XXXIX. A HALF CENTURY OF DECLINE: COMMODUS TO ALEXANDER SEVERUS…

XXXIX. A HALF CENTURY OF DECLINE: COMMODUS TO ALEXANDER SEVERUS

The day of the death of Marcus Aurelius may be taken as the decisive moment in which the ruin of the old civilisation was determined.

Now after the great effort of reason in high places, after Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus, Marcus Aurelius, the reign of evil begins again, and is worse than ever. Farewell to goodness, farewell to reason! Now, all hail, folly! All hail, absurdity! All hail to the Syrian and his questionable gods! Genuine physicians have been able to do nothing; the sick man is more sick than ever: send for the charlatans.--RENAN.

[Sidenote: [161-183 A.D.]]

We come now to a time of obvious decline. Even in the golden epoch the nation was probably static rather than progressive, notwithstanding the glory that surrounds the great names of its emperors. But now the deterioration is too rapid and too marked to be questioned. The period has no importance except as a transition time from the great days of the empire to the days of its degradation. Nevertheless, the events of this transition age marshal themselves before the eye in one of the most striking panoramas in all history. These events group themselves into a few strange scenes. The first shows us a philosopher’s son given over to the lowest forms of vice; demeaning himself in the arena; associating with gladiators and slaves; and finally coming to an ignominious death at the hands of his wife and freedmen, who kill him that their own lives may be saved.

The second scene shows us, in sharp contrast to the ignoble son of the philosopher, the noble son of a slave assuming the purple. Pertinax passes across the stage as a good old man, well-meaning, but incompetent to stem the tide of the times. He meets what may be called the normal imperial fate--assassination; and the historic stage is cleared for one of the strangest spectacles that it has yet witnessed--the auction of an empire. This, to be sure, is not the first time that money has made its power felt in the disposal of the imperial office. It has long been the custom for a new emperor to make “presents” to the soldiers. But now the affair is reduced to the frank terms of sale and purchase.

In due course the man who has thus bargained for an empire pays the penalty of his ambition; then a turmoil ensues between the rival aspirants to the succession, which ends, naturally enough, with the death of all but one; he, Septimius Severus by name, gives to the empire a moment of relative tranquillity; and at last presents a spectacle hardly less strange than all the others,--the spectacle of a Roman emperor dying a natural death. We shall not see the like again for many a reign.

Following Severus come his two sons, Caracalla and Geta. The former plays well the part of heartless despot; he kills his brother and slaughters a host of helpless subjects in the East; and then, to emphasise a paradox, grants the bauble of Roman citizenship to all subjects of the empire. In due course he meets the imperial death, and is succeeded by Macrinus, who, slain at once, is followed by Elagabalus. This degenerate youth typifies his era; sinks to depths of debauchery which horrify even the Roman conscience; introduces new forms of worship from the East; wins the title of Sardanapalus; and, finally, slaughtered, his body thrown into the Tiber, is nicknamed Tiberinus, in mocking remembrance of his ignoble death and yet more ignoble life.

And now, at last, a ray of light pierces the gloom, and with the coming of Alexander Severus there is a brief recrudescence of the days when Rome was something more than the battle-ground of mercenaries and the court of voluptuaries. Yet, in the end, even this good emperor meets the fate of all the rest. Truly, the time is out of joint.

Let us take up now in more detailed presentation--yet still as briefly as historical completeness will permit--the story of these strange events, beginning with the reign of that renegade Commodus, who owed his position on the throne to the parental affection rather than the philosophic judgment of the best of emperors.[a]

COMMODUS (180-192 A.D.)

Marcus Aurelius was succeeded by his son, usually known as Commodus, whose full name was Marcus Lucius Ælius Aurelius Commodus Antoninus. This unworthy scion of a glorious house was born at Lanuvium on the 31st of August, 161, and proclaimed cæsar on the 12th of October, 166. In the year 177 the tribunician authority was bestowed on Commodus and he was summoned to take his place as “augustus” by his father’s side.

Three years later, on the 17th of March, 180, Aurelius died, and Commodus, who was at that time less than nineteen years of age, assumed the reins of government without difficulty. But he was not the man to rise to the occasion and reap the advantage of his father’s victories. He made a peace with the Germani, which might pass for honourable, but was far from furnishing a satisfactory safeguard for the interests of Rome. The principal conditions were the same that Marcus Aurelius had imposed upon the enemy five or six years before, but Commodus yielded up all the strongholds which the Romans had established in the heart of the enemy’s country. The lustre of the Roman arms was restored for the time, it is true, and the old and new commanders, trained in the school of the Parthian and German wars, guarded the frontiers of the empire at all points. But the change for the worse soon manifested itself in the internal policy of the empire.[b]

At Rome, for the space of about three years, all was tranquillity; for Commodus, whose natural character, as we are assured, was weak and timid rather than wicked, allowed himself to be directed by the able and upright men to whom his father had recommended him. His hours were devoted to luxury and indulgence, till at length (183) an event occurred which revealed the latent cruelty of his nature.

[Sidenote: [183-186 A.D.]]

After the death of L. Verus, Marcus had given his daughter Lucilla in marriage to Pompeianus, a most respectable senator; and after the death of her mother he allowed her all the honours of an empress, which her brother also continued to her. But on the marriage of Commodus with a lady named Crispina, Lucilla was obliged to yield precedence to the reigning empress. Her haughty spirit deemed this an indignity, and she resolved on revenge. Fearing to entrust her design to her noble-minded husband, she first communicated it to Quadratus, a wealthy young nobleman, with whom she carried on an adulterous intercourse; she also engaged in the plot Claudius Pompeianus, another of her paramours, who was betrothed to her daughter; some senators also were aware of it. As Commodus was entering the amphitheatre through a dusky passage, Pompeianus, who was lying in wait, drew his sword and cried, “The senate sends thee this.” But the words prevented the execution of his design, and he was seized by the guards. He, Quadratus, and some others were executed; Lucilla was for the present confined in the isle of Capreæ, but she was erelong put to death, and a similar fate soon befell her rival Crispina on account of adultery. In her place Commodus took a freedwoman named Marcia, who had been the concubine of Quadratus, and to whom he gave all the honours of an empress, except that of having fire borne before her.

CRUELTIES AND DEATH OF COMMODUS

[Sidenote: [186-189 A.D.]]

The unwise exclamation of Pompeianus sank deep in the mind of Commodus; he learned to regard the senate as his deadly enemies, and many of its most illustrious members were put to death on various pretexts. His only reliance was now on the guards, and the prætorian prefects soon became as important as in former times. The prefects now were Tarruntenus Paternus and Perennis, but the arts of the latter caused the former to be removed and put to death, and the whole power of the state fell into his hands, for the timid Commodus no longer ventured to appear in public. The prefect removed all he dreaded by false accusations, and he amassed wealth by the confiscation of the properties of the nobility. His son was in command of the Illyrian legions, and he now aspired to the empire. But he had offended the army of Britain--the army that in 184 had won brilliant success,--and they deputed (186) fifteen hundred of their number to accuse him to Commodus of designs on the empire. They were supported by the secret influence of the freedman Cleander, and Perennis was given up to their vengeance. Himself, his wife, his sister, and two of his children were massacred; his eldest son was recalled and murdered on the way to Rome.

The character of Perennis is doubtful, but that of Cleander who succeeded to his power was one of pure evil. Cleander, a Phrygian by birth, had been brought to Rome as a slave and sold in the public market. He was purchased for the palace, and placed about the person of Commodus, with whom he speedily ingratiated himself; and when the prince became emperor he made Cleander his chamberlain. The power of the freedman, when Perennis was removed, became absolute; avarice, the passion of a vulgar mind, was his guiding principle. All the honours and all the posts of the empire were put to sale; pardons for any crime were to be had for money; and in the short space of three years the wealth of Cleander exceeded that of the Pallas and Narcissus of the early days of the empire.

A conspiracy of an extraordinary nature occurred not long after the death of Perennis. A great number of men who had deserted from the armies put themselves under the command of a common soldier named Maternus; they were joined by slaves whom they freed from their bonds, and they ravaged for some time with impunity the provinces of Gaul and Spain. At length (187) when Maternus found the governors preparing to act with vigour against him, he resolved to make a desperate effort and be emperor or perish. He directed his followers to disperse and repair secretly to Rome, where he proposed that they should assume the dress of the guards, and fall on the emperor during the license of the festival of the Megalesia. All succeeded to his wishes; they repaired safely to Rome, but some of them out of envy betrayed the secret, and Maternus and some others were taken and executed.

[Sidenote: [189-193 A.D.]]

The power of Cleander was now at its height; by gifts to Commodus and his mistresses he maintained his influence at court, and by the erection of baths and other public edifices he sought to ingratiate himself with the people. He had also the command of the guards, for whom he had for some time caused prætorian prefects to be made and unmade at his will. He at length divided the office between himself and two others, but he did not assume the title. As an instance of the way in which he disposed of offices, we find in one year (189) no less than five-and-twenty consuls.

What the ultimate views of Cleander may have been is unknown, for he shared the usual fate of aspiring freedmen. Rome was visited at this time by a direful pestilence, and the emperor on account of it resided out of the city. The pestilence was as usual attended by famine, and this visitation of heaven was by the people laid to the charge of the odious favourite. As they were one day (189) viewing the horse races in the circus, a party of children entered, headed by a fierce-looking girl, and began to exclaim against Cleander. The people joined in the cries, and then rising rushed to where Commodus was residing in the suburbs, demanding the death of Cleander. But the favourite instantly ordered the prætorian cavalry to charge them, and they were driven back to the city with the loss of many lives. When, however, the cavalry entered the streets they were assailed by missiles from the roofs of the houses, and the people being joined by the urban cohorts rallied and drove them back to the palace, where Commodus still lay in total ignorance of all that had occurred, for fear of Cleander had kept all silent. But now Marcia, or as others said the emperor’s sister Fadilla, seeing the danger so imminent, rushed into his presence and informed him of the truth. Without a moment’s hesitation he ordered Cleander and his son to be put to death. The people placed the head of Cleander on a pole and dragged his body through the streets, and when they had massacred some of his creatures the tumult ceased.

The cruelty of Commodus displayed itself more and more every day, and several men of rank became its victims.[c] Thus, after many years of tranquillity, the upper classes of Roman society again found themselves in the intolerable position of going in perpetual fear of death. Once more Rome witnessed the spectacle of a wicked lad on the throne of the Cæsars, falling a victim to the “madness of empire,” trampling the dignity of his great office underfoot in furious lust of pleasure of every sort, and, in pompous dull-wittedness, playing the part of a sanguinary practical joker and a foolish spendthrift.[b] At the same time his lust was unbounded; three hundred beautiful women and as many boys of all ages and countries filled his seraglio, and he abstained from no kind of infamy. He delighted also to exhibit proofs of his skill as a marksman, and he assumed the title and attributes of the hero Hercules. For some time, like Nero, he confined his displays to the interior of his residences, but at length the senate and people were permitted to witness his skill in the amphitheatre. A gallery ran round it for the safety and convenience of the emperor, from which he discharged his darts and arrows with unerring aim at the larger and fiercer animals, while he ventured into the arena to destroy the deer and other timid creatures. A hundred lions were at once let loose, and each fell by a single wound; an irritated panther had just seized a man, a dart was flung by the emperor and the beast fell dead, while the man remained uninjured. With crescent-headed arrows he cut off the heads of ostriches as they ran at full speed.

But his greatest delight was to combat as a gladiator. He appeared in the character of a secutor: he caused to be recorded 735 victories which he had gained, and he received each time an immense stipend out of the gladiatorial fund. Instead of Hercules he now styled himself Paulus, after a celebrated secutor, and caused it to be inscribed on his statues. He also took up his abode in the residence of the gladiators.

At length the tyrant met the fate he merited. It was his design to put to death the two consuls-elect for the year 193, and on New Year’s Day to proceed from the gladiators’ school in his gladiatorial habit and enter on the consulate. On the preceding day he communicated his design to Marcia, who tried in vain to dissuade him from it. Q. Æmilius Lætus, the prætorian prefect, and the chamberlain, Eclectus, also reasoned with him, but to as little purpose. He testified much wrath, and uttered some menaces. Knowing that the threats of the tyrant were the sure precursors of death, they saw their only hopes of safety lay in anticipation; they took their resolution on the moment;[41] and when Commodus came from the bath, Marcia, as was her usual practice, handed him a bowl (in which she had now infused a strong poison), to quench his thirst.

He drank the liquor off, and then laid himself down to sleep. The attendants were all sent away. The conspirators were expecting the effect of the poison when the emperor began to vomit profusely. Fearing now that the poison would not take effect, they brought in a vigorous wrestler named Narcissus; and induced by the promise of a large reward, he laid hold on and strangled the emperor.[42]

PERTINAX (P. HELVIUS PERTINAX), 193 A.D.

[Sidenote: [193 A.D.]]

The conspirators had, it is probable, already fixed on the person who should succeed to the empire, and their choice was one calculated to do them credit. It was P. Helvius Pertinax, the prefect of the city, a man now advanced in years, who had with an unblemished character, though born in a humble rank, passed through all the civil and military gradations of the state. Pertinax was the son of a freedman who was engaged in the manufacture of charcoal at Alba Pompeia in the Apennines. He commenced life as a man of letters, but finding the literary profession unprofitable, he entered the army as a centurion, and his career of advancement was rapid.

It was yet night when Lætus and Eclectus proceeded with some soldiers to the house of Pertinax. When informed of their arrival he ordered them to be brought to his chamber, and then, without rising, told them that he had long expected every night to be his last, and bade them execute their office; for he was certain that Commodus had sent them to put him to death. But they informed him that the tyrant himself was no more, and that they were come to offer him the empire. He hesitated to give credit to them, but having sent one on whom he could depend, and ascertained that Commodus was dead, he consented to accept the proffered dignity. Though it was not yet day they all repaired to the prætorian camp, and Lætus, having assembled the soldiers, told them that Commodus was suddenly dead of apoplexy, and that he had brought them his successor, a man whose merits were known to them all. Pertinax then addressed them, promising a large donative. The soldiers swore fidelity to the emperor.

Before dawn the senate was summoned to the temple of Concord, whither Pertinax had proceeded from the camp. He told them what had occurred, and, noticing his age and his humble extraction, pointed out divers senators as more worthy of the empire than himself. But they would not listen to his excuses, and they decreed him all the imperial titles. Then giving loose to their rage against the fallen tyrant, they termed him parricide, gladiator, the enemy of the gods and of his country, and decreed that his statues should be cast down, his titles be erased, and his body dragged with the hook through the streets. But Pertinax respected too much the memory of Marcus to suffer the remains of his son to be thus treated, and they were by his order placed in the tomb of Hadrian.

Pertinax was cheerfully acknowledged by all the armies. Like Vespasian, he was simple and modest in his dress and mode of life, and he lived on terms of intimacy with the respectable members of the senate. He resigned his private property to his wife and son, but would not suffer the senate to bestow on them any titles. He regulated the finances with the greatest care, remitting oppressive taxes and cancelling unjust claims. He sold by auction all the late tyrant’s instruments of luxury, and obliged his favourites to disgorge a portion of their plunder. He granted the waste lands in Italy and elsewhere for a term of years rent free to those who would undertake to improve them.

The reforming hand of the emperor was extended to all departments of the state; and men looked for a return of the age of the Antonines. But the soldiers dreaded the restoration of the ancient discipline; and Lætus, who found that he did not enjoy the power he had expected, secretly fomented their discontent. So early as the 3d of January they had seized a senator named Triarius Maternus, intending to make him emperor, but he escaped from them and fled to Pertinax for protection. Some time after, while the emperor was on the sea coast attending to the supply of corn, they prepared to raise Sosius Falco, then consul, to the empire; but Pertinax came suddenly to Rome, and having complained of Falco to the senate, they were about to proclaim him a public enemy, when the emperor cried that no senator should suffer death while he reigned; and Falco was thus suffered to escape punishment.

Some expressions which Pertinax used on this occasion irritated the soldiers; and Lætus, to exasperate them still more, put several of them to death, as if by his orders. Accordingly on the twenty-eighth of March a general mutiny broke out in the camp, and two or three hundred of the most desperate proceeded with drawn swords to the palace. No one opposed their entrance. Pertinax, when informed of their approach, advanced to meet them. He addressed them, reminding them of his own innocence and of the obligation of their oath. They were silent for a few moments; at length a Tungrian soldier struck him with his sword, crying, “The soldiers send thee this.” They all then fell on him, and cutting off his head set it on a lance and carried it to the camp. Eclectus, faithful to the last, perished with the emperor; Lætus had fled in disguise at the approach of the mutineers. The reign of the virtuous Pertinax had lasted only eighty-six days; he was in the sixty-seventh year of his age.

JULIANUS (M. DIDIUS SEVERUS JULIANUS), 193 A.D.

The mutineers on their return to the camp found there Sulpicianus, the prefect of the city, the late emperor’s father-in-law, who had been sent thither to try to appease the mutiny. The bloody proof which they bore of the empire’s being vacant excited when it should have extinguished his ambition, and he forthwith began to treat for the dangerous prize. Immediately some of the soldiers ran and ascending the ramparts cried out aloud that the empire was for sale, and would be given to the highest bidder. The news reached the ears of Didius Julianus, a wealthy and luxurious senator, as he sat at table; and urged by his wife and daughter and his parasites, he rose and hastened to the camp. The military auctioneers stood on the wall, one bidder within, the other without. Sulpicianus had gone as high as five thousand denarii a man, when his rival at one bidding rose to 6250. This spirited offer carried it; the soldiers also had a secret dread that Sulpicianus, if emperor, might avenge the death of his son-in-law. The gates were thrown open, and Julian was admitted and saluted emperor; but the soldiers had the generosity to stipulate for the safety of his rival.

From the camp Julian, escorted by the soldiers, proceeded to the senate house. He was there received with affected joy, and the usual titles and honours were decreed him; but the people stood aloof and in silence, and those who were more distant uttered loud curses on him. When Julian came to the palace, the first object that met his eyes was the corpse of his predecessor; he ordered it to be buried, and then it is said sat down and passed the greater part of the night at a luxurious banquet, and playing at dice. In the morning the senate repaired to him with their feigned compliments; but the people still were gloomy, and when he went down to the senate house and was about to offer incense to the Janus before the doors, they cried out that he was a parricide and had stolen the empire. He promised them money, but they would have none of it; and at length he ordered the soldiers to fall on them, and several were killed and wounded. Still they ceased not to revile him and the soldiers, and to call on the other armies, especially that of Pescennius Niger, to come to their aid.

The principal armies were that of Syria commanded by Niger; that of Pannonia under Septimius Severus, and that of Britain under Clodius Albinus, each composed of three legions, with its suitable number of auxiliaries.

C. Pescennius Niger was a native of Aquinum, of a simple equestrian family. He entered the army as a centurion, and rose almost solely by merit till he attained the lucrative government of Syria. As an officer Niger was a rigorous maintainer of discipline; as a governor he was just, but mild and indulgent, and he succeeded in gaining alike the affections of the soldiers and the subjects. In his private life he was chaste and temperate.

L. Septimius Severus was born at Leptis in Africa. He received a learned education, and devoted himself to the bar, and M. Aurelius made him advocate of the Fisc. He acted as civil governor of several provinces, and had occasionally a military command, but had seen little or no actual service. After his consulate, Commodus, through the influence of Lætus, gave him the command of the Pannonian legions, as reported in the Augustan History.

D. Clodius Albinus was also an African. He was born at Hadrumetum, of an honourable family, which derived its origin from the Postumii and Ceionii of Rome. He entered the army early, and rose through all the gradations of the service, being highly esteemed by M. Aurelius. He commanded in Bithynia, at the time of the revolt of Cassius, and kept his legions in their duty. Commodus gave him the command in Gaul and in Britain, and designed him for his successor. Albinus was a strict and even severe officer. He was fond of agriculture, on which subject he wrote some books. He was charged with private vices, but probably without reason.

When the intelligence of the murder of Pertinax and the sale of the empire to Julian reached the armies of Syria and Pannonia, their generals saw the prospect of empire open to them as the avengers of the emperor whom they had acknowledged. Each of them assembled his troops and expatiated on the atrocity of the deed which had been perpetrated at Rome, and each was saluted Augustus by his army and the subjects. But while Niger, seeing all the provinces and allied princes of Asia unanimous in his favour, and therefore indulging in confidence, remained inactive at Antioch, Severus resolved to push on for the capital, and possess himself of that seat of empire. Having secured the adherence of the army of Gaul, he wrote a most friendly letter to Albinus, giving him the title of cæsar, and adopting him as his son; by which he made sure of his neutrality, if not of his co-operation. He then advanced by rapid marches for Rome. Day and night he appeared in full armour, and surrounded by a guard of six hundred chosen men, who never laid aside their corslets. Resistance was nowhere offered; all hailed him as the avenger of Pertinax.

The wretched Julian was filled with dismay when he heard of the approach of the formidable Pannonian army. He made the senate declare Severus a public enemy; he distributed large sums of money to the prætorians to induce them to prepare to defend him; but these dissolute troops were vigorous only for evil, and they could not resume the discipline they had lost; the marines summoned from Misenum were still more inefficient; and an attempt at training elephants for war in the oriental manner only excited derision. Julian also caused an entrenchment to be run in front of the city, and he secured the palace with strong doors and bars, as if that could be maintained when all else was lost. He put to death Marcia, Lætus, and all concerned in the murder of Commodus, probably with a view to the favour of the soldiery.

Severus meantime had reached Ravenna and secured the fleet. Julian, having made some fruitless attempts on his life, caused the senate to declare him his associate in the empire. But Severus now disdained such divided power; he had written to the prætorians, assuring safety to all but the actual assassins of Pertinax, and they had accepted the conditions. The consul, Silius Messalla, assembled the senate, and it was resolved to put Julian to death and give the empire to Severus. When those charged with the mandate for his death came to Julian, his only words were, “What evil have I done? Whom have I slain?” He was then killed by a common soldier, after a reign of only sixty-six days.

SEVERUS (L. SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS), 193-211 A.D.

[Sidenote: [193-194 A.D.]]

Severus was met at Interamna (Terni), in Umbria, seventy miles from Rome, by deputies from the senate. He received them with favour, and still continued to advance. As he drew nigh to Rome he commanded the execution of the murderers of Pertinax, and he sent orders to the remaining prætorians to leave their arms in their camp and come to meet him, dressed as they were wont when attending the emperors on solemn occasions. They obeyed, and Severus received them in the plain before his camp, and addressed them from a tribunal, reproaching them with the murder of Pertinax and the sale of the empire to Julian. He would spare their lives, he said, but he would leave them nothing save their tunics, and death should be the fate of any of them who ever came within a hundred miles of the capital. While he was speaking his soldiers had imperceptibly surrounded them; resistance was vain, and they quietly yielded up their swords and their rich habiliments, and mournfully retired. A detachment had meantime taken possession of their camp, to obviate the effects of their despair.

Severus entered the city at the head of his army. The senate and people met him with all the marks of joy and festivity. He ascended the Capitol and worshipped; he then visited the other temples, and at length proceeded to the palace. In the morning he met the senate, to whom he made a speech full of the fairest promises, assuring them that Marcus should be his model and swearing that he would put no senator to death unless condemned by themselves--an oath which he kept but indifferently. The usual titles and powers had been already decreed him; among these was the title of Pertinax, of which prince he affected to be the avenger, and the ceremony of whose deification he performed with the greatest magnificence and solemnity. He distributed large sums of money among the soldiers and people; he regulated the supply of provisions, and he examined into the conduct of several governors of provinces, and punished those who were proved guilty of oppression.

Severus restored the prætorian guards on a new model, and raised them to four times their original number. Augustus had admitted none but Italians into this body; the youth of Spain, Noricum, and Macedonia had gradually been suffered to enlist in it; but Severus threw it open to all, selecting the ablest and most faithful soldiers from the legions for the higher pay and more easy life of the guardsmen.

[Sidenote: [194-197 A.D.]]

After a stay of only thirty days in Rome, Severus set out for the war against Niger, who was master of all Asia and held the strong city of Byzantium in Europe. The preparations on both sides occupied some time; at length Severus took the field, and leaving part of his troops to carry on the siege of Byzantium, he sent the main body of his army, under his generals, over the Hellespont. Æmilianus, the proconsul of Asia, gave them battle (194) near Cyzicus, but was defeated. He fled to Cyzicus, and thence to another unnamed town, where he was seized and put to death. Niger in person afterwards engaged the Severian general, Candidus, between Nicæa and Cius. The contest was long and arduous, but victory declared for the European army, and Niger, leaving troops to guard the passes of Mount Taurus, hastened to Antioch to raise men and money. The elements, however, favoured Severus; heavy falls of rain and snow destroyed the defences constructed by Niger, and his troops were obliged to abandon the passes and leave Cilicia open to the enemy.

Niger made his final stand at the Cilician Gates, as the pass from Cilicia into Syria at the head of the Bay of Issus was named, a place famous for the defeat of Darius by Alexander the Great. The troops of Niger were more numerous, but they were mostly raw levies, yet they fought with constancy; but the elements, we are told, again favoured the Severians, a storm of rain and thunder came over the sea and blew full in the faces of the Nigrians, and they fled with the loss of twenty thousand men. Niger hastened to Antioch, and thence, on the approach of the enemy, he fled to the Euphrates, in order to seek refuge with the Parthians; but he had hardly quitted the town when he was seized, and his head was cut off and sent to Severus.

CONQUESTS OF SEVERUS

This emperor, who had been in none of the preceding actions, now appeared. He put to death all the senators who had borne arms for Niger; he banished some, and seized the property of others. He put numbers of inferior rank to death, and he treated severely Antioch and some other towns. He then (195) led his army over the Euphrates, and his generals employed this and a part of the following year in reducing the various tribes and princes of Mesopotamia. While he was thus engaged (196), he received the joyful intelligence of the surrender of Byzantium, which, strong by situation and fortifications, had held out for nearly three years against the valour and skill of the besieging army, and was only subdued at last by famine. The magistrates and soldiers were all put to death; the property of the inhabitants was sold; the walls and the public edifices were demolished; Byzantium was deprived of its title of city, and subjected as a village to the jurisdiction of Perinthus.

It is said that Severus was meditating an invasion of Parthia, but his thoughts were more fixed on securing the succession to his children by removing Albinus. Suitably to his character, he resolved to proceed by treachery rather than by force. He wrote to Albinus in the most affectionate terms, as to his dearest brother; but the bearers of the letter were instructed to ask a private audience, as having matters of greater importance to communicate, and then to assassinate him. The suspicions of Albinus, however, being awaked, he put them to the torture, and extracted the truth. He saw that he had no alternative, that he must be emperor or nothing, and he therefore declared himself Augustus and passed with his army over to Gaul. Severus returned with all possible speed from the East, and advanced in person into Gaul against his rival. He crossed the Alps in the depth of winter, and after some minor engagements a decisive battle was fought on the 19th of February, 197, in the neighbourhood of Lyons. The united number of the combatants was 150,000 men; the battle was long and dubious, the left wing on each side was routed, but Severus, who now fought for the first time, brought up the prætorians to the support of his beaten troops, and though he received a wound and was driven back, he rallied them once more, and being supported by the cavalry, under his general, Lætus, he defeated and pursued the enemy to Lyons. The loss on both sides was considerable; Albinus slew himself, and his head was cut off and brought to his ungenerous enemy, who meanly insulted it; his wife and children were at first spared, but they were soon after put to death, and their bodies cast into the Rhine.

The city of Lyons was pillaged and burned; the chief supporters of Albinus, both men and women, Romans and provincials, were put to death, and their properties confiscated. Having spent some time in regulating the affairs of Gaul and Britain, Severus returned to Rome, breathing vengeance against the senate, for he knew that that body was in general more inclined to Albinus than himself, and he had found, among his rival’s papers, the letters of several individual senators. The very day after his arrival he addressed them, commending the stern policy of Sulla, Marius, and Augustus, and blaming the mildness of Pompey and Cæsar, which proved their ruin. He spoke in terms of praise of Commodus, saying that the senate had no right to dishonour him, as many of themselves lived worse than he had done. He spoke severely of those who had written letters or sent presents to Albinus. Of these he pardoned five-and-thirty, but he put to death nine-and-twenty, among whom was Sulpicianus, the father-in-law of Pertinax. These, however, were not the only victims; the whole family of Niger, and several other illustrious persons perished. The properties of all were confiscated; [wherefore the usual charge of avarice was brought against Severus.]

[Sidenote: [197-202 A.D.]]

After a short stay at Rome Severus set out again for the East; for the Parthians, taking advantage of his absence, had invaded Mesopotamia, and laid siege to Nisibis. They retired, however, when they heard of his approach, and Severus, having passed the winter in Syria making preparations for the war, crossed the Tigris the following summer (198) and laid siege to Ctesiphon. The Roman soldiers suffered greatly for want of supplies, and were reduced to feed on roots and herbage, which produced dysenteries, but the emperor persevered, and the city at length was taken. All the full-grown males were massacred, and the women and children, to the number of one hundred thousand, were sold for slaves. As want of supplies did not permit the Romans to remain beyond the Tigris, they returned to Mesopotamia, and on his way to Syria (199) Severus laid siege to the redoubtable Atræ, but he was forced to retire, with a great loss both of men and machines. He renewed the attack some time after (it is uncertain in what year) but with as little success, being obliged to retire with loss and disgrace from before the impregnable fortress.

Severus remained in the East till the year 202. He spent a part of that time in Egypt, where he took great pleasure in examining the pyramids and the other curiosities of that country. He at length returned to Rome, to celebrate the marriage of his elder son.

The family of Severus consisted of his wife and two sons. The empress, named Julia Domna, was a native of Emesa in Syria, whom Severus, who was addicted to astrology, is said to have espoused because she had a royal nativity. She was a woman of great beauty, sense, and spirit, and a cultivator of literature and philosophy. The elder son was at first named Bassianus; but his father, at the time of the war against Albinus, created him cæsar, by the name of Aurelius Antoninus;[43] and he was subsequently nicknamed Caracalla, which, to avoid confusion, is the name employed by modern historians. In the year 198 Severus created him augustus, and made him his associate in the empire. The name of the emperor’s younger son was Geta, and he also was styled Antoninus.

The bride selected for Caracalla was Plautilla, the daughter of Plautianus, the prætorian prefect. This man was a second Sejanus, and it is very remarkable that two emperors of such superior mental powers as Tiberius and Severus should have been so completely under the influence of their ministers. Plautianus, like his master, was an African by birth; he was of mean extraction, and he seems to have early attached himself to the fortune of his aspiring countryman, whose favour and confidence he won in an extraordinary degree; and when Severus attained the empire, the power of Plautianus grew to such a height, that he, the historian observes, was, as it were, emperor, and Severus captain of the guards. Persons like Plautianus, when elevated, rarely bear their faculties meekly. He was therefore proud, cruel, and avaricious; he was the chief cause of so many persons of rank and fortune being put to death, in order that he might gain their properties. He seized whatever took his fancy, whether sacred or profane, and he thus amassed such wealth that it was commonly said he was richer than Severus and his sons. Such was his pride that no one dared approach him without his permission; and when he appeared in public criers preceded him, ordering that no one should stop and gaze at him, but turn aside and look down. He would not allow his wife to visit or to receive visits, not even excepting the empress. As his power was so great, he was of course the object of universal adulation. The senators and soldiers swore by his fortune, and his statues were set up in all parts of the empire. He was in effect more dreaded and more honoured than the emperor himself.

[Sidenote: [202-208 A.D.]]

Such power is, however, unstable in its very nature, and the marriage of his daughter with the son of the emperor caused the downfall of Plautianus. The wedding was celebrated with the utmost magnificence; the dower of the bride, we are told, would have portioned fifty princesses. [But the usual allowances must be made for exaggerations of the gossipers. Some of the tales related by Dion Cassius[e] are not worthy of repetition even, though perhaps told in good faith. Doubtless all details as to the death of Plautianus must be heard with reservations.] Plautilla was haughty like himself; and Caracalla, who had been forced to marry her, hated father and daughter alike, and resolved on their destruction. He induced one Saturninus and two other centurions to declare that Plautianus had ordered them and seven of their comrades to murder Severus and his son. A written order to this effect was forged and shown to the emperor, who forthwith summoned Plautianus to his presence. He came suspecting nothing; he was admitted, but his followers were excluded. Severus, however, addressed him in a mild tone, and asked him why he had meditated killing him. Plautianus was expressing his surprise and commencing his defence, when Caracalla sprang forward, tore his sword from him, struck him with his fist, and would have slain him with his own hand but for the interference of his father. He then made some of his attendants despatch him, and sent his head to the empress and Plautilla, a joyful sight to the one, a mournful spectacle to the other. Plautilla and her brother Plautius were sent to the isle of Lipara, where they lived in poverty and misery for the remainder of the reign of Severus, and their murder was one of the first acts of Caracalla when emperor.

Severus now remained in Italy for a space of four years, actively engaged in the administration of justice, the regulation of the finances, and the correction of all kinds of abuses. He conferred the important post of prætorian prefect on Papinian, the most renowned of jurisconsults; and as it was now a part of this officer’s duty to try civil causes, Papinian appointed as his assessors Paulus and Ulpian--names nearly as distinguished as his own.

[Sidenote: [208-211 A.D.]]

In the year 208, Severus, though far advanced in years and a martyr to the gout, set out for Britain, where the northern tribes had for some time been making their usual incursions into the Roman part of the island. Various motives are assigned for this resolution; the most probable is that he wished to remove his sons from the luxury of Rome, and to restore the relaxed discipline of the legions. He entered the wild country north of the Roman wall, cut down the woods, and passed the marshes, and succeeded in penetrating to the extremity of the island, though with a loss, it is said, of fifty thousand men; for the barbarians, who would never venture to give him battle, hung on his flanks and rear, formed numerous ambuscades, and cut off all stragglers. In order to check their future incursions, he repaired and strengthened the mound or wall which Hadrian had constructed from the shore of Solway Firth to the mouth of the Tyne.

Severus had associated his second son Geta in the empire the year he came to Britain. But the two brothers hated each other mortally, and Caracalla made little secret of his resolution to reign alone. This abandoned youth, it is said, even attempted to kill his father in the very sight of the Roman legions and the barbarian enemies; for as the emperor was riding one day to receive the arms of the Caledonians, Caracalla drew his sword to stab him in the back; those who were about them cried out, and Severus, on turning round, saw the drawn sword in the hand of his son. He said nothing at the time, but when he returned he called Caracalla with Papinian and the chamberlain Castor to him in private, and causing a sword to be laid before him, rebuked his son, and then told him if he desired his death to slay him with his own hand, or to order Papinian the prefect to do it, who of course would obey him as he was emperor. Caracalla showed no signs of remorse; and though Severus had often blamed M. Aurelius for subordinating his public duty to his private affections in the case of Commodus, he himself exhibited even more culpable weakness.

Severus was once more about to take the field against the barbarians, who had renewed their ravages (211), when a severe fit of the gout carried him off at York (Eboracum), in the sixty-sixth year of his age and the eighteenth of his reign.

Though this emperor had passed the greater part of his life in civil rather than military employments, it is remarkable that his government relied more on the arms of the soldiery than that of any of his predecessors. We have seen the important changes which he made in the prætorian guards, whom he also seems to have been the first to employ on foreign service. Hitherto the legions of the frontiers had maintained something of the appearance of those of the republic, but Severus allowed them to have their wives and families in their camps, and to wear gold rings like the knights. He also increased their pay and accustomed them to donatives. His dying counsel to his sons, “Be united, enrich the soldiers, despise all others,” revealed his principles of despotic government.[c] In judging Severus, however, it is necessary to recall that the entire period through which we are now passing--up to the time of Diocletian--is in a sense an epoch of revolution, the contending forces being the senate, the emperor, the populace of Rome, the prætorians, and the legions. The weakness and brutality of Commodus precipitated the revolution. The prætorians not only trampled upon the senate and the residents of the capital, but also asserted the right to make and to unmake emperors. This was the first stage of the revolution. In the second stage, beginning with Septimius Severus, the legions, jealous of the pampered guard, fought against it, against the senate, and against one another. This civil war, after rendering the prætorians helpless and depriving the senate of its last remnant of authority, decided that the sovereign should be a general, the choice of the soldiers who protected the empire. Thus far the result of the revolution was in a great degree just and beneficent. It is to be noted that Severus was the anti-senatorial candidate for the imperial office,--hence his unfavourable treatment at the hands of the historian. Though harsh in the punishment of political offences, Severus was in other respects a great and admirable ruler. The fact that the three great jurists, Papirian, Ulpian, and Paulus co-operated with him speaks volumes in his favour. He strengthened the empire, encouraged education, and made his reign an epoch in wise legislation.[a]

CARACALLA (M. AURELIUS ANTONINUS CARACALLA), 211-217 A.D.

[Sidenote: [211-212 A.D.]]

In spite of the efforts of Caracalla to the contrary, the army proclaimed the two sons of Severus joint-emperors. The Caledonian war was abandoned, and the emperors returned to Rome to celebrate the obsequies of their father. On the way Caracalla made various attempts on the life of his brother, but Geta was protected by the soldiery, of whom he was the favourite. The brothers adopted every precaution against each other on the road, and at Rome they divided the palace, securing all the approaches to their several portions. The court, the camp, the senate, and the people were divided in their affections to the brothers, neither of whom was in reality deserving of the attachment of any man of worth; but Geta had a certain degree of mildness and humanity, of affability and of devotion to literature, which gave him the advantage over his more ferocious brother, and gained him the affection of their mother Julia.

[Sidenote: [212-216 A.D.]]

As there seemed no probability of concord between the brothers, a division of the empire was proposed and arranged, by which Caracalla was to retain the European portion, while Geta was to rule in Asia and Egypt, residing at Antioch or Alexandria. This arrangement, it is said, was defeated by the tears and entreaties of Julia; and Caracalla, bent on reigning alone, then resolved on the murder of his brother. At his desire (212) Julia invited her two sons to a meeting in her apartments. Geta came suspecting no danger; suddenly some centurions, whom Caracalla had placed in concealment, rushed out and fell on him. He threw himself on his mother’s bosom for protection, but her efforts to save him were vain; she herself received a wound in the arm, and was covered with the blood of her murdered son. When the deed was done Caracalla hastened to the camp, crying all the way that a plot had been laid for his life. He flung himself down before the standards in the camp chapel to return thanks for his preservation; and then addressed the soldiers, assuring them that he was one of themselves, and depended on them alone. He promised to raise their pay one half, and to distribute among them all the treasures accumulated by his father. Such arguments could not fail of convincing, and he was readily proclaimed sole emperor. He thence proceeded to the camp at the Alban Mount, where he found more difficulty, as the soldiers there were much attached to Geta; but by dint of promises he gained them also to acknowledge him.

Followed by the soldiers, Caracalla then proceeded to the senate house; he had a cuirass under his robe, and he brought some of his military followers into the house. He justified his conduct by the example of Romulus and others; but he spoke of Geta with regret, and gave him a magnificent funeral, and placed him among the gods.

The unhappy empress dared not lament the death of her son; she was even obliged to wear an aspect of joy for the safety of the emperor, who all through his reign continued to treat her with respect, and to give her a share in the affairs of state. But on all the other friends and favourers of Geta, both civil and military, he let his vengeance fall without restraint, and the number of those who perished on this account is estimated at twenty thousand. Among these the most regretted was the great Papinian. Caracalla, it is said, wished him to compose an apology for the murder of Geta, but he replied with virtuous intrepidity that it was not so easy to excuse a parricide as to commit it. A soldier cut off his head with an axe, and Caracalla rebuked him for not having used a sword. Fadilla, the surviving daughter of M. Aurelius, was put to death for having lamented Geta. Helvius Pertinax, son of the emperor, Thrasea Priscus, a descendant of the great lover of liberty, and many other persons of rank and virtue were involved in the common ruin. To such an extent it is said did Caracalla carry his hatred to his brother that the comic poets no longer ventured to employ the name of Geta in their plays.

Like Commodus, the emperor devoted most of his time to the circus and amphitheatre. In order to defray his enormous expenses he increased the taxes and confiscated all the properties he could lay hold on. When his mother one day blamed him for bestowing such enormous sums on the soldiers, and said that he would soon have no source of revenue remaining, he laid his hand on his sword, and said, in the true spirit of despotism, “Never fear, mother; while we have this we shall not want for money.”

One of the acts of Caracalla at this time was to confer the rights of citizenship, of which the old republicans had been so chary, on all the subjects of the empire.

His restless temper soon urged him to seek for glory in a contest with the Germans. He marched to the Rhine and obtained (by purchase as it would seem) some advantages over the confederacy of the Alamanni, whose name now first appears in history. He henceforth wonderfully affected the Germans, even wearing a blond periwig to resemble them; and he placed a number of them about him as guards. It is thought that it was on the occasion of his return to Rome from Gaul after this war (214) that he distributed among the people the long Gallic coats named caracals, whence he derived the appellation by which he is usually known. After his German war, he marched to the Danube (215), visited the province of Dacia, and had some skirmishes with the neighbouring barbarians. He then passed over to Asia with the intention of making war on the Parthians, and spent the winter at Nicomedia.

As he professed an especial regard for the memory of Achilles, he visited the remains of Ilium, offered sacrifices at the tomb of the hero, led his troops in arms round it, and erected a brazen statue on its summit. One of his freedmen happening to die, or being poisoned by him for the purpose, he acted over again the Homeric funeral of Patroclus, pouring, like Achilles, wine to the winds to induce them to inflame the pyre, and cutting off the hair, with which nature had furnished him most scantily, to cast into the flames. In thus honouring Achilles, he sought to follow the example of Alexander the Great, a prince of whom his admiration was such that he erected statues of him everywhere; and he formed a phalanx of sixteen thousand Macedonians armed as in the time of that prince, whom he styled the Eastern Augustus. He even persecuted the peripatetic philosophers, because Aristotle was accused of being concerned in the death of his royal pupil.

[Sidenote: [216-217 A.D.]]

In the spring (216) Caracalla set out for Antioch. The Parthians averted a war by the surrender of two persons whom he demanded. By treachery he made himself master of the persons of the king of Armenia and his sons, and of the prince of Edessa; but the Armenians defeated the troops which he sent against them under Theocritus, a common player, whom he had raised to the dignity of prætorian prefect. He then proceeded to Alexandria with the secret resolve of taking a bloody vengeance on the inhabitants for their railleries and witticisms against him on the occasion of the murder of his brother. When he approached the city the people came forth to meet him with all the marks of joy and respect, and he received them graciously, and entered the town. Then pretending a design of forming a phalanx in honour of Alexander, he directed all the youth to appear in the plain without the walls. When they had done as required, he went through them as it were to inspect them; and then retiring to the temple of Serapis, he gave the signal to his soldiers to fall on them and massacre them. The slaughter was dreadful both within and without the walls, for no age or rank was spared. Trenches were dug, and the dead and dying were flung into them in order to conceal the extent of the massacre. He deprived the city of all its privileges, and its total ruin was only averted by his death.

After this slaughter of his helpless subjects, Caracalla returned to Antioch, and in order to have a pretext for making war on the Parthians he sent to Artabanus their king, demanding his daughter in marriage. The Parthian monarch having refused this strange suit, Caracalla invaded and ravaged his territories; and having taken Arbela, where were the royal tombs, he opened them and scattered the bones of the monarchs which were deposited within them. He then took up his winter quarters in Edessa.

In the spring (217) both sides were engaged in active preparation for war; when a conspiracy in his own army terminated the life and reign of the Roman emperor. Of the two prætorian prefects, the one, Adventus, was a mere soldier, the other, Macrinus, was a civilian well versed in the laws. The rough and brutal Caracalla often ridiculed him on this account, and even menaced his life; and Macrinus, having got sure information that his destruction was designed, resolved to anticipate the tyrant. He accordingly communicated his designs to some of the officers of the guards, among whom was one Martial, whom Caracalla had mortally offended by refusing him the post of centurion, or, as others say, by putting his brother to death. Accordingly on the 8th of April, 217, as the emperor was riding from Edessa to Carrhæ in order to worship at the temple of the Moon, and had retired and alighted for a private occasion, Martial ran up as if called, and stabbed him in the throat. The emperor fell down dead. Martial mounted his horse and fled; but he was shot by a Scythian archer of the guard.

MACRINUS (M. OPILIUS MACRINUS), 217-218 A.D.

[Sidenote: [217-218 A.D.]]

When the news of the murder of the emperor was divulged, Macrinus was the first to hasten to the spot, and to deplore his death. As Caracalla had left no heir, the army was uncertain whom to proclaim emperor in his stead, and the empire was for four days without a chief. Meantime the officers who were in the interests of Macrinus used all their influence with their men, and on the fourth day he was saluted emperor. He accepted the office with feigned reluctance, and he distributed, according to custom, large sums of money among the soldiers. Adventus was the bearer of the ashes of Caracalla to Rome, where they were deposited in the tomb of the Antonines; and Macrinus and the senate were obliged to yield to the instances of the soldiers, and place the monster among the gods. The senate received with joy the letter in which Macrinus announced his elevation to the empire, and they decreed him all the usual titles and honours.

While these changes were taking place in the Roman Empire, Artabanus had passed the Tigris with a large army. Macrinus having in vain proposed terms of accommodation, led out his legions, and some fighting took place in the neighbourhood of Nisibis, in which the advantage was on the side of the Parthians; but as they now began to feel the want of supplies, and were anxious to return home, they readily listened to the renewed proposals of the Roman emperor, and a peace was concluded. Macrinus then led his troops back to Antioch for the winter.

Macrinus, as we have already observed, was not a military man. He was a native of Cæsarea in Africa (Algiers), of humble origin, and he was indebted for his elevation to his countryman Plautianus. He was a man of an amiable disposition, and a sincere lover of justice. He therefore turned his attention chiefly to civil regulations, and he made some necessary reforms and excellent laws; but he was timid by nature, and in his anxiety to serve and advance his friends, he did not sufficiently consider their fitness for the employments which he bestowed on them. He committed a great and irreparable fault in not setting out for Rome at once, and in keeping the army all together in Syria; and he further commenced too soon a necessary, but imprudent attempt at bringing back the discipline of the legions to what it had been under Severus; for though he applied it only to recruits and did not interfere with the old soldiers, these last apprehended that the reform would at length reach themselves, and they became highly discontented. This feeling of the soldiers was soon taken advantage of, and a rival set up to Macrinus.

The empress Julia was at Antioch at the time of the murder of Caracalla. Macrinus wrote to her in very obliging terms; but in the first transports of her grief at the death of her son or the loss of her power, she had given herself several blows on the breast, and thus irritated a cancer with which she was afflicted, and her death ensued. Her sister, named Mæsa, who had lived at court during the last two reigns and had acquired immense wealth, retired by order of Macrinus to her native town of Emesa. She had two daughters named Soæmias and Mamæa, each of whom was a widow with an only son; that of the former was named Bassianus; he was now a handsome youth of seventeen years of age, and the influence of his family had procured for him the lucrative priesthood of the Sun, who was worshipped at Emesa under the title of Elagabalus. The Roman troops who were encamped near the town used to frequent the temple, and they greatly admired the comely young priest, whom they knew to be a cousin of their lamented Caracalla. The artful Mæsa resolved to take advantage of that feeling, and she made no scruple to sacrifice the reputation of her daughters to the hopes of empire: she therefore declared (what was perhaps true) that Caracalla used to cohabit with her daughters in the palace, and that Bassianus was in reality his son. Her assertion, backed with large sums of money and lavish promises of more, found easy acceptance with the soldiers. On the night of the 15th of May, 218, she and her daughter and grandson, and the rest of her family, conducted by their eunuch Gannys, a man of great talent, stole out of the city and proceeded to the camp, where they were joyfully received; and Bassianus was proclaimed emperor by the title of M. Aurelius Antoninus. The camp was immediately put into a state of defence against a siege; and numbers of the other soldiers hastened to sustain the cause of the son of Caracalla.

Macrinus sent the prætorian prefect Ulpius Julianus against the rebels. This officer was successful in his first attack on their camp; but having neglected to push his advantage, he gave the enemy time for tampering with his troops, a part of whom abandoned him; and he was taken and slain. Macrinus had meantime advanced as far as Apamea, where he declared his son Diadumenianus, a boy of only ten years of age, Augustus, and took this opportunity of promising a large gratuity to the army; he also wrote against Bassianus to the senate and governors of provinces. But instead of advancing rapidly against the rebels, he fell back to Antioch, whither they speedily followed him, and he was forced to give them battle near that town. The troops of Bassianus were ably disposed by the eunuch Gannys, who now in arms for the first time in his life showed the talents of a general. But the prætorians on the side of Macrinus fought with such determined valour that the rebels were on the point of flying, when Mæsa and Soæmias rushed out and stopped them; and Bassianus, sword in hand, led them on to the combat. Still the prætorians gave not way, and victory would have declared for Macrinus had he not shamefully fled in the midst of the battle. His troops when assured of his flight declared for Bassianus.

Macrinus fled in disguise, and never stopped till he came to Chalcedon, where he was taken and put to death, and his innocent son shared his fate. His reign had lasted only fourteen months.[c]

ELAGABALUS (NARIUS AVIBUS BASSIANUS), 218-222 A.D.

[Sidenote: [218-222 A.D.]]

Bassianus now hastened to assert his claim to the succession. He was entirely successful; ascending the throne under title of M. Aurelius Antoninus Elagabalus, or, as the Latins called him, Heliogabalus. Dion Cassius[e] (as preserved by Xiphilinus[i]) has left us a picturesque account of the accession and brief reign of this effeminate youth, whose name has become a proverb for sensuality of the most degenerate type. We turn to his account, making such omissions as the restrictions of modern taste demand;--the classical writers, as we have had occasion to note heretofore, adjudged the limits between frankness and prudery by standards quite different from ours.

This narrative of Dion Cassius has the unique interest of being the account of an exact contemporary. The author was a member of the Roman senate, at the time of Elagabalus’ accession. The following year he was governor of Pergamus and Smyrna. “He had conversed with Macrinus after his elevation, and yet was in the senate when the letters of Macrinus were read on the elevation of Elagabalus” (Clinton[g]).

Here, then, is the story of Rome’s most degenerate emperor, as told by this contemporary witness. The account is the most authoritative one that has come down to us; but it will be observed that allowance must be made for current superstitions in parts of the narrative.[a]

DION CASSIUS ON THE ACCESSION AND REIGN OF ELAGABALUS

Avitus [Elagabalus], who is called pseudo Antoninus, or the Assyrian, or, again, Sardanapalus or Tiberinus (the last name having been bestowed upon him after his body was cast into the Tiber), made his entry next day [after the defeat of Macrinus] into Antioch, having promised five hundred drachmæ to the soldiers if they refrained from pillaging the city, as they greatly desired to do. This sum he of course exacted from the inhabitants. He likewise wrote a letter to Rome, in which, among other matters befitting the occasion, he heaped invectives upon Macrinus for the obscurity of his origin and his conspiracy against Antoninus, and made lavish promises, not only to the soldiers but to the senate and populace (pretending to act in all things after the example of Augustus, whose age he compared with his own, and of Marcus Antoninus); and, in allusion to the censures passed upon him by Macrinus, he added, “He took upon himself to censure my youth, he who nominated his six-year-old son emperor.”

Such was his message to the senate. To that assembly and to the legions he despatched an account of what had taken place among the soldiers, together with the letter written by Macrinus to Maximus, in order further to inflame their hatred of Macrinus and their attachment to his own person. In his letter to the senate and his address to the people he styled himself emperor, Cæsar, the son of Antoninus, the grandson of Severus, the pious, the fortunate, Augustus, proconsul, prince invested with tribunician authority. He is also reported to have said, “Let them give me no titles which have to do with war; in ‘the pious’ and ‘the fortunate’ I have enough.”

A number of persons having, in both a public and a private capacity, committed offences in word and deed against him and against Caracalla, he declared that he would punish no man whatever; nor did he punish any, although in the rest of his conduct he carried debauchery, injustice, and cruelty to such lengths that certain customs wholly unknown at Rome were practised there as having come down from our forefathers, and that crimes committed in single instances by other men and in other places there flourished freely for the three years and nine months of his reign, reckoning from the battle which put him in possession of the sovereign power.

In Syria he shed the blood of Nestor and of Fabius Agrippinus, governor of the province, and of the chief of the knights who had been about Macrinus, and at Rome he acted likewise towards those who had been most strongly attached to the cause of the late monarch; in Arabia he slew Picas Cærianus, to whom the government of that country had been committed, for not having immediately come over to his side; in Cyprus, Claudius Attalus, a former governor of Thrace, who had been expelled from the senate by Severus at the time of the war with Niger, restored to his honours by Tarantus,[44] and placed by fate at the head of the province of Cyprus, merely because he had given offence to Comazon. For while the latter was serving in Thrace Attalus had placed him among the oarsmen as a punishment for dereliction of duty.

Thus the pseudo Antoninus put Attalus to death,--though he had written concerning him to the senate saying that he had recalled him to Rome, whence he had been banished by Macrinus, together with Julius Asper,--and Sulla, a former governor of Cappadocia, because he was involved in certain intrigues and because, having been summoned to Rome, he had gone before some Celtic soldiers on their way home from Bithynia, where they had passed the winter, and had stirred up some disorders. Such were the motives from which these two personages perished, no word thereof being sent to the senate. As for Seius Carus, the grandson of Fuscianus, a former prefect of Rome, the reason was that he was rich and noble, and a man of ability; the pretext, that he had incited the soldiers of the Alban legion to mutiny.

The monarch being his only accuser, the trial of Seius was held in the palace, where he was slain. Valerianus Pætus was put to death because he had caused portraits of himself to be made in gold as ornaments for his mistresses. This action brought upon him the charge of intending to go into Cappadocia, a province bordering on his native land (for he was a Galatian) to stir up a rebellion, and having for this purpose made gold pieces bearing his own image.

Besides these, Silius Messalla and Pomponius Bassus were put to death by the senate on a charge of having disapproved of the emperor’s conduct, as he said. He did not hesitate to write to the senate, which he styled the examiner of his life and the censor of what took place in the palace: “As for the proofs of their conspiracy, I have not sent them, for it would be idle to read them, since the men are already dead.” Messalla had frequently expressed his opinions forcibly in the senate, for which reason the emperor had commanded his attendance in Syria, as though he were indispensable to him, but really lest he should cause an opinion different to his own to prevail in that assembly; as for Bassus, he had a beautiful wife of noble birth (a granddaughter of Claudius Severus and of Marcus Antoninus); whom Elagabalus himself wedded, not permitting her (such was the terror with which he inspired her) to weep for her husband’s unhappy fate. We shall presently hear of espousals in which he played the part of bridegroom and bride, for he gave himself out as man or woman indifferently, and behaved with the utmost shamelessness in either character.

The murder of Gannys, who had paved the way for the rebellion, had brought him to the camp and procured him the victory over Macrinus--of Gannys, his foster-father and guardian, which he committed in Nicomedia, caused him to be regarded from the very beginning of his reign as the most impious of men. Gannys lived an effeminate life and loved to receive presents, but, far from doing injury to any man, he conferred many benefits upon numbers of persons; and, what was still more important, he was zealously devoted to his sovereign and enjoyed the favour of Mæsa and Soæmias. But this was not the reason why the emperor put him to death. His real motive was that Gannys obliged him to observe the rules of temperance and wisdom. The monarch, with his own hand, dealt Gannys the first wound, since none of the soldiers dared to begin the attack. In such wise did matters go.

Thus much we have said of the blood that was shed. As for the things done by Elagabalus contrary to the customs of our forefathers, they were matters of small account and did no great harm; unless, indeed, it be that he introduced innovations contrary to our usage, by assuming of his own accord, as I have said, titles of office, substituting himself for Macrinus in the consulate without being elected, and so forth.

He wedded Cornelia Paula, desiring, as he said, to become a father quickly; he, who was not so much as a man. At the celebration of these nuptials, not the senate and the knights alone, but even the wives of the senators received liberal presents. There was a banquet for the populace which cost 150 drachmæ, and one for the soldiers which cost more than 100. He also gave gladiatorial shows, at which he was present clad in the toga prætexta, and he appeared in the same garb at the votive games. He likewise caused a great number of wild beasts to be slaughtered, among the rest an elephant and fifty-one tigers, a larger number than had ever been exhibited at one time. Afterwards, having put away Paula under the pretext that she had a blemish on her body, he wedded Aquilia Severa, in open violation of the laws, for with flagrant impiety he defiled a woman who was a vestal. He was bold enough to say, “I have done it that of myself, the pontifex maximus, and of her, the vestalis maxima, divine children may be born”; nor did he hesitate to boast of these sacrilegious acts, for which he should have been first scourged with rods in the Forum and then cast into prison and put to death. Nevertheless he did not keep Severa long, but took another wife, and then another and another, after which he went back to her.

Among his most flagrant violations of the law was the worship of the god Elagabalus, not only by reason of the introduction of a foreign divinity into Rome and the granting of new and gorgeous honours to such a divinity, but by reason of the superiority which the emperor gave him over Jupiter; and the priesthood of Elagabalus which he caused to be bestowed upon himself, by reason of his circumcision and abstinence from pork (as though this abstinence made the worship of this god purer), and also by reason of the barbarous vestments worn by Syrian priests, in which he was often to be seen, a fact which had much to do with his surname of the Assyrian.

As the height of absurdity he bestowed a wife upon Elagabalus, as though the god had need of a wife and children. Moreover, since this wife ought not to be poor or of humble birth, he chose the Urania of Carthage, had the goddess brought from thence, established her in the palace, and exacted wedding gifts for her from all the subjects of his empire, as he had done for his own wives.

Nevertheless this Sardanapalus, who must needs unite the gods by regular marriages, himself led the most irregular of lives. He married several wives, and had relations with many other women with whom he formed no legal tie.

Such was his conduct to all who had to do with him; yet this did not prevent him from playing the part of a bride to a favourite, by name Hierocles, on whom he wished to bestow the title of cæsar, himself being called imperatrix. Being opposed by his grandmother in this design, he broke out into threats against her, and by his shameful conduct no less than for other reasons incurred the hatred of the soldiery. These extravagances were the cause of his ruin.

He was destined soon to receive the due reward of his infamy. By the things he did and suffered to be done he brought upon himself the hatred of the people and of the soldiers, the main prop of his throne, and was finally assassinated by them in his own camp. The thing came to pass on this fashion. He had brought his cousin Bassianus into the senate, and, taking his place beside Mæsa and Soæmias, he adopted him as his son; he boasted of his good fortune in having become all at once the father of such a child, as though he himself were already far more advanced in years, and he declared that he had no need of any other son, since his house was henceforth safe from extinction. Elagabalus himself had commanded him to take this course and to bestow on his cousin the name of Alexander. For my own part I am convinced that these occurrences were actually the work of a god, not because of the emperor’s words but because of the saying that one Alexander, from Emesa, would succeed him, and also because of what took place in Upper Mysia and in Thrace.

Shortly before this time a genius appeared, I know not how, in the countries about the Ister, claiming to be the celebrated Alexander of Macedon, and bearing the form and all the equipments of that prince. Starting thence he traversed Mœsia and Thrace after the manner of Bacchus, accompanied by four hundred men, armed with thyrsi and wearing goatskins. They did no harm, and, as those who then dwelt in Thrace are convinced, everything was supplied them, both lodging and provisions, at the expense of the cities; for no one dared oppose him either by word or deed, neither chief, nor soldier, nor procurator, nor provincial governor; and in open daylight, as he had announced, he advanced in procession as far as Byzantium. Thence, returning upon his footsteps, he crossed over into Chalcedon, and there, having performed certain sacrifices by night and buried a wooden horse in the ground, he disappeared. These facts I learned in Asia, as I have said, before anything was done at Rome with regard to Bassianus.

As long as Sardanapalus loved his cousin he himself remained alive, but when he began to suspect all men and learned that popular favour was turning towards Alexander, he changed his purpose and did all he could to get rid of him. He was not only unsuccessful in an attempt to destroy him, but came near to perishing himself, for Alexander was jealously guarded by his mother, his grandmother, and the soldiery. The prætorian guards, becoming aware of his intentions, stirred up a fearful riot, which did not cease until Sardanapalus, coming into the camp with Alexander, appealed to them with urgent entreaties, yielded up, under compulsion, the companions of his debaucheries whose death they demanded, only pleading piteously in favour of Hierocles, and finally succeeded in mollifying them.

Afterwards, having again laid snares for Alexander, and having gone with the latter to the camp to appease a tumult which had been excited among the prætorians by this attempt, he perceived that they were watching him with intent to put him to death, and strove to flee while his mother and Alexander’s, more openly at strife than before, were endeavouring to excite the soldiers. He tried to escape by hiding in a chest, but was caught and slain at the age of eighteen. His mother perished with him. Their heads were cut off and their bodies stripped of their ornaments and dragged through the streets of the city; then that of the woman was cast forth unburied, and that of Sardanapalus thrown into the Tiber. The god Elagabalus was banished from Rome.[e] The administration has not suffered greatly through Elagabalus, for while he abandoned himself to his sensual worship, he left the government in the hands of his prudent grandmother Mæsa.[a]

ALEXANDER SEVERUS (M. AURELIUS ALEXANDER SEVERUS), 222-235 A.D.

[Sidenote: [222-232 A.D.]]

Both the senate and the army joyfully concurred in the elevation of Alexander Severus; and the former body, lest any competitor should appear, hastened to confer on him all the imperial titles and powers. On account of his youth and his extremely amiable disposition he was entirely directed by his grandmother and mother, but Mæsa dying soon after his accession, the sole direction of her son fell to Mamæa. [The statues and coins of this woman show that she was a pagan, though the contrary has been inferred from the correspondence with Origen.] Nevertheless in her guidance of public affairs she exhibited a spirit of wisdom, justice, and moderation such as had not appeared in any preceding empress. Her enemies laid to her charge the love of power and the love of money, and blamed her son for deferring too much to her; but their accusations are vague, and no act of cruelty caused by avarice stains the annals of this reign.

The first care of Mamæa was to form a wise and upright council for her son. Sixteen of the most respectable of the senate, with the learned Ulpian, the prætorian prefect, at their head, composed this council, and nothing was ever done without their consent and approbation. A general system of reformation was commenced and steadily pursued. All the absurd acts of the late tyrant were reversed. His god was sent back to Emesa; the statues of the other deities were restored to their temples; the ministers of his vices and pleasures were sold or banished, some of the worst were drowned; the unworthy persons whom he had placed in public situations were dismissed, and men of knowledge and probity put in their places.

Mamæa used the utmost care to keep away from her son all those persons by whom his morals might be corrupted, and in order to have his time fully occupied she induced him to devote the greater part of each day to the administration of justice, where none but the wise and good would be his associates. The good seed fortunately fell into a kindly soil. Alexander was naturally disposed to every virtue, and all his efforts were directed to the promotion of the welfare of the empire over which he ruled.

The first ten years of the reign of this prince were passed at Rome and devoted to civil occupations. His daily course of life has been thus transmitted to us. He usually rose early and entered his private chapel (lararium), in which he had caused to be placed the images of those who had been teachers and benefactors of the human race, among whom he included the divine founder of the Christian religion. Having performed his devotions he took some kind of exercise, and then applied himself for some hours to public business with his council. He then read for some time, his favourite works being the Republics of Plato and Cicero, and the verses of Horace, and the Life of Alexander the Great, whom he greatly admired. Gymnastic exercises, in which he excelled, succeeded. He then was anointed and bathed, and took a light breakfast, usually of bread, milk, and eggs. In the afternoon he was attended by his secretaries, and he heard his letters read and signed the answers to them. The business of the day being concluded, his friends in general were admitted, and a frugal and simple dinner followed, at which the conversation was mostly of a serious instructive nature, or some literary work was read out to the emperor and his guests.

The dress of Alexander was plain and simple, his manners were free from all pride and haughtiness; he lived with the senators on a footing of friendly equality, like Augustus, Vespasian, and the wiser and better emperors. He was liberal and generous to all orders of the people, and he took an especial pleasure in assisting those persons of good family who had fallen into poverty without reproach. Among the virtues of Alexander was the somewhat rare one in that age of chastity. His mother early caused him to espouse a lady of noble birth named Memnia, whom however he afterwards divorced and even banished to Africa. The accounts of this affair differ greatly. According to one, the father of the empress formed a conspiracy against his son-in-law, which being discovered, he was put to death and his daughter divorced. Others say that as Alexander showed great respect for his father-in-law, Mamæa’s jealousy was excited, and she caused him to be slain and his daughter to be divorced or banished. It appears that Alexander soon married again.

We have already observed that a portion of the civil jurisdiction had fallen to the prætorian prefects. This imposed a necessity that one of them should be a civilian, and Mamæa had therefore caused this dignity to be conferred on Ulpian. From the love of law and order which distinguished this prefect, he naturally sought to bring back discipline in the prætorian camp; the consequence was that repeated attempts were made on his life, and the emperor more than once found it necessary to cast his purple over him to save him from the fury of the soldiers. At length (228) they fell on him in the night; he escaped from them to the palace, but they pursued and slaughtered him in the presence of the emperor and his mother.

Some slight actions on the German and Moorish frontiers were the only occupation given to the Roman arms during the early years of the reign of Alexander, but in the year 232 so powerful an enemy menaced the oriental provinces of the empire, that the presence of the emperor became absolutely requisite in the East.

The Parthians, whom we have had such frequent occasion to mention, are said to have been a Scythian (i.e., Turkish) people of the north of Persia, who, taking advantage of the declining power of the Macedonian kings of Syria, cast off their yoke (250 B.C.), and then gradually made themselves masters of the whole of Persia. Their dominion had now lasted for five hundred years, and their power had from the usual causes, such as family dissensions, contested successions, and such like, been long on the decline; and in the fourth year of Alexander Severus (226) a native Persian, named Artaxerxes (Ardashir), who pretended to be of the ancient royal line but who is said to have been of humble birth and a mere soldier of fortune, raised a rebellion against the Parthian king, Artabanus. Fortune favoured the rebel, and Artabanus was defeated and slain. Artaxerxes then assumed the tiara, and his line, which existed till the Mohammedan conquest, was named the Sassanian, from the name of his father.

[Sidenote: [232-235 A.D.]]

Affecting to be the descendant of the ancient Achæmenians, Artaxerxes sought to restore Persia to its condition under those princes. The Magian or Light religion resumed the rank from which it had fallen under the sway of the Parthians, and flourished in its pristine glory. As the dominions of the house of Cyrus had extended to the coasts of the Ægean Sea, Artaxerxes ordered the Romans to quit Asia, and when his mandate was unheeded he led his troops over the Tigris. But his ill fortune induced him to attack the invincible Atræ, and he was forced to retire with loss and disgrace. He then turned his arms against the Medes and some other of the more northern tribes, and when he had reduced them he again invaded Mesopotamia (232). Alexander now resolved to take the command of his troops in person. He left Rome, followed by the tears and prayers of the people, and proceeded through Illyricum to the East. On his march the strictest discipline was maintained, while every attention was paid to the wants of the soldiers and care taken that they should be abundantly supplied with clothes and arms. The emperor himself used the same fare as the men, and he caused his tent to be thrown open when he was at his meals that they might perceive his mode of life.

Alexander halted at Antioch to make preparations for the war; meantime he sent an embassy with proposals of peace to Artaxerxes. The Persian in return sent four hundred of his most stately men splendidly clothed and armed to order the Romans to quit Asia; and if we can believe Herodian (for the circumstance is almost incredible), Alexander was so regardless of the laws of nations as to seize and strip them, and send them prisoners to Phrygia. It is also said that while he was at Antioch, finding that some of the soldiers frequented the Paphian grove of Daphne, he cast them into prison; and that when a mutiny broke out in the legion to which they belonged, he ascended his tribunal, had the prisoners brought before him, and addressed their comrades, who stood around in arms, dwelling on the necessity of maintaining discipline. But when his arguments proved of no effect, and they even menaced him with their arms, he cried out, in imitation of Cæsar, “Quirites, depart, and lay down your arms.” The legion obeyed, and the men, no longer soldiers, took up their abode in the houses of the town instead of the camp. After a month the emperor was prevailed on to pardon them, but he punished their tribunes with death; and this legion was henceforth equally distinguished by valour and fidelity.

In imitation of Alexander the Great, the emperor formed six of his legions into a phalanx of thirty thousand men, to whom he gave higher pay. He also had, like that conqueror, bodies of men distinguished by gold-adorned and silver-adorned shields--chrysoaspids and argyroaspids.

The details of the war cannot be learned with any certainty. One historian says that Alexander made three divisions of his army; one of which was to enter Media through Armenia, another Persia at the junction of the Tigris and Euphrates, while the emperor was in person to lead the third through Mesopotamia, and all were to join in the enemy’s country; but that, owing to the timidity of Alexander, who loitered on the way, the second division was cut to pieces, and the first nearly all perished while retreating through Armenia in the winter. This account labours under many difficulties; for the emperor certainly triumphed on his return to Rome; and in his speech to the senate on that occasion he asserted that of 700 war elephants which were in the enemy’s array he had killed 200, and taken 300; of 1000 scythed chariots he had taken 200; and of 120,000 heavy-armed horsemen he had slain 10,000, besides taking a great number of prisoners.[c] Notwithstanding this report to the senate, the Romans were probably beaten in this war, though the Persians likewise suffered great loss. The latter made no further attempts on Mesopotamia for some years.[a]

The Germans had taken advantage of the absence of the emperor and the greater part of the troops in the East, to pass the Rhine and ravage Gaul. Alexander therefore, leaving sufficient garrisons in Syria, led home the Illyrian and other legions, and having celebrated a triumph for the Persian War at Rome, where he was received with the most abundant demonstrations of joy, he departed with a large army for the defence of Gaul. The Germans retired at his approach; he advanced to the Rhine and took up his winter quarters in the neighbourhood of Mogontiacum (Mainz), with the intention of opening the campaign beyond the river in the spring (235).

The narratives of the events of this reign are so very discordant that we cannot hope often to arrive at the real truth. In no part are they more at variance than in their account of the circumstances of the emperor’s death. We can only collect that, whether from his efforts to restore discipline, from the intrigues of Maximin, an ambitious officer who had the charge of disciplining the young troops, or from some other cause, a general discontent prevailed in the army, and that Alexander was assassinated in his tent, either by his own guards or by a party sent for the purpose by Maximin, and that his mother and several of his friends perished with him. The troops forthwith proclaimed Maximin emperor, and the senate and people of Rome, deeply lamenting the fate of the virtuous Alexander, were forced to acquiesce in the choice of the army.

Alexander had reigned thirteen years. Even the historian least partial to him acknowledges that towards his subjects his conduct was blameless, and that no bloodshed or unjust condemnations stain the annals of his reign. His fault seems to have been a certain degree of effeminacy and weakness, the consequence probably of his Syrian origin, which led to his extreme submission to his mother, against whom the charges of avarice and meanness are not perhaps wholly unfounded.[45]

Dion Cassius, whose history ends with this reign, gives the following view of the numbers and disposition of the legions, at this period. Of the twenty-five which were formed by Augustus, only nineteen remained, the rest having been broken or distributed through the others; but the emperors, from Nero to Severus inclusive, had formed thirteen new ones, and the whole now amounted to thirty-two legions. Of these, three were in Britain, one in Upper and two in Lower Germany, one in Italy, one in Spain, one in Numidia, one in Arabia, two in Palestine, one in Phœnicia, two in Syria, two in Mesopotamia, two in Cappadocia, two in Lower and one in Upper Mœsia, two in Dacia, and four in Pannonia, one in Noricum, and one in Rætia. He does not tell us where the two remaining ones were quartered, neither does he give the number of men in a legion at this time, but it is conjectured to have been five thousand.[c]

RENAN’S CHARACTERISATION OF THE PERIOD

[Sidenote: [180-235 A.D.]]

On principles less disastrous than those of unbridled military despotism, the empire might have survived the ruin of the Roman spirit in the death of Marcus Aurelius, might have given peace to Christianity a century earlier and have avoided the streams of blood shed to no purpose by Decius and Diocletian. The part of the Roman aristocracy was played out; after having worn folly threadbare in the first century, it had worn virtue threadbare in the second. But the hidden forces of the great Mediterranean confederacy were not exhausted. Thus, after the downfall of the political edifice founded on the sovereignty of the family of Augustus, a provincial dynasty, that of the Flavians, was found to restore the empire, even as after the downfall of the edifice built up by the adoptions of the Roman aristocracy, there were found provincials, Orientals and Syrians, to restore the great association in which all men found peace and profit. Septimius Severus did, without moral grandeur but not without glory, what Vespasian had done.

It is true that the representatives of this new dynasty are not to be compared to the great emperors of the second century. Even Alexander Severus, who equals Antoninus and Marcus in kindliness, is very inferior to them in intelligence and greatness of soul. The principles of the government are detestable; men outbid one another for the favour of the legions; a price is set on mutiny; none approaches the soldier except with purse in hand. Military despotism never took a more shameless form; but military despotism can be long-lived.

Side by side with hideous spectacles, under the Syrian emperors, what reforms do we find! What progress in legislation! What a day was that when, under Caracalla, all free men dwelling within the empire attained equal rights!

We must not exaggerate the advantages offered by such equality; yet in politics words are never wholly void of meaning. Many excellent things had been inherited. The philosophers of the school of Marcus Aurelius had disappeared, but their place was taken by the masters of jurisprudence. Papinian, Ulpian, Paul, Gaius, Modestinus, Florentinus, Marcian, during years of execrable evil, created masterpieces and actually brought the law of the future into being. The Syrian emperors, though far inferior to Trajan and to the Antonines as far as political traditions are concerned, inasmuch as they were not Romans and had none of the Roman prejudices, often give proof of an openness of mind which would have been impossible to the great emperors of the second century, all of whom were intensely conservative. They permitted and even encouraged colleges or syndicates. They went to extreme lengths in this matter, and they would have organised the trade guilds as castes with a distinctive garb. They flung the doors of the empire wide open. One of them, that noble and pathetic figure Alexander Severus, the son of Mamæa, almost equalled in his plebeian goodness the patrician virtues of the great age; the loftiest ideas pale before the honest effusions of his heart.

It was in religion above all that these Syrian emperors inaugurated a liberality of mind and a tolerance unknown before.[46] The Syrian women of Emesa, Julia Domna, Julia Mæsa, Julia Mamæa, Julia Soæmias, beautiful, intelligent, venturous to the point of utopianism, are hampered by no tradition or conventionality. They dared to do what no Roman woman had ever done; they entered the senate, took part in its deliberations, and practically governed the empire, dreaming of Semiramis and Nitocris. It was a thing that such a woman as Faustina would not have done for all her frivolity; she would have been checked by tact, by the sense of absurdity, by the rules of good Roman society. The Syrian women hesitated at nothing. They had a senate of women, which enacted every sort of absurdity. The Roman religion seemed to them cold and meaningless. They had no family reasons for attachment to it, and being more in harmony, imaginatively, with Christianity than with Italian paganism, they delighted in the tales of the travels of gods upon the earth. Philostratus enchanted them with his Apollonius; perhaps they had a secret leaning towards Christianity.

During this time the last noble ladies of the older society, such as the elderly daughter of Marcus Aurelius, honoured by all men and put to death by Caracalla, lived in obscurity, looking on at an orgy which formed so strange a contrast to the memories of their youth.

The provinces, and those of the East more particularly, which were far more active and enlightened than those of the West, gained a decided ascendency. Elagabalus was certainly a madman, but nevertheless his chimerical idea of a central monotheistic religion, established in Rome and absorbing all others, shows that the narrow circle of Antonine conceptions had been to a great extent broken through. Mamæa and Alexander Severus were to go further; whilst the jurisconsults continued to transcribe their old and ferocious maxims against liberty of conscience with the calmness of habit, the Syrian emperor and his mother studied Christianity, and manifested sympathy with it. Not content with granting security to the Christians, Alexander, with touching eclecticism, introduced the name of Jesus among his household gods. Peace seemed made, not, as under Constantine, by the abasement of one party, but by a generous reconciliation. In all this there was certainly a daring attempt at reform, inferior in rationality to that of the Antonines, but more likely to succeed because it was much more popular and took the provinces and the East more into account.

In such a democratic work, people with no ancestors, such as these Africans and Syrians, had more chance of success than rigid men of irreproachable bearing, like the aristocratic emperors. But the innate viciousness of the imperial system revealed itself for the tenth time. Alexander Severus was assassinated by the soldiers on the 19th of March, 235. It was clear that the army would tolerate none but tyrants. The empire had fallen successively from the Roman aristocracy to provincial officers, now it passed to subordinate officers and military assassins. Whereas, until the time of Commodus, the murdered emperors are intolerable monsters, it is now the good emperor, the man who desires to restore some kind of discipline and represses the crimes of the army, who is inevitably marked for death.[j] Still, it cannot be denied that there was need of strong, able commanders on the eve of the barbarian invasions. With all his virtues, Alexander was a weakling, unfit to rule at such a time. With his death the military revolution entered upon a third stage. It became more than ever necessary to strengthen the imperial office, because, it having been decided that the emperor should be a soldier, the choice of the soldiers, rival claimants of the office were threatening, by their civil strife, to break up the Roman world into a multitude of warring states.[a]

FOOTNOTES

[41] Herodian[d] tells us of a list of those destined to be put to death taken by a child, and read by Marcia, as in the case of Domitian. But he is a very inaccurate writer, and Dion[e], who was a senator and in Rome at the time, could hardly have been ignorant of the circumstance if it were true.

[42] [During this reign the disciplined legions under able commanders still protected the frontiers. Most of the empire was peaceful and prosperous. The government still carried on great public works and benevolently succoured the afflicted. The Christians were tolerated, and those of the sect who were in prison were released. The great official machine was little disturbed by the caprices of the emperor.]

[43] Severus, not content with expressing his veneration and respect for the memory of M. Aurelius, had the folly to pretend to be his son. “What most amazed us,” says Dion,[e] “was his saying that he was the son of Marcus and brother of Commodus.”

[44] [Tarantus was a nickname given to Caracalla after his death. It was the name of a gladiator of ignoble aspect.]

[45] The Life of Alexander, by Lampridius, in the Augustan History,[f] is, as Gibbon observes, “the mere idea of a perfect prince, an awkward imitation of the Cyropædia.” [The best rulers had to bear the charge of avarice.]

[46] [The substitution of the Syro-Phœnician sun-god by Elagabalus naturally recalls the monotheistic reformation of Amenhotep IV (Khun-aten) in Egypt more than sixteen centuries before. In Amenhotep’s day, Syrian influence predominated at the Egyptian court, as it did at Rome in the beginning of the third century A.D. That the culminating result of this should have been so much the same in both cases is a matter that seems to call for at least passing notice.]

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XL. CONFUSION WORSE CONFOUNDED: THE SECOND HALF OF THE THIRD CENTURY OF EMPIRE (235-285 A.D.)

“Now begins the inferno of half a century (235-284), in which all philosophy, all civil order, all delicacy founders; with power put up to auction, the soldiery masters of everything; with sometimes ten tyrants at once; with the barbarian entering through all the breaches of a shattered world; with Athens destroying her ancient monuments, to girdle herself with ill-built walls as a protection against the Goths. If anything can show the intrinsic necessity of the Roman Empire, it is the fact that it was not wholly put out of joint by this anarchy and retained breath enough to revive under the vigorous action of Diocletian, and to endure for two centuries more. In every class the decadence is terrible. In fifty years the art of sculpture is forgotten. Latin literature comes to an end. It is as if a vampire brooded over society, drinking its life-blood.”--RENAN.

Bad matters become worse in the period we are now entering. Old evils remain, and new ones are added. The rule of the soldiers is absolute, and as before, money affords the only channel to the suffrage of these rulers of the empire. As before, there is an incessant scramble after the honours and emoluments of the imperial office; as before, successful and unsuccessful aspirants alike place themselves on the sure road to an early death, so soon as they attempt to grasp the purple.

In the half century we are now entering, some seventeen emperors who may be styled legitimate holders of the title, pass in rapid succession before the view; and with only one or two doubtful exceptions they all meet a tragic end. Some reign for a few weeks or months, some for a few years; some are young, some are old; but neither the tender years of a Gordian nor the senility of a Tacitus can give protection from the imperial fate.

All this indeed is but a repetition of what we have seen in the half century just gone. There is no sudden transition, no marked revolution. And yet the time upon which we are entering has in other respects a character that is peculiarly its own. It marks a condition towards which the empire has been steadily tending; a condition that is the logical, the necessary outcome of the antecedent conditions we have studied. The essence of this new condition is found in the de-romanisation of the empire. From now on the rulers of Rome, with rare exceptions, are no longer Romans in the old sense of the word. Caracalla, to be sure, gave Roman citizenship to all free men in the empire, which list, it may be noted, included vast numbers of persons who had once been slaves. But the sweep of the imperial stylus, while it may make the Gaul and the Goth, the Dalmatian and the Dacian, the Syrian and the Arab, each and all Romans in the official sense, is impotent to change the racial traits of this heterogeneous company. The man from the provinces, who has never been within a thousand miles of Rome, may count himself a Roman citizen, may even glory in the name, but beyond peradventure his closest interests lie with his own kith and kin, with his own race, as against those others of his fellow-citizens who live in far-distant lands, and have habits, customs, and languages different from his own.

In the present connection this natural instinct comes to have much importance. It becomes increasingly evident that we no longer have a strongly centralised government. In the first instance nearly all the emperors are themselves men from the provinces. A great city is seldom the birthplace of the great men of any epoch. It has been said that Rome never produced a poet, and the briefest analysis of her great names will show that few men indeed whom posterity remembers were born within the confines of the city itself. But in the early day the great Romans were, for the most part, born in Italy, if not at the capital. In the first century, indeed, importance attaches, as we have seen, to a good many adoptive Romans who were born in Asia Minor, and to others who came from Spain--such men as the Senecas, Lucan, and Quintilian. In the second century of the empire, it will be recalled, two of the greatest emperors, Trajan and Hadrian, were Spaniards. But these are exceptional instances.

Now, however, we are entering upon a period when the Roman emperor, almost as a matter of course, is not an Italian. Maximin is a Thracian peasant, Philip is an Arab, Decius comes from Pannonia, Æmilianus is said to be a Moor; Claudius, Probus, Carus, and Carinus come from various regions of Illyricum. Some of these provincials visit Rome whenever a lull in the border warfares will permit. Philip the Arab, for example, makes Rome his headquarters; and by an odd freak of fortune it is this man of alien blood who is on the throne when Rome comes, in the year 248, to her one thousandth anniversary: it is he who conducts the magnificent secular games that mark the millennium.

There are rulers too, like Aurelian, who take an interest in the more intimate economical affairs of the empire, and who strenuously apply their energies to a reform of the currency, the debasement of which is one of the most significant features of the time. Aurelian fixes an honest value for the gold and silver coins, takes from the senate and from all cities but Alexandria the right of coinage, striving thus to fix more firmly the position of the seat of empire as the financial centre, and to give stability to the economic system. But his best efforts lead to mutiny in the present, and fall far short of hoped-for results in the future. Moreover, even an Aurelian, whatever his regard for Rome, finds his time chiefly occupied with the warlike affairs of the outlying provinces. He must dash from Syria to Egypt, from Egypt to Gaul; one revolt is not put down before another begins. And in this day it is no easy matter to transport an army from one part of the bulky empire to another.

Then again, there are emperors who scorn the capital; Maximin, for example, who for a time transfers the seat of empire to distant Pannonia. It is a strange spectacle when Italian citizens are brought from their residences in Rome to have punishment--punishment, be it understood, not justice--meted out to them in a province on the Danube. Few other emperors go quite to such extremes as this; but more and more as time goes on we feel that the interests of the empire are everywhere except in Rome. After the time of Claudius, who occupies the throne just as the empire is rounding out its third century, it is almost a foregone conclusion that Illyricum will supply the empire with its rulers. The significance of this fact is at once evident, if we recall that Illyricum is that territory north of Greece including Macedonia, Thrace, and Mœsia, which a future emperor will fix on as the seat of New Rome--Constantinople.

The decentralisation of the empire, of which these are significant marks, is still more strikingly manifested in the ever increasing number of rival claimants to the purple. Again and again it happens that the soldiers in different portions of the empire raise different chiefs to nominal imperial power. At one time, while Gallienus is the legitimate holder of the title, there are spurious emperors in Illyricum, Gaul, Greece, Egypt,--everywhere. The time comes to be known as the epoch of the Thirty Tyrants. Doubtless there were not thirty of these rival emperors; but there may have been fifteen or twenty--just how many no one knows or need greatly care to know.

And while internal dissensions are thus weakening the empire, an even greater danger threatens it from without. The peoples whom we have come to speak of rather loosely as barbarian hordes--Franks, Alamanni, Goths--are piercing through the cordon of steel which is the sole safeguard of the empire. The Persians contest the eastern border. They capture a Roman emperor, Valerian, and carry him off to ignominious servitude. The Goths sweep down to the Bosporus, invade Asia Minor, and coast along the shores of Greece. The Alamanni invade Italy, and come almost to Rome itself. For the time being these hordes are repelled. A pest from Egypt carries off the Goths by thousands and renders their motley array of warriors powerless. The arms of Aurelian drive back the Alamanni. For the moment the imperial seat is secure. But so dreadful appears this new threat of the old northern enemies that now, just at the close of the third century of empire, a wall is built about the imperial city. A few generations back that far-outlying wall of steel was all-sufficient; now a narrow circle of stone must safeguard the capital, as in the days of long ago, when Rome had not yet conquered Italy.

This fact alone sufficiently characterises the time. When the proud city, whose subject territories are bounded by the Euphrates and the Atlantic, acknowledges the fear of an enemy at her very portals, the beginning of the end is at hand. The Roman Empire at the close of its third century is no longer dreaming of more distant conquests; it is struggling for life itself. Some salient features of this struggle will now claim our attention.[a]

MAXIMIN (C. JULIUS VERUS MAXIMINUS), 235-238 A.D.

[Sidenote: [235-237 A.D.]]

Maximin was originally a Thracian peasant, of enormous size and strength; his stature, we are told, “exceeded eight feet; his wife’s bracelet made him a thumb-ring; he could draw a loaded wagon, break a horse’s leg with a kick, and crumble sandstones in his hands”; he often, it is added, “ate forty pounds of meat in the day, and washed them down with seven gallons of wine.” Hence he was named Hercules, Antæus, and Milo of Croton. He became known to the emperor Severus on the occasion of his celebrating the birthday of his son Geta one time in Thrace. The young barbarian approached him, and in broken Latin craved permission to wrestle with some of the strongest of the camp followers; he vanquished sixteen of them, and received as many prizes, and was admitted into the service. A couple of days after, Severus seeing him exulting at his good fortune, spoke to a tribune about him, and Maximin perceiving that he was the object of the emperor’s discourse began to run on foot by his horse; Severus to try his speed put his horse to the gallop, but the young soldier kept up with him till the aged emperor was tired. Severus asked him if he felt inclined to wrestle after his running: he replied in the affirmative, and overthrew seven of the strongest soldiers. He rose rapidly in the service under Severus and his son; he retired to his native village when Macrinus seized the empire; he disdained to serve Elagabalus, but the accession of Alexander induced him to return to Rome. He received the command of a legion, was made a senator, and the emperor even had thoughts of giving his sister in marriage to the son of the Thracian peasant.

The first care of Maximin when raised to the empire was to dismiss from their employments all who were in the council or family of his predecessor, and several were put to death as conspirators. He speedily displayed the native ferocity of his temper; for when, having completed a bridge of boats over the Rhine commenced by Alexander, he was preparing to pass over into Germany, a conspiracy headed by one Magnus, a consular, was discovered, the plan of which was to loose the further end of the bridge when Maximin had passed over, and thus to leave him in the hands of the Germani, and meantime Magnus was to be proclaimed emperor. On this occasion he massacred upwards of four thousand persons, without any form of trial whatever; and he was accused of having invented the conspiracy with this design.

A revolt of the eastern archers, which occurred a few days after, being quelled, Maximin led his army into Germany. As no large force opposed him, he wasted and burned the country through an extent of four hundred miles. Occasional skirmishes took place in the woods and marshes, which gave Maximin opportunities of displaying his personal prowess; and he caused pictures of his victories to be painted, which he sent to Rome to be placed at the door of the senate house.

Maximin employed the two first years of his reign in wars against the Germans and the Sarmatians. His winter residence was Sirmium in Pannonia, and he never condescended to visit Italy. But his absence was no benefit; for Italy and all parts of the empire groaned alike beneath his merciless tyranny. The vile race of delators once more came into life; men of all ranks were dragged from every part of the empire to Pannonia, where some were sewed up in the skins of animals, others were exposed to wild beasts, others beaten to death with clubs, and the properties of all were confiscated. This had been the usual course of the preceding despotism, and the people in general therefore took little heed of it; but Maximin stretched his rapacious hands to the corporate funds of the cities of the empire, which were destined for the support or the amusement of the people; and he seized on the treasures of the temples, and stripped the public edifices of their ornaments. The spirit of disaffection thus excited was general, and even his soldiers were wearied of his severity and cruelty.

RIVAL EMPERORS, AND THE DEATH OF MAXIMIN

[Sidenote: [237-238 A.D.]]

The whole empire was now therefore ripe for revolt; the rapacity of the procurator of Africa caused it to break out in that province (237). This officer, who was worthy of his master, had condemned two young men of rank to pay such sums as would have quite ruined them. In despair, they assembled the peasantry on their estates, and having gained over part of the soldiers, they one night surprised the procurator and slew him and those who defended him. Knowing that they had no safety but in a general revolt, they resolved to offer the empire to M. Antonius Gordianus, the governor of the province, an illustrious senator of the venerable age of eighty years. They came to him as he was resting after giving audience in the morning, and flinging the purple of a standard over him hailed him as Augustus. Gordian declined the proffered dignity, but when he reflected that Maximin would never pardon a man who had been proclaimed emperor, he deemed it the safer course to run the hazard of the contest, and he consented to accept the empire, making his son his colleague. He then proceeded to Carthage, whence he wrote to the senate and people, and his friends at Rome, notifying his elevation to the empire.

The intelligence was received with the greatest joy at Rome. The two Gordians were declared Augusti; and Maximin and his son, whom he had associated with him in the empire, and their friends, public enemies, and rewards were promised to those who would kill them; but the decree was ordered to be kept secret till all the necessary preparations should have been made. Soon after it was given out that Maximin was slain. The edicts of the Gordians were then published, their images and letters were carried into the prætorian camp, and forthwith the people rose in fury, cast down and broke the images of Maximin, fell on and massacred his officers and the informers; and many seized this pretext for getting rid of their creditors and their private enemies. Murder and pillage prevailed through the city. The senate meantime having advanced too far to recede, wrote a circular to all the governors of provinces, and appointed twenty of their body to put Italy into a state of defence.

Maximin was preparing to cross the Danube against the Sarmatians when he heard of what had taken place at Rome. His rage and fury passed all bounds. He menaced the whole of the senate with bonds or death, and promised their properties, and those of the Africans, to his soldiers; but finding that they did not show all the alacrity he had expected, he began to fear for his power. His spirits, however, soon rose when tidings came that his rivals were no more; for Capelianus, governor of Mauretania, being ordered by the Gordians to quit that province, marched against Carthage at the head of a body of legionaries and Moors. The younger Gordian gave him battle, and was defeated and slain, and his father on hearing the melancholy tidings strangled himself. Capelianus pillaged Carthage and the other towns, and exercised all the rights of a conqueror (237).

When the fatal tidings reached Rome the consternation was great, but the senate, seeing they could not now recede, chose as emperors in the place of the Gordians M. Clodius Pupienus Maximus and D. Cælius Balbinus, the former to conduct the military, the latter the civil affairs of the state. To satisfy the people, a grandson of the elder Gordian, a boy of twelve years of age, was associated with them as cæsar.

The new emperors were elected about the beginning of July, and Pupienus forthwith left Rome to oppose Maximin. The remainder of the year was spent on both sides in making preparations for the war, and in the following spring (238) Maximin put his troops in motion for Italy. He passed the Alps unopposed, but found the gates of Aquileia closed against him. His offers of pardon being rejected, he laid siege to the town; it was defended with the obstinacy of despair. Ill success augmented the innate ferocity of Maximin; he put to death several of his officers; these executions irritated the soldiers, who were besides suffering all kinds of privations, and discontent became general. As Maximin was reposing one day at noon in his tent, a party of the Alban soldiers approached it with the intention of killing him. They were joined by his guards, and when he awoke and came forth with his son they would not listen to him, but killed them both on the spot, and cut off their heads. Maximin’s principal ministers shared his fate. His reign had lasted only three years.

PUPIENUS (M. CLODIUS PUPIENUS MAXIMUS), BALBINUS (D. CÆLIUS BALBINUS), AND GORDIAN (M. ANTONIUS GORDIANUS), 238-244 A.D.

[Sidenote: [238-248 A.D.]]

The joy at Rome was extreme when the news of the death of Maximin arrived. Pupienus, who was at Ravenna, hastened to Aquileia, and received the submission of the army. He distributed money to the legions, and then sending them back to their usual quarters returned to Rome with the prætorians and a part of the army of the Rhine, in which he could confide. He and his colleagues entered the city in a kind of triumph.

The administration of Pupienus and Balbinus was of the best kind, and the senate and people congratulated themselves on the choice they had made. But the prætorians were far from being contented; they felt as if robbed of their right of appointing an emperor; and they were annoyed at the German troops being retained in the city, as arguing a distrust of themselves. Unfortunately, too, there prevailed a secret jealousy between the two emperors, and it is probable that concord would not long have subsisted between them under any circumstances.

The prætorians, having to no purpose sought a pretext for getting rid of the emperors, at length took advantage of the celebration of the Capitoline games, at which almost everyone was present, and the emperors remained nearly alone in the palace. They proceeded thither in fury. Pupienus, when aware of their approach, proposed to send for the Germani, but Balbinus, fearing that it was meant to employ them against himself, refused his consent. Meantime the prætorians arrived, forced the entrance, seized the two aged emperors, tore their garments, treated them with every kind of indignity, and were dragging them to their camp, till hearing that the Germans were coming to their aid, they killed them and left their bodies lying in the street. They carried the young Gordian with them to their camp, where they proclaimed him emperor, and the senate, the people, and the provinces readily acquiesced in his elevation.

The youthful emperor was the object of general affection; the soldiers called him their child, the senate their son, the people their delight. He was of a lively and agreeable temper; and he was zealous in the acquisition of knowledge, in order that he might not be deceived by those about him. In the first years, however, of his reign public affairs were indifferently managed. His mother, who was not a Mamæa, allowed her eunuchs and freedmen to sell all the great offices of the state (perhaps she shared in their gains), and in consequence many improper appointments were made. But the marriage of the young emperor (241) brought about a thorough reformation. He espoused the daughter of Misitheus, a man distinguished in the cultivation of letters, and he made his father-in-law his prætorian prefect, and guided himself by his counsels. Misitheus, who was a man of virtue and talent as well as of learning, discharged the duties of his office in the ablest manner.

A Persian war soon called the emperor to the East (242). Sapor (Shapur), the son and successor of Artaxerxes, had invaded Mesopotamia, taken Nisibis, Carrhæ, and other towns, and menaced Antioch. But the able conduct of Misitheus, when the emperor arrived in Syria, speedily assured victory to the Roman arms; the towns were all recovered, and the Persian monarch was obliged to repass the Tigris. Unfortunately for Gordian and the empire, Misitheus died in the following year (243), to the great regret of the whole army, by whom he was both beloved and feared. The office of prætorian prefect was given to M. Julius Philippus, who is accused, though apparently without reason, of having caused the death of his predecessor. Now, however, having in effect the command of the army, Philip aspired to the empire. He spoke disparagingly of the youth of Gordian; he contrived, by diverting the supplies, to cause the army to be in want, and then laid the blame on the emperor. At length (244), after a victory gained over the Persians on the banks of the Chaboras, he led the troops into a country where no provisions could be procured: a mutiny in consequence ensued, in which the emperor was slain, and Philip was proclaimed in his place. Gordian was only nineteen years of age when he met his untimely fate; he had reigned five years and eight months. The soldiers raised him a tomb on the spot, and the senate placed him among the gods.

PHILIP (M. JULIUS PHILIPPUS), 244-249 A.D.

The adventurer who had now attained the imperial purple was an Arab by birth, and it is even pretended a Christian in religion. He probably entered the Roman service in his youth, and gradually rose to rank in the army.

Being anxious to proceed to Rome, Philip lost no time in concluding a treaty with Sapor. He then, after a short stay at Antioch, set out for Italy. At Rome he used every means to conciliate the senators by liberality and kindness, and he never mentioned the late emperor but in terms of respect. To gain the affections of the people, he formed a reservoir to supply with water the part of the city beyond the Tiber.

[Sidenote: [248-250 A.D.]]

In the fifth year of his reign (248), Rome having then attained her one thousandth year, Philip, in conjunction with his son, now associated with him in the empire, celebrated with great magnificence the secular games. These had been already solemnised by Augustus, by Claudius, by Domitian, and Severus, and Rome now witnessed them for the last time.

Philip would appear to have acted unwisely in committing extensive commands to his own relations; for in Syria, where his brother Priscus, and in Mœsia, where his father-in-law Severianus commanded, rival emperors were proclaimed. The Syrian rebel was named Jotapianus; the Mœsian was a centurion, named P. Carvilius Marinus. Philip, it is said, in alarm, called on the senate to support him or to accept his resignation (249); but while the other senators maintained silence, Decius, a man of rank and talent, reassured him, speaking slightingly of the rebels, and asserting that they could not stand against him. His prediction proved correct, for they both were shortly after slain. Philip then obliged Decius, much, it is said, against his inclination, to take the command of the Mœsian and Pannonian legions. But when Decius reached the army, the soldiers insisted on investing him with the purple. He wrote to the emperor assuring him of his fidelity; but Philip would not trust to his declarations, and leaving his son at Rome with a part of the prætorians, he put himself at the head of his troops to chastise him. The armies met near Verona; Philip was defeated and slain, and when the news reached Rome, the prætorians slew his son and proclaimed Decius.

DECIUS (C. MESSIUS QUINTUS TRAJANUS DECIUS), 249-251 A.D.

Decius was born at Bubalia, a town near Sirmium in Pannonia. He was either forty-eight or fifty-eight years of age, it is uncertain which, when he was proclaimed emperor; and from the imperfect accounts which we have of his reign he would seem to have been a man of considerable ability. His reign was, however, brief and unquiet. It had hardly commenced when he had to go in person to quell an insurrection in Gaul, and all the rest of it was occupied in war with the Goths.

[Sidenote: [250-253 A.D.]]

This people, whose original seat seems to have been the Scandinavian peninsula, had at an early period crossed the Baltic, and settled on its southern coast. They had gradually advanced southwards, and they now had reached the Euxine. In the time of Alexander Severus they had made inroads into Dacia; and in that of Philip they ravaged both that province and Mœsia. In the first year of Decius (250) the Gothic king Cniva passed the Danube at the head of seventy thousand warriors, and laid siege to the town of Eustesium (Novi); being repelled by the Roman general Gallus, he advanced against Nicopolis, whence he was driven by the emperor or his son (it is uncertain which) with a loss of thirty thousand men. Undismayed by his reverses he crossed Mount Hæmus, in the hope of surprising Philippopolis; Decius followed him, but his camp at Berœa was surprised by the Goths and his troops were cut to pieces. Philippopolis stood a siege of some duration; but it was taken, and the greater part of its inhabitants were massacred. The Goths now spread their ravages into Macedonia, the governor of which, Philip’s brother Priscus, assumed the purple under their protection.

It seems most probable that it was the younger Decius who met with these reverses, for the emperor must have been at Rome, as we find that on his leaving it (251) to direct the Gothic war, a person named Julius Valens was declared emperor, to the great joy of the people. He was, however, killed shortly after. Decius, who was worthy of empire, was meantime amidst the cares of war engaged in the visionary project of restoring the long-departed public virtue which had once ennobled Rome. With this view he proposed to revive the office of censor, and the choice of the person being left to the senate they unanimously voted it (October 27), to P. Licinius Valerianus as being the man most worthy of it. The decree was transmitted to the emperor, who was in Thrace; he read it aloud in a large assembly, and exhorted Valerian, who was present, to accept the proffered dignity. Valerian would fain excuse himself. We know not if the emperor was satisfied with his excuses, but from the turn which public affairs took the censorship was never exercised.

Decius was successful against the Goths, who offered to surrender their booty and prisoners if allowed to repass the Danube; but the emperor, who was resolved to strike such a blow as would daunt the barbarians and make them henceforth respect the Roman arms, refused all terms. The Goths therefore gave him battle in a place where a part of their front was covered by a morass. The younger Decius was slain by an arrow in the beginning of the action; but the emperor crying out that the loss of one soldier did not signify, led on his troops. In the attempt to cross the morass they were pierced by the arrows of the enemy, or swallowed up in the mire, and the body of the emperor was never found.

GALLUS (C. VIBIUS TREBONIANUS GALLUS), 251-253 A.D.

The senate, it is said, but more probably the army, conferred the vacant purple on Gallus, the governor of Mœsia. He adopted Hostilianus, the remaining son of Decius, and gave him the title of Augustus; but this youth dying soon after of the plague, Gallus associated his own son Volusianus in the empire. Unable probably to resist the victorious Goths, Gallus agreed that they should depart with their booty and prisoners, and even consented to pay them annually a large sum of gold. He then set out for Rome, where he remained for the rest of his reign, ruling with great mildness and equity.

[Sidenote: [253-256 A.D.]]

The Goths and their allies, heedless of treaties, again (253) poured over the Danube; but Æmilianus, the governor of Mœsia, gave them a signal defeat, and his victorious troops forthwith proclaimed him emperor. Without a moment’s delay he put them in motion for Rome. Gallus advanced to engage him; the troops came in sight of each other at Interamna (Terni), and those of Gallus seeing themselves the weaker, and gained by the promises of Æmilianus, murdered the emperor and his son, and passed over to the side of the rebel.

ÆMILIANUS (C. JULIUS ÆMILIANUS), 253 A.D.

Æmilianus is said to have been a Moor by birth. Of his previous history nothing is known. He wrote to the senate to say that they should have the whole civil administration, and that he would be no more than their general, and that assembly readily acquiesced in his elevation.

But Valerian had been sent by Gallus to fetch the legions of Gaul and Germany to his aid; and these troops, as soon as they heard of his death, proclaimed their general emperor. He led them into Italy; and the troops of Æmilianus, which were encamped at Spoletium (Spoleto), fearing the strength and number of the advancing army, murdered their emperor to obviate a conflict. The reign of Æmilianus had not lasted four months.

VALERIAN (P. LICINIUS VALERIANUS) AND GALLIENUS (P. LICINIUS GALLIENUS), 253-260 A.D.

Valerian is said to have been sixty years of age when thus raised to the empire. Feeling the infirmities of age, or in imitation of the practice of so many preceding emperors, he associated with him his son Gallienus, a young man devoid neither of courage nor ability, but immoderately addicted to pleasure.

Had the Roman Empire been in the condition in which it was left by Augustus, Valerian might have emulated that emperor, and have displayed his virtues and beneficence in promoting the happiness of his subjects. But a great change had taken place in the condition of Rome; her legions no longer inspired their ancient terror; her northern and eastern provinces were exposed to the ravages of those who had formerly cowered before her eagles. Valerian could therefore only exhibit his wisdom in the selection of his generals; and it is to be observed that his choice never fell on an unworthy subject.

The enemies by whom the empire was assailed at this period were the Franks, the Alamanni, the Goths, and the Persians. As the scanty notices of these times do not enable us to arrange events chronologically, we will give a separate view of the wars with each of these peoples during the reigns of Valerian and his son.

[Sidenote: [256-262 A.D.]]

We have already observed the proneness of the Germanic tribes to form confederations. The Chauci, Cherusci, Chatti, and some adjoining states, had lately, it would seem, entered into one of these political unions under the name of Franks--i.e., freemen. Their strength and number now causing uneasiness for Gaul, the young emperor Gallienus was sent to that country; but the chief military command was conferred on Postumus, a man of considerable ability. The arms of the legions were successful in various encounters; but they were finally unable to prevent the passage of an army of the Franks through Gaul, whence surmounting the barrier of the Pyrenees they poured down into the now unwarlike Spain. The rich city of Tarraco was taken and sacked; the whole country was devastated, and the Franks, then seizing the vessels which they found in the ports, embarked to ravage Africa. We know not what was their ultimate fate; they were probably, however, destroyed in detail by the Roman troops and the provincials.

A portion of the great Suevian confederation had formed a new combination under the name of Alamanni--i.e., all men, on account of the variety of tribes which composed it. Like the Suevi, their forces were chiefly composed of cavalry, with active footmen mingled with them; and they always proved a formidable foe. While Gallienus was in Gaul a body of them entered Italy, penetrated as far as Ravenna, and their advanced troops came nearly within sight of Rome. The senate drew out the prætorian guards, and added to them a portion of the populace to oppose them; and the barbarians, finding themselves greatly outnumbered, hastened to get beyond the Danube with their plunder. Gallienus it is said was so much alarmed at the spirit and energy shown by the senate on this occasion, that he issued an edict interdicting all military employments to the senators, and even prohibiting their access to the camps of the legions. It is added that the luxurious nobles viewed this indignity as a favour rather than an insult.

Gallienus is also said to have overcome a large army of Alamanni in the vicinity of Mediolanum.[47] He afterwards espoused Pipa, daughter of the king of the Marcomanni (one of the confederates), to whom he gave a territory in Pannonia, as a means of averting the hostilities of the barbarians.

The Goths were now masters of the northern coast of the Euxine, and finding their attacks on the northern provinces generally repelled with vigour, they resolved to direct their efforts against more unwarlike districts. Collecting a quantity of the vessels used for navigating the Euxine, they embarked (258) and crossed that sea. They made their first attempt on the frontier town of Pityus, which was long ably defended against them; but they at length succeeded in reducing it. They thence sailed to the wealthy city of Trapezus (Trebizond); and though it was defended by a numerous garrison, they effected an entrance during the night. The cowardly garrison fled without making any resistance; the inhabitants were massacred in great numbers; the booty and number of captives were immense, and the victors having ravaged the province of Pontus embarked there on board of the ships which they found in the harbours, and returned to their settlement in the Tauric Chersonesus.

The next expedition of the Goths was directed to the Bosporus (261). They took and plundered Chalcedon and Nicomedia, Nicæa, Apamea, Prusa, and other cities of Bithynia. The accidental swelling of the little river Rhyndacus saved the town of Cyzicus from pillage.

The third expedition of the Goths was on a larger scale (262). Their fleet consisted of five hundred vessels of all sizes. They sailed along the Bosporus and Propontis; took and plundered Cyzicus; passed the Hellespont, and entered the Ægean. They directed their course to the Piræus; Athens could offer no resistance; the Goths ravaged Greece with impunity, and advanced to the shores of the Adriatic. Gallienus roused himself from his pleasures and appeared in arms. A Herulian chief with his men was induced to enter the Roman service; the Goths, weakened by this defection, broke up; a part forced their way to the Danube overland; the rest embarked and, pillaging and burning the temple of Diana at Ephesus on their way, returned to the Euxine.

Sapor of Persia had been long engaged in war with Chosroes king of Armenia, a prince of the house of Arsaces. Unable to reduce the brave Armenian, he caused him to be assassinated; and Armenia then received the Persian yoke. Elated with his success, Sapor invaded the Roman territory, took Nisibis and Carrhæ, and spread his ravages over Mesopotamia. Valerian, alarmed for the safety of the Eastern provinces, proceeded thither in person (259). The events of the war which ensued have not reached us. All that we know with certainty is that Valerian was finally defeated and made a captive (260). The circumstances of his capture were somewhat similar to those of the taking of Crassus. His army, by ignorance or treachery, got into a position where neither discipline nor courage could avail, being without supplies and suffering from disease. The soldiers clamoured for a capitulation; Sapor detained the deputies that were sent to him, and led his troops up to the camp; and Valerian was obliged to consent to a conference, at which he was made a prisoner.

Valerian ended his days a captive in Persia. We are told that Sapor treated him with every kind of indignity; that he led him about in chains clad in his imperial purple; that when the haughty Persian would mount his horse, the captive emperor was made to go on his hands and knees to serve as his horse-block; and that when death at length released him from his sufferings, his skin was stripped off, tanned and stuffed, and placed in one of the most celebrated temples of Persia. The sufferings of Valerian are, however, probably of the same kind with the tortures of Regulus and the iron cage of Bajazet--gross exaggerations of some degree of ill treatment or of necessary precaution.

GALLIENUS (P. LICINIUS GALLIENUS), 260-268 A.D.

[Sidenote: [260-262 A.D.]]

The captivity of Valerian was lamented by all but his son, who felt himself relieved by it from the restraint imposed on him by his father’s virtue. He even affected to act the philosopher on the occasion, saying in imitation of Xenophon, “I knew that my father was mortal”; but he never made any attempt to procure his liberty, and he abandoned himself without restraint to sensual indulgence.

The reign of Gallienus is termed the time of the Thirty Tyrants. This word [in its present sense deviating slightly from old Greek usage], merely signified prince, or rather usurper--that is, one who claims the supreme power already held by another. The tyrants of this time were in general men of excellent character, who had been placed in the command of armies by Valerian, and were invested with the purple by their soldiers often against their will. The number of these usurpers who rose and fell in succession did not exceed eighteen or nineteen, but some very fanciful analogy led to a comparison of them with the Thirty of Athens, and in the Augustan History an effort is made, by including women and children, to raise them to that number.

The East, Illyricum, Gaul, Greece, and Egypt were the places in which these tyrants appeared. We will notice them in order.

After the defeat of Valerian, Sapor conferred the title of emperor on a person named Cyriades, the son of a citizen of Antioch. This vassal forthwith conducted the Persian troops to the pillage of his native city, and so rapid and so secret was their march that they surprised the Antiochians while engaged at the theatre. The massacre and devastation usual in the East ensued. The Persian monarch then poured his troops into Cilicia, took and plundered Tarsus and other towns; then crossing Mount Taurus, he laid siege to Cæsarea in Cappadocia, a city with four hundred thousand inhabitants. It was stoutly defended for some time, but treachery at length delivered it into the hands of the Persians, and massacre and pillage followed. Sapor now spread his ravages on all sides; but the Roman troops having rallied under the command of Ser. Anicius Balista, who had been prætorian prefect, checked his career, and as he was retiring towards his own states he found himself assailed by an unexpected enemy.

Soon after the defeat and capture of Valerian, a train of camels laden with presents entered the camp of Sapor. They were accompanied by a letter from Odenathus, a wealthy citizen of Palmyra (the ancient Tadmor), containing an assurance that he had never acted against the Persians. Sapor, enraged at such insolence (as he deemed it), tore the letter, flung the gifts into the river, and declared that he would exterminate the insolent writer and his family unless he came before his throne with his hands bound behind his back. Odenathus at once resolved to join the Romans; he collected a force chiefly composed of the Bedouins, or Arabs of the desert, over whom he had great influence. He hovered about the Persian army, and attacking it at the passage of the Euphrates, carried off much treasure and some of the women of the Great King, who was forced to seek safety in a precipitate retreat. Odenathus made himself master of all Mesopotamia, and he even passed the Tigris and made an attempt on Ctesiphon (261). Gallienus gave him the title of his general of the East, and Odenathus himself took soon after that of king of Palmyra.

THE THIRTY TYRANTS

[Sidenote: [260-268 A.D.]]

The Roman troops in the East meantime, being resolved not to submit to Gallienus, were deliberating on whom they would bestow the purple. Acting under the advice of Balista, they fixed on the prætorian prefect, M. Fulvius Macrianus, a man of great military talents and, what was perhaps of more importance in their eyes, extremely wealthy. Macrianus conferred the office of prætorian prefect on Balista, and leaving with him his younger son and a part of the army to defend the East, he put himself at the head of forty-five thousand men, and taking with him his elder son, set out for Europe (261). On the borders of Illyricum he was encountered by M. Acilius Aureolus, the governor (or as some say the tyrant) of that province, and in the battle which ensued, himself and his son were slain, and his troops surrendered. After the death of Macrianus, Balista assumed the purple, but he was slain by order of Odenathus, whom Gallienus (264), with the full consent of the senate and people of Rome, had made his associate in the empire, giving him the titles of cæsar, augustus, and all the other tokens of sovereignty.

Ti. Cestius Æmilianus, who commanded in Egypt, assumed the purple in that province (262), in consequence it is said of a sedition in the most turbulent city of Alexandria; but he was defeated the following year, taken prisoner, and sent to Gallienus, who caused him to be strangled.

It was in Gaul that the usurpers had most success. As soon as Gallienus left that country (260), the general M. Cassianus Latinius Postumus was proclaimed emperor, and his authority appears to have been acknowledged in both Spain and Britain. He is described as a man of most noble and upright character; he administered justice impartially, and he defended the frontier against the Germans with valour and success. Possessed of the affections of the people, he easily maintained himself against all the efforts of Gallienus; but he was slain at last (267) in a mutiny of his own soldiers, to whom he had refused the plunder of the city of Mogontiacum, in which a rival emperor had appeared. Postumus had associated with himself in the empire Victorinus, the son of a lady named Aurelia Victoria, who was called the Mother of the Camp, and who had such influence with the troops, we know not how acquired, but probably by her wealth, as to be able to give the purple to whom she pleased. Victorinus being slain by a man whose wife he had violated, a simple armourer, named Marius, wore the purple for two days, at the end of which he was murdered; and Victoria then caused a senator named C. Pivesus Tetricus to be proclaimed emperor, who maintained his power for some years.

At the time when Macrianus claimed the empire, P. Valerius Valens, the governor of Greece, finding that that usurper, who was resolved on his destruction, had sent L. Calpurnius Piso against him, assumed the purple in his own defence. Piso, being forced to retire into Thessaly, caused himself to be proclaimed emperor there; but few joined him, and he was slain by a party of soldiers sent against him by Valens, who was himself shortly after put to death by his own troops. Both Valens and Piso were men of high character, especially the latter, to whom the senate decreed divine honours, and respecting whom Valens himself said that he would not be able to account to the gods below for having ordered Piso, though his enemy, to be slain, a man whose like the Roman Republic did not then possess.

C. Annius Trebellianus declared himself independent in Isauria, and T. Cornelius Celsus was proclaimed emperor in Africa; but both speedily perished (265). Among the calamities of this reign was an insurrection of the slaves in Sicily, similar to those in the time of the republic.

While his empire was thus torn asunder, Gallienus thought only of indulgence, and the loss of a province only gave him occasion for a joke. When Egypt revolted, “Well,” said he, “cannot we do without Egyptian linen?” So when Gaul was lost, he asked if the republic could not be secure without cloaks from Arras. He was content to retain Italy, satisfied with a nominal sovereignty over the rest of the empire; and whenever this seat of dominion was menaced, he exhibited in its defence the vigour and personal courage which he really possessed.

Gaul and Illyricum were the quarters from which Italy had most to apprehend. Gallienus therefore headed his troops against Postumus, and when D. Lælius Ingenuus revolted in Pannonia, he marched against him, defeated and slew him, and made the most cruel use of his victory to deter others (260). Q. Nonius Regalianus, who afterwards revolted in the same country, was slain by his own soldiers (263); but when Aureolus was induced to assume the purple (267) the Illyrian legions advanced and made themselves masters of Mediolanum (the modern Milan). Gallienus, shaking off sloth, appeared at the head of his troops; the hostile armies encountered on the banks of the Addua, and Aureolus was defeated, wounded, and forced to shut himself up in Mediolanum. During the siege a conspiracy was formed against the emperor by some of the principal officers of his army, and one night as he was sitting at table a report was spread that Aureolus had made a sally. Gallienus instantly threw himself on horseback to hasten to the point of danger, and in the dark he received a mortal wound from an unknown hand.

We now enter on a series of emperors of a new order. Born nearly all in humble stations, and natives of the province of Illyricum, they rose by merit through the gradations of military service, attained the empire in general without crime, maintained its dignity, and checked or punished the inroads of the barbarians. This series commences with the death of Gallienus and terminates with that of Licinius, embracing a period of somewhat more than half a century, and marked, as we shall find, by most important changes in the Roman Empire. [Thus the military revolution now begins to bear good fruit.]

CLAUDIUS (M. AURELIUS CLAUDIUS), 268-270 A.D.

[Sidenote: [268-270 A.D.]]

The murmurs of the soldiers on the death of Gallienus were easily stilled by the promise of a donative of twenty pieces of gold a man. To justify themselves in the eyes of the world, the conspirators resolved to bestow the empire on one who should form an advantageous contrast to its late unworthy possessor, and they fixed on M. Aurelius Claudius, who commanded a division of the army at Ticinum (modern Pavia). The soldiers, the senate, and the people alike approved their choice, and Claudius assumed the purple with universal approbation.

This excellent man, in whose praise writers of all parties are agreed, was a native of Illyricum, born apparently in humble circumstances. His merit raised him through the inferior gradations of the army; he attracted the notice of the emperor Decius, and the discerning Valerian made him general of the Illyrian frontier, with an assurance of the consulate.

Aureolus was soon obliged to surrender, and he was put to death by the soldiers. An army of Alamanni, coming perhaps to his aid, was then, it is said, defeated by Claudius near Verona. After his victory the emperor proceeded to Rome, where during the remainder of the year he devoted his time and thoughts to the reformation of abuses in the state. Among other just and prudent regulations, he directed that the properties confiscated by Gallienus should be restored to their original owners. A woman, it is said, came on this occasion to the emperor and claimed her land, which she said had been given to Claudius, the commander of the cavalry. This officer was the emperor himself, and he replied that the emperor Claudius must restore what he took when he was a private man and less bound to obey the laws.

The following year (269) the Goths and their allies embarked, we are told, to the number of 320,000 warriors, with their wives, children, and slaves, in two or, as some say, six thousand vessels, and directed their course to the Bosporus. In passing that narrow channel the number of their vessels and the rapidity of the current caused them to suffer considerable loss. Their attempts on Byzantium and Cyzicus having failed, they proceeded along the northern coast of the Ægean, and laid siege to the cities of Cassandrea and Thessalonica. While thus engaged they learned that the emperor was on his march to oppose them, and breaking up they advanced into the interior, wasting and plundering the country on their way. Near the town of Naisus, in Dardania, they encountered the Roman legions. The battle was long and bloody, and the Romans were at one time on the verge of defeat; but the skill of Claudius turned the beam, and the Goths were finally routed with a loss of fifty thousand men. During the remainder of the year numerous desultory actions occurred, in which the Goths sustained great losses; and being finally hemmed in on all sides by the Roman troops, they were forced to seek refuge in Mount Hæmus, and pass the winter amidst its snows. Famine and pestilence alike preyed on them, and when on the return of spring (270) the emperor took the field against them, they were obliged to surrender at discretion. A portion of their youth were enrolled in the imperial troops; vast numbers both of men and women were reduced to slavery; on some lands were bestowed in the provinces; few returned to their seats on the Euxine.

The pestilence which had afflicted the Goths proved also fatal to the emperor. He was attacked and carried off by it at Sirmium in the fifty-seventh year of his age. In the presence of his principal officers he named, it is said, Aurelian, one of his generals, as the fittest person to succeed him; but his brother Quintilius, when he heard of his death, assumed the purple at Aquileia, and was acknowledged by the senate. Hearing, however, that Aurelian was on his march against him, he gave up all hopes of success, and opening his veins died after a reign of seventeen days.

AURELIAN (L. DOMITIUS AURELIANUS), 270-275 A.D.

Aurelian, like his able predecessor, was a man of humble birth. His father is said to have been a small farmer, and his mother a priestess of the Sun, in a village near Sirmium. He entered the army as a common soldier, and rose through the successive gradations of the service to the rank of general of a frontier. He was adopted in the presence of Valerian (some said at his request) by Ulpius Crinitus, a senator of the same family with the emperor Trajan, who gave him his daughter in marriage, and Valerian bestowed on him the office of consul. In the Gothic War Claudius had committed to him the command of the cavalry.

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

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

AURELIAN WALLS ROME AND INVADES THE EAST

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

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

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

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

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

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

ZOSIMUS DESCRIBES THE DEFEAT OF ZENOBIA

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE FALL OF PALMYRA

[Sidenote: [273 A.D.]]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AURELIAN QUELLS REVOLTS; ATTEMPTS REFORMS; IS MURDERED

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE ISAURIAN ROBBERS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FOOTNOTES

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

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

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

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

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

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