Chapter XI: The Fall of the Empire (1)

We have contemplated the grandeur and the glory of the Roman empire; and we have also seen, in connection with the magnificent triumphs of art, science, literature, and philosophy, a melancholy degradation of society, so fatal and universal, that all strength was undermined, and nothing was left but worn-out mechanisms and lifeless forms to resist the pressure of external enemies. So vast, so strong, so proud was this empire, that no one dreamed it could ever be subverted. With all the miseries of the people, with that hateful demoralization which pervaded all classes and orders and interests, there was still a splendid external, which called forth general panegyrics, and the idea of public danger was derided or discredited. If Rome, in the infancy of the republic, had resisted the invading Gauls, what was there to fear from the half-naked barbarians who lived beyond the boundaries of the empire? The long-continued peace and prosperity had engendered not merely the vices of self-interest, those destructive cankers which ever insure a ruin, but a general feeling of security and self-exaggeration. The eternal city was still prosperous and proud, the centre of all that was grand in the civilization of the ancient world. Provincial cities vied with the capital in luxuries, in pomps, in sports, and in commercial wealth. The cultivated face of nature betokened universal prosperity. Nothing was wanting but energy, genius, and virtue among the people.

[Sidenote: Prosperity deceptive.]

But all this prosperity was deceptive. All was rotten and hollow at heart; and, had there not been universal delusion, it would have been apparent that the machine would break up at the first great shock. There was no spring in the splendid mechanism. It was broken, and society had really been retrograding from the time of Trajan--from the moment that it had completed its task of conquest. There was a strange torpor everywhere, so soon as external antagonism had ceased, and if the barbarians had not come the empire would have been disintegrated, and would scarcely have lasted two centuries longer.

[Sidenote: The empire had fulfilled its mission.]

Moreover, the empire had fulfilled its mission. It had conquered the world that a great centralization of power might be created, under which peace and plenty might reign, and a new religion might spread.

Still, whatever the plans of Providence may have been in allowing that imperial despotism to grow and spread from the banks of the Tiber to the uttermost parts of the civilized world, we cannot but feel that a great retribution was deserved for the crimes which Rome had committed upon mankind. He that takes the sword shall perish with the sword. Rome had drank of the blood of millions, and was foul with all the abominations of the countries she had subdued, and her turn must come, and a new race must try new experiments for humanity.

[Sidenote: War the instrument of punishment.]

The great instrument of God in punishing wicked nations and effecting important changes, is war. There are other forms or divine displeasure. Plague, pestilence, and famine are often sent upon degraded peoples. But these are either the necessary attendants on war itself, or they are limited and transient. They do not produce the great revolutions in which new ideas are born and new forms of social life arise.

But war seems to be the ultimate scourge of God, when he dooms nations to destruction, or to great changes. It combines within itself all kinds of evil and calamity--poverty, sickness, captivity, disgrace, and death. A conquered nation is most forlorn and dismal. The song of the conquered is--"By the rivers of Babylon we sat down and wept."

The passions which produce war are born in hell. They are pride, ambition, cruelty, avarice, and lust. These are the natural causes which array nation against nation, or people against people. But these are second causes. The primary cause is God, who useth the passions and interests of men, as his instruments of punishment.

[Sidenote: Illustrated by the history of nations.]

How impressive the history of the different civilized nations, which formed so large a part of the universal monarchy of the Romans. Assyria, Egypt, Persia, Asia Minor, Palestine, Greece, had successively been great empires and states--independent and conquering. They arose from the prevalence of martial virtues, of courage, temperance, fortitude, allied with ambition and poverty. Then monarchs craved greater power and possessions. Their passions were inexcusable; but they possessed men who were powerful and not enslaved to enervating vices. They made war on nations sunk in effeminacy and vile idolatries--men worse than they. The conquered nations needed chastisement and reconstruction; and, generally, by their blindness and arrogance, provoked the issue. Wealth and power had inflated them with false security, with egotistic aims; or else had enervated them and undermined their strength. They became subject to a stronger power. Their pride was buried in the dust. They became enslaved, miserable, ruined. They were punished in as signal, though not miraculous manner, as the Antediluvians, or the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. The same hand, _however_, is seen in vengeance and in mercy. They regained in adversity the strength they had lost in prosperity, and civilization lost nothing by their sufferings.

[Sidenote: Wars over-ruled.]

The conquering powers, in their turn, became powerful, wealthy, and corrupt. Effeminacy and weakness succeeded; war came upon them, and they became the prey of the stronger. Their conquerors, again, were enslaved by their vices, and their empire passed away in the same gloom and despair.

We see, however, in each successive conquest, the destruction, not of civilization, but of men. Countries are overrun, thrones are subverted, the rich are made slaves, the proud utter cries of despair; but the land survives, and arts and science take a new direction, and the new masters are more interested in great improvements than the old tyrants. The condition of Babylonia was probably better for the Persian conquest, while the whole oriental world gained by the wars of Alexander. Grecian culture succeeded Persian misrule. The Romans came and took away from Grecian dynasties, in Asia and Egypt, when they became enfeebled by prosperity and self-indulgence, the powers they had usurped, without destroying Grecian civilization. That remained, and will remain, in some form, forever, as an heirloom of priceless value to all future nations. The Greeks, when they conquered the Persians, had also spared the most precious monuments of their former industry and genius. The Romans, also, when they conquered Greece itself, guarded and prized her peculiar contributions to mankind. And they gave to all these conquered territories, something of their own. They gave laws, and a good government. The Grecian and Asiatic cities were humiliated by what they regarded as barbaric inroads; for the culture of Athens, Corinth, Antioch, and Ephesus, was higher than that of Rome, at that time; but who can doubt a beneficent change in the administration of public affairs? Society was doubtless improved everywhere by the Roman conquests. It is not probable that Athens, after she became tributary to Rome, was equal to the Athens of Pericles and Plato; but it is probable that society in Athens was better than what it was for a century before her fall. But what if particular cities suffered? These did not constitute the whole country. Can it be doubted that Syria, as a province, enjoyed more rational liberty and more scope for energy, under the Roman rule, than under that of the degenerate scions of the old Grecian kings? We see a retribution in the conquest, and also a blessing in disguise.

[Sidenote: The Celtic nations.]

But still more forcibly are these truths illustrated in the conquest of the Celtic nations of Europe. They were barbarians; they had neither science, nor literature, nor art; they were given over to perpetual quarrels, and to rude pleasures. Ignorance, superstition, and unrestrained passions were the main features of society. Other rude warriors wandered from place to place, with no other end than pillage. They had fine elements of character, but they needed civilization. They were conquered. The Romans taught them laws, and language, and literature, and arts. Cities arose among them, and these conquered barbarians became the friends of order and peace, and formed the most prosperous part of the whole empire. It was from these Celtic nations that the Roman armies were recruited. The great men of Rome, in the second and third centuries, came from these Celtic provinces. They infused a new blood into the decaying body. Who can doubt the benefit to mankind by the conquests of Britain, of Gaul, and of Spain? The Romans proved the greatest civilizers of the ancient world, with all their arrogance and want of appreciation of those things which gave a glory to the Greeks. They introduced among the barbaric nations their own arts, language, literature, and laws; and the civilization which they taught never passed away. It was obscured, indeed, during the revolutions which succeeded the fall of the empire, but it was gradually revived, and beamed with added lustre when its merits were at last perceived.

Thus wars are not an unmixed calamity, since the evils are overruled in the ultimate good of nations. But they are a great calamity for the time, and they are sent when nations most need chastisement.

[Sidenote: Conquest of the Celts.]

The Romans triumphed, by their great and unexampled energy and patience and heroism, over all the world, and erected their universal empire upon the ruins of all the states of antiquity. They were suffered to increase and prosper, that great ends might be accomplished, either by the punishment of the old nations, or the creation of a new civilization.

But they, in their turn, became corrupted by prosperity, and enervated by peace. They had been guilty of the most heartless and cruel atrocities for eight hundred years. Their empire was built upon the miseries of mankind. They also must needs suffer retribution.

It was long delayed. It did not come till every conservative influence had failed. The condition of society was becoming worse and worse, until it reached a depravity and an apathy fatal to all genius, and more disgraceful than among those people whom they stigmatized as barbarians. Then must come revolution, or races would run out and civilization be lost.

[Sidenote: Barbaric conquests.]

God sent war--universal, cruel, destructive war, at the hands of unknown warriors; and they effected a total eclipse of the glory of man. The empire was resolved into its original elements. Its lands were overrun and pillaged; its cities were burned and robbed; and unmitigated violence overspread the earth, so that the cry of despair ascended to heaven, from the Pillars of Hercules to the Caspian Sea. Indeed, the end of the world was so generally believed to be at hand, on this universal upturning of society, that some of the best men fled to caves and deserts; and there were more monks that sought personal salvation by their austerities, than soldiers who braved their lives in battle.

It is this great revolution which I seek to present, this great catastrophe to which the Romans were subjected, after having conquered one hundred and twenty millions of people. It was probably the most mournful, in all its aspects, ever seen on the face of this earth since the universal deluge. Never, surely, were such calamities produced by the hand of man. The Greeks and Romans, when they had conquered a rebellious or enervated nation, introduced their civilization, and promoted peace and general security. They brought laws, science, literature, and arts, in the train of their armies; they did not sweep away ancient institutions; they left the people as they found them, only with greater facilities of getting rich; they preserved the pictures, the statues, and the temples; they honored the literature and revered the sages who taught it; they may have brought captives to their capitals as slaves, but they did not root out every trace of cultivation, or regarded it with haughty scorn. But, when their turn of punishment came, the whole world was filled with mourning and desolation, and all the relations of society were reversed.

[Sidenote: Infatuation of the Romans.]

It was a sad hour in the old capital of the world, when its blinded inhabitants were aroused from the stupendous delusion that they were invincible; when the crushing fact stared every one in the face, that the legions had been conquered, that province after province had been overrun, that proud and populous cities had fallen, that the barbarians were advancing, treading beneath their feet all that had been deemed valuable, or rare, or sacred, that they were advancing to the very gates of Rome,--that her doom was sealed, that there was no shelter to which they could fly, that there was no way by which ruin could be averted, that they were doomed to hopeless poverty or servitude, that their wives and daughters would be subject to indignities which were worse than death, and that all the evils their ancestors had inflicted in their triumphant march, would be visited upon them with tenfold severity. The Romans, even then, when they cast their eyes upon external nature, saw rich corn-fields, smiling vineyards, luxurious gardens, yea, villas and temples and palaces without end; and how could these be destroyed which had lasted for centuries? How could the eternal city, which had not seen a foreign enemy near its gates since the invasion of the Gauls, which had escaped all dangers, so rich and gay, how could she now yield to naked barbarians from unknown forests? They still beheld the splendid mechanism of government, the glitter and the pomp of armies, triumphal processions, new monuments of victory, the proud eagles, and all the emblems of unlimited dominion. What had _they_ to fear? "_Nihil est, Quirites, quod timere possitis_."

[Sidenote: Fatal security of the Romans.]

Nor to the eye of contemporaries was the great change, which had gradually taken place since the reign of Trajan, apparent. Cowardice and weakness were veiled from the view of men. In proportion to the imbecility of the troops, were the richness of their uniform, and the insolence of their manners. It was the day of boasts and pomps. All forms and emblems had their ancient force. All men partook of the vices and follies which were praised. In their levity and delusion, they did not see the real emptiness and hollowness of their institutions. A blinded generation never can see the signs of the times. Only a few contemplative men hid themselves in retired places, but were denounced as croakers or evil minded. Every body was interested in keeping up the delusion. Panics seldom last long. The world is too fond of its ease to believe the truths which break up repose and gains. All felt safe, because they had always been protected. Ruin might come ultimately, but not in their day. "_Apres moi le deluge_" No one would make sacrifices, since no one feared immediate danger. Moreover, public spirit and patriotism had fled. If their cities were in danger, they said, better perish here with our wives and children than die on the frontiers after having suffered every privation and exposure. There must have been a universal indifference, or the barbarians could not have triumphed. The Romans had every inducement which any people ever had to a brave and desperate resistance. Not merely their own lives, but the security of their families was at stake. Their institutions, their interests, their rights, their homes, their altars, all were in jeopardy. And they were attacked by most merciless enemies, without pity or respect, and yet they would not fight, as nations should fight, and do sometimes fight, when their country is invaded. Why did they offer no more stubborn resistance? Why did the full-armed and well-trained legions yield to barbaric foes, without discipline and without the most effective weapons? Alas, dispirited and enervated people will never fight. They prefer slavery to death. Thus Persia succumbed before Alexander, and Asia Minor before the Saracen generals. Martial courage goes hand in hand with virtue. Without elevation of sentiment there will be no self-sacrifice. There is no hope when nations are abandoned to sensuality or egotism.

[Sidenote: Weakness of the empire.]

We must believe in a most extraordinary degeneracy of society, or Rome would not have fallen. With any common degree of courage, the empire should have resisted the Goths and Vandals. They were not more numerous than those hordes which Marius and Caesar annihilated even in their own marshes and forests. It was not like the Macedonians, with their impenetrable phalanx, and their perfected armor, contending with semi- barbarians. It was not like the Spaniards, marching over Peru and Mexico. It was not like the English, with all the improved weapons of our modern times, firing upon a people armed with darts and arrows. But it was barbarians, without defensive armor, without discipline, without prestige, attacking legions which had been a thousand years learning the art of war. _Proh Pudor!_ The soldiers of the empire must have lost their ancient spirit. They must have represented a most worthless people. We lose our pity in the strength of our indignation and disgust. A civilized nation that will yield to barbarians must deserve their fate. Noble as were the elements of character among the Germanic tribes, they were yet barbarians in arts, in manners, in knowledge, in mechanisms. They had nothing but brute force. Science should have conquered brute force; but it did not. We cannot but infer a most startling degeneracy. It is to be regretted that we have no more satisfactory data as to the precise state of society. I am inclined to the opinion that society was much more degraded than it is generally supposed. When for two centuries the whole empire scarcely produced a poet, or a philosopher, or an historian; when even the writings of famous men in the time of Augustus were lost or unread; when, from Trajan to Honorius, a period of three hundred and fifty years, scarcely a work of original genius appeared, it must be that society was utterly demoralized, and all life and vigor had fled.

[Sidenote: Conquerors of Rome.]

Then it was time for the empire to fall. And it is our work to sketch the ruin--and such a ruin. The bloody conquerors were Goths and Vandals, and other Teutonic tribes--Franks, Sueves, Alans, Heruli, Burgundians, Lombards, Saxons. They came originally from Central Asia, in the region of the Caspian Sea, and were kindred to the Medes and Persians. They drove before them older inhabitants, probably Celtic nations, and ultimately settled in the vast region between the Baltic and the Danube, the Rhine and the Vistula, embracing those countries which are now called Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Germany.

[Sidenote: The Germanic nations.]

All these tribes were probably similar in manners, habits, tastes, and natural elements of character. Tacitus has furnished us with the most authentic record of their customs and peculiarities. [Footnote: Tacitus, _De Moribus Germanorum_.] Their eyes were stern and blue, their hair red, their bodies large, their strength great. They were ruled by kings, but not with unlimited power. The priests had also an extraordinary influence, which they shared with the women, who were present in battles, and who were characterized for great purity and courage. Even the power to predict the future was ascribed to women. The Germans were superstitious, and were given to divinations by omens and lots, by the flight of birds and the neighing of horses. They transacted no business, public or private, without being armed. They were warlike in all their habits and tastes, and the field of battle was the field of glory. Their chief deity was an heroic prince. Odin, the type-man of the nation, was a wild captain, who taught that it was most honorable to die in battle. They hated repose and inactivity, and, when not engaged in war, they pursued with eagerness the pleasures of the chase; yet, during the intervals of war and hunting, they divided their time between sleeping and feasting. They loved the forests, and dangerous sports, and adventurous enterprises. They abhorred cities, which they regarded as prisons of despotism. A rude passion for personal independence was one of their chief characteristics, as powerful as veneration for the women and religious tendency of mind. They would brook no restraint on their wills or their passions. Their wills were stern and their passions impetuous. They only yielded to the voice of entreaty or of love. They were ordinarily temperate, except on rare occasions, when they indulged in drunken festivities. Chastity was a virtue which was rigorously practiced. There were few cases of adultery among them, and the unfaithful wife was severely punished. Men and women, without seductive spectacles or convivial banquets, were fenced around with chastity, and bound together by family ties. Polygamy was unknown, and the marriage obligation was sacred. The wife brought no dowry to her husband, but received one from him, not frivolous presents, but oxen, a caparisoned steed, a shield, spear, and sword, to indicate that she is to be a partner in toil and danger, to suffer and to dare in peace and war. Hospitality was another virtue, extended equally to strangers and acquaintances, but, at the festive board, quarrels often took place, and enmities once formed were rarely forgiven. Vindictive resentments were as marked as cordial and frank friendships. They drank beer or ale, instead of wine, at their feasts, although their ordinary drink was water. Their food was fruits, cheese, milk, and venison. They had an inordinate passion for gambling, and would even stake their very freedom on a throw. Slavery was common, but not so severe and ruthless as among the Romans. They had but little commerce, and were unacquainted with the arts of usury. Their agriculture was rude, and corn was the only product they raised. They had the ordinary domestic animals, but their horses were neither beautiful nor swift.

[Sidenote: The native elements of character of the barbarians.]

It is easy to see that, in their manners and traits, they had a great resemblance to the Celts, before they were subdued and civilized, but were not so passionate, nor impulsive, nor thoughtless, nor reckless as they. Nor were they so much addicted to gluttony and drunkenness. They were more persevering, more earnest, more truthful, and more chaste. Nor were they so much enslaved by the priesthood. The Druidical rule was confined to the Celts, yet, like the Celts, they worshiped God in the consecrated grove. Their religion was pantheistic: they saw God in the rocks, the rain, the thunder, the clouds, the rivers, the mountains, the stars. He was supposed to preside everywhere, and to be a supreme intelligence. Their view of God was quite similar to the early Ionic philosophers of Greece: "_Regnator omnium deus, coetera subjecta atque parentia_." They Were never idol-worshipers; they worshiped nature, and called its wonders gods. But this worship of nature was modified by the worship of a hero. In Odin they beheld strength, courage, magnanimity, the attributes they adored. To be brave was an elemental principle of religion, and they attributed to the Deity every thing which could inspire horror as the terrible,--the angry god who marked out those destined to be slain. Hence their groves, where he was supposed to preside, were dark and mysterious. We adore the gloom of woods, the silence which reigns around. "_Lucos atque in iis silentia, ipsa adoremus_." While the priests of this awful being were not so despotic as the Druids, they still exercised a great ascendency: they conjured the storms of internal war; they pronounced the terrible anathema; they imparted to military commanders a sacred authority; and they carried at the head of their armies the consecrated banner of the Deity. In short, they wielded those spiritual weapons which afterward became thunderbolts in the hands of the clergy, and which prepared the way for the autocratic reign of the popes, in whom the Germanic nations ever recognized the vicegerent of their invisible Lord. They were most preeminently a religious people, governed by religious ideas--by which I mean they recognized a deity to whose will they were to be obedient, and whose favor could only be purchased by deeds of valor or virtue. Their morality sprung out of veneration for the Great Unseen, in whose hands were their destinies.

This trait is the most remarkable and prominent among the Germans, next to their fierce passion for war, their veneration for woman, and their love of personal independence, to which last Guizot attaches great importance. The feeling one's self a man in the most unrestricted sense, was the highest pleasure of the German barbarian. There was a personality of feeling and interest hostile to social forms and municipal regulations. They cared for nothing beyond the gratification of their inclinations. To be unrestrained, to be free in the wildest sense, to do what they pleased under the impulse of the moment, this was their leading characteristic. Who cannot see that such a trait was hostile to civilization, and would prevent obedience to law--would make the uncultivated warrior unsocial and solitary, and lead him, in after- times, when he got possession of the lands of the conquered Romans, to build his castle on inaccessible heights and rugged rocks? Hence isolated retreats, wild adventures, country life, the pleasures of the chase, characterized the new settlers. They avoided cities, and built castles.

[Sidenote: National traits.]

[Sidenote: Character of the Germanic nations.]

This passion for liberty, accompanied with the spirit of daring, adventure, and war, would have been fatal but for the rule of priests, and the great influence of woman. In this latter element of character, the barbarians from Scandinavia stand out in interesting contrast with the civilized nations whom they subverted. They evidently had a greater respect for woman than any of the nations of antiquity, not excepting the Jews. In her they beheld something sacred and divine. In her voice was inspiration, and in her presence there was safety. There was no true enthusiasm for woman in Greece even when Socrates bowed before the charms of Aspasia. There was none at Rome when Volumnia screened the city from the vengeance of her angry son. But the Germans worshiped the fair, and beheld in her the incarnation of all virtue and loveliness. And thus, among such a race, arose the glorious old institution of chivalry, which could not have existed among the Romans or the Greeks, even after Christianity had softened the character and enlarged the heart. In the baronial mansion of the Middle Ages this natural veneration was ripened into devotion and gallantry. Among the knights, zeal for God and the ladies was enjoined as a single duty; and "he who was faithful to his mistress," says Hallam, "was sure of salvation, in the theology of castles, if not of cloisters." This devotion was expressed in the rude poetry of barbarous ages, in the sports of the tournament and tilt, in the feasts of the castle, in the masculine pleasures of the chase, in the control of the household, in the education of children, in the laws which recognized equality, in the free companionship with man, in the trust reposed in female honor and virtue, in the delicacy of love, and in the refinements of friendship. This trait alone shows the superior nature of the Germanic races, especially when taught by Christianity, and makes us rejoice that the magnificent conquests of the Romans were given to them for their proud inheritance.

Such were the men who became the heirs of the Romans,--races never subdued by arms or vices, among whom Christianity took a peculiar hold, and gradually developed among them principles of progress such as were never seen among the older nations. Can we wonder that such men should prevail?--men who loved war as the Romans did under the republic; men who gloried in their very losses, and felt that death in the field would secure future salvation and everlasting honor; men full of hope, energy, enthusiasm, and zeal; men who had, what the old races had not,--a soul, life, uncorrupted forces.

Yet, when they invaded the Roman world, it must not be forgotten that they were rude, ignorant, wild, fierce, and unscrupulous. They were held in absolute detestation, as the North American Indians, whom they resembled in many important respects, were held in this country two hundred years ago. Their object was pillage. They roamed in search of more fruitful lands and a more congenial sky. They were bent on conquest, rapine, and violence. They were called the Northern Hordes-- barbarians--and even their vices were exaggerated. They were, indeed, most formidable and terrific foes; and when conquered in battle would rally their forces, and press forward with renewed numbers.

[Sidenote: The Goths.]

The first of these Teutonic barbarians who made successful inroads were the Goths. I do not now allude to the Celtic nations who were completely subdued and incorporated with the empire before the accession of the emperors. Nor do I speak of the Teutons whom Marius defeated one hundred years before the Christian era, nor yet of the Germanic tribes who made unsuccessful inroads during the reigns of the earlier emperors. Augustus must have had melancholy premonitions of danger when his general, Varus, suffered a disgraceful defeat by the sword of Arminus in the dark recesses of the Teuto-burger Wald, even as Charlemagne covered his face with his iron hands when he saw the invasion of his territories by the Norman pirates. For three centuries there was a constant struggle between the Roman armies and the barbarians beyond the Rhine. In the reign of Marcus Antoninus they formed a general union for the invasion of the Roman world, but they were signally defeated, and the great pillar of Marcus Aurelius describes his victories on the Danube, who died combating the Vandals, A.D. 180. In the year 241 A.D., the great Aurelian is seen fighting the Franks near Mayence, who, nevertheless, pressed forward until they made their way into Spain.

[Sidenote: Invasion of the Goths.]

The most formidable of the enemies of Rome were the Goths. When first spoken of in history they inhabited the shores of the Baltic. They were called by Tacitus, Gothones. In the time of Caracalla they had migrated to the coast of the Black Sea. Under the reign of Alexander Severus, 222-235, A.D., they threatened the peace of the province of Dacia. Under Philip, A.D. 244-249, they succeeded in conquering that province, and penetrated into Mosia. In the year 251, they encountered a Roman army under Decius, which they annihilated, and the emperor himself was slain. Then they continued their ravages along the coasts of the Euxine until they made themselves masters of the Crimea. With a large fleet of flat- boats they sailed to all the northern parts of the Euxine, took Pityus and Trapezus, attacked the wealthy cities on the Thracian Bosphorus, conquered Chalcedon, Nicomedia, and Nice, and retreated laden with spoil. The next year, with five hundred boats--they cannot be called ships,--they pursued their destructive navigation, destroyed Cyzicus, crossed the Aegean Sea, and landed at Athens, which they plundered. Thebes, Argos, Corinth, and Sparta were unable to defend their dilapidated fortifications. They advanced to the coasts of Epirus and devastated the whole Illyrian peninsula. In this destructive expedition they destroyed the famous temple of Diana at Ephesus, with its one hundred and twenty-seven marble columns sixty feet in height, and its interior ornamented with the choicest sculptures of Praxiteles. But they at length got wearied of danger and toil, and returned through Mosia to their own settlements. Though this incursion was a raid rather than a conquest, yet what are we to think of the military strength of the empire and the condition of society, when, in less than three hundred years after Augustus had shut the temple of Janus, fifteen thousand undisciplined barbarians, without even a leader of historic fame, were allowed to ravage the most populous and cultivated part of the empire, even the classic cities which had resisted the Persian hosts, and retire unmolested with their spoils? The Emperor Gallienus, one of the most frivolous of all the Caesars, received the intelligence with epicurean indifference, and abandoned himself to inglorious pleasures; and as Nero is said to have fiddled while his capital was in ashes, so he, in this great emergency, consumed his time in gardening and the arts of cookery, and was commended by his idolatrous courtiers as a philosopher and a hero.

In fact, this invasion of the Goths was not contemplated with that alarm which it ought to have excited, but rather as an accidental evil, like a pestilence or a plague. Moreover, it was lost sight of in the general misery and misfortunes of the times. The Emperor Valerian had just been defeated and taken prisoner by Sapor. Pretenders had started up in nineteen different places for the imperial purple. Banditti had spread devastation in Sicily. Alexandria was disturbed by tumults. Famine and the plague raged for ten years in nearly all parts of the empire. Rome lost by the pestilence five thousand daily, while half the inhabitants of Alexandria were swept away. Soldiers, tyrants, barbarians, and the visitation of God threatened the ruin of the Roman world.

But the ruin was staved off one hundred years by the labors and genius of a series of great princes, who traced their origin to the martial province of Illyricum. And all that was in the power of the emperors to do was done to arrest destruction. No empire was ever ruled by a succession of better and greater men than the calamities of the times raised up on the death of Gallienus, A.D. 268. But what avail the energy and talents of rulers when a nation is doomed to destruction? We have the profoundest admiration for the imperial heroes who bore the burdens of a throne in those days of tribulation. They succeeded in restoring the ancient glories--but glories followed by a deeper shame. They attempted impossibilities when their subjects were sunk in sloth and degradation.

[Sidenote: Success and the defeat of the Goths.]

Claudius, one of the generals of Gallienus, was invested with the purple at the age of fifty-four. He restored military discipline, revived law, repressed turbulence, and bent his thoughts to head off the barbaric invasions. The various nations of Germany and Sarmatia, united under the Gothic standard, and in six thousand vessels, prepared once more to ravage the world. Sailing from the banks of the Dniester, they crossed the Euxine, passed through the Bosphorus, anchored at the foot of Mount Athos, and assaulted Thessalonica, the wealthy capital of the Macedonian provinces. Claudius advanced to meet these three hundred and twenty thousand barbarians. At Naissus, in Dalmatia, was fought one of the most memorable and bloody battles of ancient times, but not one of the most decisive. Fifty thousand Goths were slain in that dreadful fight. Three Gothic women fell to the share of every imperial soldier. The discomfited warriors fled in consternation, but their retreat was cut off by the destruction of their fleet; and on the return of spring the mighty host had dwindled to a desperate band in the inaccessible parts of Mount Hemus.

[Sidenote: Victories of Claudius.]

Claudius survived his victory but two years, and was succeeded, A.D. 270, by a still greater man--his general Aurelian, whose father had been a peasant of Sirmium. Every day of his short reign was filled with wonders. He put an end to the Gothic war; he chastised the Germans who invaded Italy; he recovered Gaul, Spain, and Britain, from the hands of an usurper; he destroyed the proud monarchy which Zenobia had built up in the deserts of the East; he defeated the Alemanni who, with eighty thousand foot and forty thousand horse, had devastated the country from the Danube to the Po; and, not least, he took Zenobia herself a prisoner --one of the most celebrated women of antiquity, equaling Cleopatra in beauty, Elizabeth in learning, and Artemisia in valor--a woman who blended the popular manners of the Roman princes with the stately pomp of oriental kings.

Zenobia, queen of Palmyra, the widow of Odenatus, ruled a large portion of Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt, and with a numerous army she advanced to meet the imperial legions. Conquered in two disastrous battles, she retired to the beautiful city which Solomon had built, shaded with palms, ornamented with palaces, and rich in oriental treasure. Then again, attacked by her persevering enemy, she mounted the fleetest of her dromedaries, but was overtaken on the banks of the Euphrates, and brought a captive to the tent of the martial emperor, while Palmyra, her capital, with all its riches, fell into the hands of the conqueror.

[Sidenote: Successes of Aurelian.]

Aurelian, with the haughty queen who had presumed to rise up in arms against the empire, returned to successes of Rome, and then was celebrated the most magnificent triumph which the world had seen since the days of Pompey and of Caesar. And since the foundation of the city, no conqueror more richly deserved a triumph than this virtuous and rugged soldier of fortune. And as the august procession, with all the pomp and circumstance of war, moved along the Via Sacra, up the Capitoline Hill, and halted at the Temple of Jupiter, to receive the benediction of the priests, and to deposit within its sacred walls the treasures of the East, it would seem that Rome was destined to surmount the ordinary fate of nations, and reign as mistress of the world _per secula seculorum_.

But this grand pageant was only one of the last glories of the setting sun of Roman greatness. Aurelian had no peace or repose. "The gods decree," said the impatient emperor, "that my life should be a perpetual warfare." He was obliged to take the field a few months after his triumph, and was slain, not in battle, but by the hands of assassins-- the common fate of his predecessors and successors--"the regular portal" through which the Caesars passed to their account with the eternal Judge. He had boasted that public danger had passed--_"Ego efficiam ne sit aliqua solicitudo Romana. Nos publicae necessitates teneant; vos occupent voluptates."_ But scarcely had this warlike prince sung his requiem to the agitations of Rome before new dangers arose, and his sceptre descended to a man seventy-five years of age.

Tacitus, the new emperor, was however worthy of his throne. He was selected as the most fitting man that could be found. Scarcely was he inaugurated, before he was obliged to march against the Alans, who had spread their destructive ravages over Pontus, Cappadocia, Cilicia, and Galatia. He lost his life, though successful in battle, amid the hardships of a winter campaign, and Probus, one of his generals, who had once been an Illyrian peasant, was clothed with the imperial purple, A.D. 278.

[Sidenote: The successes of Probus.]

This vigorous monarch was then forty-five years of age, in the prime of his strength, popular with the army, and patriotic and enlarged in his views. He reigned six years, and won a fame equal to that of the ancient heroes. He restored peace and order in every province of the empire; he broke the power of the Sarmatian tribes; he secured the alliance of the Gothic nation; he drove the Isaurians to their strongholds among the mountains; he chastised the rebellious cities of Egypt; he delivered Gaul from the Germanic barbarians, who again inundated the empire on the death of Aurelian; he drove back the Franks into their morasses at the mouth of the Rhine; he vanquished the Burgundians, who had wandered in quest of booty from the banks of the Oder; he defeated the Lygii, a fierce tribe from the frontiers of Silesia, and took their chieftain Semno alive; he passed the Rhine and pursued his victories to the Elbe, exacting a tribute of corn, cattle, and horses, from the defeated Germans; he even erected a bulwark against their future encroachments--a stone wall of two hundred miles in length, across valleys and hills and rivers, from the Danube to the Rhine--a feeble defense indeed, but such as to excite the wonder of his age; he, moreover, dispersed the captive barbarians throughout the provinces, who were afterward armed in defense of the empire, and whose brethren were persuaded to make settlements with them, so that, at length, "there was not left in all the provinces," says Gibbon, "a hostile barbarian, a tyrant, or even a robber."

After having destroyed four hundred thousand barbarians, the victor returned to Rome, and, like Aurelian, celebrated his successes in one of those gorgeous triumphs to which modern nations have no parallel. Then he again, like the conqueror of Zenobia, mounted the Pisgah of hope, and descried the Saturnian ages which, in his vision of Peace, he fancied were to follow his victories. _"Respublica orbis terrarum, ubique secura, non arma fabricabit. Boves habebuntur aratro; equus nasciter ad pacem. Nulla erunt bella; nulla captivitas. Aeternes thesauros haberet Romana respublica."_ But scarcely had the paeans escaped him, before, in his turn, he was assassinated in a mutiny of his own troops--a man of virtue and abilities, although his austere temper insensibly, under military power, subsided into tyranny and cruelty.

Without the approbation of the Senate, the soldiers elected a new emperor, and he too was a hero. Carus had scarcely assumed the purple, A.D. 282, before he marched against the Persians, through Thrace and Asia Minor, in the midst of winter, and the ambassadors of the Persian king found the new emperor of the world seated on the grass, at a frugal dinner of bacon and pease, in that severe simplicity which afterward marked the early successors of Mohammed. But before he could carry his victorious arms across the Tigris, he suddenly died in his tent, struck, as some think, by lightning. His son Carinus was unworthy of the throne to which he succeeded, and his reign is chiefly memorable for the magnificence of his games and festivals. His reign, and that of his brother Numerian, was however short, and a still greater man than any who had mounted the throne of the Caesars since Augustus, took the helm at the most critical period of Roman history, A.D. 285.

[Sidenote: Diocletian.]

This man was Diocletian, rendered infamous in ecclesiastical history, as the most bitter persecutor the Christians ever had; a man of obscure birth, yet of most distinguished abilities, and virtually the founder of a new empire. He found it impossible to sustain the public burdens in an age so disordered and disorganized, when every province was menaced by the barbarians, and he associated with himself three colleagues who had won fame in the wars of Aurelian and Carus, and all of whom had rendered substantial services--Galerius, Maximian, and Constantius. These four Caesars, alive to the danger which menaced the empire, took up their residence in the distant provinces. They were all great generals; and they won great victories on the banks of the Rhine and the Danube, in Africa and Egypt, in Persia and Armenia. Their lives were spent in the camp; but care, vexation, and discontent pursued them. The barbarians were continually beaten, but they continually advanced. Their progress reminds one of the rising tide on a stormy and surging beach. Wave after wave breaks upon the shore, recedes, returns, and nothing can stop the gradual advance of the waters. So in the hundred years after Gallienus, wave after wave of barbaric invasion constantly appeared, receded, returned, with added strength. The heroic emperors were uniformly victors; but their victories were in vain. They were perpetually reconquering rebellious provinces, or putting down usurpers, or punishing the barbarians, who acquired strength after every defeat, and were more and more insatiable in their demands, and unrelenting in their wills. They were determined to conquer, and the greatest generals of the Roman empire during four hundred years could not subdue them, although they could beat them.

[Sidenote: Constantine.]

The empire is again united under Constantine, after bloody civil wars, A.D. 324, thirty-four years after Diocletian had divided his power and provinces with his associates. He renews the war against the Goths and Sarmatians, severely chastises them as well as other enemies of Rome, and dies leaving the empire to his son, unequal to the task imposed upon him. The inglorious reigns of Constantius and Gallus only enabled the barbarians to renew their strength. They are signally defeated by the Emperor Julian, A.D. 360, who alone survives of all the heirs of Constantius Chlorus. The studious Julian, who was supposed to be a mere philosopher, proves himself to be one of the most warlike of all the emperors. He repulses the Alemanni, defeats the Franks, delivers Gaul, and carries the Roman eagles triumphantly beyond the Rhine. His victories delay the ruin of the empire; they do not result in the conquest of Germany, and he dies, mortally wounded, not by a German spear, but by the javelin of a Persian horseman, beyond the Tigris, in an unsuccessful enterprise against Sapor, A.D. 363.

[Sidenote: New invasions of barbarians.]

After his death the ravages of the barbarians became still more fearful. The Alemanni invade Gaul, A.D. 365, the Persians recover Armenia, the Burgundians appear upon the Rhine, the Saxons attack Britain, and spread themselves from the Wall of Antoninus to the shores of Kent, the Goths prepare for another invasion; in Africa there is a great revolt under Firmus. The empire is shaken to its centre.

Valentinian, a soldier of fortune, and an able general, now wears the imperial purple. Like Diocletian, he finds himself unable to bear the burdens of his throne. He elects an associate, divides the empire, and gives to Valens the eastern provinces. All idea of reigning in peace, and giving the reins to pleasure, has vanished from the imperial mind. The office of emperor demands the severest virtues and the sternest qualities and the most incessant labors. "Uneasy sits the head that wears a crown," can now be said of all the later emperors. The day is past for enjoyment or for pomp. The emperor's presence is required here and there. Valentinian rules with vigor, and gains successes over the barbarians. He is one of the great men of the day. He reserves to himself the western provinces, and fixes his seat at Milan, but cannot preserve tranquillity, and dies in a storm of wrath, by the bursting of a blood-vessel, while reviling the ambassadors of the Quadi, A.D. 375, at the age of fifty-four.

[Sidenote: Disasters of Valens.]

His brother, Valens, Emperor of the East, had neither his talents nor energy; and it was his fate to see the first great successful inroads of the Goths. For thirty years the Romans had secured their frontiers, and the Goths had extended their dominions. Hermanric, the first historic name of note among them, ruled over the entire nation, and had won a series of brilliant victories over other tribes of barbarians after he was eighty years of age. His dominions extended from the Danube to the Baltic, including the greater part of Germany and Scythia. In the year 366 his subjects, tempted by the civil discords which Procopius occasioned, invaded Thrace, but were resisted by the generals of Valens. The aged Hermanric was exasperated by the misfortune, and made preparations for a general war, while the emperor himself invaded the Gothic territories. For three years the war continued, with various success, on the banks of the Danube. Hermanric intrusted the defense of his country to Athanaric, who was defeated in a bloody battle, and a hollow peace was made with Victor and Arintheus, the generals of Valens. The Goths remained in tranquillity for six years, until, driven by the Scythians, who emerged in vast numbers from the frozen regions of the north, they once more advanced to the Danube and implored the aid of Valens. [Footnote: See Ammianus Marcellinus, b. xxi., from which Gibbon has chiefly drawn his narratives.] The prayers of the Goths were answered, and they were transported across the Danube--a suicidal act of the emperor, which imported two hundred thousand warriors, with their wives and children, into the Roman territories. The Goths retained their arms and their greed, and pretended to settle peaceably in the province of Mosia. But they were restless and undisciplined barbarians, and it required the greatest adroitness to manage them in their new abodes. They were insolent and unreasonable in their demands and expectations, while the ministers of the emperor were oppressive and venal. Difficulties soon arose, and, too late, it was seen by the emperor that he had introduced most dangerous enemies into the heart of the empire.

[Sidenote: Fritigern, leader of the Goths.]

[Sidenote: Death of the Emperor Valens.]

The great leader of these Goths was Fritigern, who soon kindled the flames of war. He united under his standard all the various tribes of his nation, increased their animosities, and led them to the mouth of the Danube. There they were attacked by the lieutenants of Valens, and a battle was fought without other result than that of checking for a time the Gothic progress. But only for a time. The various tribes of barbarians, under the able generalship of Fritigern, whose cunning was equal to his bravery, advanced to the suburbs of Hadrianople. Under the walls of that city was fought the most disastrous battle, A.D. 378, to the imperial cause which is recorded in the annals of Roman history. The emperor himself was slain with two thirds of his whole army, while the remainder fled in consternation. Sixty thousand infantry and six thousand cavalry were stretched in death upon the bloody field--one third more than at the fatal battle of Cannae. The most celebrated orator of the day, though a Pagan, [Footnote: Libanius of Antioch.] pronounced a funeral oration on the vanquished army, and attributed the catastrophe, not to the cowardice of the legions, but the anger of the gods. "The fury of the Goths," says St. Jerome, "extended to all creatures possessed of life: the beasts of the field, the fowls of the air, and the fishes of the sea." The victors, intoxicated with their first great success, invested Hadrianople, where were deposited enormous riches. But they were unequal to the task of taking so strong a city; and when the inhabitants aroused themselves in a paroxysm of despair, they raised the siege and departed to ravage the more unprotected West. Laden with spoils, they retired to the western boundaries of Thrace, and thence scattered their forces to the confines of Italy. From the shores of the Bosphorus to the Julian Alps nothing was to be seen but conflagration and murders and devastations. Churches were turned into stables, palaces were burned, works of priceless value were destroyed, the relics of martyrs were desecrated, the most fruitful provinces were overrun, the population was decimated, the land was overgrown with forests, cultivation was suspended, and despair and fear seized the minds of all classes. So great was the misfortune of the Illyrian provinces that they never afterward recovered, and for ten centuries only supplied materials for roving robbers. The empire never had seen such a day of calamity.

[Sidenote: Desperate condition of the Romans.]

This melancholy state of affairs, so desperate and so general, demanded a deliverer and a hero; but where was a hero to be found? Nothing but transcendent ability could now arrest the overthrow. Who should succeed to the vacant throne of Valens?

[Sidenote: Theodosius.]

[Sidenote: His character and illustrious deeds.]

The Emperor Gratian, who wielded the sceptre of Valentinian in the West, in this alarming crisis, cast his eyes upon an exile, whose father had unjustly suffered death under his own sanction three years before. This man was Theodosius, then living in modest retirement on his farm in Spain, near Valladolid, as unambitious as David among his sheep, as contented as Cincinnatus at the plough. Great deliverers are frequently selected from the most humble positions; but no world hero, in ancient or modern times, is more illustrious than Theodosius for modesty and magnanimity united with great abilities. No man is dearer to the Church than he, both for his services and his virtues. The eloquent Flechier has emblazoned his fame, as Bossuet has painted the Prince of Conde. Even Gibbon lays aside his sneers to praise this great Christian Emperor, although his character was not free from stains. He modestly but readily accepted the vacant sceptre and the conduct of the Gothic war. He was thirty-three years of age, in the pride of his strength, and well instructed in liberal pursuits. No better choice could have been made by Gratian. He was as prudent as Fabius, as magnanimous as Richard, as persevering as Alfred, as comprehensive as Charlemagne, as beneficent as Henry IV., as full of resources as Frederic II. One of the greatest of all the emperors, and the last great man who swayed the sceptre of Trajan his ancestor, his reign cannot but be too highly commended, living in such an age, exposed to so many dangers, invested with so many difficulties. He was the last flickering light of the expiring monarchy, beloved and revered by all classes of his subjects. "The vulgar gazed with admiration on the manly beauty of his face and the graceful majesty of his person, which they were pleased to compare with the pictures and medals of the Emperor Trajan; while intelligent observers discovered, in the qualities of the heart and understanding, a more important resemblance to the best and greatest of the Roman emperors." [Footnote: Gibbon, chap. xxvi.]