Rome the Middle of the World

Preface

ix CHAP. I. HOW ROME BECAME THE MIDDLE OF THE WORLD I II. AUGUSTUS, AND WHAT HE DID FOR ROME . 19 III. NERO AND HIS TIMES 35 IV. TRAJAN AND HADRIAN 5 1 V. THE SEVERI 69 VI. CONSTANTINE THE GREAT — CHANGES IN GOVERNMENT AND IN RELIGION 90 VII. THE GOTHS AND THE HUNS— ALARIC AND ATTILA 1 10 VIII. THEODORIC THE GOTHIC KING AND JUSTINIAN THE EMPEROR 132 IX. RENEWAL OF THE EMPIRE IN ROME . . VI CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE X. EMPERORS AND POPES I71 XL KINGS AND POPES 1 89 XII. RIENZI THE TRIBUNE 209 XIII. THE MEDICI POPES 229 XIV. THE WORLD WITHOUT A MIDDLE — CON CLUSION LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS TRAJAN RECEIVING THE SUBMISSION OF THE dacians ■ ..... Frontispiece statue of Augustus (Vatican) . To face page 18 trajan sacrificing (lustfatio exercitus) 2 ,, ,, 56 BUST OF HADRIAN ....„„ 62 MAP OF EUROPE (493 A.D.) 3 . „ „ IOI PLACIDIA AND VALENTINIAN III.

(an ivory diptych) * ....,,„ 126 coronation of leo. x. (medal) s . ,, „ 242 CASTLE OF ST. ANGELO, FORMERLY THE TOMB OF HADRIAN . . ,, „ 246 1 From Ciclioiius, " Reliefs der Trajanssaule," Plate liv. 2 From Cichorius, " Reliefs der Trajanssaule," Plate xxxviii. 3 From "Theodoric" ; by kind permission of Dr. Hodgkin and of Messrs. Putnam's Sons. * From " Julian, Philosopher and Emperor *" ; by kind permission of Messrs. Putnam's Sons. s Kindly furnished by Mr. George Hill, of the British Museum.

PREFACE.

THIS book has been undertaken in consequence of the friendly encouragement given to me by several successful teachers of children, in schools and at home, who seem to have thought well of my previous attempt to make some historical persons and incidents appeal to children's imagination. It will be observed, however, that this is only in a very general sense a sequel to my " Friends of the Olden Time." In style it is adapted to the understanding of young people who six or seven years ago may have followed, without a feeling of outraged dignity, our rambles and chats in the ancient world. The biographical character of treatment has been partially abandoned for the dramatic. It may to some people seem absurd, yet I judge it by no means impracticable, to lead even young people to look at history as one great whole. In our young days, as in the young days of history itself, both ancient and mediæval, the unity of the whole X

PREFACE.

story of man was generally kept in view, a unity which gave it a kind of artistic grandeur and also caused it to abound in moral instruction. The unifying links were supplied from theories as to the Divine government of the World or the gradual upward progress of man. Now that we are more humbly reticent as to the ways of Providence, and perhaps less confident about the continuity of human progress, our historical views are apt to become frag mentary, and history loses its æsthetic interest without assuredly becoming more scientific. Perhaps it is only passing through a transition stage from which it will emerge as strong to impress the imagination, form the judgment, and brace the will, as ever it has been in the past. For young learners of history, I believe it to be far the wiser plan to acquire first a strong impression, and an accurate knowledge of a few luminous patches in history, and to fill up gradually the duller spaces between, as time goes on.

A few dates should be so fixed in the memory that they will remain there always, and afford, so to speak, large beads by help of which the length and the position of the intermediate parts of the chain may easily be reckoned. I have endeavoured where possible to show the importance of monumental evidence as to facts and customs. Some of my illustrations have been chosen expressly with this view. Finally, I would express my sincere gratitude to

PREFACE.

XI all who have helped and encouraged me in my task, and my earnest hope that they may find this little work helpful to them. And if children ever read prefaces — as, happily, they never do — I should give my best thanks and most affectionate good wishes to those who took my " Friends " as I meant them to be taken, and to tell them that the thought that I had given them some pleasure, and might help to give them more, in what gives me more pleasure — mixed with pain, as the best pleasures always are — than anything else, had alone made it possible for me to write this book. ALICE GARDNER. Newnham College, Cambridge, June, 1897. SOME IMPORTANT EVENTS MENTIONED IN THIS BOOK. A.D. 20. Augustus recovers from the Parthians the Eagles lost by Crassus. 64. Great fire of Rome. Nero begins to persecute the Christians. 100.

Trajan prepares for his war against the Dacians. 122. Hadrian in Britain. 235. Alexander Severus murdered by his soldiers. 330. Constantine founds Constantinople. 410. Alaric the Goth sacks Rome. 451. Attila the Hun beaten by Romans and Goths at Chalons. 500. Theodoric the Ostrogoth in Rome. 800. Charles the Great, King of the Franks, crowned Emperor in Rome. 1077. The Emperor Henry IV. does penance before Pope Gregory VII. at Canossa. 1300. Jubilee of Pope Boniface VIII. 1347. Rienzi Tribune in Rome. 1527. Rome sacked by the troops of the Emperor Charles V

Chapter I Introductory How Rome Became The Middle Of The World

I AM writing this book chiefly for those who through me have made friends with my " Friends of the Olden Time." I feel that I have done for them the kind of service that a privileged lady may do for a young friend in presenting her at court. I dare say that a good many young people who have been presented never see the Queen again, yet I think that they are generally glad to have been near to her at least once in their lives, and she will seem a more really living person to them ever after. I hope, however, that some young people whom I have introduced to my " Friends " have had a good deal more than a hurried glance at their faces. I shall at least suppose that all who care to read this I book know, at any rate, as much about the Olden Times as they could learn from the little visits we made together.

We are all older since that time, and I hope we have all learned more, of history and of other subjects, but I still keep to my principle, that the best plan, if possible, for those who want really to understand what was going on at any time in the world's history, is to get hold of a man who belongs to that time, and find out from him what he thinks about things around him (though he may often be utterly wrong), and — more important — to see what he is doing to help or hinder the progress or the changes going on. Of course this cannot always be done : in some obscure periods few persons stand out from among the rest so that we can really know them, and either honour them or shrink from them. Such periods may, nevertheless, be very interesting, for nations and societies have their characters and may be as attractive as private persons.

And besides, when you know much about the character of a people and all its ways of life, you may, by a little imagination, come to understand, or at least to guess at, the kind of life and character you would find in the men, women, and children who make up that people, and so you feel almost as if you knew them personally. But real personal friendship is, where possible, the best introduction to history, as into society generally. Yet, though I keep to this notion as to the need of friendship with men of the past for all those who INTRODUCTORY 3 want to understand history, I am not going to try to make a book just like my other, only dealing with a later time. I intend to make two changes. For one thing, we are not going to rush about from period to period and country to country, seeking for in teresting friends.

We are older, and some of us less agile than we were, and for reasons which you may possibly see later on, it will be better for us to take our station at one place, which seems to be very much in the middle of all that is going on, and watch men and nations file past us, as, you will remember, King Xerxes sat on his throne looking towards the Ægean Sea, while all the mighty array of men from divers countries marched past him on their way (as he hoped) to conquer the Greeks. We shall be stationary as to place. But as to time, I shall, as before, make many leaps, and hurry over long periods, pointing out nothing but a guiding line. For I am not going to write for you a history of all the world, as seen from any one place during several centuries. That would be a heavy task, both for you and for me.

But as the procession passes, I shall try to snatch a photograph of some one part of it, and we can study the picture at our leisure till another portion passes which is worth taking, though of course we must look at the Order of the Procession so as to know generally what has passed between the two parts that we have observed more closely. Now this brings me to the second change I am making in my way of bringing the past before you, or bringing you into the past. There are men in abundance belonging to the times we are to traverse who are well worth knowing, and who can be known. But while I desire you to interest your selves in these men for their own sakes, I want you also to look at them with a larger interest, such as was impossible when you were yet children. It is a great step gained when you come to feel that men and women of old were in some ways so much like ourselves, in spite of such marked differences.

The differences due to remoteness of time and place, to strangeness in language, in religion, in judgment as to right and wrong, come, after a time, to make historical personages all the more attractive to us, just as we enjoy meeting a Chinaman in his national costume or an Indian lady in her bright-coloured robes, and hearing from their lips of their own customs and thoughts, in some ways so like our own, in others so strangely unlike. But after we have overcome the feeling of strangeness, and have gained a personal feeling towards people of bygone times, we may go further and learn more from them by looking at them not only as our fellow-men and forerunners on life's path, but as makers of history. For, in a sense, all history has been made by the men and women who have gone before us. I do not, of course, mean that any generation of men, or any particular set of men in any generation, decide in which way they would like the course of history INTRODUCTORY 5 to move, and then act accordingly.

If the leading men at any time thus consciously and intentionally directed the progress of the world, history might still be a useful subject to study, but it would not be such a great subject as it is. I think we may safely say that though some great men see a few things, a little way off, very clearly, and go straight to the goal, yet many (and those of the very greatest) feel how little ahead they can see clearly, and so far from thinking of directing the course of the world, follow, and feel strongest when they follow, voices heard within or without which bid them do this or refrain from that and give no clear reason why. So that when we speak of men and nations making history, we think not of any great connected action planned and carried out by human effort. We think rather how each nation or society, and every man or woman in that society, has had some particular task to perform in bringing about a great result which the wisest of us can as yet see but dimly.

We who care to study the past learn to appreciate the parts that men and groups or societies of men have severally contri buted to the treasure which they have handed down to us. We often feel that we have suffered through their mistakes, that we have profited by their efforts and learned wisdom by their blunders ; we feel bitterly that they have wasted much that ought to have come down to us, and we regret also that we cannot impart to them the fruits of their own labours. "They, without us, might not be made perfect," and likewise we cannot be made per fect, or fulfil our whole duty in life, except by ministering to those who are to come after us. As we watch the great march-past, then, we must never be too sure that we know whence, at first, it has come, nor whither it is going. But is it possible to watch it at all ?

Is there any point from which we can see enough of it to make it worth while to look at it at all ? For our present purposes, and for the part of the procession we want to watch, I answer without hesitating that there is such a place, and that place is the City of Rome. But before we take up our position there, it is as well to make quite sure why it is that we can call Rome, during these times, the "Middle of the World," and then how it is that she has come to hold such an exalted position. Of course " Middle of the World " is a figure of speech, and such figures of speech are very apt to run away with us, if we are not careful, and to make us talk nonsense. We can hardly say that any place seems to us just now the very centre of the World's life. To us Englishmen, London may seem to come nearest to that idea.

Paris would seem the centre to all Frenchmen. Americans would perhaps regard no city in such a light. But all through the times which we are to go into— first the time of the Roman Empire and then that which, for reasons that we may understand by and by, we call the INTRODUCTORY 7 Middle Ages, there was no doubt in any one's mind that though one's own city might be nearer and dearer, yet none but Rome was the head-city of all the world. You know that it is not so now. Many people like to visit Rome so that they may see the ruins of her former greatness and the works of art that are stored in her museums. Others venerate the City as the residence of the Head of the Roman Catholic Church. But it would not make much difference to their lives and thoughts if they never realised that Rome was there.

I am not speaking of Italians, of course. Rome is the seat of their government and the most important city of their country. But they do not regard her, and do not want to regard her, as belonging to other nations just as she belongs to them. And it is not quite easy to put into other words exactly what the many generations meant that called Rome the Head of the World. It did not exactly mean that she was the mistress that ruled over all countries and peoples, for the idea of her headship continued, as we shall see, long after she had lost her far-reaching political power. Nor yet did it mean that she was the most sacred of cities in the religious sense ; to Christians of the Middle Ages, Jerusalem seemed a holier city still. Nor was she in front of all other cities in learning and art. Athens and Alex andria were of greater reputation for those things than Rome had when Rome was at her best.

But somehow, the course of historical events — that is, the actions and sufferings of many generations which go to make up history — had brought it about that Rome found herself in a position such as no other city has occupied before or after. She had come to be regarded as the great protectress and diffuser of what we call civilisation, though few of the people who looked up to her would have put the idea into those words. She was the centre of the Roman Empire which was considered the one Empire, and became the centre of the Western Church — which regarded itself as the One Church. With other empires and other churches we have nothing to do just now. They did not look to Rome, yet we may say, when we think how the world is now in a sense bound in one, and how the most distant lands depend for some things one on another, that even they are different from what they would have been if there had never been any Rome.

I have not exactly explained what we wanted to explain, as to the meaning which we are to give to the words " Rome the Middle of the World." But there are a great many words that we can never understand till we have industriously studied the things that the words stand for. It is only by read ing and thinking a good deal about the history of Rome that you come to see the meaning of the names that have been given her. Meantime, we may take this practical meaning for ourselves — that when we want to study the world in the times of the Emperors and in the Middle Ages, we shall not miss tbe most INTRODUCTORY 9 important events if we look first at what is going on in and about Rome. And the steps by which Rome has grown so great may be traced if you think over what you know of her history, even if (as I do not wish to believe) yoti know no more than what we gathered in our visits to my " Friends of the Olden Time."

We have paid an imaginary visit to Rome during the lifetime of grand old Camillus. That was in the year 367 B.C., just after the wars and perils Rome had undergone in the invasions of the Gauls, and just at the time when Rome was healing her own breach within the city, the conflict between Patri cians and Plebeians. A compromise was being made, by which, among other things, it was to be arranged that of the Consuls, or chief magistrates of the State, one must always be a Plebeian. Now Rome had been founded, according to the date usually given, nearly four hundred years before this time, in the year 753 B.C. Of course we can know a good deal about Rome during these four hundred years, but I am sorry to say that very few of the legends of early Rome, which came, or used to come, at the beginning of all school histories, are to be taken as containing much sober fact.

Almost all nations have legends about their earliest history, and their " brave days of old," just as we find numbers of stories told about the childhood of great men. But there are differences in these stories. Sometimes, in the case of great men, they arise from hazy memories of nurses and playmates, and in nations, from traditions proudly and lovingly handed down, and not losing anything in the process. Sometimes, the stories are made up long afterwards by people who think that the great man ought to have said and done wonderful things when he was a boy, or that the great nation ought to have heard prophecies of its future greatness, and to have been led by heroes worthy to be its first leaders. Now many, I fear most, of the stories of early Rome are of this second kind — they were made up afterwards, and therefore they are not worth much to us as history.

But I would by no means go on to say that we ought not to know them, or that it is foolish to take pleasure in them. After all, we know the Romans, or any other people, much better for knowing what their own thoughts were about the people from whom they had sprung, and on what kind of stories the children were brought up, and how they got their first ideas of their duty to their country. Nevertheless, we must always be on the lookout, in reading history, to distinguish what is known to be true from what is only a doubtful story. And just at present I wish to keep within the boundaries of sober history. To return, then, to the days of the great Camillus. Rome was so far, then, from being the middle of the world, that she was not even the greatest town of Italy. She was gradually gaining ground over the great cities of Northern Italy (you remember the INTRODUCTORY 11 story of the fall of Veii, the great Etruscan city), but there were still Greek colony-cities in the South of Italy beside which she might have seemed rude and barbarous.

Many cities of her own neighbourhood, allied to her by kinship and by language and religious usages, were formed into a kind of league with her, and after a time, with some resistance on their part, and much actual fighting, these allied cities were obliged to give up some of their independence and look on Rome as their mistress. Roman power spread gradually in Italy. Whenever she had put down discontent anywhere, she built a fortress-city to keep the people in awe, and these cities were connected together by excellent roads, so that it became almost impossible to obtain back from her anything that she had once possessed. In time, every part of Italy, even the Greek cities that had once been so strong and great, were drawn into her net, and forced to make alliance with her on terms that practically made them her subjects.

Meanwhile, the old disputes between Patricians and Plebeians had come to an end. Fresh disputes and factions were to break out later on, but for some time Rome pursued her course, united and strong. After she had become the mistress of Italy, she was for a long while engaged in a life-and-death struggle with the great seafaring people of Carthage. What that struggle was like, and how it ended, you have already learned in making friends with Hannibal. You know, too, that after her wars with the Carthaginians, Rome obtained power over great countries beyond Italy, and forced them to pay tribute to her. We have seen also how Rome came to interfere in the affairs of Eastern lands, and how her inter ference ended in making her, not only judge between contending cities and princes, but mistress of all the civilised world (which means, roughly speaking, over all places where people talked and wrote in Greek or Latin), and of many barbarous peoples also.

We have seen, too, that the wide conquests which Rome made were not altogether beneficial to her. The Italians were able to obtain corn from abroad at a very low rate, while the Roman people often had it given them for nothing, so that farming became as unprofitable a business to the small owners of corn growing estates as it is to our tenant farmers in parts of England at the present day. Again, it was natural that when the State was constantly at war in distant parts, the great generals and their armies came to have more power than was desirable, and meantime the provinces were oppressed and plundered because the Senate could not or would not keep an eye on all that was going on, so as to know how Roman generals were acting in distant places. Thence came a series of seditions and agitations and at last civil wars.

We have seen how the rumbling of the storm began with the Gracchi, and how the end of the Roman Republic came with the defeat and death of Cato the Stoic and the few who kept by him. How is it, then, that Rome became the One Great INTRODUCTORY 13 City of the World after she had seemed to sink under her burdens and calamities ? The fact is, she had not died of her disease. She only needed a skilful physician to help her to recovery. Yet we know that when a person has had a bad illness, especially if he is no longer young, even after he has entirely recovered, he is not quite the same man that he was before. And so with some great cities and countries. Rome was like a man with a weak heart that has not vigour to pump the blood into the furthest capillaries of the long limbs. There came two great men in succession who by artificial means brought the centre and the extremities into closer connection.

To drop figures of speech — which, as we have said, are apt to run away with us — it had become impossible for the Senate and People of Rome to control such a far-reaching empire. They could not have sufficed for the task when at their very bast ; and now the Senate was generally composed of a set of incapable and inert men of good family and of little else good, and the People was little better than a city mob. What was wanted was a master's eye, to watch with personal interest every part of the great machine, and one strong pair of hands to hold the threads by which the whole was bound together. Yet when Rome fell under the rule of one man, she lost what was good, though she may have gained what was better. She lost republican liberty, which is always an excellent thing for any people capable of using it aright, Some people, especially English and Americans, might think that when liberty is gone, nothing else remains worth having, but when we read Roman history, we feel that, sad as it was for Rome herself to lose her liberty, it was better for the world that she should not be allowed to keep it any longer.

Of the changes which gave Rome a new lease of life, and of the way in which they came about, I shall have more to say by and by. Just now I want you to realise that, in spite of quarrellings, and mistakes, and many failures, Rome really deserved to become the mistress of so many lands, and also that in a sense she was able to rise to the great occasion and to fulfil her duty to the world of which she had become the centre. Rome deserved her position not only because she could fight better than her enemies, when it came to the actual conflict, but also because the Romans could patiently make sure of what they had con quered, could fortify, and make roads, and endure, if need be, great privations and hard labours. True, when you read about the wars of the Romans, you find cases of insubordination among the men and of blundering among the officers.

But I think we may safely say that no army in ancient times was kept in discipline like that of the best modern armies ; and the art of war had not yet been brought within the compass of rules such as those which all military officers are now obliged to learn. In orderly fight ing and orderly governing, she was far ahead of peoples who were far beyond her in everything to INTRODUCTORY 15 do with art and literature and with the things that make life refined and easy. This is set forth in Macaulay's lay, " The Prophecy of Capys." In it he makes the Prophet address King Romulus : " Leave to the soft Campanian His baths and his perfumes ; Leave to the sordid race of Tyre Their dyeing-vats and looms ; Leave to the sons of Carthage The rudder and the oar ; Leave to the Greek his marble Nymphs And scrolls of wordy lore.

Thine, Roman, is the pilum, Roman, the sword is thine, The even trench, the bristling mound, The legion's ordered line." Those who read Virgil will some day come across, if they do not know it already, the very fine passage in the Roman poet which suggested these lines to Macaulay. It is as well to read also what was said by a man who was not a Roman, and so had no reason for boasting, and who wrote at a time (late in the second century B.C.) when Rome was already distracted by civic factions and seemed to be fast approaching the inevitable collapse : "Now Judas (Maccabaeus) r had heard of the fame of the Romans, that they were mighty and valiant men, and such as would lovingly accept all that joined themselves unto them, and make a league of amity with all that came unto them ; " And that they were men of great valour.

It ' i Maccabees was told him also of their wars and noble acts which they had done among the Galatians, and how they had conquered them and brought them under tribute ; "And what they had done in the country of Spain. . . . " It was told him besides how they destroyed and brought under their dominion all other kingdoms and isles that at any time resisted them ; " But with their friends and such as relied upon them they kept amity ; and that they had conquered kingdoms both far and nigh, insomuch as all that heard of their name were afraid of them ; " Also that whom they would help to a kingdom, those reign ; and whom again they would, they displace : finally, that they were greatly exalted ; " Yet for all this none of them wore a crown, or was clothed in purple, to be magnified thereby. " Moreover have they had made for themselves a senate-house, wherein three hundred and twenty men sat in council daily, consulting alway for the people to the end they might be well ordered : "And that they committed their government to one man every year, who ruled over all their country, and that all were obedient to that one, and that there was neither envy nor emulation among them "...