Chapter X
THE LATER EMPIRE: CHRISTIANITY IN THE ROMAN WORLD, 180-395 A.D.
74. THE "SOLDIER EMPERORS," 180-284 A.D.
THE LATER EMPIRE, 180-395 A.D.
The period called the Later Empire covers the two hundred and fifteen years from the accession of Commodus to the final division of the Roman world at the death of Theodosius. It formed, in general, a period of decline. The very existence of the empire was threatened, both from within and from without. The armies on the frontiers often set up their favorite leaders as contestants for the throne, thus provoking civil war. Ambitious governors of distant provinces sometimes revolted against a weak or unpopular emperor and tried to establish independent states. The Germans took advantage of the unsettled condition of affairs to make constant inroads. About the middle of the third century it became necessary to surrender to them the great province of Dacia, which Trajan had won. [1] A serious danger also appeared in the distant East. Here the Persians, having overcome the Parthians, [2] endeavored to recover from Roman hands the Asiatic provinces which had once belonged to the old Persian realm. Though the Persians failed to make any permanent conquest of Roman territory, their constant attacks weakened the empire at the very time when the northern barbarians had again become a menace.
"IMPERIAL PHANTOMS"
The rulers who occupied the throne during the first half of this troubled period are commonly known as the "Soldier Emperors," because so many of them owed their position to the swords of the legionaries. Emperor after emperor followed in quick succession, to enjoy a brief reign and then to perish in some sudden insurrection. Within a single year (237-238 A.D.) six rulers were chosen, worshiped, and then murdered by their troops "You little know," said one of these imperial phantoms, "what a poor thing it is to be an emperor." [3]
POLITICAL SITUATION IN 284 A.D.
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.
75. THE "ABSOLUTE EMPERORS," 284-395 A.D.
REIGN OF DIOCLETIAN, 284-305 A.D.
Diocletian, whose reign is one of the most illustrious 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 entitles 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 "partnership 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 partnership soon seemed advisable, and so each Augustus chose a younger associate, 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 title of Dominus ("Lord"). They were treated as gods. 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 nobles, 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 pronounced 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 title 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 succumbed 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, classical 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 noble 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 competitor alive. Peasants and artisans gradually drifted into the cities, where the public distributions of grain, wine, and oil assured 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 classes, 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 institutions 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 fashioned 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 worship. For educated Romans, also, the rites and ceremonies of the ancient religion came gradually to lose their meaning. The worship of the Roman gods had never appealed to the emotions. Now it tended to pass into the mere mechanical repetition of prayers and sacrifices. Even the worship 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 noble 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 classes, 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 worship of Demeter, goddess 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 passion 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 Panhellenic festival open to all Greeks, women as well as men, slaves as well as freemen. The privilege of membership 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 classical 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 worship.
MITHRA
Perhaps the most remarkable of the Asiatic religions was Mithraism. Mithra first appears as a Persian sun god, the leader of Ahuramazda's hosts in the ceaseless struggle against the forces of darkness and evil. [15] As a god of light Mithra was also a god of truth and purity. His worship, spreading over the length and breadth of the Roman Empire, became the noblest of all pagan faiths. Men saw in Mithra a Lord and Giver of Life, who protected the weak and miserable, cleansed the sinner, conquered death, and procured for his faithful followers the crown of immortality.
THE WORSHIP OF MITHRA
The Mithraic worship took the form of a mystery with seven grades, or degrees, through which candidates passed by ordeals of initiation. The rites included a kind of baptism with holy water, a sacrificial meal of bread and wine, and daily litanies to the sun. Mithra was represented as a youthful hero miraculously born from a rock at the dawn of day; for this reason his worship was always conducted underground in natural or artificial caves, or in cellars. At the back of one of these subterranean temples would be often a picture of Mithra slaying a bull, and an inscription: "To the Unconquerable Sun, to Mithra." [16]
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE ORIENTAL RELIGIONS
The new Oriental religions all appealed to the emotions. They helped to satisfy the spiritual wants of men and women, by dwelling on the need of purification from sin and by holding forth the prospect of a happier life beyond the tomb. It is not strange, therefore, that they penetrated every province of the Roman Empire and flourished as late as the fourth century of our era. Christianity had no more dangerous antagonists than the followers of Mithra and other eastern divinities.
78. RISE AND SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY
CHRISTIANITY AMONG THE JEWS
Christianity rose among the Jews, for Jesus was a Jew and his disciples were Jews. At the time of the death of Jesus [17] his immediate followers numbered scarcely a Christianity hundred persons. The catastrophe of the crucifixion struck them with sorrow and dismay. When, however, the disciples came to believe in the resurrection of their master, a wonderful impetus was given to the growth of the new religion. They now asserted that Jesus was the true Messiah, or Christ, who by rising from the dead had sealed the truth of his teachings. For several years after the crucifixion, the disciples remained at Jerusalem, preaching and making converts. The new doctrines met so much opposition on the part of Jewish leaders in the capital city that the followers of Jesus withdrew to Samaria, Damascus, and Antioch. In all these places there were large Jewish communities, among whom Peter and his fellow apostles labored zealously.
MISSIONARY LABORS OF PAUL
Up to this time the new faith had been spread only among the Jews. The first Christians did not neglect to keep up all the customs of the Jewish religion. It was even doubted for a while whether any but Jews could properly be allowed within the Christian fold. A new convert, Saul of Tarsus, afterwards the Apostle Paul, did most to admit the Gentiles, or pagans, to the privileges of the new religion. Though born a Jew, Paul had been trained in the schools of Tarsus, a city of Asia Minor which was a great center of Greek learning. He possessed a knowledge of Greek philosophy, and particularly of Stoicism. This broad education helped to make him an acceptable missionary to Greek-speaking peoples. During more than thirty years of unceasing activity Paul established churches in Asia Minor, Greece, Macedonia, and Italy. To many of these churches he wrote the letters (epistles), which have found a place in the New Testament. So large a part of the doctrines of Christianity has been derived from Paul's writings that we may well speak of him as the second founder of the Christian faith.
CHRISTIANITY AMONG THE GENTILES
Christianity advanced with marvelous rapidity over the Roman world. At the close of the first century there were Christians everywhere in Asia Minor. The second century saw the establishment of flourishing churches in almost every province of the empire. A hundred years later there were missionaries along the Rhine, on the Danube frontier, and in distant Britain. "We are but of yesterday," says a Christian writer, with pardonable exaggeration, "yet we have filled all your places of resort-- cities, islands, fortresses, towns, markets, the camp itself, the tribes, town councils, the palace, the senate, and the forum, We have left to you only the temples of your gods." [18]
CONDITIONS FAVORING THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY
Certain circumstances contributed to the success of this gigantic missionary enterprise. Alexander's conquests in the East and those of Rome in the West had done much to remove the barriers to intercourse between nations. The spread of Greek and Latin as the common languages of the Mediterranean world furnished a medium in which Christian speakers and writers could be easily understood. The scattering of the Jews after the destruction of Jerusalem [19] provided the Christians with an audience in many cities of the empire. The early missionaries, such as Paul himself, were often Roman citizens who enjoyed the protection of the Roman law and profited by the ease of travel which the imperial rule had made possible. At no other period in ancient history were conditions so favorable for the rapid spread of a new religion.
ORGANIZATION OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY
While Christianity was conquering the world, the believers in its doctrines were grouping themselves into communities or churches. Every city had a congregation of Christian worshipers. [20] They met, not in synagogues as did the Jews, but in private houses, where they sang hymns, listened to readings from the Holy Scriptures, and partook of a sacrificial meal in memory of the last supper of Jesus with his disciples. Certain officers called presbyters, [21] or elders, were chosen to conduct the services and instruct the converts. The chief presbyter received the name of "overseer," or bishop. [22] Each church had also one or more deacons, who visited the sick and relieved the wants of the poor. Every Christian community thus formed a little brotherhood of earnest men and women, united by common beliefs and common hopes.
79. THE PERSECUTIONS
HOSTILITY TOWARD THE CHRISTIANS
The new religion from the start met popular disapproval. The early Christians, who tried to keep themselves free from idolatry, were regarded as very unsociable persons. They never appeared at public feasts and entertainments. They would not join in the amusements of the circus or the amphitheater. They refused to send their children to the schools. The ordinary citizen could not understand such people. It is not surprising, therefore, that they gained the evil name of "haters of mankind."
SUPERSTITIOUS FEAR OF THE CHRISTIANS
If the multitude despised the Christians, they sometimes feared them as well. Strange stories circulated about the secret meetings of the Christians, who at their sacrificial meal were declared to feast on children. The Christians, too, were often looked upon as magicians who caused all sorts of disasters. It was not difficult to excite the vicious crowds of the larger cities to riots and disorders, in which many followers of the new religion lost their lives.
ANTAGONISM OF THE ROMAN GOVERNMENT
Such outbursts of mob hatred were only occasional. There would have been no organized, persistent attack, if the imperial government had not taken a hand. Rome, which had treated so many other foreign faiths with careless indifference or even with favor, which had tolerated the Jews and granted to them special privileges of worship, made a deliberate effort to crush Christianity.
ATTITUDE OF THE CHRISTIANS TOWARD PAGANISM
Rome entered on the persecutions because it saw in Christianity that which threatened its own existence. The Christians declined to support the state religion; they even condemned it unsparingly as sinful and idolatrous. The Christians, moreover, would not worship the genius, or guardian spirit of the emperor, and would not burn incense before his statue, which stood in every town. Such a refusal to take what was really an oath of allegiance was regarded as an act of rebellion. These feelings of hostility to the Christians were strengthened by their unwillingness to serve in the army and to swear by the pagan gods in courts of law. In short, the members of this new sect must have appeared very unruly subjects who, if allowed to become numerous enough, would endanger the security of the government.
DIOCLETIAN'S PERSECUTION, 303-311 A.D.
As early as the beginning of the second century Roman officials began to search out and punish Christians, wherever they were found. During the third century the entire power of the imperial government was directed against this outlawed sect. The persecution which began under Diocletian was the last and most severe. With some interruptions it continued for eight years. Only Gaul and Britain seem to have escaped its ravages. The government began by burning the holy books of the Christians, by destroying their churches, and by taking away their property. Members of the hated faith lost their privileges as full Roman citizens. Then sterner measures followed. The prisons were crowded with Christians. Those who refused to recant and sacrifice to the emperor were thrown to wild animals in the arena, stretched on the rack, or burned over a slow fire. Every refinement of torture was practiced. Paganism, fighting for its existence, left no means untried to root out a sect both despised and feared.
THE MARTYRS
The Christians joyfully suffered for their religion. They welcomed the torture and death which would gain for them a heavenly crown. Those who perished were called martyrs, that is, "witnesses." Even now the festal day of a martyr is the day of his death.
80. TRIUMPH OF CHRISTIANITY
CHRISTIANITY BECOMES A TOLERATED RELIGION
Diocletian's persecution, which continued for several years after his abdication, came to an end in 311 A.D. In that year Galerius, the ruler in the East, published an edict which permitted the Christians to rebuild their churches and worship undisturbed. It remained for the emperor Constantine to take the next significant step. In 313 A.D. Constantine and his colleague, Licinius, issued the Edict of Milan, which proclaimed for the first time in history the noble principle of religious toleration. It gave absolute freedom to every man to choose and follow the religion which he deemed best suited to his needs. This edict placed the Christian faith on an equality with paganism.
CONSTANTINE'S CONVERSION
The conversion of Constantine is one of the most important events in ancient history. A Roman emperor, himself a god to the subjects of Rome, became the worshiper of a crucified provincial of his empire. Constantine favored the Christians throughput his reign. He surrounded himself with Christian bishops, freed the clergy from taxation, and spent large sums in building churches. One of his laws abolished the use of the cross as an instrument of punishment. Another enactment required that magistrates, city people, and artisans were to rest on Sunday. This was the first "Sunday law." [23]
CHURCH COUNCIL AT NICAEA, 325 A.D.
Significant of the emperor's attitude toward Christianity was his action in summoning all the bishops in the different provinces to a gathering at Nicaea in Asia Minor. It was the first general council of the Church. The principal work of the Council of Nicaea was the settlement of a great dispute which had arisen over the nature of Christ. Some theologians headed by Arius, a priest of Alexandria, maintained that Christ the Son, having been created by God the Father, was necessarily inferior to him Athanasius, another Alexandrian priest, opposed this view and held that Christ was not a created being, but was in all ways equal to God. The Council accepted the arguments of Athanasius, condemned Arius as a heretic, and framed the Nicene Creed, which is still the accepted summary of Christian doctrine. Though thrust out of the Church, Arianism lived to flourish anew among the Germanic tribes, of which the majority were converted to Christianity by Arian missionaries.
CHRISTIANITY BECOMES THE STATE RELIGION UNDER THEODOSIUS, 379-395 A.D.
The recognition given to Christianity by Constantine helped immensely to spread the new faith. The emperor Theodosius, whose services to the church won him the title of "the Great," made Christianity the state religion. Sacrifices to the pagan gods were forbidden, the temples were closed, and their property was taken away. Those strongholds of the old paganism, the Delphic oracle, the Olympian games, and the Eleusinian mysteries, were abolished. Even the private worship of the household Lares and Penates [24] was prohibited. Though paganism lingered for a century or more in the country districts, it became extinct as a state religion by the end of the fourth century.
81. CHRISTIAN INFLUENCE ON SOCIETY
MORAL TEACHINGS OF CHRISTIANITY
The new religion certainly helped to soften and refine manners by the stress which it laid upon such "Christian" virtues as humility, tenderness, and gentleness. By dwelling on the sanctity of human life, Christianity did its best to repress the very common practice of suicide as well as the frightful evil of infanticide. [25] It set its face sternly against the obscenities of the theater and the cruelties of the gladiatorial shows. [26] In these and other respects Christianity had much to do with the improvement of ancient morals.
SOCIAL TEACHINGS OF CHRISTIANITY
Perhaps even more original contributions of Christianity to civilization lay in its social teachings. The belief in the fatherhood of God implied a corresponding belief in the brotherhood of man. This doctrine of the equality of men had been expressed before by ancient philosophers, but Christianity translated the precept into practice. In this way it helped to improve the condition of slaves and, by favoring emancipation, even tended to decrease slavery. [27] Christianity also laid much emphasis on the virtue of charity and the duty of supporting all institutions which aimed to relieve the lot of the poor, the sick, and the downtrodden.
CHRISTIANITY AND THE GERMANS
At the close of the fourth century the Germanic tribes living nearest the frontiers had been visited by missionaries and had become converts to Christianity. The fact that both Romans and Germans were Christians tended to lessen the terrors of the invasions and to bring about a peaceful fusion of the conquerors and the conquered.
STUDIES
1. On an outline map indicate the territories of the Roman Empire and their division, 395 A D.
2. What is the date of the accession of the emperor Commodus? of the accession of Diocletian? of the death of Theodosius? of the Edict of Milan? of the Council of Nicaea?
3. What elements of weakness in the imperial system had been disclosed during the century 180-284 A.D.?
4. Explain Diocletian's plan of "partnership emperors."
5. Define the terms absolutism and centralization. Give an example of a European country under a centralized administration; of a European country under an absolute government.
6. What are the advantages of local self-government over a centralized government?
7. "The emperor of the first century was a Prince, that is, 'first citizen'; the emperor of the fourth century was a Sultan." Comment on this statement.
8. What arguments might have been made for and against the removal of the capital to Constantinople?
9. Enumerate the causes of the decline of population in imperial times.
10. Show how an unwise system of taxation may work great economic injury.
11. Give reasons for the decline of Greek and Roman paganism.
12. Why should Mithraism have proved "the most formidable foe which Christianity had to overcome"?
13. Were any of the ancient religions missionary faiths?
14. When and where was Jesus born? Who was king of Judea at the time? Were the Jews independent of Rome during the lifetime of Jesus?
15. Locate on the map, facing page 230, the three divisions of Palestine at the time of Christ.
16. To what cities of Asia Minor did Paul write his epistles, or letters? To what other cities in the Roman Empire?
17. What was the original meaning of the words "presbyter," "bishop," and "deacon"?
18. What is meant by calling the Church an episcopal organization?
19. How can you explain the persecution of the Christians by an emperor so great and good as Marcus Aurelius?
20. What is the meaning of the word "martyr"?
21. "The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church." Explain.
22. Describe the Labarum (illustration, page 235).
23. What reasons suggest themselves as helping to explain the conversion of the civilized world to Christianity?
FOOTNOTES
[1] See page 200.Return to passage
[2] See pages 184, 194.Return to passage
[3] Vopiscus, Saturninus, 10.Return to passage
[4] The number and arrangement of these divisions varied somewhat during the fourth century. See the map, between pages 222-223, for the system as it existed about 395 A.D.Return to passage
[5] See page 186.Return to passage
[6] See page 88.Return to passage
[7] See the map, page 340.Return to passage
[8] Until the capture of the city by the Ottoman Turks in 1453 A.D.Return to passage
[9] See pages 200, 219.Return to passage
[10] See page 77.Return to passage
[11] See page 196.Return to passage
[12] See page 201.Return to passage
[13] See the map, page 107.Return to passage
[14] Isocrates, Panegyricus, 29.Return to passage
[15] See page 54.Return to passage
[16] Soli Invicto Mithrae. An interesting survival of Mithra worship is the date of our festival of Christmas. The 25th of December was the day of the great annual celebration in memory of the Persian deity. In 274 A.D. the emperor Aurelian raised a gorgeous temple to the sun god in the Campus Martius, dedicating it on the 25th of December, "the birthday of the Unconquerable Sun." After the triumph of Christianity the day was still honored, but henceforth as the anniversary of the birth of Christ.Return to passage
[17] The exact date of the crucifixion is unknown. It took place during the reign of Tiberius, when Pontius Pilatus was procurator of Judea.Return to passage
[18] Tertullian, Apology, 37.Return to passage
[19] See page 199, note 1.Return to passage
[20] The meeting was called ecclesia from the Greek word for "popular assembly." Hence comes our word "ecclesiastical."Return to passage
[21] Whence the word "priest."Return to passage
[22] The word "bishop" comes from the Greek episkopos and means, literally, an "overseer."Return to passage
[23] It is highly doubtful, however, whether this legislation had any reference to Christianity. More probably, Constantine was only adding the day of the Sun, the worship of which was then firmly established in the empire (see page 229, note 1) to the other holy days of the Roman calendar.Return to passage
[24] See page 146.Return to passage
[25] See page 253.Return to passage
[26] See page 267.Return to passage
[27] See page 270.Return to passage
XI. THE GERMANS TO 476 A.D. [1]
82. GERMANY AND THE GERMANS
PHYSICAL FEATURES OF GERMANY
The Germans were an Indo-European people, as were their neighbors, the Celts of Gaul and Britain. They had lived for many centuries in the wild districts of central Europe north of the Alps and beyond the Danube and the Rhine. This home land of the Germans in ancient times was cheerless and unhealthy. Dense forests or extensive marshes covered the ground. The atmosphere was heavy and humid; in summer clouds and mists brooded over the country; and in winter it was covered with snow and ice. In such a region everything was opposed to civilization. Hence the Germans, though a gifted race, had not advanced as rapidly as the Greek and Italian peoples.
THE GERMANS DESCRIBED BY THE ROMANS
Our earliest notice of the Germans is found in the Commentaries by Julius Caesar, who twice invaded their country. About a century and a half later the Roman historian, Tacitus, wrote a little book called Germany, which gives an account of the people as they were before coming under the influence of Rome and Christianity. Tacitus describes the Germans as barbarians with many of the usual marks of barbarism. He speaks of their giant size, their fierce, blue eyes, and their blonde or ruddy hair. These physical traits made them seem especially terrible to the smaller and darker Romans. He mentions their love of warfare, the fury of their onset in battle, and the contempt which they had for wounds and even death itself. When not fighting, they passed much of their time in the chase, and still more time in sleep and gluttonous feasts. They were hard drinkers, too, and so passionately fond of gambling that, when a man's wealth was gone, he would even stake his liberty on a single game. In some of these respects the Germans resembled our own Indian tribes.
GERMAN MORALS
On the other hand, the Germans had certain attractive qualities not always found even among civilized peoples. They were hospitable to the stranger, they respected their sworn word, they loved liberty and hated restraint. Their chiefs, we are told, ruled rather by persuasion than by authority. Above all, the Germans had a pure family life. "Almost alone among barbarians," writes Tacitus, "they are content with one wife. No one in Germany laughs at vice, nor is it the fashion to corrupt and be corrupted. Good habits are here more effectual than good laws elsewhere." [2] The Germans, then, were strong and brave, hardy, chaste, and free.
PROGRESS OF THE GERMANS
The Germans, during the three centuries between the time of Tacitus and the beginning of the invasions, had advanced somewhat in civilization. They were learning to live in towns instead of in rude villages, to read and write, to make better weapons and clothes, to use money, and to enjoy many Roman luxuries, such as wine, spices, and ornaments. They were likewise uniting in great confederations of tribes, ruled by kings who were able to lead them in migrations to other lands.
REASONS FOR THE GERMANIC MIGRATIONS
During this same period, also, the Germans increased rapidly in numbers. Consequently it was a difficult matter for them to live by hunting and fishing, or by such rude agriculture as their country allowed. They could find additional land only in the fertile and well cultivated territories of the Romans. It was this hunger for land, together with the love of fighting and the desire for booty and adventure, which led to their migrations.
GROWING WEAKNESS OF ROME
The German inroads were neither sudden, nor unexpected, nor new. Since the days of Marius and of Julius Caesar not a century had passed without witnessing some dangerous movement of the northern barbarians. Until the close of the fourth century Rome had always held their swarming hordes at bay. Nor were the invasions which at length destroyed the empire much more formidable than those which had been repulsed many times before. Rome fell because she could no longer resist with her earlier power. If the barbarians were not growing stronger, the Romans themselves were steadily growing weaker. The form of the empire was still the same, but it had lost its vigor and its vitality. [3]
83. BREAKING OF THE DANUBE BARRIER
THE GOTHS
North of the Danube lived, near the close of the fourth century, a German people called Visigoths, or West Goths. Their kinsmen, the Ostrogoths, or East Goths, held the land north of the Black Sea between the Danube and the Don. These two nations had been among the most dangerous enemies of Rome. In the third century they made so many expeditions against the eastern territories of the empire that Aurelian at last surrendered to the Visigoths the great province of Dacia. [4] The barbarians now came in contact with Roman civilization and began to lead more settled lives. Some of them even accepted Christianity from Bishop Ulfilas, who translated the Bible into the Gothic tongue.
THE VISIGOTHS CROSS THE DANUBE, 376 A.D.
The peaceful fusion of Goth and Roman might have gone on indefinitely but for the sudden appearance in Europe of the Huns. They were a nomadic people from central Asia. Entering Europe north of the Caspian Sea, the Huns quickly subdued the Ostrogoths and compelled them to unite in an attack upon their German kinsmen. Then the entire nation of Visigoths crowded the banks of the Danube and begged the Roman authorities to allow them to cross that river and place its broad waters between them and their terrible foes. In an evil hour for Rome their prayer was granted. At length two hundred thousand Gothic warriors, with their wives and children, found a home on Roman soil.
BATTLE OF ADRIANOPLE, 378 A.D.
The settlement of such a host of barbarians within the frontier of the empire was in itself a dangerous thing. The danger was increased by the ill treatment which the immigrants received. The Roman officials robbed them of their possessions, withheld the promised supplies of food, and even tried to murder their leaders at a banquet. Finally, the Germans broke out in open revolt. The emperor Valens misjudged their strength and rashly gave them battle near Adrianople in Thrace. The once invincible legions fell an easy prey to their foes, and the emperor himself perished.
RESULTS OF THE BATTLE
The defeat at Adrianople is considered one of the few really decisive battles in the world's history. It showed the barbarians that they could face the Romans in open fight and beat them. And it broke, once for all, the Danube barrier. Swarms of fighting men, Ostrogoths as well as Visigoths, overran the provinces south of the Danube. The great ruler, Theodosius, [5] saved the empire for a time by granting lands to the Germans and by enrolling them in the army under the high-sounding title of "allies." Until his death the Goths remained quiet--but it was only the lull before the storm.
ALARIC THE VISIGOTH
Theodosius, "the friend of the Goths," died in 395 A.D., leaving the defense of the Roman world to his weakling sons, Arcadius and Honorius. In the same year the Visigoths raised one of their young nobles, named Alaric, upon a shield and with joyful shouts acclaimed him as their king. The Visigothic leader despised the service of Rome. His people, he thought, should be masters, not servants. Alaric determined to lead them into the very heart of the empire, where they might find fertile lands and settle once for all.
ALARIC IN GREECE AND ITALY
Alaric at first fixed his attention on Constantinople. Realizing, at length, how hopeless would be the siege of that great city, he turned toward the west and descended upon Greece. The Germans marched unopposed through the pass of Thermopylae and devastated central Greece, as the Persians had done nearly nine centuries before. [6] Then the barbarians entered the Peloponnesus, but were soon driven out by Stilicho, a German chieftain who had risen to the command of the army of Honorius. Alaric gave up Greece only to invade Italy. Before long the Goths crossed the Julian Alps and entered the rich and defenseless valley of the Po. To meet the crisis the legions were hastily called in, even from the distant frontiers. Stilicho formed them into a powerful army, beat back the enemy, and captured the Visigothic camp, filled with the spoil of Greek cities. In the eyes of the Romans Stilicho seemed a second Marius, who had arisen in an hour of peril to save Italy from its barbarian foes. [7]
THE VISIGOTHS BEFORE ROME
Alaric and his Goths had been repulsed; they had not been destroyed. Beyond the Alps they were regaining their shattered strength and biding their time. Their opportunity came soon enough, when Honorius caused Stilicho to be put to death on a charge of plotting to seize the throne. The accusation may have been true, but in killing Stilicho the emperor had cut off his right hand with his left. Now that Stilicho was out of the way, Alaric no longer feared to descend again on Italy. The Goths advanced rapidly southward past Ravenna, where Honorius had shut himself up in terror, and made straight for Rome. In 410 A.D., just eight hundred years after the sack of the city by the Gauls, [8] Rome found the Germans within her gates.
SACK OF ROME BY THE VISIGOTHS, 410 A.D.
The city for three days and nights was given up to pillage. Alaric, who was a Christian, ordered his followers to respect the churches and their property and to refrain from bloodshed. Though the city did not greatly suffer, the moral effect of the disaster was immense. Rome the eternal, the unconquerable, she who had taken captive all the world, was now herself a captive. The pagans saw in this calamity the vengeance of the ancient deities, who had been dishonored and driven from their shrines. The Christians believed that God had sent a judgment on the Romans to punish them for their sins. In either case the spell of Rome was forever broken.
KINGDOM OF THE VISIGOTHS, 415-711 A.D.
From Rome Alaric led his hosts, laden with plunder, into southern Italy. He may have intended to cross the Mediterranean and bring Africa under his rule. The plan was never carried out, for the youthful chieftain died suddenly, a victim to the Italian fever. After Alaric's death, the barbarians made their way northward through Italy and settled in southern Gaul and Spain. In these lands they founded an independent Visigothic kingdom, the first to be created on Roman soil.
ROMANIZATION OF THE VISIGOTHS
The possessions of the Visigoths in Gaul were seized by their neighbors, the Franks, in less than a century; [9] but the Gothic kingdom in Spain had three hundred years of prosperous life. [10] The barbarian rulers sought to preserve the institutions of Rome and to respect the rights of their Roman subjects. Conquerors and conquered gradually blended into one people, out of whom have grown the Spaniards of modern times.
84. BREAKING OF THE RHINE BARRIER
THE GERMANS CROSS THE RHINE, 406 A.D.
After the departure of the Visigoths Rome and Italy remained undisturbed for nearly forty years. The western provinces were not so fortunate. At the time of Alaric's first attack on Italy the legions along the Rhine had been withdrawn to meet him, leaving the frontier unguarded. In 406 A.D., four years before Alaric's sack of Rome, a vast company of Germans crossed the Rhine and swept almost unopposed through Gaul. Some of these peoples succeeded in establishing kingdoms for themselves on the ruins of the empire.
KINGDOM OF THE BURGUNDIANS, 443-534 A.D.
The Burgundians settled on the upper Rhine and in the fertile valley of the Rhone, in southeastern Gaul. Alter less than a century of independence they were conquered by the Franks. [11] Their name, however, survives in modern Burgundy.
VANDAL KINGDOM IN NORTH AFRICA, 429-534 A.D.
The Vandals settled first in Spain. The territory now called Andalusia still preserves the memory of these barbarians. After the Visigothic invasion of Spain the Vandals passed over to North Africa. They made themselves masters of Carthage and soon conquered all the Roman province of Africa. Their kingdom here lasted about one hundred years. [12]
THE FRANKS IN NORTHERN GAUL
While the Visigoths were finding a home in the districts north and south of the Pyrenees, the Burgundians in the Rhone valley, and the Vandals in Africa, still another Germanic people began to spread over northern Gaul. They were the Franks, who had long held lands on both sides of the lower Rhine. The Franks, unlike the other Germans, were not of a roving disposition. They contented themselves with a gradual advance into Roman territory. It was not until near the close of the fifth century that they overthrew the Roman power in northern Gaul and began to form the Frankish kingdom, out of which modern France has grown.
THE ANGLES AND SAXONS IN BRITAIN, FROM 449 A.D.
The troubled years of the fifth century saw also the beginning of the Germanic conquest of Britain. The withdrawal of the legions from that island left it defenseless, for the Celtic inhabitants were too weak to defend themselves. Bands of savage Picts from Scotland swarmed over Hadrian's Wall, attacking the Britons in the rear. Ireland sent forth the no less savage Scots. The eastern coasts, at the same time, were constantly exposed to raids by German pirates. The Britons, in their extremity, adopted the old Roman practice of getting the barbarians to fight for them. Bands of Jutes were invited over from Denmark in 449 A.D. The Jutes forced back the Picts and then settled in Britain as conquerors. Fresh swarms of invaders followed them, chiefly Angles from what is now Schleswig-Holstein and Saxons from the neighborhood of the rivers Elbe and Weser in northern Germany. The invaders subdued nearly all that part of Britain that Rome had previously conquered. In this way the Angles and Saxons became ancestors of the English people, and Engleland became England. [13]
POLITICAL SITUATION IN 451 A.D.
By the middle of the fifth century the larger part of the Roman Empire in the West had come under barbarian control. The Germans ruled in Africa, Spain, Britain, and parts of Gaul. But now the new Germanic kingdoms, together with what remained of the old empire, were threatened by a common foe--the terrible Huns.
85. INROADS OF THE HUNS
THE HUNS
We know very little about the Huns, except that they were not related to the Germans or to any other European people. Some scholars believe them to have belonged to the Mongolian race. But the Huns, to the excited imagination of Roman writers, were demons rather than men. Their olive skins, little, turned-up noses, and black, beady eyes must have given them a very frightful appearance. They spent most of their time on horseback, sweeping over the country like a whirlwind and leaving destruction and death in their wake.
ATTILA THE HUN
The Huns did not become dangerous to Rome for more than half a century after their first appearance in Europe. [14] During this time they moved into the Danube region and settled in the lands now known as Austria and Hungary. At last the Huns found a national leader in Attila, "a man born into the world to agitate the nations, the fear of all lands," [15] one whose boast it was that the grass never grew again where his horse's hoofs had trod. He quickly built up a great military power obeyed by many barbarous nations from the Caspian to the Rhine.
INVASION OF GAUL BY ATTILA
Attila, from his capital on the Danube, could threaten both the East and the West. The emperors at Constantinople bought him off with lavish gifts, and so the robber-ruler turned to the western provinces for his prey. In 451 A.D. he led his motley host, said to number half a million men, across the Rhine. Many a noble municipality with its still active Roman life was visited by the Huns with fire and sword. Paris, it is worthy of note, escaped destruction. That now famous city was then only a little village on an island in the Seine.
BATTLE OF CHÂLONS, 451 A.D.
In this hour of danger Romans and Germans gave up quarreling and united against the common foe. Visigoths under their native king hastened from Spain; Burgundians and Franks joined their ranks; to these forces a German general, named Aëtius, added the last Roman army in the West. Opposed to them Attila had his Huns, the conquered Ostrogoths, and many other barbarian peoples. The battle of Châlons has well been called a struggle of the nations. It was one of the fiercest conflicts recorded in history. On both sides thousands perished, but so many more of Attila's men fell that he dared not risk a fresh encounter on the following day. He drew his shattered forces together and retreated beyond the Rhine.
ATTILA INVADES ITALY, 452 A.D.
In spite of this setback Attila did not abandon the hope of conquest. The next year he led his still formidable army over the Julian Alps and burned or plundered many towns of northern Italy. A few trembling fugitives sought shelter on the islands at the head of the Adriatic. Out of their rude huts grew up in the Middle Ages splendid and famous Venice, a city that in later centuries was to help defend Europe against those kinsmen of the Huns, the Turks.
DEATH OF ATTILA, 453 A.D.
The fiery Hun did not long survive this Italian expedition. Within a year he was dead, dying suddenly, it was said, in a drunken sleep. The great confederacy which he had formed broke up after his death. The German subjects gained their freedom, and the Huns themselves either withdrew to their Asiatic wilds or mingled with the peoples they had conquered. Europe breathed again; the nightmare was over.
86. END OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN THE WEST, 476 A.D.
VANDAL PIRATES
Rome escaped a visitation by the Huns only to fall a victim, three years later, to the Vandals. After the capture of Carthage,[16] these barbarians made that city the seat of a pirate empire. Putting out in their long, light vessels, they swept the seas and raided many a populous city on the Mediterranean coast. So terrible were their inroads that the word "vandalism" has come to mean the wanton destruction of property.
SACK OF ROME BY THE VANDALS, 455 A.D.
In 455 A.D. the ships of the Vandals, led by their king, Gaiseric, appeared at the mouth of the Tiber. The Romans could offer no resistance. Only the noble bishop Leo went out with his clergy to meet the invader and intercede for the city. Gaiseric promised to spare the lives of the inhabitants and not to destroy the public buildings. These were the best terms he would grant. The Vandals spent fourteen days stripping Rome of her wealth. Besides shiploads of booty the Vandals took away thousands of Romans as slaves, including the widow and two daughters of an emperor.
THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN THE WEST, 455-476 A.D.
After the Vandal sack of Rome the imperial throne became the mere plaything of the army and its leaders. A German commander, named Ricimer, set up and deposed four puppet emperors within five years. He was, in fact, the real ruler of Italy at this time. After his death Orestes, another German general, went a step beyond Ricimer's policy and placed his own son on the throne of the Caesars. By a curious coincidence, this lad bore the name of Romulus, legendary founder of Rome, and the nickname of Augustulus ("the little Augustus"). The boy emperor reigned less than a year. The German troops clamored for a third of the lands of Italy and, when their demand was refused, proclaimed Odoacer king. The poor little emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was sent to a villa near Naples, where he disappears from history.
POLITICAL SITUATION IN 476 A.D.
There was now no emperor in the West. To the men of that time it seemed that East and West had been once more joined under a single ruler, as in the days of Constantine. The emperors who reigned at Constantinople did not relinquish their claims to be regarded as the rightful sovereigns in Italy and Rome. Nevertheless, as an actual fact, Roman rule in the West was now all but extinct. Odoacer, the head of the barbarians in Italy, ruled a kingdom as independent as that of the Vandals in Africa or that of the Visigoths in Spain and Gaul. The date 476 A.D. may therefore be chosen as marking, better than any other, the overthrow of the Roman Empire in the West by the Germans.
87. GERMANIC INFLUENCE ON SOCIETY
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE GERMANIC INVASIONS
Classical civilization suffered a great shock when the Germans descended on the empire and from its provinces carved out their kingdoms. These barbarians were rude in manners, were very ignorant, and had little taste for anything except fighting and bodily enjoyments. They were unlike the Romans in dress and habits of life. They lived under different laws, spoke different languages, obeyed different rulers. Their invasions naturally ushered in a long period of confusion and disorder, during which the new race slowly raised itself to a level of culture somewhat approaching that which the Greeks and the Romans had attained.
RETROGRESSIVE FORCES
The Germans in many ways did injury to classical civilization. They sometimes destroyed Roman cities and killed or enslaved the inhabitants. Even when the invaders settled peaceably in the empire, they took possession of the land and set up their own tribal governments in place of the Roman. They allowed aqueducts, bridges, and roads to go without repairs, and theaters, baths, and other public buildings to sink into ruins. Having no appreciation of education, the Germans failed to keep up the schools, universities, and libraries. Being devoted chiefly to agriculture, they had no need for foreign wares or costly articles of luxury, and hence they permitted industry and commerce to languish. In short, large parts of western Europe, particularly Gaul, Spain, and Britain, fell backward into a condition of ignorance, superstition, and even barbarism.
PROGRESSIVE FORCES
But in closing our survey of the Germanic invasions we need to dwell on the forces that made for progress, rather than on those that made for decline. Classical civilization, we have already found reason to believe, [17] had begun to decay long before the Germans broke up the empire. The Germans came, as Christianity had come, only to hasten the process of decay. Each of these influences, in turn, worked to build up the fabric of a new society on the ruins of the old. First Christianity infused the pagan world with its quickening spirit and gave a new religion to mankind. Later followed the Germans, who accepted Christianity, who adopted much of Graeco-Roman culture, and then contributed their fresh blood and youthful minds and their own vigorous life.
STUDIES
1. On an outline map indicate the extent of Germany in the time of Tacitus.
2. Make a list of all the Germanic nations mentioned in this chapter, and give a short account of each.
3 Give dates for the following: battle of Châlons; sack of Rome by Alaric; battle of Adrianople; and end of the Roman Empire in the West.
4. What resemblances existed between the culture of the Germans and that of the early Greeks?
5. Why did the Germans progress more slowly in civilization than the Greeks and the Romans?
6. Comment on this statement: "The Germans had stolen their way into the very citadel of the empire long before its distant outworks were stormed."
7. Why is modern civilization, unlike that of antiquity, in little danger from barbarians?
8. Why has the battle of Adrianople been called "the Cannae of the fourth century"?
9. Why has Alaric been styled "the Moses of the Visigoths"?
10. What is the origin of the geographical names Andalusia, Burgundy, England, and France?
11. Why was Attila called the "scourge of God"?
12. Can you suggest a reason why some historians do not regard Châlons as one of the world's decisive battles?
13. In what sense does the date, 476 A.D., mark the "fall" of the Roman Empire?
FOOTNOTES
[1] Webster, Readings in Ancient History, chapter xxiii, "The Germans as Described by Tacitus."
[2] Tacitus, Germania, 19.Return to passage
[3] See pages 224-226.Return to passage
[4] See page 219.Return to passage
[5] See page 223.Return to passage
[6] See page 98.Return to passage
[7] See page 178.Return to passage
[8] See page 153.Return to passage
[9] See page 303.Return to passage
[10] See page 378.Return to passage
[11] See page 303.Return to passage
[12] See page 330.Return to passage
[13] The invasion of Britain by the Anglo-Saxons was followed by the migration across the Channel of large numbers of the defeated islanders. The district in France where they settled is called after them, Brittany.Return to passage
[14] See page 241.Return to passage
[15] Jordanes, De rebus Geticis, 35.Return to passage
[16] See page 225.Return to passage
[17] See page 224.Return to passage
XII. CLASSICAL CIVILIZATION [1]
88. THE CLASSICAL CITY
THE CENTER OF CLASSICAL LIFE
The history of the Greeks and Romans ought not to be studied only in their political development and the biographies of their great statesmen and warriors. We must also know something of ancient literature, philosophy, and art. Especially do we need to learn about the private life of the classical peoples--their manners, customs, occupations, and amusements. This life centered in the city.
ORIGIN OF THE CITY
A Greek or a Roman city usually grew up about a hill of refuge (acropolis, capitolium), to which the people of the surrounding district could flee in time of danger. The hill would be crowned with a fortress and the temples of the gods. Not far away was the market place (agora, forum), where the people gathered to conduct their business and to enjoy social intercourse. About the citadel and market place were grouped the narrow streets and low houses of the town.
GENERAL APPEARANCE OF AN ANCIENT CITY
The largest and most beautiful buildings in an ancient city were always the temples, colonnades, and other public structures. The houses of private individuals, for the most part, had few pretensions to beauty. They were insignificant in appearance and were often built with only one story. From a distance, however, their whitewashed walls and red-tiled roofs, shining brightly under the warm sun, must have made an attractive picture.
LIFE IN THE CITY
To the free-born inhabitant of Athens or of Rome his city was at once his country and his church, his club and his home. He shared in its government; he took part in the stately ceremonies that honored its patron god; in the city he could indulge his taste for talking and for politics; here he found both safety and society. No wonder that an Athenian or a Roman learned, from early childhood, to love his city with passionate devotion.
89. EDUCATION AND THE CONDITION OF CHILDREN
IMPORTANCE OF MALE CHILDREN
The coming of a child, to parents in antiquity as to parents now, was usually a very happy event. Especially welcome was the birth of a son. The father felt assured that through the boy his old age would be cared for and that the family name and the worship of the family ancestors would be kept up after his own death. "Male children," said an ancient poet, "are the pillars of the house." [2] The city, as well, had an interest in the matter, for a male child meant another citizen able to take the father's place in the army and the public assembly. To have no children was regarded as one of the greatest calamities that could befall a Greek or a Roman.
INFANTICIDE
The ancient attitude toward children was in one respect very unlike our own. The law allowed a father to do whatever he pleased with a newly born child. If he was very poor, or if his child was deformed, he could expose it in some desert spot, where it soon died. An infant was sometimes placed secretly in a temple, where possibly some kind-hearted person might rescue it. The child, in this case, became the slave of its adopter. This custom of exposure, an inheritance from prehistoric savagery, tended to grow less common with advancing culture. The complete abolition of infanticide was due to the spread of Christian teachings about the sacredness of human life. [3]
NAMES
A Greek boy generally had but one name. The favorite name for the eldest son was that of his paternal grandfather. A father, however, might give him his own name or that of an intimate friend. The Romans at first seem to have used only the one name, then two were given; and later we have the familiar three-fold name, representing the individual, the clan, and the family. [4]
GREEK EDUCATION
Greek education consisted of three main branches, known as gymnastics, music, and grammar. By gymnastics the Greeks meant the physical training in the palestra, an open stretch of ground on the outskirts of the city. Here a private teacher gave instruction in the various athletic sports which were so popular at the national games. The training in music was intended to improve the moral nature of young men and to fit them for pleasant social intercourse. They were taught to play a stringed instrument, called the lyre, and at the same time to sing to their own accompaniment. Grammar, the third branch of education, included instruction in writing and the reading of the national literature. After a boy had learned to write and to read, the schoolmaster took up with him the works of the epic poets, especially Homer, besides Aesop's Fables and other popular compositions. The student learned by heart much of the poetry and at so early an age that he always remembered it. Not a few Athenians, it is said, could recite the entire Iliad and Odyssey.
ROMAN EDUCATION
A Roman boy began his school days at about the age of seven. He learned to read, to write with a stylus on wax tablets, and to cipher by means of the reckoning board, or abacus. He received a little instruction in singing and memorized all sorts of proverbs and maxims, besides the laws of the Twelve Tables. [5] His studying went on under the watchful eyes of a harsh schoolmaster, who did not hesitate to use the rod. After Rome began to come into close contact with Greece, the curriculum was enlarged by the study of literature. The Romans were the first people who made the learning of a foreign tongue an essential part of education. Schools now arose in which the Greek language and literature formed the chief subject of instruction. As Latin literature came into being, its productions, especially the orations of Cicero and the poems of Vergil and Horace, were also used as texts for study.
TRAVEL AND STUDY ABROAD
Persons of wealth or noble birth might follow their school training by a university course at a Greek city, such as Athens, Alexandria, or Rhodes. Here the Roman youth would listen to lectures on philosophy, delivered by the deep thinkers whom Greece still produced, and would profit by the treasures of art and science preserved in these ancient capitals. Many famous Romans thus passed several years abroad in graduate study. During the imperial age, as we have already seen, [6] schools of grammar and rhetoric arose in the West, particularly in Gaul and Spain, and attracted students from all parts of the empire.
90. MARRIAGE AND THE POSITION OF WOMEN
ENGAGEMENTS
A young man in Athens or in Rome did not, as a rule, marry immediately on coming of age. He might remain a bachelor for several years, sometimes till he was thirty or over. The young man's father had most to do with the selection of a wife. He tried to secure for his son some daughter of a friend who possessed rank and property equal to his own. The parents of the two parties would then enter into a contract which, among other things, usually stated how large a dowry the bride's father was to settle on his daughter. An engagement was usually very little a matter of romance and very much a matter of business.
WEDDING CUSTOMS
The wedding customs of the Greeks and Romans presented many likenesses. Marriage, among both peoples, was a religious ceremony. On the appointed day the principals and their guests, dressed in holiday attire, met at the house of the bride. In the case of a Roman wedding the auspices [7] were then taken, and the words of the nuptial contract were pronounced in the presence of witnesses. After a solemn sacrifice to the gods of marriage, the guests partook of the wedding banquet. When night came on, the husband brought his wife to her new abode, escorted by a procession of torchbearers, musicians, and friends, who sang the happy wedding song.
POSITION OF WOMEN
An Athenian wife, during her younger years, always remained more or less a prisoner. She could not go out except by permission. She took no part in the banquets and entertainments which her husband gave. She lived a life of confinement in that quarter of the house assigned to the women for their special abode. Married women at Rome enjoyed a far more honorable position. Although early custom placed the wife, together with her children, in the power of the husband, [8] still she possessed many privileges. She did not remain all the time at home, but mingled freely in society. She was the friend and confidante of her husband, as well as his housekeeper. During the great days of Roman history the women showed themselves virtuous and dignified, loving wives and excellent companions.
91. THE HOME AND PRIVATE LIFE
CLOTHING
There were no great differences between the dress of the two classical peoples. Both wore the long, loosely flowing robes that contrast so sharply with our tight-fitting garments. [9] Athenian male attire consisted of but two articles, the tunic and the mantle. The tunic was an undergarment of wool or linen, without sleeves. Over this was thrown a large woolen mantle, so wrapped about the figure as to leave free only the right shoulder and head. In the house a man wore only his tunic; out of doors and on the street he usually wore the mantle over it. Very similar to the two main articles of Greek clothing were the Roman tunica and toga. [10]
COVERING FOR THE HEAD AND FEET
On a journey or out in the country broad-brimmed hats were used to shield the head from the sun. In rainy weather the mantle, pulled up over the head, furnished protection. Sandals, merely flat soles of wood or leather fastened by thongs, were worn indoors, but even these were laid aside at a dinner party. Outside the house leather shoes of various shapes and colors were used. They cannot have been very comfortable, since stockings were not known in antiquity.
EXTERIOR OF THE HOUSE
The ancient house lay close to the street line. The exterior was plain and simple to an extreme. The owner was satisfied if his mansion shut out the noise and dust of the highway. He built it, therefore, round one or more open courts, which took the place of windows supplying light and air. Except for the doorway the front of the house presented a bare, blank surface, only relieved by narrow slits or lattices in the wall of the upper story. The street side of the house wall received a coating of whitewash or of fine marble stucco. The roof of the house was covered with clay tiles. This style of domestic architecture is still common in eastern lands.
INTERIOR OF THE HOUSE
In contrast with its unpretentious exterior a classical dwelling indoors had a most attractive appearance. We cannot exactly determine just what were the arrangements of a Greek interior. But the better class of Roman houses, such as some of those excavated at Pompeii, [11] followed Greek designs in many respects. The Pompeian remains, therefore, will give some idea of the sort of residence occupied by a well-to-do citizen of Athens or Rome.
THE ATRIUM
The visitor at one of these ancient houses first entered a small vestibule, from which a narrow passage led to the heavy oaken door. A dog was sometimes kept chained in this hallway; in Pompeii there is a picture of one worked in mosaic on the floor with the warning beneath it, "Beware of the dog." Having made known his presence by using the knocker, the guest was ushered into the reception room, or atrium. This was a large apartment covered with a roof, except for a hole in the center admitting light and air. A marble basin directly underneath caught the rain water which came through the opening. The atrium represents the single room of the primitive Roman house without windows or chimney. [12]
THE PERISTYLE
A corridor from the atrium led into the peristyle, the second of the two main sections of a Roman house. It was a spacious court, open to the sky and inclosed by a colonnade or portico. This delightful spot, rather than the formal atrium, served as the center of family life. About it were grouped the bedchambers, bathrooms, dining rooms, kitchen, and other apartments of a comfortable mansion. Still other rooms occupied the upper stories of the dwelling.
BUSINESS OF THE FORENOON
The ancient Athenian was no sluggard. At sunrise, or even before, he rose from his couch, washed his face and hands, put on his scanty garments, and was soon ready for the street. Before leaving the house, he broke his fast with a meal as simple as the European "rolls and coffee"--in this case merely a few mouthfuls of bread dipped in wine. After breakfast he might call on his friends or perhaps ride into the country and visit his estates. About ten o'clock (which the Athenians called "full market"), he would be pretty sure to find his way to the Agora. The shops at this time were crowded with purchasers, and every sociable citizen of Athens was to be found in them or in the neighboring colonnades which lined the market place.
OCCUPATIONS IN THE AFTERNOON
The public resorts were deserted at noon, when the Athenian returned home to enjoy a light meal and a rest during the heat. As the day grew cooler, men again went out and visited a gymnasium, such as the Lyceum or the Academy, in the city suburbs. [13] Here were grounds for running, wrestling, discus-throwing, and other sports, as well as rooms for bathing and anointing. While the younger men busied themselves in such active exercises, those of maturer years might be content with less vigorous games or with conversation on political or philosophical themes.
THE EVENING MEAL
The principal meal of the day came about sunset. The master of the house, if he had no guests, shared the repast with his wife and children. For a man of moderate means the ordinary fare was very much what it is now in Greece--bread, olives, figs, cheese, and a little meat as an occasional luxury. At the end of the meal the diners refreshed themselves with wine mixed with water. The Greeks appear to have been usually as temperate in their drink as they were frugal in their food. The remainder of the evening would be devoted to conversation and music and possibly a little reading. As a rule the Athenian went early to bed.
MORNING ROUND OF A ROMAN NOBLE
A Roman of the higher class, who lived in late republican or early imperial times, passed through much the same daily routine as an Athenian citizen in the days of Pericles. He rose at an early hour and after a light breakfast dispatched his private business with the help of his steward and manager. He then took his place in the atrium to meet the crowd of poor dependents who came to pay their respects to their patron and to receive their usual morning alms--either food or sufficient money to buy a modest dinner. Having greeted his visitors and perhaps helped them in legal or business matters, the noble entered his litter and was carried down to the Forum. Here he might attend the law courts to plead a case for himself or for his clients. If he were a member of the Senate, he would take part in the deliberations of that body. At eleven o'clock, when the ordinary duties of the morning were over, he would return home to eat his luncheon and enjoy the midday rest, or siesta. The practice of having a nap in the heat of the day became so general that at noon the streets of a Roman city had the same deserted appearance as at midnight.
THE AFTERNOON EXERCISE AND BATH
After an hour of refreshing sleep it was time for the regular exercise out of doors in the Campus Martius or indoors at one of the large city baths. Then came one of the chief pleasures of a Roman's existence--the daily bath. It was taken ordinarily in one of the public bathing establishments, or thermae, to be found in every Roman town. [14] A Roman bath was a luxurious affair. After undressing, the bathers entered a warm anteroom and sat for a time on benches, in order to perspire freely. This was a precaution against the danger of passing too suddenly into the hot bath, which was taken in a large tank of water sunk in the middle of the floor. Then came an exhilarating cold plunge and anointing with perfumed oil. Afterwards the bathers rested on the couches with which the resort was supplied and passed the time in reading or conversation until the hour for dinner.
THE LATE DINNER
The late dinner, with the Romans as with the Greeks, formed the principal meal of the day. It was usually a social function. The host and his guests reclined on couches arranged about a table. The Romans borrowed from the Greeks the custom of ending a banquet with a symposium, or drinking-bout. The tables were cleared of dishes, and the guests were anointed with perfumes and crowned with garlands. During the banquet and the symposium it was customary for professional performers to entertain the guests with music, dancing, pantomimes, and feats of jugglery.
92. AMUSEMENTS
ATHENIAN RELIGIOUS FESTIVALS
The Athenians celebrated many religious festivals. One of the most important was the Great Panathenaea, [15] held every fourth year in the month of July. Athletic contests and poetical recitations, sacrifices, feasts, and processions honored the goddess Athena, who presided over the Athenian city. Even more interesting, perhaps, were the dramatic performances held in midwinter and in spring, at the festivals of Dionysus. The tragedies and comedies composed for these entertainments took their place among the masterpieces of Greek literature.
FEATURES OF A GREEK PLAY
There is very little likeness between the ancient and the modern drama. Greek plays were performed out of doors in the bright sunlight. Until late Roman times it is unlikely that a raised stage existed. The three actors and the members of the chorus appeared together in the dancing ring, or orchestra. The performers were all men. Each actor might play several parts. There was no elaborate scenery; the spectator had to rely chiefly on his own imagination for the setting of the piece. The actors indulged in few lively movements or gestures. They must have looked from a distance like a group of majestic statues. All wore elaborate costumes, and tragic actors, in addition, were made to appear larger than human with masks, padding, and thick-soled boots, or buskins. The performances occupied the three days of the Dionysiac festivals, beginning early in the morning and lasting till night. All this time was necessary because they formed contests for a prize which the people awarded to the poet and chorus whose presentation was judged of highest excellence.
PANTOMIME AND VAUDEVILLE AT ROME
Pantomimes formed the staple amusement of the Roman theater. In these performances a single dancer, by movements and gestures, represented mythological scenes and love stories. The actor took several characters in succession and a chorus accompanied him with songs. There were also "vaudeville" entertainments, with all manner of jugglers, ropedancers, acrobats, and clowns, to amuse a people who found no pleasure in the refined productions of the Greek stage.
CHARIOT RACES
Far more popular than even pantomime and vaudeville were the "games of the circus." At Rome these were held chiefly in the Circus Maximus. Chariot races formed the principal attraction of the circus. There were usually four horses to a chariot, though sometimes the drivers showed their skill by handling as many as six or seven horses. The contestants whirled seven times around the low wall, or spina, which divided the race course. The shortness of the stretches and the sharp turns about the spina must have prevented the attainment of great speed. A race, nevertheless, was a most exciting sport. What we should call "fouling" was permitted and even encouraged. The driver might turn his team against another or might endeavor to upset a rival's car. It was a very tame contest that did not have its accompaniment of broken chariots, fallen horses, and killed or injured drivers.
ANIMAL BAITINGS
The Circus Maximus was often used for a variety of animal shows. Fierce wild beasts, brought from every quarter of the empire, were turned loose to slaughter one another, or to tear to pieces condemned criminals. [16] More popular still were the contests between savage animals and men. Such amusements did something to satisfy the lust for blood in the Roman populace--a lust which was more completely satisfied by the gladiatorial combats.
GLADIATORIAL SHOWS
Exhibitions of gladiators were known in Italy long before they became popular at Rome. The combats probably started from the savage practice of sacrificing prisoners or slaves at the funeral of their master. Then the custom arose of allowing the victims a chance for their lives by having them fight one another, the conquerors being spared for future battles. From this it was but a step to keeping trained slaves as gladiators. During the imperial epoch the number of such exhibitions increased greatly. The emperor Trajan, for example, to celebrate his victories over the Dacians, [17] exhibited no less than ten thousand men within the space of four months. The gladiators belonged to various classes, according to the defensive armor they wore and the style of fighting they employed. When a man was wounded and unable to continue the struggle, he might appeal to the spectators. He lifted his finger to plead for release; if he had fought well, the people indicated their willingness to spare him by waving their handkerchiefs. If the spectators were in a cruel mood, they turned down their thumbs as the signal for his deathblow. These hideous exhibitions continued in different parts of the Roman Empire until the fifth century of our era.
"BREAD AND THE GAMES OF THE CIRCUS."
Gladiatorial combats, chariot races, and dramatic shows were free performances. For the lower classes in the Roman city they became the chief pleasure of life. The days of their celebration were public holidays, which in the fourth century numbered no less than one hundred and seventy-five. The once-sovereign people of Rome became a lazy, worthless rabble, fed by the state and amused with the games. It was well said by an ancient satirist that the Romans wanted only two things to make them happy--"bread and the games of the circus." [18]
93. SLAVERY
PLACE OF SLAVERY IN CLASSICAL LIFE
The private life of the Greeks and Romans, as described in the preceding pages, would have been impossible without the existence of a large servile class. Slaves did much of the heavy and disagreeable work in the ancient world, thus allowing the free citizen to engage in more honorable employment or to pass his days in dignified leisure.
SOURCES OF SLAVES
The Greeks seem sometimes to have thought that only barbarians should be degraded to the condition of servitude. Most Greek slaves, as a matter of fact, were purchased from foreign countries. But after the Romans had subdued the Mediterranean world, their captives included not only members of inferior races, but also the cultivated inhabitants of Greece, Egypt, and Asia Minor. We hear of slaves at Rome who served as clerks, secretaries, librarians, actors, and musicians. Their education was often superior to that of the coarse and brutal masters who owned them.
NUMBER AND CHEAPNESS OF SLAVES
The number of slaves, though great enough in Athens and other Greek cities, reached almost incredible figures during the later period of Roman history. Every victorious battle swelled the troops of captives sent to the slave markets at Rome. Ordinary slaves became as cheap as beasts of burden are now. The Roman poet Horace tells us that at least ten slaves were necessary for a gentleman in even moderate circumstances. Wealthy individuals, given to excessive luxury, might number their city slaves by the hundreds, besides many more on their country estates.
SLAVES' TASKS
Slaves engaged in a great variety of occupations. They were domestic servants, farm laborers, miners, artisans, factory hands, and even shopkeepers. Household slaves at Rome were employed in every conceivable way. Each part of a rich man's residence had its special staff of servants. The possession of a fine troop of slaves, dressed in handsome liveries, was a favorite method of showing one's wealth and luxury.
TREATMENT OF SLAVES
It is difficult for us to realize the attitude of ancient peoples toward their slaves. They were regarded as part of the chattels of the house--as on a level with domestic animals rather than human beings. Though Athenian law forbade owners to kill their slaves or to treat them cruelly, it permitted the corporal punishment of slaves for slight offenses. At Rome, until the imperial epoch, [19] no restraints whatever existed upon the master's power. A slave was part of his property with which he could do exactly as he pleased. The terrible punishments, the beating with scourges which followed the slightest misconduct or neglect of duty, the branding with a hot iron which a runaway slave received, the fearful penalty of crucifixion which followed an attempt upon the owner's life--all these tortures show how hard was the lot of the bondman in pagan Rome.
POSSIBILITIES OF FREEDOM
A slave, under some circumstances, could gain his freedom. In Greece, where many little states constantly at war bordered one another, a slave could often run away to liberty. In a great empire like Rome, where no boundary lines existed, this was usually impossible. Freedom, however, was sometimes voluntarily granted. A master in his will might liberate his favorite slave, as a reward for the faithful service of a lifetime. A more common practice permitted the slave to keep a part of his earnings until he had saved enough to purchase his freedom.
PERMANENCE OF SLAVERY
Slavery in Greece and Italy had existed from the earliest times. It never was more flourishing than in the great age of classical history. Nor did it pass away when the Roman world became Christian. The spread of Christianity certainly helped to improve the lot of the slave and to encourage his liberation. The Church, nevertheless, recognized slavery from the beginning. Not until long after ancient civilization had perished did the curse of slavery finally disappear from European lands. [20]
94. GREEK LITERATURE
EPIC POETRY
The literature of Greece begins with epic poetry. An epic may be defined as a long narrative in verse, dealing with some large and noble theme. The earliest epic poetry of the Greeks was inseparable from music. Wandering minstrels sang at feasts in the palaces of kings and accompanied their lays with the music of the clear-toned lyre. In time, as his verse reached a more artistic character, the singer was able to give up the lyre and to depend for effect solely on the poetic power of his narrative. Finally, the scattered lays were combined into long poems. The most famous are the Iliad and the Odyssey, works which the Greeks attributed to Homer. [21]
LYRIC POETRY
Several centuries after Homer the Greeks began to create a new form of poetic expression--lyric poetry. In short poems, accompanied by the flute or the lyre, they found a medium for the expression of personal feelings which was not furnished by the long and cumbrous epic. The greatest lyric poet was Pindar. We still possess forty-four of his odes, which were written in honor of victorious athletes at the Olympian and other national games. [22] Pindar's verses were so popular that he became, as it were, the "poet laureate" of Greece. When Alexander the Great destroyed Thebes, [23] the native town of Pindar, he spared that poet's birthplace from the general ruin.
ATHENIAN TRAGEDY
The three great masters of the tragic drama [24] lived and wrote in Athens during the splendid half century between the Persian and the Peloponnesian wars. Such was the fertility of their genius that they are said to have written altogether nearly three hundred plays. Only thirty-two have come down to us. Aeschylus, the first of the tragic poets, had fought at Marathon and Salamis. One of his works, the Persians, is a magnificent song of triumph for the victory of Hellas. Sophocles, while yet a young man, gained the prize in a dramatic contest with Aeschylus. His plays mark the perfection of Greek tragedy. After the death of Sophocles the Athenians revered him as a hero and honored his memory with yearly sacrifices. Euripides was the third of the Athenian dramatists and the most generally popular. His fame reached far beyond his native city. We are told that the Sicilians were so fond of his verses that they granted freedom to every one of the Athenian prisoners captured at Syracuse who could recite the poet's lines.
ATHENIAN COMEDY
Athenian comedy during the fifth century B.C. is represented by the plays of Aristophanes. He was both a great poet and a great satirist. In one comedy Aristophanes attacks the demagogue Cleon, who was prominent in Athenian politics after the death of Pericles. In other comedies he ridicules the philosophers, makes fun of the ordinary citizen's delight in sitting on jury courts and trying cases, and criticizes those responsible for the unfortunate expedition to Sicily. The plays of Aristophanes were performed before admiring audiences of thousands of citizens and hence must have had much influence on public opinion.
HISTORY
The "father of history," Herodotus, flourished about the middle of the fifth century B.C. Though a native of Asia Minor, Herodotus spent some of the best years of his life at Athens, mingling in its brilliant society and coming under the influences, literary and artistic, of that city. He traveled widely in the Greek world and in the East, as a preparation for his great task of writing an account of the rise of the Oriental nations and the struggle between Greece and Persia. Herodotus was not a critical historian, diligently sifting truth from fable. Where he can he gives us facts. Where facts are lacking, he tells interesting stories in a most winning style. A much more scientific writer was Thucydides, an Athenian who lived during the epoch of the Peloponnesian War and became the historian of that contest. An Athenian contemporary of Thucydides, Xenophon, is best known from his Anabasis, which describes the famous expedition of the "Ten Thousand" Greeks against Persia. [25]
BIOGRAPHY
Of the later prose writers of Greece it is sufficient to name only one-- the immortal Plutarch. He was a native of Chaeronea in Boeotia and lived during the first century of our era. Greece at that time was only a province of the Roman Empire; the days of her greatness had long since passed away. Plutarch thus had rather a melancholy task in writing his Parallel Lives. In this work he relates, first the life of an eminent Greek, then of a famous Roman who in some way resembled him; and ends the account with a short comparison of the two men. Plutarch had a wonderful gift of sympathy for his heroes and a keen eye for what was dramatic in their careers. It is not surprising, therefore, that Plutarch has always been a favorite author. No other ancient writer gives us so vivid and intimate a picture of the classical world.
ORIGINALITY OF GREEK LITERATURE
From the foregoing survey it is clear that the Greeks were pioneers in many forms of literature. They first composed artistic epic poems. They invented lyric and dramatic poetry. They were the first to write histories and biographies. In oratory, as has been seen, they also rose to eminence. [26] We shall now find that the Greek intellect was no less fertile and original in the study of philosophy.
95. GREEK PHILOSOPHY
THE SOPHISTS
The Greek philosophy took its rise in the seventh century B.C., when a few bold students began to search out the mysteries of the universe. Their theories were so many and so contradictory, however, that after a time philosophers gave up the study of nature and proposed in turn to study man himself. These later thinkers were called sophists. They traveled throughout Greece, gathering the young men about them and lecturing for pay on subjects of practical interest. Among other things they taught the rhetoric and oratory which were needed for success in a public career.
SOCRATES
One of the founders of Greek philosophy and the greatest teacher of his age was Socrates the Athenian. He lived and taught during the period of the Peloponnesian War. Socrates resembled the sophists in his possession of an inquiring, skeptical mind which questioned every common belief and superstition. But he went beyond the sophists in his emphasis on problems of every-day morality.
Though Socrates wrote nothing, his teaching and personality made a deep impression on his contemporaries. The Delphic oracle declared that no one in the world was wiser than Socrates. Yet he lived through a long life at Athens, a poor man who would neither work at his trade of sculptor, nor (as did the sophists) accept money for his instruction. He walked the streets, barefoot and half-clad, and engaged in animated conversation with anyone who was willing to discuss intellectual subjects with him. Socrates must have been a familiar figure to the Athenians. His short body, large, bald head, and homely features hardly presented the ideal of a philosopher. Even Aristophanes in a comedy laughs at him.
CONDEMNATION AND DEATH OF SOCRATES
Late in life Socrates was accused of impiety and of corrupting the youth of Athens with his doctrines. As a matter of fact he was a deeply religious man. If he objected to the crude mythology of Homer, he often spoke of one God, who ruled the world, and of a divine spirit or conscience within his own breast. A jury court found him guilty, however, and condemned him to death. He refused to escape from prison when opportunity offered and passed his last days in eager conversation on the immortality of the soul. When the hour of departure arrived, he bade his disciples farewell and calmly drained the cup of hemlock, a poison that caused a painless death. Although Socrates gave his life for his philosophy, this did not perish with him.
PLATO
One of the members of the Socratic circle was Plato, a wealthy noble who abandoned a public career for the attractions of philosophy. After the death of Socrates, Plato traveled widely in the Greek world and even visited Egypt, where he interviewed the learned priests. On his return to Athens Plato began teaching in the garden and gymnasium called the Academy. [27] His writings, known as Dialogues, are cast in the form of question and answer that Socrates had used. In most of them Plato makes Socrates the chief speaker. Plato's works are both profound in thought and admirable in style. The Athenians used to say that if Zeus had spoken Greek he would have spoken it as did Plato.
ARISTOTLE
As great a philosopher as Plato, but a far less attractive writer, was Aristotle. He was not an Athenian by birth, but he passed many years in Athens, first as a pupil of Plato, who called him the "mind" of the school, and then as a teacher in the Athenian city. Aristotle seems to have taken all knowledge for his province. He investigated the ideas underlying the arts of rhetoric and poetry; he gathered the constitutions of many Greek states and drew from them some general principles of politics; he studied collections of strange plants and animals to learn their structure and habits; he examined the acts and beliefs of men in order to write books on ethics. In all this investigation Aristotle was not content to accept what previous men had written or to spin a pleasing theory out of his own brain. Everywhere he sought for facts; everything he tried to bring to the test of personal observation. Aristotle, then, was as much a scientist as a philosopher. His books were reverently studied for centuries after his death and are still used in our universities.
EPICUREANISM
The system of philosophy called Epicureanism was founded by a Greek named Epicurus. He taught in Athens during the earlier part of the third century B.C. Epicurus believed that pleasure is the sole good, pain, the sole evil. He meant by pleasure not so much the passing enjoyments of the hour as the permanent happiness of a lifetime. In order to be happy men should not trouble themselves with useless luxuries, but should lead the "simple life." They must be virtuous, for virtue will bring more real satisfaction than vice. Above all, men ought to free themselves from idle hopes and fears about a future existence. The belief in the immortality of the soul, said Epicurus, is only a delusion, for both soul and body are material things which death dissolves into the atoms making up the universe. And if there are any gods, he declared, they do not concern themselves with human affairs. Some of the followers of Epicurus seemed to find in his philosophic system justification for free indulgence in every appetite and passion. Even to-day, when we call a person an "Epicurean," we think of him as a selfish pleasure seeker.
STOICISM
The noblest of all pagan philosophies was Stoicism, founded by Zeno, a contemporary of Epicurus. Virtue, said the Stoic, consists in living "according to nature," that is, according to the Universal Reason or Divine Providence that rules the world. The followers of this philosophy tried, therefore, to ignore the feelings and exalt the reason as a guide to conduct. They practiced self-denial, despised the pomps and vanities of the world, and sought to rise above such emotions as grief, fear, hope, and joy. The doctrines of Stoicism gained many adherents among the Romans [28] and through them became a real moral force in the ancient world. Stoicism is even now no outworn creed. Our very word "stoical" is a synonym for calm indifference to pleasure or to pain.
96. ROMAN LITERATURE
RISE OF ROMAN LITERATURE
The beginnings of Roman literature go back to the third century B.C., when some knowledge of the Greek language became increasingly common in Rome. The earlier writers--chiefly poets and dramatists--did little original work, and usually were content to translate and adapt the productions of Greek authors for Roman audiences. During this period the Romans gradually discovered the capabilities of their language for prose composition. The republican institutions of Rome, like those of Athens, were highly favorable to the art of public speaking. It was the development of oratory which did most to mold the Latin language into fitness for the varied forms of prose.
CICERO
Cicero, the greatest of Roman orators, created a style for Latin prose composition which has been admired and imitated by men of letters even to our own day. Latin, in his hands, became a magnificent instrument for the expression of human thought. Cicero's qualities as an author are shown, not only by his Orations, but also by the numerous Epistles which he wrote to friends and correspondents in all parts of the Roman world. Besides their historical interest Cicero's letters are models of what good letters ought to be--the expression of the writer's real thoughts and feelings in simple, unstilted language. Cicero also composed a number of Dialogues, chiefly on philosophical themes. If not very profound, they are delightfully written, and long served as textbooks in the schools.
CAESAR
Another eminent statesman--Julius Caesar--won success in literature. As an orator he was admitted by his contemporaries to stand second to Cicero. None of his speeches have survived. We possess, however, his invaluable Commentaries on the Gallic and Civil wars. These works, though brief and in most parts rather dull, are highly praised for their simple, concise style and their mastery of the art of rapid narration.
VERGIL AND HORACE
The half century included within the Augustan Age marks a real epoch in the history of Latin literature. The most famous poet of this period was Vergil. The Aeneid, which he undertook at the suggestion of Augustus, is his best-known work. In form the poem is a narrative of the adventures of the Trojan hero, Aeneas, [29] but its real theme is the growth of Rome under the fostering care of the gods. The Aeneid, though unfinished at the author's death, became at once what it has always remained--the only ancient epic worthy of comparison with the Iliad or with the Odyssey. Another member of the Augustan circle was Vergil's friend and fellow- worker, Horace. An imitative poet, Horace reproduced in Latin verse the forms, and sometimes even the substance, of his Greek models. But, like Vergil, what Horace borrowed he made his own by the added beauty which he gave to it. His Odes are perhaps the most admirable examples of literary art to be found in any language.
LIVY
The most famous prose writer of the Augustan Age was Livy. His History of Rome, beginning with Romulus and extending to Augustus, traced the rise and growth of the Roman state during eight centuries of triumphal progress. It did in prose what Vergil's Aeneid had done in verse.
TACITUS
The period of the "Good Emperors" saw the rise of several important authors, of whom one, the historian Tacitus, was a man of genius. The crowning labor of his life was a history of Rome from Tiberius to Domitian. Of this work, issued under the two titles of Histories and Annals, only about one-half is extant.
SURVIVAL OF ROMAN LITERATURE
Less than two hundred years separate Cicero and Tacitus. During this period Latin authors, writing under the influence of old Greece, accomplished much valuable work. Some of their productions are scarcely inferior to the Greek masterpieces. In later centuries, when Greek literature was either neglected or forgotten in the West, the literature of Rome was still read and enjoyed. Even to-day a knowledge of it forms an essential part of a "classical" education.
97. GREEK ARCHITECTURE
CHARACTERISTICS OF GREEK ARCHITECTURE
The existing monuments of Greek architecture--chiefly ruined temples-- afford some idea of its leading characteristics. The building materials were limestone and white marble. The blocks of stone were not bound together by cement, but by metal clamps which held them in a firm grip. It was usual to color the ornamental parts of a temple and the open spaces that served as a background for sculpture. The Greeks did not employ the principle of the arch, in order to cover large spaces with a vaulted ceiling. Their temples and other public buildings had only flat ceilings, resting on long rows of columns. The column probably developed from the wooden post or tree trunk used in timber construction. The capital at the top of the column originated in the square wooden slab which supported the heavy beam of the roof.
THE DORIC COLUMN
The two Greek orders of architecture, Doric and Ionic, [30] are distinguished mainly by differences in the treatment of the column. The Doric column has no base of its own. The sturdy shaft is grooved lengthwise with some twenty flutings. The capital is a circular band of stone capped by a square block, all without decoration. The mainland of Greece was the especial home of the Doric order. This was also the characteristic style of southern Italy and Sicily.
THE IONIC COLUMN.
The Ionic column rests upon a base. Its shaft is tall and slender. The beautifully carved capital swells outward into two spiral rolls, the ends of which are curled under to form the "volutes." The Ionic order flourished particularly in Asia Minor. It was well known, too, at Athens.
NATURE OF THE GREEK TEMPLE
The temple formed the chief structure in a Greek city. It was very simple in outline--merely a rectangular building provided with doors, but without windows. Around it was a single or a double row of columns. Above them rose the architrave, a plain band of massive stones which reached from one column to another. Then came the frieze, adorned with sculptured reliefs, then the horizontal cornice, and at the ends of the building the triangular pediments formed by the sloping roof. The pediments were sometimes decorated with statues. Since the temple was not intended to hold a congregation of worshipers, but only to contain the image of the god, the interior usually had little ornamentation.
UNIQUENESS OF THE GREEK TEMPLE
Greek temples were not very large, for hugeness was no object to the builders. They were not even lavishly decorated. Their beauty lies, most of all, in their harmonious proportions and perfect symmetry. In the best examples of the Greek temple there are, for instance, no straight lines. The columns are not set at equal intervals, but closer together near the corners of the building. The shafts of the columns, instead of tapering upward at a uniform rate, swell slightly toward the center. The artistic eyes of the Greeks delighted in such subtle curves. These characteristics make a classical temple unique of its kind. [31]
98. GREEK SCULPTURE
THE GREEK GENIUS IN SCULPTURE
The greatest achievement of the Greeks in art was their sculpture. Roman artists surpassed them in the creation of massive architectural works; modern artists have surpassed them in painting. In sculpture the Greeks still remain unexcelled.
LOSS OF THE MASTERPIECES
The existing remains of Greek sculpture are very scanty. The statues of gold and ivory vanished long ago. The bronze statues, formerly numbered by thousands, have nearly all gone into the melting pot. Sculptures in marble were turned into mortar or used as building materials. Those which escaped such a fate were often ruined by wanton mutilation and centuries of neglect. The statues which we still possess are mainly marble copies, made in Roman times from Greek originals. It is as if the paintings by the old masters of Europe, four centuries ago, were now known only in the reproductions by modern artists of inferior powers.
MATERIALS
The Greek sculptor worked with a variety of materials. Wood was in common use during primitive times. Terra cotta was employed at all periods for statuettes a few inches in height. Productions in gold and ivory, from the costliness of these objects, were extremely rare. Bronze was the favorite material of some of the most eminent artists. The Greek sculptor especially relied on the beautiful marbles in which his country abounded.
TECHNICAL PROCESSES
The methods employed by the ancient sculptor differed in some respects from those followed by his modern successors. A Greek marble statue was usually built up out of several parts. The joining was accomplished with such skill as to escape ordinary observation. The preliminary work of hewing out from the rough was done by means of chisels. The surface of the marble afterwards received a careful polishing with the file, and also with sand. Marble statues were always more or less painted. The coloring seems to have been done sparingly, being applied, as a rule, only to the features and draperies. Still, it is worth while to remember that the pure white statues of modern sculptors would not have satisfied Greek artists of the classical age.
VARIETIES OF GREEK SCUPLTURE
Greek sculpture existed in the two forms of bas-reliefs and statuary in the round. Reliefs were chiefly used for temple pediments and friezes, and also for the many grave monuments. Statues consisted of the images of the gods set up in their shrines, the sculptures dedicated as offerings to divinities, and the figures of statesmen, generals, and victorious athletes raised in public places and sanctuaries.
IMPORTANCE OF THE SCULPTOR'S ART
This list will show how many were the opportunities which the ancient sculptor enjoyed. The service of religion created a constant demand for his genius. The numerous athletic contests and the daily sports of the gymnasium gave him a chance to study living models in the handsome, finely-shaped bodies of the contestants. With such inspiration it is not remarkable that sculpture reached so high a development in ancient Greece. [32]
99. ROMAN ARCHITECTURE AND SCULPTURE
THE ARCH AND DOME IN ROMAN BUILDINGS
In architecture the Romans achieved preëminence. The temples and other public works of Greece seem almost insignificant beside the stupendous edifices raised by Roman genius in every province of the empire. The ability of the Romans to build on so large a scale arose from their use of vaulted constructions. Knowledge of the round arch passed over from the Orient to the Etruscans and from them to the Romans. [33] At first the arch was employed mainly for gates, drainage sewers, aqueducts, and bridges. In imperial times this device was adopted to permit the construction of vast buildings with overarching domes. The principle of the dome has inspired some of the finest creations of ancient and modern architecture.
ROMAN USE OF CONCRETE AND RUBBLE
The Romans for many of their buildings made much use of concrete. Its chief ingredient was pozzolana, a sand found in great abundance near Rome and other sites. When mixed with lime, it formed a very strong cement. This material was poured in a fluid state into timber casings, where it quickly set and hardened. Small pieces of stone, called rubble, were also forced down into the cement to give it additional stability. Buildings of this sort were usually faced with brick, which in turn might be covered with thin slabs of marble, thus producing an attractive appearance.
TEMPLES
The triumphs of Roman architecture were not confined chiefly to sacred edifices. Roman temples, indeed, are mostly copies from the Greek. In comparison with their originals, they lack grace and refinement. There is less accuracy in the masonry fitting and far less careful attention to details of construction. A frequent departure from Greek models is found in the restriction of the rows of pillars to the front of the building, while the sides and rear are lined with "engaged" columns to give the idea of a colonnade. [34] More characteristically Roman are vaulted temples, such as the Pantheon, [35] where the circular dome is faced with a Greek portico.
BASILICAS
Roman basilicas, of which only the ruins are now in existence, were once found in every city. These were large, lofty buildings for the use of judges and merchants. The chief feature of a basilica was the spacious central hall flanked by a single or double row of columns, forming aisles and supporting the flat roof. At one end of the hall was a semicircular recess--the apse--where the judges held court. This arrangement of the interior bears a close resemblance to the plan of the early Christian church with its nave, choir (or chancel) and columned aisles. The Christians, in fact, seem to have taken the familiar basilicas as the models for their places of worship.
AQUEDUCTS
Perhaps the most imposing, and certainly among the most useful, of Roman structures were aqueducts. [36] There were sixty-eight in Italy and the provinces. No less than fourteen supplied the capital city with water. The aqueducts usually ran under the surface of the ground, as do our water pipes. They were carried on arches only across depressions and valleys. The Claudian aqueduct ran for thirty-six miles underground and for nine and a half miles on arches. Though these monuments were intended simply as engineering works, their heavy masses of rough masonry produce an inspiring sense of power.
THERMAE
The abundant water supply furnished by the aqueducts was connected with a system of great public baths, or thermae. [37] Scarcely a town or village throughout the empire lacked one or more such buildings. Those at Rome were constructed on a scale of magnificence of which we can form but a slight conception from the ruins now in existence. In addition to many elaborate arrangements for the bathers, the thermae included lounging and reading rooms, libraries, gymnasia, and even museums and galleries of art. The baths, indeed, were splendid clubhouses, open at little or no expense to every citizen of the metropolis.
TRIUMPHAL ARCHES AND COLUMNS
A very characteristic example of Roman building is found in the triumphal arches. [38] Their sides were adorned with bas-reliefs, which pictured the principal scenes of a successful campaign. Memorial structures, called columns of victory, [39] were also set up in Rome and other cities. Both arch and column have been frequently imitated by modern architects.
CIRCUSES, THEATERS, AND AMPHITHEATERS
The palaces of Roman emperors and nobles, together with their luxurious country houses, or villas, have all disappeared. A like fate has befallen the enormous circuses, such as the Circus Maximus [40] at Rome and the Hippodrome [41] at Constantinople. The Roman theaters that still survive reproduce, in most respects, the familiar outlines of the Greek structures. In the amphitheaters, where animal shows and gladiatorial combats were exhibited, we have a genuinely Roman invention. The gigantic edifice, called the Colosseum, in its way as truly typifies Roman architectural genius as the Parthenon represents at its best that of the Greeks.
ROMAN SCULPTURE
Roman sculpture owed much to Greek models. However, the portrait statues and bas-reliefs show originality and illustrate the tendency of the Romans toward realism in art. The sculptor tried to represent an historic person as he really looked or an historic event, for example, a battle or a triumphal procession, as it actually happened. The portrait statues of Roman emperors and the bas-reliefs from the arch of Titus impress us at once with a sense of their reality.
WALL PAINTINGS
Our knowledge of Roman painting is almost wholly confined to the wall paintings found at Rome, Herculaneum, and Pompeii. What has survived is apparently the work of ordinary craftsmen, who, if not Greeks, were deeply affected by the Greek spirit. Most of the scenes they depict are taken from classical mythology. The coloring is very rich; and the peculiar shade of red used is known to-day by the name of "Pompeian red." The practice of mural painting passed over from the Romans to European artists, who have employed it in the frescoes of medieval and modern churches.
100. ARTISTIC ATHENS
ART CENTERS OF ANTIQUITY
Athens and Rome were the artistic centers of the classical world. Architects, sculptors, and painters lavished their finest efforts on the adornment of these two capitals. Here there are still to be seen some of the most beautiful and impressive monuments of antiquity.
ROADS AND SUBURBS OF ATHENS
Athens lies in the center of the Attic plain, about four miles from the sea. [42] The city commands a magnificent view of purple-hued mountains and the shining waters of the Aegean. Roads approached the ancient city from all parts of Attica. Among these were the highway from Piraeus, running between the Long Walls, [43] and the Sacred Way from Eleusis, where the famous mysteries were yearly celebrated. [44] The suburbs of Athens included the Outer Ceramicus, part of which was used as a national cemetery, and a pleasure ground and gymnasium on the banks of the Cephissus, called the Academy. Another resort, known as the Lyceum, bordered the little stream of the Ilissus.
WALLS OF ATHENS
The traveler who passed through these suburbs came at length to the great wall, nearly five miles in circumference, raised by Themistocles to surround the settlement at the foot of the Acropolis. [45] The area included within this wall made up Old Athens. About six centuries after Themistocles the Roman emperor Hadrian, by building additional fortifications on the east, brought an extensive quarter, called New Athens, inside the city limits.
HILLS OF ATHENS
The region within the walls was broken up by a number of rocky eminences which have a prominent place in the topography of Athens. Near the center the Acropolis rises more than two hundred feet above the plain, its summit crowned with monuments of the Periclean Age. Not far away is the hill called the Areopagus. Here the Council of the Areopagus, a court of justice in trials for murder, held its deliberations in the open air. Beyond this height is the hill of the Pnyx. This was the meeting place of the Athenian Assembly until the fourth century B.C., when the sessions were transferred to the theater of Dionysus.
THE AGORA
The business and social center of an ancient city was the agora or market place. The Athenian Agora lay in the hollow north of the Areopagus and Acropolis. The square was shaded by rows of plane trees and lined with covered colonnades. In the great days of the city, when the Agora was filled with countless altars and shrines, it presented a most varied and attractive scene.
PUBLIC BUILDINGS
Not all the splendid structures in Athens were confined to the Agora and the Acropolis. On a slight eminence not far from the Agora, rose the so- called "Theseum," [46] a marble temple in the Doric order. Another famous temple, the colossal edifice known as the Olympieum, lay at some distance from the Acropolis on the southeast. Fifteen of the lofty columns with their Corinthian capitals are still standing. The theater of Dionysus [47] is in a fair state of preservation. Beyond this are the remains of the Odeum, or "Hall of Song," used for musical contests and declamations. The original building was raised by Pericles, in imitation, it is said, of the tent of Xerxes. The present ruins are those of the structure erected in the second century A.D. by a public-spirited benefactor of Athens.
THE ACROPOLIS
The adornment of the Acropolis formed perhaps the most memorable achievement of Pericles. [48] This rocky mount was approached on the western side by a flight of sixty marble steps. To the right of the stairway rose a small but very beautiful Ionic temple dedicated to Athena. Having mounted the steps, the visitor passed through the superb entrance gate, or Propylaea, which was constructed to resemble the front of a temple with columns and pediment. Just beyond the Propylaea stood a great bronze statue of the Guardian Athena, a masterpiece of the sculptor Phidias.
THE ERECHTHEUM
The Erechtheum, a temple which occupies part of the Acropolis, is in the Ionic style. It may be regarded as the best existing example of this light and graceful order. Perhaps the most interesting feature is the porch of the Caryatides, with a marble roof supported by six pillars carved in the semblance of maidens. [49] This curious but striking device has been often copied by modern architects.
ARCHITECTURE OF THE PARTHENON
The other temple on the Acropolis is the world-famed edifice known as the Parthenon, the shrine of the Virgin of the Athena. [50] The Parthenon illustrates the extreme simplicity of a Greek temple. It had no great size or height and included only two chambers. The rear room stored sacred vessels and furniture used in worship, state treasure, and the more valuable offerings intrusted to the goddess for safekeeping. The second and larger room contained a colossal gold and ivory statue of Athena, the work of Phidias. It faced the eastern entrance so that it might be bathed in the rays of the rising sun. Apart from the large doors a certain amount of light reached the interior through the semi-transparent marble tiles of the roof. The Doric columns surrounding the building are marvels of fine workmanship. The Parthenon, because of its perfection of construction and admirable proportions, is justly regarded as a masterpiece of architecture.
SCULPTURES OF THE PARTHENON
The Parthenon was also remarkable for its sculptures [51] executed under the superintendence of Phidias. The subjects of the pediment sculptures are taken from the mythic history of Athena. The frieze of the Parthenon consists of a series of sculptured slabs, over five hundred feet in length. The subject was the procession of the Great Panathenaea, [52] the principal festival in honor of Athena. At this time the sacred robe of the goddess, woven anew for each occasion, was brought to adorn her statue. The procession is thought of as starting from the western front, where Athenian youths dash forward on their spirited steeds. Then comes a brilliant array of maidens, matrons, soldiers, and luteplayers. Near the center of the eastern front they meet a group of divinities, who are represented as spectators of the imposing scene. This part of the frieze is still in excellent condition.
THE GLORY OF ATHENS
It was, indeed, a splendid group of buildings that rose on the Acropolis height. If to-day they have lost much of their glory, we can still understand how they were the precious possession of the Athenians and the wonder of all the ancient world. "O shining, violet-crowned city of song, great Athens, bulwark of Hellas, walls divine!" The words are those of an old Greek poet, [53] but they are reëchoed by all who have come under the magic spell of the literature and art of the Athenian city.
101. ARTISTIC ROME
DESTRUCTION OF ANCIENT ROME
The monuments of Rome, unlike those of Athens, cannot lay claim to great antiquity. The destruction wrought by the Gauls in 390 B.C. and the great fire under Nero in 64 A.D. removed nearly all traces of the regal and republican city. Many buildings erected in the imperial age have also disappeared, because in medieval and modern times the inhabitants of Rome used the ancient edifices as quarries. The existing monuments give only a faint idea of the former magnificence of the capital city.
HILLS OF ROME
The city of Rome lies on the Tiber. Where the river approaches Rome it makes two sharp turns, first to the west and then to the east. On the western, or Etruscan, bank stood the two hills called Vatican and Janiculum. They were higher than the famous seven which rose on the eastern side, where the ancient city was built. Two of these seven hills possess particular interest. The earliest settlement, as we have seen, [54] probably occupied the Palatine. It became in later days the favorite site for the town houses of Roman nobles. In the imperial age the splendid palaces of the Caesars were located here. The Capitoline, steepest of the seven hills, was divided into two peaks. On one of these rose the most famous of all Roman temples, dedicated to Jupiter and his companion deities, Juno and Minerva. The other peak was occupied by a large temple of Juno Moneta ("the Adviser"), which served as the mint. The altars, shrines, and statues which once covered this height were so numerous that the Capitoline, like the Athenian Acropolis, became a museum of art.
WALLS AND OPEN SPACES
Rome in early times was surrounded by a wall which bore the name of its legendary builder, Servius Tullius. The present fortifications were not constructed until the reign of the emperor Aurelian. [55] The ancient city was closely built up, with only two great open spaces, in addition to the Forum. These were the Circus Maximus, in the hollow between the Palatine Mount and the Aventine, and the Campus Martius, stretching along the Tiber to the northwest of the Capitoline Hill.
PUBLIC BUILDINGS
Following the map of ancient Rome under the empire we may note the more important monuments which still exist in something like their original condition. Across the Tiber and beyond the Campus Martius stands the mausoleum of Hadrian. [56] The most notable structure in the Campus Martius is the Pantheon. [57] It is the one ancient building in the entire Roman world which still survives, inside and out, in a fair state of preservation. The depression between the Caelian and Esquiline hills contains the Flavian Amphitheater, better known as the Colosseum. [58] It was begun by Vespasian and probably completed by Titus. No less than eighty entrances admitted the forty-five thousand spectators who could be accommodated in this huge structure. Despite the enormous mass of the present ruins probably two-thirds of the original materials have been carried away to be used in other buildings. Close to the Colosseum stands the arch [59] erected by the Senate in honor of the victory of Constantine over his rival Maxentius. From this event is dated the triumph of Christianity in the Roman state. The ruins of the huge baths of Caracalla lie about half a mile from the Colosseum. Near the center of the city are the remains of the Forum added by Trajan to the accommodations of the original Forum. It contains the column of Trajan [60] under which that emperor was buried.
THE FORUM
The Forum lies in the valley north of the Palatine Hill. It was the business and social center of the Roman city. During the Middle Ages the site was buried in ruins and rubbish, in some places to a depth of forty feet or more. Recent excavations have restored the ancient level and uncovered the remains of the ancient structures.
APPROACH TO THE FORUM
The Forum could be approached from the east by one of the most famous streets in the world, the Roman Sacred Way. The illustration of the Forum at the present time gives a view, looking eastward from the Capitoline Mount, and shows several of the buildings on or near the Sacred Way. At the left are seen the ruins of the basilica of Constantine. Farther in the distance the Colosseum looms up. Directly ahead is the arch of Titus, which commemorates the capture of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. [61] The ruins of the palaces of the Caesars occupy the slopes of the Palatine.
THE FORUM TO-DAY
The only well-preserved monument in the Forum is the beautiful arch erected by the emperor Septimius Severus. Beyond it are three columns which once formed part of the temple of Castor. They date from the time of Tiberius. In front are the foundations of the Basilica Julia, built by Augustus. Next come eight Ionic columns, all that remain of the temple of Saturn. Near it and in the foreground are several columns in the Corinthian style, belonging to a temple built by Vespasian.
THE FORUM IN ANTIQUITY
These ruined monuments, these empty foundations and lonely pillars, afford little idea of all the wealth of architecture that once adorned this spot. Here stood the circular shrine of Vesta, [62] guarding the altar and its ever-blazing fire. Here was the temple of Concord, famous in Roman history. [63] The Senate-house was here, and just before it, the Rostra, a platform adorned with the beaks (rostra) of captured ships. From this place Roman orators addressed their assembled fellow-citizens.
THE GRANDEUR OF ROME
How splendid a scene must have greeted an observer in ancient times who, from the height of the Capitol, gazed at the city before him. The Forum was then one radiant avenue of temples, triumphal arches, columns, and shrines. And beyond the Forum stretched a magnificent array of theaters and amphitheaters, enormous baths, colossal sepulchers, and statues in stone and bronze. So prodigious an accumulation of objects beautiful, costly, and rare has never before or since been found on earth.
STUDIES
1. What is the origin of our words pedagogue, symposium, circus, and academy?
2. Make a list of such Roman names as you have met in your reading.
3. Write a letter describing an imaginary visit to the theater of Dionysus during the performance of a tragedy.
4. What did civic patriotism mean to the Greek and to the Roman?
5. Have we anything to learn from the Greeks about the importance of training in music?
6. What were the schoolbooks of Greek boys?
7. What features of Athenian education are noted in the illustration, page 254?
8. How did the position of women at Athens differ from their position in Homeric Greece?
9. Why does classical literature contain almost no "love stories," or novels?
10. What contrasts exist between the ancient and the modern house?
11. Describe a Roman litter (illustration, page 263).
12. What differences exist between an ancient and a modern theatre?
13. What features of our "circus" recall the proceedings at the Roman games?
14. How many holidays (including Sundays) are there in your state? How do they compare in number with those at Rome in the reign of Marcus Aurelius?
15. Describe the theater of Dionysus (illustration, page 264).
16. What is the "Socratic method" of teaching?
17. How did the Greeks manage to build solidly without the use of mortar?
18. Discuss the appropriateness of the terms: severe Doric; graceful Ionic; ornate Corinthian.
19. Can you find examples of any of the Greek orders in public buildings familiar to you?
20. How do you explain the almost total loss of original Greek sculptures?
21. By reference to the illustrations, page 279, explain the following terms: shaft; capital; architrave; frieze; and cornice.
22. Explain the "Greek profile" seen in the Aphrodite of Cnidus and the Apollo of the Belvedere (plate facing page 76).
23. Name five famous works of Greek sculpture which exist to-day only in Roman copies.
24. What is your favorite Greek statue? Why do you like it?
25. "The dome, with the round arch out of which it sprang, is the most fertile conception in the whole history of building." Justify this statement.
26. What famous examples of domed churches and public buildings are familiar to you?
27. What artistic objections to the use of "engaged columns" can you mention?
28. Discuss the revival of cement construction in modern times. What are its special advantages?
29. What examples of triumphal arches in the United States and France are known to you?
30. Do you know of any modern columns of victory?
31. Why is it likely that the bust of Nerva (illustration, page 200) is a more faithful likeness than that of Pericles (illustration, page 103)?
32. Write a brief essay describing an imaginary walk on the Athenian Acropolis in the Age of Pericles.
33. Enumerate the most important contributions to civilization made in classical antiquity.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Webster, Readings in Ancient History, chapter xxi, "Roman Life as Seen in Pliny's Letters"; chapter xxii, "A Satirist of Roman Society."
[2] Euripides, Iphigenia in Tauris, 57.Return to passage
[3] See page 237.Return to passage
[4] In "Marcus Tullius Cicero," "Marcus," the praenomen, corresponds to our "given" name; "Tullius," the nomen, marks the clan, or gens; "Cicero," the cognomen, indicates the family.Return to passage
[5] See pages 151, 206.Return to passage
[6] See page 218.Return to passage
[7] See page 148.Return to passage
[8] See page 144.Return to passage
[9] See the illustrations, pages 117, 271.Return to passage
[10] The corresponding names of women's garments were stola and pallet.Return to passage
[11] See page 199.Return to passage
[12] See the illustration, page 145.Return to passage
[13] See page 288.Return to passage
[14] See page 285.Return to passage
[15] Panathenaic means 'belonging to all the Athenians.' See page 292.Return to passage
[16] See page 234.Return to passage
[17] See page 200.Return to passage
[18] Panem et circenses (Juvenal x, 80-81).Return to passage
[19] See page 215.Return to passage
[20] See pages 436, 463.Return to passage
[21] See page 73.Return to passage
[22] See page 80.Return to passage
[23] See page 120.Return to passage
[24] See page 265.Return to passage
[25] See page 121.Return to passage
[26] See page 117.Return to passage
[27] See page 261.Return to passage
[28] See page 226.Return to passage
[29] See page 142.Return to passage
[30] The so-called Corinthian order differs from the Ionic only in its capital.Return to passage
[31] For illustrations of Greek temples, see pages 89, 101.Return to passage
[32] For illustrations of Greek statues see pages 80, 81, 103, 117, 119, 129, 271 and the plates facing pages 76, 77, 80, 130, 131.Return to passage
[33] See pages 61, 138.Return to passage
[34] See the illustration, page 215.Return to passage
[35] See the illustration, page 202.Return to passage
[36] See the illustrations, pages 157, 285.Return to passage
[37] See page 263.Return to passage
[38] See the illustration, page 236.Return to passage
[39] See the illustrations, pages 163, 201.Return to passage
[40] See the illustration, page 266.Return to passage
[41] See the illustration, page 339.Return to passage
[42] See the map, page 107.Return to passage
[43] See page 108.Return to passage
[44] See page 227.Return to passage
[45] See page 100.Return to passage
[46] See the illustration, page 101.Return to passage
[47] See the illustration, page 264.Return to passage
[48] See page 108.Return to passage
[49] See the plate facing page 281.Return to passage
[50] See the plate facing page 280.Return to passage
[51] See the plate facing page 281.Return to passage
[52] See page 264.Return to passage
[53] Pindar, Fragments, 76.Return to passage
[54] See page 140.Return to passage
[55] See the illustration, page 220.Return to passage
[56] See the illustration, page 203.Return to passage
[57] See the illustration, page 202.Return to passage
[58] See the illustration, page 286.Return to passage
[59] See the illustration, page 236.Return to passage
[60] See the illustration, page 201.Return to passage
[61] See the plate facing page 198.Return to passage
[62] See page 146.Return to passage
[63] See page 177.Return to passage
Chapter XIII
WESTERN EUROPE DURING THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES, 476-962 A.D. [1]
102. THE OSTROGOTHS IN ITALY, 488-553 A.D.
TRANSITION TO THE MIDDLE AGES
We are not to suppose that the settlement of Germans within the Roman Empire ended with the deposition of Romulus Augustulus, near the close of the fifth century. The following centuries witnessed fresh invasions and the establishment of new Germanic states. The study of these troubled times leads us from the classical world to the world of medieval Europe, from the history of antiquity to the history of the Middle Ages.
THE OSTROGOTHS UNDER THEODORIC
The kingdom which Odoacer established on Italian soil did not long endure. It was soon overthrown by the Ostrogoths. At the time of the "fall" of Rome in 476 A.D. they occupied a district south of the middle Danube, which the government at Constantinople had hired them to defend. The Ostrogoths proved to be expensive and dangerous allies. When, therefore, their chieftain, Theodoric, offered to lead his people into Italy and against Odoacer, the Roman emperor gladly sanctioned the undertaking.
OSTROGOTHIC INVASION OF ITALY, 488-493 A.D.
Theodoric led the Ostrogoths--women and children as well as warriors-- across the Alps and came down to meet Odoacer and his soldiers in battle. After suffering several defeats, Odoacer shut himself up in the strong fortress of Ravenna. Theodoric could not capture the place and at last agreed to share with Odoacer the government of Italy, if the latter would surrender. The agreement was never carried into effect. When Theodoric entered Ravenna, he invited Odoacer to a great feast and at its conclusion slew him in cold blood. Theodoric had now no rival in Italy.
THEODORIC KING OF ITALY, 493-526 A.D.
Though Theodoric gained the throne by violence and treachery, he soon showed himself to be, as a ruler, wise, broad-minded, and humane. He had lived as a youth in the imperial court at Constantinople and there had become well acquainted with Roman ideas of law and order. Roman civilization impressed him; and he wished not to destroy but to preserve it. Theodoric reigned in Italy for thirty-three years, and during this time the country enjoyed unbroken peace and prosperity.
THEODORIC'S RULE IN ITALY.
The enlightened policy of Theodoric was exhibited in many ways. He governed Ostrogoths and Romans with equal consideration. He kept all the old offices, such as the senatorship and the consulate, and by preference filled them with men of Roman birth. His chief counselors were Romans. A legal code, which he drew up for the use of Ostrogoths and Romans alike, contained only selections from Roman law. He was remarkably tolerant and, in spite of the fact that the Ostrogoths were Arians, [2] was always ready to extend protection to Catholic Christians. Theodoric patronized literature and gave high positions to Roman writers. He restored the cities of Italy, had the roads and aqueducts repaired, and so improved the condition of agriculture that Italy, from a wheat-importing, became a wheat-exporting, country. At Ravenna, the Ostrogothic capital, Theodoric erected many notable buildings, including a palace, a mausoleum, and several churches. The remains of these structures are still to be seen.
THEODORIC'S FOREIGN POLICY
The influence of Theodoric reached far beyond Italy. He allied himself by marriage with most of the Germanic rulers of the West. His second wife was a Frankish foreign princess, his sister was the wife of a Vandal chieftain, one of his daughters married a king of the Visigoths, and another daughter wedded a Burgundian king. Theodoric by these alliances brought about friendly relations between the various barbarian peoples. It seemed, in fact, as if the Roman dominions in the West might again be united under a single ruler; as if the Ostrogoths might be the Germanic people to carry on the civilizing work of Rome. But no such good fortune was in store for Europe.
END OF THE OSTROGOTHIC KINGDOM, 553 A.D.
Theodoric died in 526 A.D. The year after his death, a great emperor, Justinian, came to the throne at Constantinople. Justinian had no intention of abandoning to the Ostrogothic Germans the rich provinces of Sicily and Italy. Although the Ostrogoths made a stubborn resistance to his armies, in the end they were so completely overcome that they agreed to withdraw from the Italian peninsula. The feeble remnant of their nation filed sadly through the passes of the Alps and, mingling with other barbarian tribes, disappeared from history.
103. THE LOMBARDS IN ITALY, 568-774 A.D.
INVASION OF ITALY BY THE LOMBARDS
The destruction of the Ostrogothic kingdom did not free Italy of the Germans. Soon after Justinian's death the country was again overrun, this time by the Lombards. The name of these invaders (in Latin, Langobardi) may have been derived from the long beards that gave them such a ferocious aspect. The Lombards were the last of the Germanic peoples to quit their northern wilderness and seek new homes in sunny Italy. They seized the territory north of the river Po--a region ever since known as Lombardy-- and established their capital at Pavia. The Lombards afterwards made many settlements in central and southern Italy, but never succeeded in subduing the entire peninsula.
LOMBARD RULE IN ITALY
The rule of the Lombards at first bore hardly on Italy, which they treated as a conquered land. In character they seem to been far less attractive than their predecessors the Visigoths and Ostrogoths. Many of them were still heathen when they entered Italy and others were converts to the Arian [3] form of Christianity. In course of time, however, the Lombards accepted Roman Catholicism and adopted the customs of their subjects. They even forgot their Germanic language and learned to speak Latin. The Lombard kingdom lasted over two centuries, until it was overthrown by the Franks. [4]
RESULTS OF THE LOMBARD INVASION
The failure of the Lombards to conquer all Italy had important results in later history. Sicily and the extreme southern part of the Italian peninsula, besides large districts containing the cities of Naples, Rome, Genoa, Venice, and Ravenna, continued to belong to the Roman Empire in the East. The rulers at Constantinople could not exercise effective control over their Italian possessions, now that these were separated from one another by the Lombard territories. The consequence was that Italy broke up into a number of small and practically independent states, which never combined into one kingdom until our own time. The ideal of a united Italy waited thirteen hundred years for its realization. [5]
104. THE FRANKS UNDER CLOVIS AND HIS SUCCESSORS
CLOVIS, KING OF THE FRANKS, 481-511 A.D.
We have already met the Franks in their home on the lower Rhine, from which they pushed gradually into Roman territory. [6] In 486 A.D., just ten years after the deposition of Romulus Augustulus, the Franks went forth to conquer under Clovis, [7] one of their chieftains. By overcoming the governor of Roman Gaul, in a battle near Soissons, Clovis destroyed the last vestige of imperial rule in the West and extended the Frankish dominions to the river Loire. Clovis then turned against his German neighbors. East of the Franks, in the region now known as Alsace, lived the Alamanni, a people whose name still survives in the French name of Germany. [8] The Alamanni were defeated in a great battle near Strassburg (496 A.D.), and much of their territory was added to that of the Franks. Clovis subsequently conquered the Visigothic possessions between the Loire and the Pyrenees, and compelled the Burgundians to pay tribute. Thus Clovis made himself supreme over nearly the whole of Gaul and even extended his authority to the other side of the Rhine. This great work entitles him to be called the founder of the French nation.
THE FRANKS AND THE GALLO-ROMANS
Clovis reigned in western Europe as an independent king, but he acknowledged a sort of allegiance to the Roman emperor by accepting the title of honorary consul. Henceforth to the Gallo-Romans he represented the distant ruler at Constantinople. The Roman inhabitants of Gaul were not oppressed; their cities were preserved; and their language and laws were undisturbed. Clovis, as a statesman, may be compared with his eminent contemporary, Theodoric the Ostrogoth.
CHRISTIANIZATION OF THE FRANKS, 496 A.D.
The Franks were still a heathen people, when they began their career of conquest. Clovis, however, had married a Burgundian princess, Clotilda, who was a devout Catholic and an ardent advocate of Christianity. The story is told how, when Clovis was hard-pressed by the Alamanni at the battle of Strassburg, he vowed that if Clotilda's God gave him victory he would become a Christian. The Franks won, and Clovis, faithful to his vow, had himself baptized by St. Remi, bishop of Reims. "Bow down thy head," spoke the bishop, as the Frankish king approached the font, "adore what thou hast burned, burn what thou has adored." [9] With Clovis were baptized on that same day three thousand of his warriors.
SIGNIFICANCE OF CLOVIS'S CONVERSION
The conversion of Clovis was an event of the first importance. He and his Franks naturally embraced the orthodox Catholic faith, which was that of his wife, instead of the Arian form of Christianity, which had been accepted by almost all the other Germanic invaders. Thus, by what seems the merest accident, Catholicism, instead of Arianism, became the religion of a large part of western Europe. More than this, the conversion of Clovis gained for the Frankish king and his successors the support of conversion the Roman Church. The friendship between the popes and the Franks afterwards ripened into a close alliance which greatly influenced European history.
THE EARLIER MEROVINGIAN KINGS
The descendants of Clovis are called Merovingians. [10] They occupied the throne of the Franks for nearly two hundred and fifty years. The annals of their reigns form an unpleasant catalogue of bloody wars, horrible murders, and deeds of treachery without number. Nevertheless, the earlier Merovingians were strong men, under whose direction the Frankish territory continued to expand, until it included nearly all of what is now France, Belgium, and Holland, besides a considerable part of Germany.
CHARACTER OF THE FRANKISH CONQUESTS
The Frankish conquests differed in two important respects from those of the other Germanic peoples. In the first place, the Franks did not cut themselves off completely from their original homes. They kept permanently their territory in Germany, drawing from it continual reinforcements of fresh German blood. In the second place, the Franks steadily added new German lands to their possessions. They built up in this way what was the largest and the most permanent of all the barbarian states founded on the ruins of the Roman Empire.
105. THE FRANKS UNDER CHARLES MARTEL AND PEPIN THE SHORT
THE LATER MEROVINGIAN KINGS
After the middle of the seventh century the Frankish rulers, worn out by violence and excesses, degenerated into weaklings, who reigned but did not rule. The actual management of the state passed into the hands of officers, called "mayors of the palace." They left to the kings little more than their title, their long hair,--the badge of royalty among the Franks,--and a scanty allowance for their support. The later Merovingians, accordingly, are often known as the "do-nothing kings."
CHARLES MARTEL
The most illustrious of these mayors was Charles, surnamed Martel, "the Hammer," from the terrible defeat which he administered to the Mohammedans near Tours, in central France. [11] Charles Martel was virtually a king, but he never ventured to set aside the Merovingian ruler and himself ascend the throne. This step was taken, however, by Charles's son, Pepin the Short.
PEPIN THE SHORT BECOMES KING OF THE FRANKS, 751 A.D.
Before dethroning the last feeble "do-nothing," Pepin sought the approval of the bishop of Rome. The pope, without hesitation, declared that it was only right that the man who had the real authority in the state should have the royal title also. Pepin, accordingly, caused himself to be crowned king of the Franks, thus founding the Carolingian [12] dynasty. (751 A.D.). Three years later Pope Stephen II came to Pepin's court and solemnly anointed the new ruler with holy oil, in accordance with ancient Jewish custom. The rite of anointing, something unknown to the Germans, gave to Pepin's coronation the sanction of the Roman Church. Henceforth the Frankish sovereigns called themselves "kings by the grade of God."
"DONATION OF PEPIN," 756 A.D.
Pepin was soon able to repay his great obligation to the Roman Church by becoming its protector against the Lombards. These barbarians, who were trying to extend their rule in Italy, threatened to capture Rome and the territory in the vicinity of that city, then under the control of the pope. Pepin twice entered Italy with his army, defeated the Lombards, and forced them to cede to Pope Stephen an extensive district lying between Rome and Ravenna. Pepin might have returned this district to the emperor at Constantinople, to whom it belonged, but the Frankish king declared that he had not fought for the advantage of any man but for the welfare of his own soul. He decided, therefore, to bestow his conquests on St. Peter's representative, the pope. Before this time the bishops of Rome had owned much land in Italy and had acted as virtual sovereigns in Rome and its neighborhood. Pepin's gift, known as the "Donation of Pepin," greatly increased their possessions, which came to be called the States of the Church. They remained in the hands of the popes until late in the nineteenth century. [13]
106. THE REIGN OF CHARLEMAGNE, 768-814 A.D.
CHARLEMAGNE THE MAN
Pepin was succeeded in 768 A.D. by his two sons, one of whom, Charlemagne, three years later became sole king of the Franks. Charlemagne reigned for nearly half a century, and during this time he set his stamp on all later European history. His character and personality are familiar to us from a brief biography, written by his secretary, Einhard. Charlemagne, we learn, was a tall, square-shouldered, strongly built man, with bright, keen eyes, and an expression at once cheerful and dignified. Riding, hunting, and swimming were his favorite sports. He was simple in his tastes and very temperate in both food and drink. Except when in Rome, he wore the old Frankish costume, with high-laced boots, linen tunic, blue cloak, and sword girt at his side. He was a clear, fluent speaker, used Latin as readily as his native tongue, and understood Greek when it was spoken. "He also tried to learn to write and often kept his tablets and writing book under the pillow of his couch, that, when he had leisure, he might practice his hand in forming letters; but he made little progress in this task, too long deferred and begun too late in life." [14] For the times, however, Charlemagne was a well-educated man--by no means a barbarian.
CONQUEST AND CONVERSION OF THE SAXONS, 772-804 A.D.
Much of Charlemagne's long life, almost to its close, was filled with warfare. He fought chiefly against the still-heathen peoples on the frontiers of the Frankish realm. The subjugation of the Saxons, who lived in the forests and marshes of northwestern Germany, took many years. Charlemagne at the head of a great army would invade their territory, beat them in battle, and receive their submission, only to find his work undone by a sudden rising of the liberty-loving natives, after the withdrawal of the Franks. Once when Charlemagne was exasperated by a fresh revolt, he ordered forty-five hundred prisoners to be executed. This savage massacre was followed by equally severe laws, which threatened with death all Saxons who refused baptism or observed the old heathen rites. By such harsh means Charlemagne at length broke down the spirit of resistance among the people. All Saxony, from the Rhine to the Elbe, became a Christian land and a permanent part of the Frankish realm.
CONQUEST OF THE LOMBARDS, 774 A.D.
Shortly after the beginning of the Saxon wars the king of the Franks received an urgent summons from the pope, who was again being threatened by his old enemies, the Lombards. Charlemagne led a mighty host across the Alps, captured Pavia, where the Lombard ruler had taken refuge, and added his possessions to those of the Franks. Thus passed away one more of the Germanic states which had arisen on the ruins of the Roman Empire. Charlemagne now placed on his own head the famous "Iron Crown," and assumed the title of "King of the Franks and Lombards, and Patrician of the Romans."
CHARLEMAGNE'S OTHER CONQUESTS
Charlemagne's conquests were not confined to Germanic peoples. He forced the wild Avars, who had advanced from the Caspian into the Danube valley, to acknowledge his supremacy. He compelled various Slavic tribes, including the Bohemians, to pay tribute. He also invaded Spain and wrested from the Moslems the district between the Ebro River and the Pyrenees. By this last conquest Charlemagne may be said to have begun the recovery of the Spanish peninsula from Mohammedan rule. [15]
CHARLEMAGNE'S GOVERNMENT
Charlemagne was a statesman, as well as a warrior. He divided his wide dominions into counties, each one ruled by a count, who was expected to keep order and administer justice. The border districts, which lay exposed to invasion, were organized into "marks," under the military supervision of counts of the mark, or margraves (marquises). These officials had so much power and lived so far from the royal court that it was necessary for Charlemagne to appoint special agents, called missi dominici ("the lord's messengers"), to maintain control over them. The missi were usually sent out in pairs, a layman and a bishop or abbot, in order that the one might serve as a check upon the other. They traveled from county to county, bearing the orders of their royal master and making sure that these orders were promptly obeyed. In this way Charlemagne kept well informed as to the condition of affairs throughout his kingdom.
REVIVAL OF LEARNING UNDER CHARLEMAGNE
Charlemagne made a serious effort to revive classical culture in the West from the low state into which it had fallen during the period of the invasions. We still possess a number of laws issued by this Frankish king for the promotion of education. He founded schools in the monasteries and cathedrals, where not only the clergy but also the common people might receive some training. He formed his whole court into a palace school, in which learned men from Italy, Spain, and England gave instruction to his own children and those of his nobles. The king himself often studied with them, under the direction of his good friend, Alcuin, an Englishman and the foremost scholar in western Europe. He had the manuscripts of Latin authors collected and copied, so that the knowledge preserved in books should not be forgotten. All this civilizing work, together with the peace and order which he maintained throughout a wide territory, made his reign the most brilliant period of the early Middle Ages.
107. CHARLEMAGNE AND THE REVIVAL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE, 800 A.D.
CORONATION OF CHARLEMAGNE, 800 A.D.
Charlemagne, the champion of Christendom and the foremost ruler in Europe, seemed to the men of his day the rightful successor of the Roman emperors. He had their power, and now he was to have their name. In the year 800 A.D. the Frankish king visited Rome to investigate certain accusations made against the pope, Leo III, by his enemies in the city. Charlemagne absolved Leo of all wrong-doing and restored him to his office. Afterwards, on Christmas Day Charlemagne went to old St. Peter's Church, where the pope was saying Mass. As the king, dressed in the rich robes of a Roman patrician, knelt in prayer before the high altar, the pope suddenly placed on his head a golden crown, while all the people cried out with one voice, "Long life and victory to Charles Augustus, the great and pacific emperor of the Romans, crowned by God!"
REASONS FOR THE CORONATION
Although Charlemagne appears to have been surprised by the pope's act, we know that he wished to become emperor. The imperial title would confer upon him greater dignity and honor, though not greater power, than he possessed as king of the Franks and of the Lombards. The pope, in turn, was glad to reward the man who had protected the Church and had done so much to spread the Catholic faith among the heathen. The Roman people also welcomed the coronation, because they felt that the time had come for Rome to assume her old place as the capital of the world. To reject the eastern ruler, in favor of the great Frankish king, was an emphatic method of asserting Rome's independence of Constantinople.
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CORONATION
The coronation of Charlemagne was one of the most important events in medieval history. It might be thought a small matter that he should take the imperial title, when he already exercised imperial sway throughout western Europe. But Charlemagne's contemporaries believed that the old Roman Empire had now been revived, and a German king now sat on the throne once occupied by Augustus and Constantine. Henceforth there was established in the West a line of Roman emperors which lasted until the opening of the nineteenth century. [16]
CHARLEMAGNE'S EMPIRE
Charlemagne's empire was not in any true sense a continuation of the Roman Empire. It did not include the dominions over which the emperors at Constantinople were to reign for centuries. Moreover, Charlemagne and his successors on the throne had little in common with the old rulers of Rome, who spoke Latin, administered Roman law, and regarded the Germans as among their most dangerous enemies. Charlemagne's empire was, in fact, largely a new creation.
108. DISRUPTION OF CHARLEMAGNE'S EMPIRE, 814-870 A.D.
AFTER CHARLEMAGNE
The empire of Charlemagne did not long remain intact. So vast was its extent and so unlike were its inhabitants in race, language, and customs that it could be managed only by a ruler of the greatest energy and strength of will. Unfortunately, the successors of Charlemagne proved to be too weak for the task of maintaining peace and order. Western Europe now entered on a long period of confusion and violence, during which Charlemagne's possessions broke up into separate and warring kingdoms.
TREATY OF VERDUN, 843 A.D.
Charlemagne's son, Louis the Pious, who became emperor in 814 A.D., was a well-meaning but feeble ruler, better fitted for the quiet life of a monastery than for the throne. He could not control his rebellious sons, who, even during his lifetime, fought bitterly over their inheritance. The unnatural strife, which continued after his death, was temporarily settled by a treaty concluded at the city of Verdun. According to its terms Lothair, the eldest brother, received Italy and the imperial title, together with a narrow stretch of land along the valleys of the Rhine and the Rhone, between the North Sea and the Mediterranean. Louis and Charles, the other brothers, received kingdoms lying to the east and west, respectively, of Lothair's territory. The Treaty of Verdun may be said to mark the first stage in the dissolution of the Carolingian Empire.
TREATY OF MERSEN, 870 A.D.
A second treaty, made at Mersen in Holland, was entered into by Louis and Charles, after the death of their brother Lothair. They divided between themselves Lothair's kingdom north of the Alps, leaving to his young son the possession of Italy and the empty title of "emperor." The Treaty of Mersen may be said to mark the second stage in the dissolution of the Carolingian Empire. That empire, as such, had now ceased to exist.
IMPORTANCE OF THE TWO TREATIES
The territorial arrangements made by the treaties of Verdun and Mersen foreshadowed the future map of western Europe. The East Frankish kingdom of Louis, inhabited almost entirely by Germanic peoples, was to develop into modern Germany. The West Frankish kingdom of Charles, inhabited mainly by descendants of Romanized Gauls, was to become modern France. Lothair's kingdom, separated into two parts by the Alps, never became a national state. Italy, indeed, might be united under one government, but the long, narrow strip north of the Alps had no unity of race, no common language, and no national boundaries. It was fated to be broken into fragments and to be fought over for centuries by its stronger neighbors. Part of this territory now forms the small countries of Belgium, Holland, and Switzerland, and another part, known as Alsace and Lorraine, [17] still remains a bone of contention between France and Germany.
RENEWED BARBARIAN INVASIONS
Even had Charlemagne been followed by strong and able rulers, it would have been a difficult matter to hold the empire together in the face of the fresh series of barbarian inroads which began immediately after his death. The Mohammedans, though checked by the Franks at the battle of Tours, [18] continued to be dangerous enemies. They ravaged southern France, Sicily, and parts of Italy. The piratical Northmen from Denmark and Norway harried the coast of France and made inroads far beyond Paris. They also penetrated into western Germany, sailing up the Rhine in their black ships and destroying such important towns as Cologne and Aix-la- Chapelle. Meanwhile, eastern Germany lay exposed to the attacks of the Slavs, whom Charlemagne had defeated but not subdued. The Magyars, or Hungarians, were also dreaded foes. Their wild horsemen entered Europe from the plains of Asia and, like the Huns and Avars to whom they were probably related, spread devastation far and wide. A great part of Europe thus suffered from invasions almost as destructive as those which had brought ruin to the old Roman world.
109. GERMANY UNDER THE SAXON KINGS, 919-973 A.D.
THE GERMAN STEM-DUCHIES
The tenth century saw another movement toward the restoration of law and order. The civilizing work of Charlemagne was taken up by German kings, not of the old Prankish stock, but belonging to that Saxon people which had opposed Charlemagne so long and bitterly. Saxony was one of the five great territorial states, or stem-duchies, as they are usually called, into which Germany was then divided. [19] Germany at that time extended only as far east as the river Elbe, beyond which lay the territory occupied by half-civilized Slavic tribes.
ELECTIVE KINGSHIP OF GERMANY
The rulers of the stem-duchies enjoyed practical independence, though they had recognized some king of Germany ever since the Treaty of Verdun. Early in the tenth century the Carolingian dynasty died out in Germany, and the German nobles then proceeded to elect their own kings. Their choice fell first upon Conrad, duke of Franconia, but he had little authority outside his own duchy. A stronger man was required to keep the peace among the turbulent nobles and to repel the invaders of Germany. Such a man appeared in the person of Henry, duke of Saxony, who, after Conrad's death, was chosen king.
REIGN OF HENRY THE FOWLER, 919-936 A.D.
Henry I, called the Fowler, because he was fond of hunting birds, spent the greater part of his reign in wars against the Slavs, Magyars, and other invaders. He conquered from the Slavs the territory afterwards known as Brandenburg. This country was to furnish Germany, in later centuries, with its present dynasty--the Hohenzollerns. [20] He occupied the southern part of Denmark (Schleswig) and Christianized it. He also recovered for Germany Lorraine, a district which remained in German hands until the eighteenth century.
REIGN OF OTTO THE GREAT, 936-973 A.D.
Henry the Fowler was succeeded by his son, Otto I, whom history knows as Otto the Great. He well deserved the title. Like Charlemagne, Otto presented the aspect of a born ruler. He is described as being tall and commanding in presence, strong and vigorous of body, and gifted with great charm of manner. In his bronzed face shone clear and sparkling eyes, and down his breast hung a long, thick beard. Though subject to violent outbursts of temper, he was liberal to his friends and just to his foes. Otto was a man of immense energy and ambition, with a high conception of his duties as a sovereign. His reign forms one of the most notable epochs in German history.
OTTO AND THE MAGYARS
Otto continued Henry's work of defending Germany from the foes which threatened to overrun that country. He won his most conspicuous success against the Magyars, who suffered a crushing defeat on the banks of the river Lech in Bavaria (955 A.D.). These barbarians now ceased their raids and retired to the lands on the middle Danube which they had seized from the Slavs. Here they settled down, accepted Christianity from the Roman Church, and laid the foundations of the kingdom of Hungary. [21] As a protection against future Magyar inroads Otto established the East Mark. This region afterwards rose to great importance under the name of Austria.
OTTO AND THE STEM-DUKES
Otto was an excellent ruler of Germany. He made it his business to strengthen the royal authority by weakening that of the stem-dukes. He had to fight against them on more than one occasion, for they regarded themselves almost as independent kings. Otto was able to keep them in check, but the rulers who followed him were less successful in this respect. The struggle between the kings and their powerful nobles formed a constant feature of the medieval history of Germany.
110. OTTO THE GREAT AND THE RESTORATION OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE, 962 A.D.
CONDITION OF ITALY
Otto the Great is not to be remembered only as a German king. His reign was also noteworthy in the history of Italy. The country at this time was hopelessly divided between rival and contending peoples. The emperor at Constantinople controlled the southern extremity of the peninsula. The Mohammedans held Sicily and some cities on the mainland. The pope ruled at Rome and in the States of the Church. A so-called king of Italy still reigned in Lombardy, but he could not manage the powerful counts, dukes, and marquises, who were virtually independent within their own domains. Even the imperial title died out, and now there was no longer a Roman emperor in the West.
CORONATION OF OTTO THE GREAT, 962 A.D.
The deplorable condition of Italy invited interference from abroad. Following in the footsteps of Charlemagne, Otto the Great led two expeditions across the Alps, assumed the "Iron Crown" [22] of Lombardy, and then proceeded to Rome, where he secured the pope (John XII) against the latter's enemies in that city. Otto's reward was the same as Charlemagne's. On Candlemas Day, (February 2d) 962 A.D., the grateful pope crowned him Roman emperor.
MEANING OF THE CORONATION
The coronation of Otto the Great seemed to his contemporaries a necessary and beneficial act. They still believed that the Roman Empire was suspended, not extinct; and that now, one hundred and fifty years after Charlemagne, the occasion was opportune to revive the name and power associated with the golden age of the first Frankish emperor. Otto's ardent spirit, one may well believe, was fired with this vision of imperial sway and the renewal of a title around which clustered so many memories of success and glory.
ULTIMATE RESULTS OF THE CORONATION
But the outcome of Otto's restoration of the Roman Empire was good neither for Italy nor for Germany. It became the rule, henceforth, that the man whom the German nobles chose as their king had a claim, also, to the Italian crown and the imperial title. The efforts of the German kings to make good this claim led to their constant interference in the affairs of Italy. They treated that country as a conquered province which had no right to a national life and an independent government under its own rulers. At the same time they neglected Germany and failed to keep their powerful territorial lords in subjection. Neither Italy nor Germany, in consequence, could become a unified, centralized state, such as was formed in France and England during the later Middle Ages.
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE
The empire of Charlemagne, restored by Otto the Great, came to be called in later centuries the "Holy Roman Empire." The title points to the idea of a world monarchy--the Roman Empire--and a world religion--Roman Christianity--united in one institution. This magnificent idea was never fully realized. The popes and emperors, instead of being bound to each other by the closest ties, were more generally enemies than friends. A large part of medieval history was to turn on this conflict between the Empire and the Papacy. [23]
111. THE ANGLO-SAXONS IN BRITAIN, 449-839 A.D.
ANGLO-SAXON CONQUEST OF BRITAIN
From the history of Continental Europe we now turn to the history of Britain. That island had been overrun by the Germanic barbarians after the middle of the fifth century. [24] They are commonly known as Anglo-Saxons, from the names of their two principal peoples, the Angles and Saxons. The Anglo-Saxon conquest of Britain was a slow process, which lasted at least one hundred and fifty years. The invaders followed the rivers into the interior and gradually subdued more than a half of what is now England, comprising the fertile plain district in the southern and eastern parts of the island.
NATURE OF THE CONQUEST
Though the Anglo-Saxons probably destroyed many flourishing cities and towns of the Romanized Britons, it seems likely that the conquerors spared the women, with whom they intermarried, and the agricultural laborers, whom they made slaves. Other natives took refuge in the hill regions of western and northern Britain, and here their descendants still keep up the Celtic language and traditions. The Anglo-Saxons regarded the Britons with contempt, naming them Welsh, a word which means one who talks gibberish. The antagonism between the two peoples died out in the course of centuries, conquerors and conquered intermingled, and an English nation, partly Celtic and partly Germanic, came into being.
THE SEVEN KINGDOMS IN BRITAIN
The Anglo-Saxons started to fight one another before they ceased fighting their common enemy, the Britons. Throughout the seventh and eighth centuries, the Anglo-Saxon states were engaged in almost constant struggles, either for increase of territory or for supremacy. The kingdoms farthest east--Kent, Sussex, Essex, and East Anglia--found their expansion checked by other kingdoms--Northumbria, Mercia, and Wessex--which grew up in the interior of the island. Each of these three stronger states gained in turn the leading place.
EGBERT AND THE SUPREMACY OF WESSEX, 802-839 A.D.
The beginning of the supremacy of Wessex dates from the reign of Egbert. He had lived for some years as an exile at the court of Charlemagne, from whom he must have learned valuable lessons of war and statesmanship. After returning from the Continent, Egbert became king of Wessex and gradually forced the rulers of the other states to acknowledge him as overlord. Though Egbert was never directly king of all England, he began the work of uniting the Anglo-Saxons under one government. His descendants have occupied the English throne to the present day.
ANGLO-SAXON BRITAIN
When the Germans along the Rhine and the Danube crossed the frontiers and entered the western provinces, they had already been partially Romanized. They understood enough of Roman civilization to appreciate it and to desire to preserve it. The situation was quite different with the Anglo- Saxons. Their original home lay in a part of Germany far beyond the borders of the Roman Empire and remote from the cultural influences of Rome. Coming to Britain as barbarians, they naturally introduced their own language, laws, and customs wherever they settled. Much of what the Anglo- Saxons brought with them still lives in England, and from that country has spread to the United States and the vast English colonies beyond the seas. The English language is less indebted to Latin than any of the Romance languages, [25] and the Common law of England owes much less to Roman law than do the legal systems of Continental Europe. England, indeed, looks to the Anglo-Saxons for some of the most characteristic and important elements of her civilization.
112. CHRISTIANITY IN THE BRITISH ISLES
PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY
The Anglo-Saxons also brought to Britain their heathen faith. Christianity did not come to them until the close the sixth century. At this time more or less intercourse had sprung up between the people of Kent, lying nearest to the Continent, and the Franks in Gaul. Ethelbert, the king of Kent, had even married the Frankish princess, Bertha. He allowed his Christian wife to bring a bishop to her new home and gave her the deserted church of St. Martin at Canterbury as a place of worship. Queen Bertha's fervent desire for the conversion of her husband and his people prepared the way for an event of first importance in English history--the mission of Augustine.
MISSION OF AUGUSTINE, 597 A.D.
The pope at this time was Gregory I, better known, from his services to the Roman Church, as Gregory the Great. [26] The kingdom of Kent, with its Christian queen, must have seemed to him a promising field for missionary enterprise. Gregory, accordingly, sent out the monk Augustine with forty companions to carry the Gospel to the heathen English. The king of Kent, already well disposed toward the Christian faith, greeted the missionaries kindly and told them that they were free to convert whom they would. Before long he and his court embraced Christianity, and the people of Kent soon followed the royal example. The monks were assigned a residence in Canterbury, a city which has ever since remained the religious capital of England. From Kent Christianity in its Roman form gradually spread into the other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.
CELTIC CHRISTIANITY
Augustine and his monks were not the first missionaries to Britain. Roman soldiers, merchants, and officials had introduced Christianity among the Britons as early as second century. During the fifth century the famous St. Patrick had carried Christianity to the heathen Irish. The Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain drove many Christians to Ireland, and that island in the sixth and seventh centuries became a center from which devoted monks went forth to labor in western Scotland and northern Britain [27] Here they came in contact with the Roman missionaries.
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN CELTIC AND ROMAN CHRISTIANITY
The Celtic Christians followed some customs which differed from those observed by Roman Christians. They computed the date on which Easter fell according to a system unlike that of the Romans. They permitted their priests to marry; the Romans forbade the practice. Their monks shaved the front of the head from ear to ear as a tonsure, while Roman monks shaved the top of the head, leaving a "crown of thorns." These differences may not seem very important, but they were enough to prevent the cooperation of Celtic and Roman missionaries for the conversion of the heathen.
SYNOD OF WHITBY, 664 A.D.
The rivalry between Celtic and Roman Christians was finally settled at a church gathering, or synod, called by the king of Northumbria at Whitby. The main controversy at this synod concerned the proper date for Easter. In the course of the debate it was asserted that the Roman custom had the sanction of St. Peter, to whom Christ had intrusted the keys of heaven. This statement was enough for the Northumbrian king, who thereupon decided in favor of the Roman claim, declaring that he would not oppose St. Peter, "lest when I come before the gates of the kingdom of heaven, he who holds the keys should not open to me." [28] The representatives of the Celtic Church then withdrew from England, leaving the field clear for Roman missionaries.
THE BRITISH ISLES BECAME ROMAN CATHOLIC
The decision of the Synod of Whitby in favor of Rome meant that all England henceforth would recognize the pope's authority in religious matters. It remained a Roman Catholic country until the time of the Reformation, nearly nine hundred years later. [29] The Celtic Christians in Ireland and Scotland also in the course of time became the devoted children of the Roman Church.
113. THE FUSION OF GERMANS AND ROMANS
THE GERMANIC KINGDOMS
We have now followed the fortunes of the Germans for five centuries from the end of the Roman Empire in the West. Most of their kingdoms, it has been seen, were not permanent. The Visigothic and Burgundian dominions in Gaul yielded to the Franks, and those of the Visigoths in Spain, to the Mohammedan Arabs. [30] The Vandal possessions in North Africa were regained by the emperors at Constantinople. [31] The rule of the Ostrogoths in Italy endured for only sixty years and that of the Lombards passed away after two centuries. The kingdoms established by the Franks and the Anglo-Saxons alone developed into lasting states.
HINDRANCES TO THE FUSION OF GERMANS AND ROMANS
But even where the Germans did not found permanent kingdoms, they mingled with the subject provincials and adopted much of the old Roman civilization. The fusion of the two peoples naturally required a long time, being scarcely completed before the middle of the tenth century. It was hindered, in the first place, by the desire of the Germans to secure the lands of the Romans. Wherever the barbarians settled, they appropriated a large part of the agricultural soil. How much they took varied in different countries. The Ostrogoths seem to have seized one- third of the land in Italy; the Visigoths, two-thirds of that in Gaul and Spain; the Anglo-Saxons, perhaps all the tillable soil of Britain. It could not but be galling to the Romans to surrender their farms to the barbarians. In the second place, the Germans often assessed heavy taxes on the Romans, which they themselves refused to pay. Tax-paying seemed to the Germans a mark of servitude. In the third place, a barrier between the two peoples arose from the circumstance that each had its particular law. For several centuries following the invasions there was one law for the Romans--that which they had enjoyed under the empire--and another law for the Germans--their old tribal customs. After the Germans had lived for some time in contact with the Romans they wrote out their laws in the Latin language. These "Laws of the Barbarians" still survive and throw much light on their early beliefs and manners.
CONDITIONS FAVORING FUSION
In spite of the hindrances to fusion, it seems true that the Germans and the Romans felt no great dislike for each other and that, as a rule, they freely intermingled. Certain conditions directly favored this result. First, many Germans had found their way within the empire as hired soldiers, colonists, and slaves, long before the invasions began. Second, the Germanic invaders came in relatively small numbers. Third, the Germans entered the Roman world not as destroyers, but as homeseekers. They felt a real reverence for Roman civilization. And fourth, some of the principal Germanic nations, including the Visigoths, Burgundians, and Vandals, were already Christians at the time of their invasions, while other nations, such as the Franks and the Anglo-Saxons, were afterwards converted to Christianity. As long, however, as most of the Germans remained Arian Christians [32] their belief stood in the way of friendly intercourse with the Roman provincials, who had accepted the Catholic faith.
CONTRAST BETWEEN EAST AND WEST
If western Europe during the early Middle Ages presented a scene of violence and confusion while the Germans were settling in their new homes, a different picture was afforded by eastern Europe. Here the Roman Empire still survived and continued to uphold for centuries the Roman tradition of law and order. The history of that empire forms the theme of the following chapter.
STUDIES
1. On an outline map indicate the boundaries of the empire of Charlemagne, distinguishing his hereditary possessions from those which he acquired by conquest.
2. On an outline map indicate the boundaries of the empire of Otto the Great.
3. What events are connected with the following places: Soissons; Mersen; Whitby; Reims; Verdun; Canterbury; and Strassburg?
4. What is the historical importance of Augustine, Henry the Fowler, Pepin the Short, Charles Martel, Egbert, and Ethelbert?
5. Give dates for the following events: battle of Tours; crowning of Charlemagne as emperor; crowning of Otto the Great as emperor; deposition of Romulus Augustulus; Augustine's mission to England; and the Treaty of Verdun.
6. Explain the following expressions: "do-nothing kings"; missi dominici; Holy Roman Empire; and "Donation of Pepin."
7. Why was the extinction of the Ostrogothic kingdom a misfortune for Italy?
8. Why did Italy remain for so many centuries after the Lombard invasion merely "a geographical expression"?
9. What difference did it make whether Clovis became an Arian or a Catholic?
10. What events in the lives of Clovis and Pepin the Short contributed to the alliance between the Franks and the popes?
11. What provinces of the Roman Empire in the West were not included within the limits of Charlemagne's empire?
12. What countries of modern Europe are included within the limits of Charlemagne's empire?
13. Compare the missi dominici with the "eyes and ears" of Persian kings.
14. What is the origin of the word "emperor"? As a title distinguish it from that of "king."
15. Why has Lothair's kingdom north of the Alps been called the "strip of trouble"?
16. In what parts of the British Isles are Celtic languages still spoken?
17. How did the four English counties, Sussex, Essex, Norfolk, and Suffolk, receive their names?
18. What was the importance of the Synod of Whitby?
19. Set forth the conditions which hindered, and those which favored, the fusion of Germans and Romans.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Webster, Readings in Medieval and Modern History, chapter i, "Stories of the Lombard Kings"; chapter ii, "Charlemagne."Return to passage
[2] See page 236.Return to passage
[3] See page 236.Return to passage
[4] See page 309.Return to passage
[5] The modern kingdom of Italy dates from 1861-1870 A.D.Return to passage
[6] See page 245.Return to passage
[7] His name is properly spelled Chlodweg, which later became Ludwig, and in French, Louis.Return to passage
[8] Allemagne. On the other hand, the inhabitants of Gaul came to call their country France and themselves Français after their conquerors, the Germanic Franks.Return to passage
[9] Gregory of Tours, Historia Francorum, ii, 31.Return to passage
[10] From Merovech, grandfather of Clovis.Return to passage
[11] See page 379.Return to passage
[12] So called from Pepin's son, Charles the Great (in Latin, Carolus Magnus). The French form of his name is Charlemagne.Return to passage
[13] In 1870 A.D. the States of the Church were added to the newly formed kingdom of Italy.Return to passage
[14] Einhard, Vita Caroli Magni, 25.Return to passage
[15] The rearguard of Charlemagne's army, when returning from Spain, was attacked and overwhelmed by the mountaineers of the Pyrenees. The incident gave rise to the famous French epic known as the Song of Roland.Return to passage
[16] The title of "Holy Roman Emperor," assumed by the later successors of Charlemagne, was kept by them till 1806 A.D.Return to passage
[17] The French name Lorraine and the German name Lothringen are both derived from the Latin title of Lothair's kingdom--Lotharii regnum.Return to passage
[18] See page 306.Return to passage
[19] The others were Franconia, Swabia, Bavaria, and Lorraine.Return to passage
[20] The Hohenzollerns became electors of Brandenburg in 1415 A.D., kings of Prussia in 1701, and emperors of Germany in 1871.Return to passage
[21] The Magyar settlement in central Europe had the important result of dividing the Slavic peoples into three groups. Those who remained south of the Danube (Serbians, Croatians, etc.) were henceforth separated from the northwestern Slavs (Bohemians, Moravians, and Poles) and from the eastern Slavs (Russians). See the map facing page 326.Return to passage
[22] See the Illustration, page 308.Return to passage
[23] See pages 455-463.Return to passage
[24] See page 246.Return to passage
[25] See page 208.Return to passage
[26] See page 350.Return to passage
[27] The enthusiasm of the Celtic Christians reached such proportions that it swept back upon the Continent. In the seventh and eighth centuries Irish missionaries worked among the heathen Germans and founded monasteries in Burgundy, Lombardy, and southern Germany (now Switzerland).Return to passage
[28] Bede, Historia ecclesiastica, iii, 25.Return to passage
[29] The separation from Rome occurred in 1534 A.D., during the reign of Henry VIII.Return to passage
[30] See page 378.Return to passage
[31] See page 330.Return to passage
[32] See page 236.Return to passage
XIV. EASTERN EUROPE DURING THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES, 395-1096 A.D
114. THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN THE EAST
SURVIVAL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN THE EAST
The Roman Empire in the West moved rapidly to its "fall" in 476 A.D., at the hands of the Germanic invaders. The Roman Empire in the East, though threatened by enemies from without and weakened by civil conflicts from within, endured for more than a thousand years. Until the middle of the eleventh century it was the strongest state in Europe, except during the reign of Charlemagne, when the Frankish kingdom eclipsed it. Until the middle of the fifteenth century it preserved the name, the civilization, and some part of the dominions, of ancient Rome. [1]
CAUSES OF THE SURVIVAL
The long life of the Roman Empire in the East is one of the marvels of history. Its great and constant vitality appears the more remarkable, when one considers that it had no easily defensible frontiers, contained many different races with little in common, and on all sides faced hostile states. The empire survived so long, because of its vast wealth and resources, its despotic, centralized government, the strength of its army, and the almost impregnable position occupied by Constantinople, the capital city.
CHARACTER OF THE EMPIRE
The changing fortunes of the empire during the Middle Ages are reflected in some of the names by which it is often known. The term "Greek Empire" expresses the fact that the state became more and more Greek in character, owing to the loss, first of the western provinces in the fifth century, and then of Syria and Egypt in the seventh century. Another term-- "Byzantine Empire"--appropriately describes the condition of the state in still later times, when its possessions were reduced to Constantinople (ancient Byzantium) and the territory in the neighborhood of that city. But through all this period the rulers at Constantinople regarded themselves as the true successors of Augustus, Diocletian, and Constantine. They never admitted the right of Charlemagne and Otto the Great to establish a rival Roman Empire in western Europe. [2] They claimed to be the only legitimate heirs of Old Rome.
115. THE REIGN OF JUSTINIAN, 527-565 A.D.
SUCCESSORS OF THEODOSIUS, 395-527 A.D.
The history of the Roman Empire in the East, for more than one hundred years after the death of Theodosius, is uneventful. His successors, though unable to prevent the Germans from seizing Italy and the other western provinces, managed to keep their own dominions intact. The eastern provinces escaped the fate of those in the West, because they were more populous and offered greater obstacles to the barbarian invaders, who followed the line of least resistance. The gradual recovery of the empire in strength and warlike energy prepared the way for a really eminent ruler--Justinian.
JUSTINIAN AND THEODORA
Justinian is described as a man of noble bearing, simple in his habits, affable in speech, and easy of approach to all his subjects. Historians have often drawn attention to his wonderful activity of mind and power of steady industry. So great was his zeal for work that one of his courtiers called him "the emperor who never sleeps." Possessed of large ideas and inspired by the majesty of Rome, Justinian aimed to be a great conqueror, a great lawgiver, and a great restorer of civilization. His success in whatever he undertook must be ascribed in part to his wife, Theodora, whom he associated with himself on the throne. Theodora, strong of mind and wise in counsel, made a worthy helpmate for Justinian, who more than once declared that in affairs of state he had consulted his "revered wife."
CONQUESTS OF JUSTINIAN
It was the ambition of Justinian to conquer the Germanic kingdoms which had been formed out of the Mediterranean provinces. In this task he relied chiefly on the military genius of Belisarius, one of the world's foremost commanders. Belisarius was able in one short campaign to destroy the Vandal kingdom in North Africa. [3] The Vandals by this time had lost their early vigor; they made but a feeble resistance; and their Roman subjects welcomed Belisarius as a deliverer. Justinian awarded a triumph to his victorious general, an honor which for five centuries emperors alone had enjoyed. The conquest of North Africa, together with the islands of Sardinia and Corsica, was followed by the overthrow of the Ostrogothic kingdom in Sicily and Italy. [4] Justinian also recovered from the Visigoths [5] the southeastern part of Spain. He could now say with truth that the Mediterranean was once more a Roman sea. [6]
CODIFICATION OF ROMAN LAW
The conquests of Justinian proved to be less enduring than his work as a lawgiver. Until his reign the sources of Roman law, including the legislation of the popular assemblies, the decrees of the Senate, the edicts of the of Roman praetors and emperors, and the decisions of learned lawyers, had never been completely collected and arranged in scientific form. Justinian appointed a commission of legal scholars to perform this task. The result of their labors, in which the emperor himself assisted, was the publication of the Corpus Juris Civilis, the "Body of Civil Law." Under this form the Roman principles of jurisprudence have become the foundation of the legal systems of modern Italy, Spain, France, Germany, and other European countries. These principles even influenced the Common law of England, which has been adopted by the United States. [7] The Corpus Juris Civilis, because of this widespread influence, is justly regarded as one of Rome's most important gifts to the world.
CIVILIZING WORK OF JUSTINIAN
Justinian's claim to the title of "Great" rests also on his civilizing work. He wished to restore the prosperity, as well as the provinces, of the empire. During his reign roads, bridges, and aqueducts were repaired, and commerce and agriculture were encouraged. It was at this time that two Christian missionaries brought from China the eggs of the silkworm, and introduced the manufacture of silk in Europe. As a builder Justinian gained special fame. The edifices which he caused to be raised throughout his dominions included massive fortifications on the exposed frontiers, splendid palaces, and many monasteries and churches. The most noteworthy monument to his piety is the church of Sancta Sophia [8] at Constantinople, now used as a Mohammedan mosque. By his conquests, his laws, and his buildings, Justinian revived for a time the waning glory of imperial Rome.
116. THE EMPIRE AND ITS ASIATIC FOES
AFTER JUSTINIAN
The Roman Empire in the East did not long remain at the pinnacle of greatness to which Justinian had raised it. His conquests, indeed, weakened rather than strengthened the empire, since now there were much more extensive frontiers to defend. Within half a century after his death it was attacked both in Europe and in Asia. The Lombards [9] soon seized Italy, and in the East the Persians renewed their contest against the Roman power.
PERSIANS
The struggle with the Persians was an inheritance from earlier times. [10] Under an ambitious king, Chosroes II, the Persians overran all the Asiatic provinces of the empire. A savior arose, however, in the person of the Roman emperor, Heraclius (610-641 A.D.). His brilliant campaigns against Chosroes partook of the nature of a crusade, or "holy war," for the Persians had violated the Holy Sepulcher at Jerusalem and had stolen away the True Cross, the most sacred relic of Christendom. Heraclius recovered all his provinces, but only at the cost of a bloody struggle which drained them of men and money and helped to make them fall easy victims to foes still more terrible than the Persians. These were the Arabs.
ARABS
Heraclius had not closed his reign before he saw all his victories undone by the advance of the Arabs. The first wave of invasion tore away Syria and Egypt from the empire, penetrated Asia Minor, and reached the shores of the Bosporus. Repulsed before the walls of Constantinople, the Arabs carried their arms to the West and seized North Africa, Spain, part of southern Italy, and the Mediterranean islands. Asia Minor and the Balkan peninsula still held out, however, and during the tenth century a line of able rulers at Constantinople succeeded in winning back some of their lost provinces.
SELJUK TURKS
During the eleventh century the empire had to face new enemies. These were the Seljuk Turks, [11] fierce nomads from the steppes beyond the Caspian. After their conversion to Mohammedanism, they swept with irresistible force through the East and conquered nearly all Asia Minor. The ruin of this country, in earlier ages one of the most populous and flourishing regions of the world, dates from its occupation by the Seljuks. To resist their further advance the Roman emperor sought in 1095 A.D. the help of the Christians of Europe. His appeals for aid resulted in the First Crusade, with which a new chapter of medieval history began. (See Chapter XX.)
WORK OF THE EMPIRE IN ASIA
Thus, for more than five centuries after Justinian, the Roman Empire in the East was engaged in a long struggle with the foes--Persians, Arabs, and Seljuk Turks--which successively attacked its dominions. By its stubborn resistance of the advance of the invaders the old empire protected the young states of Europe from attack, until they grew strong enough to meet and repulse the hordes of Asia. This service to civilization was not less important than that which had been performed by Greece and Rome in their contests with the Persians and the Carthaginians.
117. THE EMPIRE AND ITS FOES IN EUROPE
SLAVS
The troubled years after Justinian's death also witnessed the beginning of the Slavic [12] settlements in southeastern Europe. The Slavs belonged to the Indo-European race, but had not progressed in civilization as far as the Germans. Their cradle land seems to have been in western Russia, whence they slowly spread to the Baltic, the Elbe, and the Danube. We have already mentioned the campaigns which Charlemagne and Henry the Fowler waged against them. [13] The emperors at Constantinople were less successful in resisting that branch of the Slavs which tried to occupy the Balkan peninsula. After crossing the Danube, the Slavs pressed on farther and farther, until they reached the southern extremity of ancient Greece. They avoided the cities, but formed peasant communities in the open country, where they readily mingled with the inhabitants. Their descendants have remained in the Balkan peninsula to this day. The inhabitants of modern Serbia [14] are Slavs, and even in the Greeks there is a considerable strain of Slavic blood.
BULGARIANS
The Bulgarians, a people akin to the Huns and Avars, made their appearance south of the lower Danube in the seventh century. For more than three hundred years these barbarians, brutal, fierce, and cruel, were a menace to the empire. At one time they threatened Constantinople and even killed a Roman emperor, whose skull was converted into a drinking cup to grace their feasts. The Bulgarians settled in the region which now bears their name and gradually adopted the speech and customs of the Slavs. Modern Bulgaria is essentially a Slavic state.
RUSSIANS
The empire was attacked in southeastern Europe by still other barbarians, among whom were the Russians. This Slavic people, led by chieftains from Sweden, descended the Dnieper and Dniester rivers and, crossing the Black Sea, appeared before the walls of Constantinople. Already, in the tenth century, that city formed the goal of Russian ambitions. The invaders are said to have made four attempts to plunder its treasures. Though unsuccessful, they compelled the emperors from time to time to pay them tribute.
WORK OF THE EMPIRE IN EUROPE
Christianity reached the invaders of the Balkan peninsula from Constantinople. The Serbians, Bulgarians, and Russians were converted in the ninth and tenth centuries. With Christianity they received the use of letters and some knowledge of Roman law and methods of government. Constantinople was to them, henceforth, such a center of religion and culture as Rome was to the Germans. By becoming the teacher of the vast Slavic peoples of the Balkan peninsula and European Russia, the empire performed another important service to civilization.
118. BYZANTINE CIVILIZATION
STRENGTH AND WEALTH OF THE EMPIRE
The Roman Empire in the East, though often menaced by barbarian foes, long continued to be the leading European power. Its highest degree of prosperity was reached between the middle of the ninth and the middle of the eleventh century. The provinces in Asia Minor and the Balkan peninsula produced a vast annual revenue, much of which went for defense. It was necessary to maintain a large, well-disciplined army, great fleets and engines of war, and the extensive fortifications of Constantinople and the frontier cities. Confronted by so many dangers, the empire could hope to survive only by making itself a strong military state.
COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY
The merchant ships of Constantinople, during the earlier part of the Middle Ages, carried on most of the commerce of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. The products of Byzantine industry, including silks, embroideries, mosaics, enamels, and metal work, were exchanged at that city for the spices, drugs, and precious stones of the East. Byzantine wares also found their way into Italy and France and, by way of the Russian rivers, reached the heart of eastern Europe. Russia, in turn, furnished Constantinople with large quantities of honey, wax, fur, wool, grain, and slaves. A traveler of the twelfth century well described the city as a metropolis "common to all the world, without distinction of country or religion."
CHARACTER OF BYZANTINE ART
Many of the Roman emperors from Justinian onward were great builders. Byzantine architecture, seen especially in the churches, became a leading form of art. Its most striking feature is the dome, which replaces the flat, wooden roof used in the basilican [15] Churches of Italy. The exterior of a Byzantine church is plain and unimposing, but the interior is adorned on a magnificent scale. The eyes of the worshiper are dazzled by the walls faced with marble slabs of variegated colors, by the columns of polished marble, jasper, and porphyry, and by the brilliant mosaic pictures of gilded glass. The entire impression is one of richness and splendor. Byzantine artists, though mediocre painters and sculptors, excelled in all kinds of decorative work. Their carvings in wood, ivory, and metal, together with their embroideries, enamels, and miniatures, enjoyed a high reputation throughout medieval Europe.
INFLUENCE OF BYZANTINE ART
Byzantine art, from the sixth century to the present time, has exerted a wide influence. Sicily, southern Italy, Rome, Ravenna, and Venice contain many examples of Byzantine churches. Italian painting in the Middle Ages seems to have been derived directly from the mosaic pictures of the artists of Constantinople. Russia received not only its religion but also its art from Constantinople. The great Russian churches of Moscow and Petrograd follow Byzantine models. Even the Arabs, in spite of their hostility to Christianity, borrowed Byzantine artists and profited by their services. The Mohammedan mosques of Damascus, Cairo, and Cordova, both in methods of construction and in details of ornamentation, reproduce Byzantine styles.
LITERATURE AND LEARNING
The libraries and museums of Constantinople preserved classical learning. In the flourishing schools of that city the wisest men of the day taught philosophy, law, medicine, and science to thousands of students. The professors figured among the important persons of the court: official documents mention the "prince of the rhetoricians" and the "consul of the philosophers." Many of the emperors showed a taste for scholarship; one of them was said to have been so devoted to study that he almost forgot to reign. When kings in western Europe were so ignorant that they could with difficulty scrawl their names, eastern emperors wrote books and composed poetry. It is true that Byzantine scholars were erudite rather than original. Impressed by the great treasures of knowledge about them, they found it difficult to strike out into new, unbeaten paths. Most students were content to make huge collections of extracts and notes from the books which antiquity had bequeathed to them. Even this task was useful, however, for their encyclopedias preserved much information which otherwise would have been lost. During the Middle Ages the East cherished the productions of classical learning, until the time came when the West was ready to receive them and to profit by them.
119. CONSTANTINOPLE
POSITION OF CONSTANTINOPLE
The heart of Byzantine civilization was Constantinople. The city lies on a peninsula between the Sea of Marmora and the spacious harbor called the Golden Horn. Washed on three sides by the water and, like Rome, enthroned upon seven hills, Constantinople occupies a site justly celebrated as the noblest in the world. It stands in Europe, looks on Asia, and commands the entrance to both the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. As a sixteenth century writer pointed out, Constantinople "is a city which Nature herself has designed to be the mistress of the world."
CONSTANTINOPLE AS A NATURAL CITADEL
The position of Constantinople made it difficult to attack but easy to defend. To surround the city an enemy would have to be strong upon both land and sea. A hostile army, advancing through Asia Minor, found its further advance arrested by the long, winding channel which the Bosporus, the Sea of Marmora, and the Dardanelles combine to form. A hostile fleet, coming by way of the Mediterranean or the Black Sea, faced grave difficulties in attempting to penetrate the narrow strait into which this waterway contracts at each extremity. On the landward side the line of defense was so short--about four miles in width--that it could be strongly fortified and held by a small force against large numbers. During the Middle Ages the rear of the city was protected by two huge walls, the remains of which are still visible. Constantinople, in fact, was all but impregnable. Though each new century brought a fresh horde of enemies, it resisted siege after siege and long continued to be the capital of what was left of the Roman Empire. [16]
MONUMENTS OF CONSTANTINOPLE
Constantine had laid out his new city on an imposing scale and adorned it with the choicest treasures of art from Greece, Italy, and the Orient. Fourteen churches, fourteen palaces, eight public baths, and several triumphal arches are assigned to the founder of the city. His most stately building was the Hippodrome, an immense structure devoted to chariot races and all sorts of popular gatherings. There new emperors, after their consecration in Sancta Sophia, were greeted by their subjects; there civic festivals were held; and there the last Roman triumphs were celebrated. Theodosius the Great built the principal gate of Constantinople, the "Golden Gate," as it was called, by which the emperors made their solemn entry into the city. But it was Justinian who, after Constantine, did most to adorn the new capital by the Bosporus. He is said to have erected more than twenty-five churches in Constantinople and its suburbs. Of these, the most beautiful is the world-famed cathedral dedicated by Justinian to "Holy Wisdom." On its completion the emperor declared that he had surpassed Solomon's Temple. Though nearly fourteen hundred years old and now defaced by vandal hands, it remains perhaps the supreme achievement of Christian architecture.
HISTORIC SIGNIFICANCE OF CONSTANTINOPLE
Excepting Athens and Rome, no other European city can lay claim to so long and so important a history as Constantinople. Her day came after theirs was done. Throughout the Middle Ages Constantinople remained the most important city in Europe. When London, Paris, and Vienna were small and mean towns, Constantinople was a large and flourishing metropolis. The renown of the city penetrated even into barbarian lands. The Scandinavians called it Micklegarth, the "Great City"; the Russians knew of it as Tsarigrad, the "City of the Caesars." But its own people best described it as the "City guarded by God." Here, for more than eleven centuries, was the capital of the Roman Empire and the center of Eastern Christendom.
STUDIES
1. Compare the area of the Roman Empire in the East in 395 A.D. with its area in 800 A.D. (maps between pages 222-223 and facing page 308).
2. Compare the respective areas in 800 A.D. of the Roman Empire in the East and Charlemagne's empire.
3. On the map, page 338, locate Adrianople, Gallipoli, Nicaea, the Bosporus, Sea of Marmora, and Dardanelles.
4. Who were Belisarius, Chosroes II, and Heraclius?
5. In your opinion which of the two rival imperial lines after 800 A.D. had the better title to represent ancient Rome?
6. Why has Justinian been called the "lawgiver of civilization"?
7. Why was it necessary to codify Roman law? Is the English Common law codified?
8. Compare the work of Alexandrian and Byzantine scholars in preserving learning.
9. "The Byzantines were the teachers of the Slavs, as the Romans were of the Germans." Comment on this statement.
10. The Byzantine Empire was once called "a gigantic mass of mould, a thousand years old." Does this seem a fair description?
11. "The history of medieval civilization is, in large measure, the history of the Roman Empire in the East." Comment on this statement.
12. Show that Constantinople formed "a natural citadel."
13. On the map, page 340, trace the successive walls of Constantinople.
FOOTNOTES
[1] The fall of the empire came in 1453 A.D., when Constantinople was captured by the Ottoman Turks.Return to passage
[2] See pages 311-312, 317-318.Return to passage
[3] See page 245.Return to passage
[4] See page 300.Return to passage
[5] See page 244.Return to passage
[6] See the map, page 301.Return to passage
[7] Roman law still prevails in the province of Quebec and the state of Louisiana, territories formerly under French control, and in all the Spanish-American countries.Return to passage
[8] In Greek, Hagia Sophia, "Holy Wisdom."Return to passage
[9] See page 302.Return to passage
[10] See page 219.Return to passage
[11] So named from one of their leaders.Return to passage
[12] The word slova means "speech"; the Slavs are those who speak the same language.Return to passage
[13] See pages 309, 315.Return to passage
[14] A more accurate designation than Servia. Originally, all Slavic peoples called themselves Serbs.Return to passage
[15] See page 284.Return to passage
[16] Of the eight sieges to which Constantinople was subjected in medieval times, only two succeeded. In 1204 A.D. it was captured by the Venetians and in 1453 A.D., by the Ottoman Turks. See pages 477 and 492.Return to passage