Early European History Part 43

The close of the third century thus found the empire engaged in a struggle for existence. No part of the Roman world had escaped the ravages of war.

The fortification of the capital city by the emperor Aurelian was itself a testimony to the altered condition of affairs. The situation was desperate, yet not hopeless. Under an able ruler, such as Aurelian, Rome proved to be still strong enough to repel her foes. It was the work of the even more capable Diocletian to establish the empire on so solid a foundation that it endured with almost undiminished strength for another hundred years.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE WALL OF ROME Constructed by Aurelian and rebuilt by Honorius. The material is concrete faced with brick, thickness 13 feet, greatest height 58 feet. This is still the wall of the modern city, although at present no effort is made to keep it in repair.]

75. THE "ABSOLUTE EMPERORS," 284-395 A.D.

REIGN OF DIOCLETIAN, 284-305 A.D.

Diocletian, whose reign is one of the most ill.u.s.trious in Roman history, entered the army as a common soldier, rose to high command, and fought his way to the throne. A strong, ambitious man, Diocletian resolutely set himself to the task of remaking the Roman government. His success in this undertaking ent.i.tles him to rank, as a statesman and administrator, with Augustus.

WEAKNESSES IN THE IMPERIAL SYSTEM

The reforms of Diocletian were meant to remedy those weaknesses in the imperial system disclosed by the disasters of the preceding century. In the first place, experience showed that the empire was unwieldy. There were the distant frontiers on the Rhine, Danube, and Euphrates to be guarded; there were all the provinces to be governed. A single ruler, however able and energetic, had more than he could do. In the second place, the succession to the imperial throne was uncertain. Now an emperor named his successor, now the Senate elected him, and now the swords of the legionaries raised him to the purple. Such an unsettled state of affairs constantly invited those struggles between rival pretenders which had so nearly brought the empire to destruction.

DIOCLETIAN'S REFORMS

Diocletian began his reforms by adopting a scheme for "partners.h.i.+p emperors." He shared the Roman world with a trusted lieutenant named Maximian. Each was to be an Augustus, with all the honors of an emperor.

Diocletian ruled the East; Maximian ruled the West. Further partners.h.i.+p soon seemed advisable, and so each _Augustus_ chose a younger a.s.sociate, or _Caesar_, to aid him in the government and at his death or abdication to become his heir. Diocletian also remodeled the provincial system. The entire empire, including Italy, was divided into more than one hundred provinces. They were grouped into thirteen dioceses and these, in turn, into four prefectures. [4] This reform much lessened the authority of the provincial governor, who now ruled over a small district and had to obey the vicar of his diocese.

THE NEW ABSOLUTISM

The emperors, from Diocletian onward, were autocrats. They bore the proud t.i.tle of _Dominus_ ("Lord"). They were treated as G.o.ds. Everything that touched their persons was sacred. They wore a diadem of pearls and gorgeous robes of silk and gold, like those of Asiatic monarchs. They filled their palaces with a crowd of fawning, flattering n.o.bles, and busied themselves with an endless round of stately and impressive ceremonials. Hitherto a Roman emperor had been an _imperator_, [5] the head of an army. Now he became a king, to be greeted, not with the old military salute, but with the bent knee and the prostrate form of adoration. Such pomps and vanities, which former Romans would have thought degrading, helped to inspire reverence among the servile subjects of a later age. If it was the aim of Augustus to disguise, it was the aim of Diocletian to display, the unbounded power of a Roman emperor.

CONSTANTINE, SOLE EMPEROR, 324-337 A.D.

There can be little doubt that Diocletian's reforms helped to prolong the existence of the empire. In one respect, however, they must be p.r.o.nounced a failure. They did not end the disputes about the succession. Only two years after the abdication of Diocletian there were six rival pretenders for the t.i.tle of _Augustus_. Their dreary struggles continued, until at length two emperors were left--Constantine in the West, Licinius in the East. After a few years of joint rule another civil war made Constantine supreme. The Roman world again had a single master.

REIGN OF CONSTANTINE

Constantine was an able general and a wise statesman. Two events of lasting importance have made his reign memorable. It was Constantine who recognized Christianity as one of the religions of the empire and thus paved the way for the triumph of that faith over the ancient paganism. His work in this connection will be discussed presently. It was Constantine, also, who established a new capital for the Roman world at Byzantium [6]

on the Bosporus. He christened it "New Rome," but it soon took the emperor's name as Constantinople, the "City of Constantine." [7]

FOUNDATION OF CONSTANTINOPLE

Several good reasons could be urged for the removal of the world's metropolis from the Tiber to the Bosporus. The Roman Empire was ceasing to be one empire. Constantine wanted a great city for the eastern half to balance Rome in the western half. Again, Constantinople, far more than Rome, was the military center of the empire. Rome lay too far from the vulnerable frontiers; Constantinople occupied a position about equidistant from the Germans on the lower Danube and the Persians on the Euphrates.

Finally, Constantine believed that Christianity, which he wished to become the prevailing religion, would encounter less opposition and criticism in his new city than at Rome, with its pagan atmosphere and traditions.

Constantinople was to be not simply a new seat of government but also distinctively a Christian capital. Such it remained for more than eleven centuries. [8]

AFTER CONSTANTINE, 337-395 A.D.

After the death of Constantine the Roman world again entered on a period of disorder. The inroads of the Germans across the Danube and the Rhine threatened the European provinces of the empire with dissolution. The outlook in the Asiatic provinces, overrun by the Persians, was no less gloomy. Meanwhile the eastern and western halves of the empire tended more and more to grow apart. The separation between the two had become well marked by the close of the fourth century. After the death of the emperor Theodosius (395 A.D.) there came to be in fact, if not in name, a Roman Empire in the East and a Roman Empire in the West.

POLITICAL SITUATION IN 395 A.D.

More than four hundred years had now elapsed since the battle of Actium made Octavian supreme in the Roman world. If we except the abandonment of Trajan's conquests beyond the Danube and the Euphrates, [9] no part of the huge empire had as yet succ.u.mbed to its enemies. The subject peoples, during these four centuries, had not tried to overthrow the empire or to withdraw from its protection. The Roman state, men believed, would endure forever. Yet the times were drawing nigh when the old order of things was to be broken up; when barbarian invaders were to seize the fairest provinces as their own; and when new kingdoms, ruled by men of Germanic speech, were to arise in lands that once obeyed Rome.

76. ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL CONDITIONS IN THE THIRD AND FOURTH CENTURIES

THE "FALL" OF ROME

Rome, it has been said, was not built in a day; the rule of Rome was not destroyed in a day. When we speak of the "fall" of Rome, we have in mind, not a violent catastrophe which suddenly plunged the civilized world into ruin, but rather the slow and gradual decay of ancient society throughout the basin of the Mediterranean. This decay set in long before the Germans and the Persians became a serious danger to the empire. It would have continued, doubtless, had there been no Germans and Persians to break through the frontiers and destroy. The truth seems to be that, during the third and fourth centuries of our era, cla.s.sical civilization, like an overtrained athlete, had grown "stale."

DEPOPULATION DUE TO THE SLAVE SYSTEM

It is not possible to set forth all the forces which century after century had been sapping the strength of the state. The most obvious element of weakness was the want of men to fill the armies and to cultivate the fields. The slave system seems to have been partly responsible for this depopulation. The peasant on his little homestead could not compete with the wealthy n.o.ble whose vast estates were worked by gangs of slaves. The artisan could not support himself and his family on the pittance that kept his slave compet.i.tor alive. Peasants and artisans gradually drifted into the cities, where the public distributions of grain, wine, and oil a.s.sured them of a living with little expense and almost without exertion. In both Italy and the provinces there was a serious decline in the number of free farmers and free workingmen.

"RACE SUICIDE"

But slavery was not the only cause of depopulation. There was a great deal of what has been called "race suicide" in the old Roman world. Well-to-do people, who could easily support large families, often refused to be burdened with them. Childlessness, however, was not confined to the wealthy, since the poorer cla.s.ses, crowded in the huge lodging houses of the cities, had no real family life. Roman emperors, who saw how difficult it was to get a sufficient number of recruits for the army, and how whole districts were going to waste for lack of people to cultivate them, tried to repopulate the empire by force of law. They imposed penalties for the childlessness and celibacy of the rich, and founded inst.i.tutions for the rearing of children, that the poor might not fear to raise large families.

Such measures were scarcely successful. "Race suicide" continued during pagan times and even during the Christian age.

LOSS OF REVENUES

The next most obvious element of weakness was the shrinkage of the revenues. The empire suffered from want of money, as well as from want of men. To meet the heavy cost of the luxurious court, to pay the salaries of the swarms of public officials, to support the idle populace in the great cities required a vast annual income. But just when public expenditures were rising by leaps and bounds, it became harder and harder to secure sufficient revenue. Smaller numbers meant fewer taxpayers. Fewer taxpayers meant a heavier burden on those who survived to pay.

ECONOMIC RUIN

These two forces--the decline in population and the decline in wealth-- worked together to produce economic ruin. It is no wonder, therefore, that in province after province large tracts of land went out of cultivation, that the towns decayed, and that commerce and manufactures suffered an appalling decline. "Hard times" settled on the Roman world.

INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY

Doubtless still other forces were at work to weaken the state and make it incapable of further resistance to the barbarians. Among such forces we must reckon Christianity itself. By the close of the fourth century Christianity had become the religion of the empire. The new faith, as we shall soon see, helped, not to support, but rather to undermine, pagan society.

77. THE PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY

DECLINE OF PAGANISM

Several centuries before the rise of Christianity many Greek thinkers began to feel a growing dissatisfaction with the crude faith that had come down to them from prehistoric times. They found it more and more difficult to believe in the Olympian deities, who were fas.h.i.+oned like themselves and had all the faults of mortal men. [10] An adulterous Zeus, a bloodthirsty Ares, and a scolding Hera, as Homer represents them, were hardly divinities that a cultured Greek could love and wors.h.i.+p. For educated Romans, also, the rites and ceremonies of the ancient religion came gradually to lose their meaning. The wors.h.i.+p of the Roman G.o.ds had never appealed to the emotions. Now it tended to pa.s.s into the mere mechanical repet.i.tion of prayers and sacrifices. Even the wors.h.i.+p of the Caesars, [11] which did much to hold the empire together, failed to satisfy the spiritual wants of mankind. It made no appeal to the moral nature; it brought no message, either of fear or hope, about a future world and a life beyond the grave.

STOICISM

During these centuries a system of Greek philosophy, called Stoicism, gained many adherents among the Romans. Any one who will read the Stoic writings, such as those of the n.o.ble emperor, Marcus Aurelius, [12] will see how nearly Christian was the Stoic faith. It urged men to forgive injuries--to "bear and forbear." It preached the brotherhood of man. It expressed a humble and unfaltering reliance on a divine Providence. To many persons of refinement Stoicism became a real religion. But since Stoic philosophy could reach and influence only the educated cla.s.ses, it could not become a religion for all sorts and conditions of men.

THE ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES

Many Greeks found a partial satisfaction of their religious longings in secret rites called mysteries. Of these the most important grew up at Eleusis, [13] a little Attic town thirteen miles from Athens. They were connected with the wors.h.i.+p of Demeter, G.o.ddess of vegetation and of the life of nature. The celebration of the Eleusinian mysteries came in September and lasted nine days. When the candidates for admission to the secret rites were worked up to a state of religious excitement, they entered a brilliantly lighted hall and witnessed a pa.s.sion play dealing with the legend of Demeter. They seem to have had no direct moral instruction but saw, instead, living pictures and pantomimes which represented the life beyond the grave and held out to them the promise of a blessed lot in another world. As an Athenian orator said, "Those who have shared this initiation possess sweeter hopes about death and about the whole of life." [14]

INFLUENCE OF THE MYSTERIES

The Eleusinian mysteries, though unknown in the Homeric Age, were already popular before the epoch of the Persian wars. They became a Panh.e.l.lenic festival open to all Greeks, women as well as men, slaves as well as freemen. The privilege of members.h.i.+p was later extended to Romans. During the first centuries of our era the influence of the mysteries increased, as faith in the Olympian religion declined. They formed one of the last strongholds of paganism and endured till the triumph of Christianity in the Roman world.

ORIENTAL RELIGIONS IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE

The Asiatic conquests of Alexander, followed in later centuries by the extension of Roman rule over the eastern coasts of the Mediterranean, brought the cla.s.sical peoples into contact with new religions which had arisen in the Orient. Slaves, soldiers, traders, and travelers carried the eastern faiths to the West, where they speedily won many followers. Even before the downfall of the republic the deities of Asia Minor, Egypt, and Persia had found a home at Rome. Under the empire many men and women were attracted to their wors.h.i.+p.