very commencement of the battle. His legions fought, notwithstanding, with desperation, and perished nearly to a man.

Victorious over all his rivals and all the enemies of Rome, Aurelian celebrated a triumph with unusual magnificence. Wild beasts of various kinds, troops of gladiators, and bands of captives of many nations opened the procession. Tetricus and his son walked, clad in the Gallic habit; Zenobia also moved on foot covered with jewels and bound with golden chains, which were borne up by slaves. The splendid cars of Odenathus and Zenobia, and one the gift of the Persian king to the emperor, preceded the chariot drawn by four stags, once the car of a Gothic king, in which Aurelian himself rode. The senate, the people, the army, horse and foot, succeeded; and it was late in the day when the monarch reached the Capitol.

The view of a Roman senator led in triumph in the person of Tetricus (an act of which there was no example), cast a gloom over the minds of the senators. The insult, if intended for such, ended however with the procession. Aurelian made him governor of the southern part of Italy, and honoured him with his friendship. He also bestowed on the Palmyrenian queen an estate at Tibur, where she lived many years, and her daughters matched into some of the noblest Roman families.

[Sidenote: [274-275 A.D.]]

The improvement of the city by useful public works, the establishment of daily distributions of bread and pork to the people, and the burning of all accounts of moneys due to the treasury, were measures calculated to gain Aurelian the popular favour. But a reformation of the coinage became the cause or pretext of an insurrection, the quelling of which cost him the lives of seven thousand of his veteran soldiers. [Aurelian had attempted to put the depreciated currency on a sound basis. He restored the aurene to its normal weight of one-fiftieth of a pound, made the imperial gold piece the standard, and took from the senate, and from all cities except Alexandria, the right of coinage.] The senators must have been implicated in the insurrection, for Aurelian’s vengeance fell heavily on the whole body of the nobility. Numbers of them were cast into prison, and several were executed.

Aurelian quitted Rome once more for the East, in order to carry on war against the Persians. On the road in Thrace, having detected his private secretary Mnestheus in some act of extortion, he menaced him with his anger. Aware that he never threatened in vain, Mnestheus saw that himself or the emperor must die; he therefore, imitating Aurelian’s writing, drew up a list containing his own name and those of the principal officers of the army as marked out for death. He showed this bloody list to those who were named in it, advising them to anticipate the emperor’s cruelty. Without further inquiry they resolved on his murder, and falling on him between Byzantium and Heraclea, they despatched him with their swords.

TACITUS (M. CLAUDIUS TACITUS), 275-276 A.D.

[Sidenote: [275-276 A.D.]]

After the death of the emperor Aurelian a scene without example presented itself--an amicable strife between the senate and the army, each wishing the other to appoint an emperor, and the empire without a head and without a tumult for the greater part of a year. It originated in the following manner.

The assassins of Aurelian speedily discovered their error, and Mnestheus expiated his treason with his life. The soldiers, who lamented the emperor, would not raise to his place any of those concerned in his death, however innocently, and they wrote to the senate requesting them to appoint his successor. The senate, though gratified by the deference shown to them by the army, deemed it prudent to decline the invidious honour. The legions again pressed them, and eight months passed away in the friendly contest. At length (September 28) the consul assembled the senate and laying before them the perilous condition of the empire, called on Tacitus the first of the senate to give his opinion. But ere he could speak he was saluted emperor and augustus from all parts of the house, and after having in vain represented his unfitness for the office on account of his advanced age, he was obliged to yield to their wishes and accept the purple. The prætorian guards willingly acquiesced in the choice of the senate; and when Tacitus proceeded to the camp in Thrace, the soldiers, true to their engagement, submitted willingly to his authority.

Tacitus was now seventy-five years old. He was one of those men who were perhaps less rare at Rome than we generally imagine, who in the possession of a splendid fortune spent a life dignified by the honours of the state in the cultivation of philosophy and elegant literature. He claimed a descent from the historian of his name, whose works formed his constant study, and after his accession to the empire he directed that ten copies of them should be annually made and placed in the public libraries.

Viewing himself only as the minister of the laws and the senate, Tacitus sought to raise that body to its former consideration, by restoring the privileges of which it had been deprived. Once more it began to appoint magistrates, to hear appeals, and to give validity to the imperial edicts. But this was merely a glimpse of sunshine irradiating the decline of its greatness. In history there is no return, and the real power of the once mighty Roman senate had departed forever.

Aurelian had engaged a body of the Alani, a Sarmatian tribe who dwelt about Lake Mæotis, for the war against Persia. On the death of that emperor, and the suspension of the war, they ravaged the provinces south of the Euxine to indemnify themselves for their disappointment. Tacitus on taking the command of the army offered to make good to them the engagements contracted by his predecessor. A good number of them accepted the terms and retired, and he led the legions against the remainder, and speedily reduced them. As these military operations fell in the winter, the emperor’s constitution, enervated by age and the relaxing clime of southern Italy, proved unequal to them. His mind was also harassed by the factions which broke out in the camp and even reached his tent, and he sank under mental and corporeal suffering at Tyana on the 22nd of April, 276, after a brief reign of six months and twenty days.[49]

PROBUS (M. AURELIUS PROBUS), 276-282 A.D.

[Sidenote: [276-279 A.D.]]

On the death of Tacitus his brother Florianus claimed the empire as if fallen to him by inheritance, and the legions yielded him their obedience; but the army of the East obliged their general, Probus, to assume the purple, and a civil war commenced. The constitution of the European troops soon, however, began to give way under the heat of the sun of Asia; sickness spread among them, desertions became numerous, and when at Tarsus in Cilicia the army of Probus came to give them battle, they averted the contest by proclaiming Probus, and putting their emperor to death after a reign of less than three months.

Probus was another of those Illyrians who, born in a humble station, attained the empire by their merit, and honoured it by their virtues. He entered the army young, and speedily became distinguished for his courage and his probity. His merit did not escape the discerning eye of Valerian, who made him a tribune, though under the usual age; gave him the command of a body of auxiliary troops, and recommended him strongly to Gallienus, by whom and by the succeeding emperors he was greatly esteemed, and trusted with important commands. Aurelian rated him very highly, and is even thought to have destined him for his successor.

After the death of Florianus, Probus wrote to the senate, apologising for having accepted the empire from the hands of the soldiery, but assuring them that he would submit himself to their pleasure. A decree was unanimously passed investing him with all the imperial titles and powers. In return Probus continued to the senate the right of hearing appeals, appointing magistrates, and of giving force to his edicts by their decrees.

Tacitus had punished severely some of those concerned in the murder of Aurelian; Probus sought out and punished the remainder, but with less rigour. He exhibited no enmity toward those who had supported Florianus.

The Germans had taken advantage of the interregnum which succeeded the death of Aurelian to make a formidable irruption into Gaul, where they made themselves masters of not less than seventy cities, and were in possession of nearly the whole of the country. Probus, however, as soon as his affairs permitted (277), entered Gaul at the head of a numerous and well-appointed army. He gave the Germans several defeats, and forced them to repass the Rhine with a loss, it is said, of four hundred thousand men.[50] He pursued them over that river, and nine of their kings were obliged to come in person to sue for peace. The terms which the emperor imposed were the restoration of all their booty, the annual delivery of a large quantity of corn and cattle, and sixteen thousand men to recruit the Roman armies. These Probus distributed in parties of fifty and sixty throughout the legions, for it was his wise maxim that the aid derived from the barbarians should be felt, not seen. He also placed colonies of the Germans and other tribes in Britain, and some of the other provinces. He had further, it is said, conceived the idea of making the conquered Germans renounce the use of arms and trust for their defence to those of the Romans; but on considering the number of troops it would require he gave it up, contenting himself with making them retire behind the Nicer (Neckar) and Albis (Elbe), with building forts and towns in the country between these rivers and the Rhine, and running a wall two hundred miles in length from the Rhine to the Danube as a defence to Italy and the provinces against the Alamanni.

[Sidenote: [278-281 A.D.]]

After the conquest of the Germans the emperor led his troops into Rætia and Illyricum, where the terror of his name and his arms daunted the Goths and Sarmatians, and gave security to the provinces. He then (279) passed over to Asia, subdued the brigands of Isauria, expelled them from their fastnesses in the mountains, in which he settled some of his veterans, under the condition that they should send their sons when eighteen years of age to the army, in order that they might not be induced by the natural advantages of the country to take to a life of freebooting, and prove as dangerous as their predecessors. Proceeding through Syria he entered Egypt and reduced the people named Blemyes,[51] who had taken the cities of Coptos and Ptolemais. He concluded a peace with the king of Persia, and on his return through Thrace he bestowed lands on a body of two hundred thousand Bastarnæ, and on some of the Gepidæ, Vandals, and other tribes. He triumphed for the Germans and Blemyes on his return to Rome.

A prince so just and upright, and at the same time so warlike as Probus, might have been expected to have no competitors for empire; yet even he had to take the field against rival emperors. The first of these was Saturninus, whom he himself had made general of the East, a man of both talent and virtue, and for whom he had a most cordial esteem. But the light-minded and turbulent people of Alexandria, on occasion of his entry into their city, saluted him augustus; and though he rejected the title and retired to Palestine, he yet, not reflecting on the generous nature of Probus, deemed that he could no longer live in a private station. He therefore assumed the purple, saying with tears to his friends that the republic had lost a useful man, and that his own ruin and that of many others was inevitable. Probus tried in vain to induce him to trust to his clemency. A part of his troops joined those sent against him by the emperor; he was besieged in the castle of Apamea, and taken and slain.

After the defeat of Saturninus, two officers, named Proculus and Bonosus, assumed the purple in Germany. They were both men of ability, and the emperor found it necessary to take the field against them in person. Proculus being defeated fled for succour to the Franks, by whom he was betrayed, and he fell in battle against the imperial troops. Bonosus held out for some time, but having received a decisive overthrow, he hanged himself. As he had been remarkable for his drinking powers, one who saw him hanging cried, “There hangs a jar, not a man.” Probus treated the families of both with great humanity.[c]

THE ISAURIAN ROBBERS

[Sidenote: [278-283 A.D.]]

In the year 278 the Isaurian marauders were reduced to submission. Zosimus gives us an account of the incident that led up to the capture of their city of Crymna. “There was an Isaurian named Lydius,” he says, “who had been a robber from his youth, and with a gang like himself had committed depredations throughout Pamphylia and Lycia. This gang being attacked by the soldiers, Lydius, not being able to oppose the whole Roman army, retreated to a place in Lycia called Crymna, which stands on a precipice and is secured on one side by large and deep ditches. Finding many who had fled there for refuge, and observing that the Romans were very intent on the siege and that they bore the fatigue of it with great resolution, he pulled down the houses, and making the ground fit for tillage, sowed corn for the maintenance of those that were in the town. But the number being so great that they were in need of much more provisions, he turned out of the place all that were of no service, both male and female.

“The enemy, perceiving his design, forced them back again, on which Lydius threw them headlong into the trenches that surrounded the walls, where they died. Having done this, he constructed a mine from the town beyond the enemy’s camp, through which he sent persons to steal cattle and other provisions. By these means he provided for the besieged a considerable time, until the affair was discovered to the enemy by a woman. Lydius, however, still did not despond, but gradually retrenched his men in their wine, and gave them a smaller allowance of corn. But this not answering the end, he was at length driven to such straits that he killed all that were in the town, except a few of his adherents sufficient as he thought to defend it, and some women, whom he ordered to be in common among them all. But when he had resolved to persevere against all dangers, there happened at length this accident. There was with him in the town a man who was expert in making engines, and in using them with such dexterity that when Lydius ordered him to shoot a dart at any of the enemy, he never missed his aim. It happened that Lydius had ordered him to hit a particular person, whom either accidentally or on purpose he missed, for which he stripped and scourged him severely, and moreover threatened him with death.

“The man was so exasperated on account of the blows he had received, and so affrighted at the menaces, that he took an opportunity to steal out of the town; and falling in with some soldiers to whom he gave an account of his actions and sufferings, he showed them an aperture in the wall through which Lydius used to inspect all that was done in their camp, and promised them to shoot him as he was looking through it in his usual manner. The commander of the expedition on this took the man into favour, who, having planted his engine, and placed some men before him that he might not be discovered by the enemy, took aim at Lydius as he looked through the aperture, and with a dart shot him and gave him a mortal wound. He had no sooner received this wound than he became still more strict with some of his own men. Having enjoined them upon oath never to surrender the place, he expired with much struggling.”[d]

Notwithstanding the admonition of the dying chief, the city capitulated presently to Probus. In the same year the Blemyes of Nubia were expelled from Upper Egypt. And, as the wars on the Rhine had been followed by the settlement of numbers of captive Germani in Gaul and Britain, so in the year 279 large bodies of Bastarnæ, a Germanic tribe which was giving ground before the advancing Goths, were transplanted to Mœsia and Thrace, with a view to the romanisation of those provinces.

But gradually the disgust of the soldiers at the laborious tasks to which they were set, such as agriculture, the draining of swamps, and the laying out of vineyards, objects which the excellent emperor pursued with the utmost zeal, grew to be a menace to his personal safety. As early as the summer of 282, mutinous troops in Rætia and Noricum had forced M. Aurelius Carus, a Dalmatian general and a native of Narona, who had always been on friendly terms with Probus, to come forward as a rival emperor; and in the October of the same year Probus himself was slain by his own soldiers, in a revolt that broke out suddenly, after the fashion common in this century, among the men employed in digging a canal at Sirmium.

CARUS, NUMERIANUS, AND CARINUS (282-285 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [282-285 A.D.]]

Carus, the new emperor, an old man of stern temper, set about the war with Persia in earnest. The elder of his sons, the cæsar M. Aurelius Carinus, managed the affairs of Rome and Gaul, and the emperor, accompanied by M. Aurelius Numerianus, the other cæsar, set out before the end of 282 for Asia, where he gained some considerable successes. Favoured by the internecine disorders of the Persian Empire, he first brought Armenia once more under the dominion of Rome, in the year 283; and then proceeded to reconquer Mesopotamia. At length Ctesiphon itself fell into the hands of the Romans. But the army had no desire to follow the emperor into the interior of Iran, and Carus perished, apparently by a conspiracy among the officers of high rank, in December, 283. His son Numerianus fell ill during the retreat of the army to the Bosporus (284); and when, at the beginning of September, one part of the force reached Chalcedon and the other Perinthus, the soldiers discovered that the young emperor, who had accompanied the latter body, was dead. His father-in-law, Arrius Aper, prætorian prefect, who then tried to win the people for himself, was arrested on a strong suspicion of having murdered him.

Meanwhile the officers at Chalcedon, taking into consideration the profligate and disgraceful conduct of the youthful cæsar, Carinus, at Rome, proclaimed Diocles, the commander of the imperial bodyguard, emperor on September 17th, 284.

This general, who was at that time thirty-nine years of age, was born in 245, at Doclea or Dioclea, near Scodra, in Dalmatia, of humble parents. He owed his promotion to his extraordinary ability and exceptional intellectual gifts. Though addicted, like all his comrades, to the superstition of the age, he was superior to them all in administrative capacity, as in penetration, discretion, and resolution. Having slain Aper before his tribunal--whether from motives purely superstitious or, as the pessimistic criticism of our day would have it, as an accomplice in his own designs, he took up the dynastic war against Carinus, under the name of Aurelius Valerius Diocletianus. It ended in favour of Diocletian, after a somewhat protracted struggle, by a battle on the lower Margus (Morava), in which, while the fortune of the day hung yet undecided, an officer whose wife had been seduced by the Roman débauché, struck Carinus down in the thick of the fray (summer of 285).[b]

FOOTNOTES

[47] Zonaras,[e] xii. He says the Alamanni were 300,000, the Romans only 10,000 strong.

[48] [Zosimus writes in the first half of the fifth century, A.D. It is interesting to observe that he thus looks back upon the time of Aurelian as an “age of felicity.” To some minds the past is always glorious.]

[49] [Zosimus [d] gives the following brief account of this emperor, with, it will be observed, a different version of the end of Tacitus: “Upon Aurelian’s death the empire fell into the hands of Tacitus, in whose time the Scythians crossed the Palus Mæotis, and made incursions through Pontus even into Cilicia, until he opposed them. Partly in person and partly by Florianus, prefect of the court, whom he left in commission for that purpose, this emperor completely routed and destroyed them. He himself was going into Europe, but was thus circumvented and killed. He had committed the government of Syria to his cousin Maximinus, who treated the nobility of that country with such austerity that he caused them both to hate and fear him. Their hatred became so excessive that at length, conspiring with the murderers of Aurelianus, they assaulted Maximinus; and having killed him, fell on and slew Tacitus also as he was upon his departure.”]

[50] [Zosimus[d] calmly tells the following tale, as to the manner in which Probus was enabled to defeat the Germans: “When the war began there, a grievous famine prevailed throughout the surrounding country; but a heavy shower of rain and corn fell together, so that in some places were great heaps of it made by its own descent. At this prodigy, all were so astonished that at first they dared not touch the corn to satisfy their hunger, but being at length forced to it by necessity, which expels all fear, they made bread of it, which not only allayed their hunger, but enabled them to gain the victory with great ease.” Zosimus, it will be recalled, was a pagan; but obviously the Christians had no monopoly of the belief in miracles, in the fifth century A.D.]

[51] This people inhabited the mountains between Upper Egypt and the Red Sea.