THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES THE ROMAN EMPIRE THE ROMAN EMPIRE ESSAYS ON THE CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY FROM THE ACCESSION OF DOMITIAN (81 A.D.) TO THE RETIREMENT OF NICEPHORUS III. (lo8l A.D.) BY F. W. BUSSELL FELLOW AND TUTOR OF BRASENOSE COLLEGE, OXFORD RECTOR OF SIZELAND VOLUME I LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA IQIO All rights reserved Library TO MY FRIEND ALFRED J. BUTLER, D.Lrrr., FELLOW AND BURSAE OF BRASENOSE, WHOSE WORK ON THE ARAB CONQUEST OF EGYPT IS NOT THE LEAST NOTABLE MONUMENT OF THE INTEREST OF OUR COLLEGE IN THE HISTORY OF IMPERIAL ROME / .^ ^ >- 1155117 \ ^ CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTION i BOOK I THE PAGAN EMPIRE : THE CIVILIAN MONARCHY AND THE MILITARY REACTION CHAP. I. The Reign of Domitian and the Era of the Earlier Antonines (81-180 A.D.) 25 II. The Pseudo-Antonines ; or, the Afro-Syrian House and the Regimen of Women (180-235 A.D.) ... 43 III. The Moral Revival, the Suggested Dyarchy, and the Illyrian Line (235-285 A.D.) 65 IV. Centralised Absolutism; or, the System of Diocletian and Constantine (285-337 A.D.) .... 88 BOOK II PROBLEMS OF THE NEW MONARCHY AND THE NEW SUBJECTS ; OR, THE LIMITATIONS OF AUTOCRACY AND THE BARBARIAN OFFER I. The New System of Caste and Officialism ; the Severance of Civil and Military Orders ; and the Influx of Aliens 109 II. Legitimacy ; or, the Dynastic Epoch and the Successors of Constantine (337-457 A.D.) . . . . .125 III. Liberal Imperialism; or, the Functions of the Emperor and the Proffer of Barbarian Loyalty . . . 146 IV. The Era of the Patricians ; or, the Barbarian Pro- tectorate 168 vii viii CONTENTS BOOK III RECONSTRUCTION AND COLLAPSE UNDER THE HOUSES OF JUSTIN AND HERACLIUS: VICTORY OF CIVILIAN AND REACTION TO MILITARY FORMS CHAP. PAGE I. The Eastern Rejection of the Teutonic Patronate ; and the Adoptive Period of Mature Merit (457-527 A.D.) 195 II. The Restoration ; or, Period of Conquest and Central Control under Justinian (527-565 A.D.) . . .218 III. Success of the Forces arrayed against Absolutism; Overthrow of the Empire (565-610 A.D.) . . . 246 IV. The Protest of Carthage ; or, the Second African House and the Orthodox Crusade (610-711 A.D.) . . 268 BOOK IV ZENITH AND DECLINE OF THE BYZANTINE MONARCHY UNDER ASIATIC INFLUENCE: ROMAN TRADITION, THE COURT, AND THE FEUDAL NOBILITY I. The Second Syrian House ; or, the Attempt at Pro- testant Reform (717-820 A.D.) 291 II. The Pretenders, and the Establishment of the Dynasty of Phrygia(82o-9i9 A.D.) 310 III. The Epoch of the Byzantine "Shogunate"; or, the Age of Military Expansion and Recovery (919-1025 A.D.) 328 IV. Extinction of Roman Tradition under the Daughters of Constantine IX. (1025-1081 A.D.) .... 340 REVIEW OF THE PERIOD 354 ANALYSIS 373 LIST OF EMPERORS AND DYNASTIES A. First ' ' Flavian " House : VESPASIANUS 69-79 TITUS (son) 79-8i DOMITIANUS 81-96 B. Adoptive or Antoninian Period : M. COCCEIUS NERVA 96-98 NERVA TRAJANUS (Spain) .... 98-117 JEL.IUS HADRIANUS 117-138 TITUS ANTONINUS I. Pius . . 138-161 f MARC. AURELIUS ANTONINUS II. 161-180 \M. ANTONINUS III. VERUS . . 161-169 Luc. AUREL. COMMOD. ANTON- > Q INUS IV f *- I 9 a HELVIUS PERTINAX .... 193 . . DIDIUS JULIANUS I. . . . . 193 . . PESCENNIUS NIGER (in Syria) . 193-194 CLODIUS ALBINUS (in Brit.) . . 193-197 C. Afro-Syrian House and Pseudo-Antonines : L. SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS I. (Afric.) . 193-211 CM. AURELIUS ANTONINUS V.} < ("Caracallus,"son) 1211217 (ANTONINUS VI. GETA (brother) | 211-212 M. OPILIUS MACRINUS . . . 217-218 ANTONINUS VII. DIADU- ) MENIANUS f ' ' M. AUREL. ANTONINUS VIII. ) (" Elagabalus," son of A. V.) f 2I M. AUREL. SEVERUS II. ALEXANDER 222-235 milit. nom. birth. birth. senat. nom. adoption. ? adopt. adopt. adopt. adopt. birth. senat. nom. milit. nom. milit. nom. milit. nom. . milit. nom. ( birth and ' adop- ( tion.' birth. milit. nom. birth. {milit. nom. and 'birth.' , birth. L. JUL. AUR. URANIUS ANTONINUS IX. (in East). D. Gordian House (from Africa) : JUL. VALER. MAXIMINUS I. (Dacia) MAXIMUS I. (? or -inus), son. . 236-238 M. ANTONIUS GORDIANUS I. (at 1 Carthage) ) ' ' M. ANT. GORDIANUS II. (son) . . 238 . . MAXIMUS II. PUPIENUS . . . ) DEC. JUN. BALBINUS . . . . 1 3 M. ANTONIUS GORDIANUS III. (son of II. ) milit. nomin. birth. provinc. nomin. birth. senat. nomin. milit. nom. birth. and E. Period of Disorder : M. JULIUS PHILIPPUS I. and II. (Arab) 244-249 . milit. nomin. C. MESSIUS DECIUS (Pannon.) . . 249-251 . milit. nom. HERENNIUS ETRUSCUS (son) birth. ( HOSTILIANUS (brother) 251-252 . birth. ( C. VIBIUS TREBONIANUS GALLUS . 251-253 . milit. nom. VOLUSIANUS GALLUS II. (son) birth. /EMILIANUS 253 . . milit. nom. is x LIST OF EMPERORS AND DYNASTIES ( P. LICINIUS VALERIANUS I. ... 253-260 . milit. nom. I P. LICIN. GALLIENUS (son) . . . 253-268 . birth. LICINIUS VALERIANUS II. (brother) SALONINUS (nephew), &c. or VALERIANUS III. F. The " Thirty Tyrants " : (a) The Gaulish monarchy : POSTUMUS ........ 258-267 . milit. nom. kills Saloninus at Cologne. Reigns at Treves over Gaul, Britain, Spain ; associates (a. reneg. general of) VICTORINUS-^ Gallien, slain by own V 265-268 . co-opt. \ troops ..... J 26 7 . . . mili,nom. }** Oct.-268 Feb ' f VICTORIA (mother of Victorin) . . 268-270? . gov. of Aquitaine;~| yields to Aurelian, V 268-274 . FEMALE nom. {gov. of Aquitaine;~| yields to Aurelian, V 274 ..... J (b) The Eastern Monarchy : (1) Roman : in Egypt and Syria BALISTA (?) and CYRIADES .... 261 FULV. MACRIANUS . { Va ^ q ure b y lus . [261-262 MACRIANUS II. (son) QUIETUS (son) (2) Alien SEPTIMIUS OD/BNATHUS, recogn. by Gallien . . ' imp.' 262 'Aug.' 264-267 . co-opt. HERODES (son), both slain by> 6 ^ binh Maeomus ......... I ( ZENOBIA (wife of Od) ..... 266-273 ( VABALATHUS (son) ..." Aug ' 270 or 1-272 birth. (c) Brief and sporadic seditions : Pannonia. INGENUUS. . REGALIANUS, ? Dacian (killed by own soldiers). fsauria. TREBELLIANUS (bandit, predec. of Zeno and Longinus). Egypt. {vanq. byTheo-^ dotus. Sent [ 263 by Gallien. i FIRMUS I. (a 'bandit') ..... 274 North Italy. AUREOLUS, Dacian herdsman ) fi (long faithful lieut. of Gallien) f 2 7 27 G. The "Illyrian" or Pannonian line : M. AUREL. CLAUDIUS II ..... 268-270 . milit. nom. QUINTILLUS (brother) ..... 270 . . . birth. L. DOMIT. VALER. AURELIANUS . 270-275 . milit. nom. M. CLAUDIUS TACITUS ..... 275-276 . senat. nomin. FLORIANUS (brother) .... 276 . . . birth. LIST OF EMPERORS AND DYNASTIES XI M. AURELIUS VALER. PROBUS . . 276-282 . milit. nom. M AURELIUS CARUS 282-283 inilit. nom ( M. AURELIUS NUMERI AN us (son) . 283 . . birth. I M. AURELIUS CARINUS (brother) 283-285 . birth. JULIANUS II ( C. AUREL. VALEK. DIOCLETIAN us . 284-305 . ( M. AUREL. VALER. MAXIMIANUS . 285-305 . milit. nom co-opt. C. GALERIUS MAXIMIANUS II. . . 305-311 . adopt. JULIANUS III. (Garth.). CARAUSIUS AND ALLECTUS (Britain) 286-293 . milit. nom. H. The "Flavian" Houses (Constantine, Valentinian, and Theodosius) FLAVIUS VALER. CONSTANTIUS I. ) , (grand-nephew of Claud. II.) . f3 o 53OO . adopt. FLAV. VAL. CONSTANTINUS I. . . 306-337 . birth. MAXIMINUS II. (or III. ?) . . 308-313 . co-opt. SEVERUS III 307-308 . co-opt. MAXENTlUS(sonof Maximian I.) 306-312 . milit. nom. P. VALERIUS L'IANUS LICINIUS III. ) and IV. (son) ] 3-323 co-opt. / FLAV. JUL. CONSTAN- \ ( 337-340 . birth. TINUS II | , /FLA. JUL. CONSTAN- } so ~ s T ot < 337-361 . birth. j TIUS II I j \ FLAV. JUL. CONSTANS I. J ' 337-350 . birth. MAGNENTIUS (Gaul) .... 350-353 . milit. nom. DECENTIUS (brother) .... 351-353 . milit. nom. VETRANIO 350 . . . milit. nom. NEPOTIANUS (in Rome) . . . 350 . . . milit. nom. : bii SILVANUS (Gaul at Cologne) . . 355 . . . milit. nom. FLAV. CLAUDIUS JULIANUS IV. . . ) 6 , (cousin of Constance II. ). . . j 3 r 3 3 birth. FLAV. TOVIANUS . . 161-161 milit. nom. WEST FLAVIUS VALENTINI- ANUS 1 364 375 mil. nom. f FLAVIUS GRATIANUS I. (son) .... 375-383 . birth. | FLAVIUS VALENTINI- V. ANUS II. (brother) . 375-392 MAXIMUS III. . . 383-388 milit. nom. EUGENIUS . . . 392-394 . BARB. nom. FLAV. THEODOSIUS I. 394-395 FLAV. HONORIUS . . 395-423 . birth. In Britain MARCUS .... 405 j GRATIANUS II. . . 406 CONSTANTINUS III. 407-411 J- mil. nom. CONSTANS II. (son) 409-411 J In Spain MAXIMUS IV. . . 410 . BARB. nom. At Mentz JOVINUS (Gaul) . .411 SEBASTIANUS (bro. 412 PR. ATTAEUS . . 409-410 . BARB. (in Rome) nom. FLAV. CONSTANTIUS III." (bro.-in-law to Honor.) 421 JOHANNES I. ... 423-425 . BARB. nom. EAST FLAVIUS VALENS (bro.) 364-378 . birth. PROCOPIUS . . . 365, 366 . birth. FLAVIUS THEODOSIUS I. 378-395 . co-opt. FLAV. ARCADIUS (son) 395-408 . birth. FLAV. THEODOSIUS II. (son) 408-450 . birth. Xll LIST OF EMPERORS AND DYNASTIES EAST WEST FLAV. PLAC. VALEN- TINIANUS III. . . . 425-455 (son of Const. III. and Placidia) FLAV. JUL. VAL. MA- JORIANUS .... 457-461 FLAV. LIBIUS SEVERUS IV 461-465 [Interregnum] FLAV. PROCOP. AN- THEMIUS .... 467-472 OLYBRIUS 472 FL. GLYCERIUS . . 473-474 JULIUS II. NEPOS . 474-475 ROMULUS .... 475-476 FLAV. ODOVACAR (patric.} 476-491 THEODORic(/>a/r*V.) 489 king in Italy . . 493 birth. PETRONIUS MAXI- MUS V 455-456 . ? nom. AVITUS (in Gaul) . 456-457 . prov. BARB. nom. BARB. nom. co-opt. East (? birth) BARB. nom. and FEMALE right. BARB. nom. co-opt. East. milit. FLAV. MARCIANUS (husb. of Pulcheria) . 450-457 . FEMALE right. I. Later Pseudo-Flavians and Pannonian House of Justin : FLAVIUS LEO I. \ 457-474 . BARB. (Thrac. ) . . . . / nom. FLAVIUS LEO II. (son) 474 FLAVIUS ZENO (father) 474-475 BASILISCUS (bro. of Leo's widow) . . . 475-477 ZENO (restored) . . . 477-491 K. The Second African House, or the Dynasty of Heraclius : HERACLIUS I. (from Carth.) . . . 610-641 . milit. pretend. HERACLIUS II. (or Const. IV. ?), son 641 . . . birth. HERACLIUS III. (or Heraclonas) bro. 641. . . birth. TIBERIUS III. ('David'), bro birth. "CoNSTANS III." (son of Her. II.) . 641-668 . birth. CONSTANTINUS IV. POGONATUS (son 668-685 . birth. ( HERACLIUS IV. bros. assoc birth. 1 TIBERIUS IV birth. JUSTINIANUS II. (son 685-695 . birth. LEONTIUS 695-698 . milit. conspir. TIBERIUS V. APSIMARUS . . . 698-705 . milit. nom. JUSTINIANUS II. (restored) .... 705-711 . foreign aid. FEMALE right. FEMALE nom. FLAV. ANASTASIUS I. (husb. of Ariadne) . 491-518 , FLAV. ANIC. JUSTINUS I. . . 944 . birth. (CONSTANTINUS VIII j (CONSTANTINUS VII. (sole) . . 944-959) ROMANUS II. (son of Const. VII. ) . . .. grandson of Romanus I. ). . . [959-963 . birth. f BASILIUS II. (son) 963-1025 . birth. ( CONSTANTINUS IX. (brother) . . . 963-1028 . birth, NICEPHORUS II. PHOCAS . . . 963-969 . milit. nom. and FEMALE right. JOHANNES II. TZIMISCES (neph.) 969-976 . palace conspir. ROMANUS III. (son-in-law to Const. ) ,_ , T?.,.. _ . , IX.,husb. loZoe) [1028-1034. FEMALE right. MICHAEL IV.(Paphlag.) husb.to Zoe . 1034-1041 . FEMALE right. MICHAEL V. (nephew) adopted by ^ I04I _ IO42 . FEMIN . adopt> ZOE AND THEODORA (sisters to- \ gether) f 10 CONSTANTINUS X. (Monomachus), )__._ ., tv.,,., r, ,;,. husb. of Zoe. ..... '.'[1042-1054. FEMALE right. THEODORA (alone) d. of Const. IX. 1054-1056 . birth. MICHAEL VI. (Stratioticus). . . . 1056-1057 . FEM. nomin. N. Prelude of the Comnenian Age and House of Ducas : ISAACIUS I. (Comnenus) .... 1057-1059 . milit. nom. 'CONSTANTINUS XI. (Ducas) . . . 1059-1067 . civil, nomin. EUDOCIA (widow and regent for I" MICHAEL VII. "J < ANDRONICUS I. > her sons 1067 (CONSTANTINUS XII. j ROMANUS IV. (Diogenes), husb. of) , _, _ ( FEM. right and Eudocia f 10 " I071 t milit. nom. IMICHAEL VII. (with his brothers) . . 1071-1078 CONSTANTINUS XIII. son. . . . 1075- ? NICEPHORUS (III.) Bryennius milit. pretend. NICEPHORUS III. (IV.), Botani- J I0?8 _ lo8l . milit> pretend> C. Pseudo-Antonines: Spartianus, Geta, 2. " In animo habuit Severus ut omnes deinceps principes quemadmodurn Augusti, ita etiam Antonini dicerentur." xiv LIST OF EMPERORS AND DYNASTIES Lampridius Diadumenus, 6. " Fuit quidem tarn amabile illis temporibus nomen Antoninorum ut qui eo nomine non niteretur, mereri non videretur imperium." Capitolinus Macrinus, 3. "Alii vero tantum desiderium nominis hujus fuisse dicunt, ut nisi populus et militesAntonini nomen audirent, imperatorem eum non putarent " (cum Petschenig). H. The Flavian Houses: The name Antoninus being now obsolete, its place in popularity is taken by the name Flavius, which attained so great a vogue that it was adopted by barbarian kings; and especially by the Lombards, as a title of office: cf. Paulus Diaconus, Gest. Langob.: of Authari's election, 584 A.D. " Quem etiam obdignitatem Flaviumappellsirunt, quo praenomine omnes (qui postea fuerunt Langobardorum reges) feliciter usi stint " (v. Abel's note, p. 60). Recared the Visigoth assumed also : Odovacar had done so on failure of Western line : The same reason as for name An.tonin.vs; or for eager acceptance of title patricius= endeavour to obtain by this affiliation or adoption a semblance of legitimacy and continuity. K. A similar emphasis is given to the name Tiberius, now completely re- instated in popular favour, a tardy and ironical justice to a great emperor. It is borne by Tiberius Constantino ; Martina's son David changes to it during the brief, joint reigns of Heraclius I.'s sons by his second marriage; the brother of Constantine IV. reigning with him about 678, is another Tiberius, and Pope Agatho (writing after Synod of 680) addresses to the three co-emperors Const., Heracl. IV., and Tiberius IV. In the same year they were degraded. It is doubtful whether the poor lad (in whose pathetic murder near the altar the line became extinct) was associated by Justinian II. : but it is at least probable. With the family of Heraclius, the fascination of the once-detested name was forgotten, and the "Isaurian" and Phrygian families hark back once more to the traditions of Constantine the Great. It seems quite obvious that Heraclius deliberately (like his predecessor Severus), sought connection with the beloved Tiberius II. Apsimar assumed it (during the interregnum under Justinian's reign), no doubt at the express wish of his supporters ; and it was adopted by more than one rebel in the West before the final severance of Rome from the empire. INTRODUCTION 1. THE purpose of the following essays, written Scope and for the use of general reader and modern politician, is to add a modest contribution to the interpreta- tion of the imperial system. I have tried to follow the development of the constitution during a period of one thousand years ; and I must sooner or later justify this choice of somewhat arbitrary limits ; why should the historian begin with Domitian and relax his flagging interest at the dethronement of the third Nicephorus ? I am well aware that all the limits of all historical periods are in truth fictitious and imaginary ; and it is an idle task to dam up the current of a river, in the vain hope of obtaining leisure to analyse its constituents or its direction. I am a firm believer in the continuity of the develop- ment of mankind ; though I do not always accept the assurance or the evidence of those who imagine that their route is direct, their destination certain. It is the part of the student to trace the presages and premonitions of the future in an earlier epoch ; and with a limited power of judgment to suggest rather than to dogmatise upon the real and often subterranean forces, already silently at work but only emerging in a later age. I have chosen the opening date of the period because I feel that other competent critics have already devoted, or might devote, their time with far greater success than VOL. I. A 2 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF IXTRO. Scope and myself to the classical age of the empire I mean Value. the Julo-Claudian house ; and I am not without misgivings in addressing myself to the Flavian restora- tion, and that period of repose endeared to the young student by the half-merited eulogy of Gibbon, the "Age of the Five Good Emperors." It is im- possible, however, to dispense entirely with some sort of general appraisement of the method, the function, and the success of the early empire, in its self-appointed task. But the modern scholar weighted with material steadily accumulating, each year needing more scientific and minute equipment for the simplest task or the briefest monograph must learn the lesson of abstinence and accept without a murmur the profound and salutary law of the "division of labour." It were in vain to multiply continuous narratives in English dress of the events already told by the four great English his- torians Gibbon, Finlay, Bury, and Hodgkin. It would be an impertinence to repeat again the records which are open to all in their stately, sincere, critical, or eloquent pages. Nor is there need for me to reiterate, what is obvious, my constant indebtedness to their patience, care, and suggestiveness. I would only add to these familiar authorities the names of two others, equally well known, who have laboured less in this portion of human records. It has been my privilege at different times to know both these Oxford professors, Freeman and Pelham, who have done so much to encourage an exact and sympathetic knowledge of the past. And this little contribution is in some sense due to their stimulating interest in younger men, which influence hundreds besides my- self have felt and appreciated, though perhaps few in this busy and unresting age have had leisure to follow up their fascinating suggestions. But the Oxford tutor cannot forget that besides the rare intervals of learned ease in term, there are six months in the year during which the multifarious and conflicting duties of tuition or administration can be laid aside INTRO. THE ROMAN EMPIRE 3 for a concentrated task. When from some of our Scope and younger men such works as Mr. Henderson's " Nero " or Dr. Dudden's "St. Gregory" are produced, one feels not merely pride in their fellowship but a con- fidence that the utilitarian changes, which many anticipate to-day, will respect even if they cannot understand the devotion and the industry of such scholars, their steady interest in a single obscure page of history. It seems clear that the prejudice against classical studies can only be justified in any degree when the acquaintance with a dead language in its minute structure is thought an end in itself, and no real attempt is made by its use to lay open the treasures or decipher the teaching of the past. In an age like the present, when concentrated and continuous reading is becoming obsolete, it is more than ever needful for the few who have the key and the leisure to turn it, to unlock the door for the general benefit. I do not know any better remedy against the hasty opportunism of amateurs who know only the surface of their own age and none of the hidden causes that have produced it than acquaint- ance with the events and lessons of history. There has prevailed to a dangerous extent a complacent idea that about the middle of the nineteenth century there dawned a new era different from any that had gone before ; and that the opening of the vote and the closing of the ballot-box have made a mighty change in human nature. This regeneration of man- kind may be dated from the popular outbursts in 1848, or the Great Exhibition of 1851 from a violent or a peaceful origin ; but the newest phase of society cannot be said at the present moment to have acquired any very definite or encouraging features. We are still constantly thrown back upon the past for parallels of warning or instruction. Few sup- porters survive of the theory of an unbroken advance to a certain goal ; indeed there are not many who venture a satisfactory definition of progress. It would be the height of folly to reject the lessons 4 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF INTRO. Scope and which Roman development can display to us, on Value. the hypothesis of some permanent metamorphosis which has of late transformed our nature and made all past precedent superfluous and inapplicable. Whether the cause of the change be the Christian religion reaching at last, after dogmatic aberrations, its true social function, or the scientific inroad of unquestioned fact and unerring sequence, or the new humanitarian and cosmopolitan sentiment destined to weld mankind into a sympathetic commonwealth of equal and free citizens such a mighty influence is often believed to be triumphing everywhere by a complacent critic of a limited span of years. And yet we have not to look far for striking and significant parallels between our own times and the first three centuries ; the crowned Communism or empurpled Socialism, which under cover of a fictitious plutocratic census of rank and dignity very cleverly exploited the rich for the benefit of the poor, and turned the personal wealth, power, and pride of the people's representative into genuine democratic affluence ; the professed pacific basis of the State and its stationary limits ; the undying feud between the two conceptions of the emperor, as mature and efficient magistrate in an autonomous State, and as secluded and semi-divine sovereign, wielding as in Neo-Platonism, indirectly and through agents, a sacred and autocratic power ; the retreat of the historic families from the active charges of public life to give place to lesser men, without tradition and often without conscience ; the gradual drifting of these intermediate functionaries (whom we should now term by the collective title of bureaucracy) out of control, alike independent of the fury or protests of the people or the frown of a helpless monarch ; the fond attachment to the fiction of a free election, combined with a natural instinct, in the subject no less than in the interested dynasty, for hereditary succession ; the severance of function, or "division of labour," which results from any calculated formulation of the respective duties of INTRO. THE ROMAN EMPIRE 5 government and citizen the careful partition of class Scope and and interest and function, until the whole business Value - of the State is transferred to experts, and the boasted democratic opening to average intelligence is falsified in the excessive power enjoyed by secret and irresis- tible committees, of national defence, or of finance or education ; the growing irresponsibility of the governors and the difficulty of reform ; the popular and progressive sympathies of the sovereign thwarted at every turn by the intrigues of the palace ; the gradual creation of an independent class, sometimes of the rich, at others of the official hierarchy, who claim to be above law, and withdraw themselves by privilege and immunity from the restraints which govern the rest of mankind ; the tendency to cen- . tralise in a nominal autocrat, who by the very fulness of recognition loses most of his real influ- ence : such are the features of the ancient republic which must to any student of our own time suggest throughout Europe to-day the closest of analogies. For what is true of a despotic State (so-called) is found to be true also of a free commonwealth ; that is, the exclusion of the " people " from any real share in their government beyond the payment of taxes, over which they have little control, and the surrender of power to compact and irresponsible minorities not like an aristocracy of birth directly amenable and highly sensitive to public opinion, but lacking dignity or conviction as they lack publicity, and during their tenure of power indifferent to its voice. These are serious falsifications of the hopes and prayers so freely showered upon the new age, which dates its era from the middle of last century. Yet no one who, without prejudice as to the peculiar monarchic or representative formula of the consti- tution, meditates on the actual problems in Russia or in France, in the United States or even in England, can deny that modern society has many features in common with that age, whose history we propose to follow. Nor is the mere analysis of slow and Scope and Value. 'Imper- 6 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF INTRO. cyclic development without value ; our horizon of history is perhaps dangerously circumscribed to-day, and the vague movement of the impersonal forces cannot be easily detected in the short modern epoch we condescend to honour with our attention. 2. But I am well aware that many critics will find sonal' treat- this didactic or pragmatic writing of history both tiresome and misleading. " History," they will assert, " can be manipulated so as to teach any lesson which the writer wishes to deduce ; and you may with equal plausibility prove the failure and the success of the democratic regimen at Athens, the benign or disastrous result of the feudal system." " Genuine history is not didactic or exemplary ; it is critical and statistical that is, it includes the minute record and verification of facts and events ; and it is economic, to use the word in its wider sense, a careful generalising from data supplied in the former method, as to the impersonal currents and tendencies which underlie and guide them." It is quite true that with the very prevalent denial of free-will, history becomes a survey of dancing automata, plagued with a conviction of their own spontaneity " wire - pulled " as one of our own emperors would say. We know that Mr. Froude's idea of the claim of historical studies is quite out of fashion : " To discover noble characters and to pay them ungrudging honour." An overt or covert Hegelianism has invaded the already very restricted area of man's liberty ; and each actor is detected as the mere mouthpiece of the Time-Spirit, and not in any strict or decisive sense, himself. And with this in view, most historians (except perhaps the romantic Mommsen) prefer not to distribute praise and blame with the cheap and facile moralising of an older school. Nero is no longer the target of abuse for superhuman wickedness ; and the Ca3sars are trans- formed from unrecognisable monsters into the tied exponents of general tendencies. Hence we see to- day a kindly and universal inclination to rehabilitate ; INTRO. THE ROMAN EMPIRE 7 for by a genial inconsistency, we like to attri- 'imper- bute a man's virtues to himself and spread the sonal> .,.,., , ,. ,. i ment of responsibility for his vices upon his age, his circum- history. stances, his education. And it must seriously be confessed that the philosophical student of history cannot fail to be impressed with the small and futile part played on the world's stage by conscious and deliberate intent. The symmetrical and calculated constitution falls to pieces at once ; and the ill- balanced and creaking edifice of centuries of re- modelling outlasts every rival and defies every reformer. Hegel writes as if the genuine actors in the drama were the invisible age- or race-spirits, which "gather round the throne of the Eternal" each having played its part and contributed its quota to the grand design assembling, as it were, for the last scene, the brilliant ensemble of the final chorus and consummation. For him, man is of value only as a "type," or rather only as an instance of a " type." And it need not be said that to this agrees modern fiction, whether in story or theatre ; for the hero is no successful adventurer, but rather one struggling in the grip of aimless destiny ; and there is always an undercurrent of irony, the spectator and reader knowing, as in the Sophoclean CEdipus, the vast gulf stretching between his confessed purpose and the real ends he unconsciously subserves. And thus personal history is out of date ; we abandon the consular lists, the imperial series, and try to immerse ourselves in the life of the people, or detect the vague current of the time ; we snatch eagerly at the least hint of genuine feeling, of daily routine, of economic and social changes. Disgusted with the parade or treachery of courts, we turn away from the industrious minuteness of Lebeau, as a typical chronicler of an age when national life seemed to centre in a palace. And in reaction, we are inclined to invest with unmerited virtues and a fixed public opinion, the great mass of the subject population. We forget that this very public opinion, the test and 8 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF INTRO. 'Imper- sonal' treat- ment of history. Empire re- presentative of 'Will of the Age.' safeguard of fitness for self-government, is a plant of modern and tender growth ; and in some countries, as France, it has already ceased to blossom, just as in the strangely akin monarchy which is its well- assorted ally, it has not yet begun to thrive. It is a revenge upon the failure of deliberate statesmen and calculating administrators that we set up the ideal of the honest but reserved " Will of the People," the sound heart of the nation not indeed articulate in personal edicts or manifestos, but beating some- where and pulsing through the still dormant frame with a vague yet rhythmic movement. 3. No one, I feel sure, would wish to dispute the one single indisputable axiom left to us in the wreck of most positive political belief, as we have perforce to start again from the very alphabet of social needs I mean the good nature, the honesty and the kindli- ness of the average man. I am indeed confident that upon this basis alone can any future recon- struction of decrepit democracy take a firm place ; given over it would seem to-day to general supine- ness and stagnation, out of which emerge the strange panaceas of scientific biologists, and the secret and (in effect) irresponsible rule of interested minorities both uniting in a single fear, that of any genuine appeal to the people, in a single contempt, that of the native loyalty and friendliness of the normal man. Now we are apt to transfer our admiration for this untutored instinct of the individual to the mass ; the good sense of the voter to the body of heterogeneous representatives which he calls together. But a knowledge of history does not bear out this hasty generalisation. It is to be feared that assemblies stand for disunion and the spirit of envious partizans, save in some rare moment of national crisis. The reason of the success of the imperial system, its hold upon popular affection, lay in this conviction that it aimed at strict im- partiality, uniform justice, equalisation of burden and of opportunity. But can it be honestly main- INTRO. THE ROMAN EMPIRE 9 tained, with the whole turbulent history of the Empire re- conciliar period before us, from Nice, let us say, ^^f 1 ^ to the " robber-den " at Ephesus, that any question the Age.' of universal moment could have been safely intrusted to the people's representatives ? And was not the tacit agreement of the democracy, by no means without intermittent articulateness and plain speech that nothing could replace the Caesarian regimen, a proof of the soundness of their common sense ? It is quite possible that free government in the genuine sense may imply disorder as an ingredient, not as an exception ; just as in Teutonic subjectivity and in feudalism, private war, local justice, and the duel shattered a centralised and uniform govern- ment. It would be no real paradox, in these days, when perhaps no formal principles of universal validity are acknowledged in any sphere, to say that much too high a price can be paid for public order ; and that the entire liberal yet firm policy of the empire was at fault in not encouraging free-play in those decaying or rudimentary forces which occupied or coveted the charmed area. It might be easy to show that on the whole this judicious restraint, this equalis- ing and humane law, was to the advantage of the weaker and numerous class, who, whatever the precise designation of the State, seem under any commonwealth to suffer alike. To the credit of the imperial line, it cannot be maintained that the single popular representative was ever intimidated into the enormity of class-legislation. (For this is not condemned by any preconceived standard of right and wrong, but merely on account of its im- prudence ; for the law of reaction and reprisal is ignored and this old principle is accepted uncon- sciously, that the final form of social order shall be a perpetual state of civil war and alternate injustice.) Yet on the other hand all law settlement and security tell in favour of the class in power ; and it must be confessed that it is difficult to get away from the 10 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF INTRO. Empire re- cynical truth of a Platonic formula, TO TOV presentattve ff vu. , , ,- > - , / ,* ^ \ tlie Age.' Greek law-making, Trpos TWV e^oi/rwf 9otpe TOV vopov Ti6r)<;. And the heroic attempts to hold the colossus together, such as we witness again and again in the devoted and untiring sacrifice of an Aurelian, a Probus, a Diocletian, a Justinian, a Heraclius, a Leo may well be branded as selfish and egoistic defiance of praiseworthy nationalism. It is a humiliat- ing confession for professed Christians living under an honest social system but we lack entirely the certain data or absolute standard by which to measure or to criticise. We are told that Providence is on the side of big battalions, but we are as yet unaware if it extends its fullest sympathies to overgrown empires and confederations ; whether the drift of time sets steadily and with some hidden purpose towards aggregations of warring elements, kept in leash by some central impartial and forcible power. And even if we allow this to be actually the direction of the current to-day, we may at least utter a vain and regretful protest against the extinction of the lesser states, the local liberties, the more direct and sincere contact of the citizen with the working of State all which are of necessity sacrificed to the interests of a vague yet overpowering Ideal. And one must repeat it is no paradox to affirm with Tacitus one's academic predilection for the matchless spectacle of the noble savage in his continual feuds, of the indefinite turmoil and exuberant disorder of petty commonwealths, living the simple life, boasting the more manly virtues, and regarding war (in the intervals of the chase) as the noblest and normal occupation of man. With certain modifications, one is strongly tempted with a small and powerful section of English politicians to admire freedom, tongue, nationality ; and to believe that the indi- vidual may pay too high a price for safety and order, if it seems to entail the pursuit of aggrandising INTRO. THE ROMAN EMPIRE 11 and the heavy and costly weight of centralised unity. Empire re- It is a salubrious maxim of an older school, " Let them presentative fight it out." If the empire preserved with care a ^ A g e > fragile and moribund society, if its magical influence tempered and softened and subtly transformed the barbarians it is clear that it fulfilled a Hegelian mission ; the world-spirit was wiser than its children. To have removed the empire (if it was conceivable) would be to unchain the rivalry of class and race and creed. It would appear that the surrender of rights made quite in the fashion of Hobbes, at the commencement of our era, did in effect represent a genuine human wish. The world at that time did not really wish for self-government ; and though doubtless it did not accurately estimate the sacrifice it was making for ease and safety and peace, yet it never seriously withdrew its endorsement of the Augustan system. The emperors did not encroach ; they were invoked. The provinces did not, like Ireland or Poland or India to-day, seek to break off from a hateful allegiance ; but the emperors ceased to be able to protect them ; and the memory of that in- dulgent dominion, idealised by time or absence, lingered on with a wonderful afterglow of sunset until, like many other ideals, it faded in the chilly and artificial illumination of the scientific spirit. We may be quite certain from the familiar character and experience of debating and executive assemblies, that this great fundamental gratitude and aspiration towards integrity and control would not have found expression in any system of representation. It is the natural and excusable tendency of such bodies to accentuate points of difference between principles and parties, to separate into smaller groups, and (as in modern France) present a dazzling kaleidoscope of successive meteoric ministries : and against this disin- tegrating influence nothing holds the country together but the legacy of the great foreigner administrative absolutism. 12 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF INTRO. An Idta em- 4. It is for this reason that we trace one incon- bodicdina testable principle of union, which it is to be hoped *pertont: m never grow obsolete even in the most scientific loyalty cannot and unemotional society personal loyalty and grati- dispnue mth tude to an equitable master. It would seem to be a tne personal. * . . curious task, destined beforehand to failure, to seek to draw analogies between the function of modern European royalty, with its honourable past and its great but indefinite future, and a system which in many and essential points is the direct negation of its every principle. And it would also seem strange for one who has already professed his distrust in the efficacy of reflection, calculation, and personality, to hark back again to the influence of a sovereign. But it must be remembered that the monarch, by a strange revolution such as fate delights in, has become the unique representative not merely of order, integrity, and national solidarity, but of those warmer emotions and strictly democratic sentiments, which must still continue to regulate and influence mankind. Both emperor and king had origin in the unscrupu- lous (if justified) victory of armed force ; and the modern State no less than imperial Rome, owes its birth to the popular captain and the loyal train-band or legion descending upon anachronism in a Senate, or upon effeminacy in a populace corrupted by long years of peace. Yet round both gathers the strange and intangible feeling of attachment and devotion owed to a parent and father, which is not only difficult to put into language, but is more than difficult to justify by any cool logical process. Yet then as now, it is practically the only sentiment that can unite all sections of society in a common aim ; elsewhere, it is increasingly clear, grow the forces, the jealousies, the prejudices, the suspicions which make for dis- union. If the centripetal aim of the modern State, overcoming and embracing lesser constituents, be in any way justified by the sole test, the general sum of happiness, it would seem to be essential to preserve this feeling ; or rather, seeing that love cannot be INTRO. THE ROMAN EMPIRE 13 coerced or commandeered, it would seem essential An Idea em- that it be preserved. The language of loyalty and bod * ed in a profound obedience may to-day seem artificial and persons: overstrained ; yet it is surely better than the passionate loyalty cannot yet equally fictitious invective in which the platform and the popular assembly accustom us to the thought, that all political life is made up of hatred and of dis- respect. This pretended indignation and contempt may be part of a farce played by actors, who are in truth the best of friends; but it is played before an audience which is quite ready to believe it genuine. As under the empire, we agree about one single point, reverence for the sovereign ; in all other respects, we are at feud among ourselves. We may reserve for the body of the volume an analysis of the obvious differences in the conception of an ancient Caesar and a monarch of to-day ; but it is not too much to assert that in both these vague and anomalous ideas lay the seed and safeguard of the pacific development of these early centuries, till the coming of the Teuton. Strictly, the loyalty of provincial subject or barbarian settler was directed to the impersonal majesty of Rome ; while to-day (though we speak of the elimina- tion of the personal element) it is character and personality that rather recommends the system. But let us not dwell inopportunely on points of distinction. It is enough now to have noted one matter at least, in which we may learn something of the workings of the average mind through several centuries. And such a study must still to-day have use and interest for us, in spite of the efforts of philosophers and statesmen to supplant the natural emotions by reasoned and deliberate calculation of interest. 5. Let me now adduce some justification for my Reason of our choice of dates : an apology so long delayed that some #"<* - /** => T , J piredeadby may deem my promise forgotten. It was a passage iQ81. in Zonaras that finally decided my selection of a terminus ad quern; he is discussing a prophecy as to the duration of Constantinople, which miscarried. At the bidding of its founder, Valens the astrologer 14 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF INTRO. Reason of our casts the horoscope of the new capital and finds limits: em- jt s duration is fixed by the stars at 696 years ; " which IO&Z. y tiw*" savs Zonaras, "is now long past." "Either," he continues, "we must suppose that the good seer s pre- diction was in error and his vaunted art was at fault, or we must think that he gave the number of years in which the ancient usages of the republic were maintained, the constitution of the Senate held in honour and the citizens of Constantinople flourished and rule was accord- ing to law the government, I mean, kingly in the best sense, and not downright tyranny, where rulers deem the public treasure their own and use it for their private pleasures, giving to whomsoever they will the moneys of the State and not behaving to their subjects as true shepherds of their flock, w ho should shear off that which is superfluous only of the fleece and drink sparingly of the milk; whereas these butcher their sheep after the fashion of bandits and take their fill of the flesh, yea, and suck out the very marrow from the bone." This severe judg- ment is passed by a retired minister of Alexius I. (1081-1118) upon the Comnenian administration. He is writing as a monk on Mount Athos in the reign of his son, John II. (1118-1143), one of the most brilliant and attractive figures in later " Roman " history ; or it may be that such bitter remarks as these were added in extreme old age under Manuel Comnenus (1143- 1181), whose long reign and chivalrous achievement forms so strange a contrast to the downfall and break- up of the system under the Angelic dynasty. But in any case here is the serious indictment, that the imperial constitution was now a thing of the past; a mere rvpdvvts with its well-defined implication of selfish aim, and not the responsible magistracy of a free republic, or the fatherly vigilance of the genuine king. Here is very strong testimony to the view that during the most despotic periods the subjects and critics and historians had always regarded themselves as subordinate only to the man of their own unfettered choice, as governed according to settled law and not personal caprice. This sentiment appears clearly in INTRO. THE ROMAN EMPIRE 15 Laurentius, who examines the development of the Reason of our chief offices during the reigns of Anastasius, Justin, li mits: em- and Justinian. This is the note of the rescript of a P good emperor, "Though we are released from the re- straint of law, yet it is our aim and pleasure to live by the laws." And does not an early Byzantine his- torian with legitimate pride contrast the servile state of the Eastern monarchies with the favoured and privileged freedom of a subject of the empire ? Again, do we not find in unexpected corners of some obscure and dull-witted chronicler, the expressions respublica, TO STJ/JLOO-LOV ; showing how undying was the sense of righteous and responsible government even to the end, as pre-eminently the Roman ideal, contrasted with the exercise of monarchic power among the barbarian settlers ? Thus if we compute the years from the foundation of the new capital we shall find ourselves in the last years of Emperor Basilius II. The Roman consti- tution then lasted until the end of the first quarter of the eleventh century ; and this conjecture of Zonaras is borne out in every detail by the narrative of Michael Psellus. This work of recent discovery and publica- tion throws a flood of new light upon the Byzantine administration in that age, which Finlay (with his usual unerring intuition) terms the " Epoch of Con- servatism on the eve of Decline." For just at that time the great change took place from vigorous personal government to the evils of seclusion and chamberlain-rule. An effective and on the whole conscientious " Shogunate " had marked nearly the whole of the tenth century that century which in all the annals of Byzantium stands in most welcome and conspicuous contrast with the riot and welter of contemporary States. But towards the close of the century Basil, half-monk, half-warrior, recovers his full heritage ; and the succession of his brother, Constantine IX. (I adhere to Gibbon's enumeration), was as the succession of Arcadius to Theodosius. The outspoken appeal of Synesius of Gyrene to that 16 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF INTRO. Reason of our prince, buried in the penetralia of the palace, would ''iVe'rfeaaTL liave been c l uite in P lace if address ed by Psellus 1081. to the ninth Constantine six hundred years later. The revolving cycle of the fates had once more brought round a very similar crisis : and the recovery which the Comnenian House was able to effect by a feudal and military revolution only stayed for a time this inevitable decline. As with Justinian, the brilliance of the twelfth century concealed a fatal weakness, and exposed once more to the " Feringhi " the empire ; which, though it had staved off Teuton and Avar, Muslim and Russian inroad, fell a victim to a predatory raid, led by one of its oldest and most devoted vassals. I am in no way concerned to sup- port the credit of Valens the astrologer : he adroitly fixed on a distant date, when the miscarriage of his prophecy could be attended by no personal incon- venience. But it is one of the chief objects of these essays and the retinue of appendices, to bring out the prevalent opinion of the subjects of the empire whether the secret and wholesale incrimination locked in the bureau of one I would fain believe was not the historian of the Vandal and Gothic wars ; or the openly expressed clamour of the mob ; or the solemn pretension of some usurper, setting before his cause the ancient prestige of the Senate, the crying needs of state-defence, or (as in the revolt of Thomas) the communistic demands of an angry Asiatic "Jacquerie." What did the subjects of the Roman Empire really think of their system and their rulers ? And if Zonaras agrees with Psellus (who is less ex- plicit in his condemnation) that the real constitution ended with Basil II., we may perhaps attribute without exciting surprise some significance to the date of Valens. We shall hope to point out the curious de- velopment of the reigns of the tenth and the eleventh Constantine the change long prepared indeed and secretly working but then overt and unconcealed; and the last stage when the purely feudal and patri- monial idea seizes upon and submerges the poor rem- INTEO. THE ROMAN EMPIRE 17 nant of "republican" tradition. For the annals of Reason of our the principate after the accession of Alexius I. belong littti ^' em ~ to mediaeval and European history ; but the thread ^081. that connects Basil II. with Constantine, Trajan, and Augustus, is not yet snapped. Others may tell of the exploits of the Comnenians and Palaeologi ; but I trace the merits, the failures, the achievements of no noble or princely family. It is the impersonal interest in the commonwealth and its destinies which forms the theme, embodied as it is in personal representatives ; and the imperceptible and gradual transformation changing its outline but never altering its countenance beyond recognition. 6. I feel that something should be said for the Tentative and form of the work. It has been quite deliberately wbjectwe chosen, both for this modest venture on political political analysis and for an earlier volume of theological theorist. studies. I have myself found the value of such a division the general and comprehensive survey which in its very nature must be largely subjective and indeed tentative, suggestive, however its sentences may seem to lapse into occasional dogmatism and the minuter detail, dealing with a special point of limited interest and application, supported by no vague footnote reference but by the " veriest words " (so far as the textual critic will allow) of the ancient writer. I am fully aware that no amount of direct citation will ever compensate for want of first-hand acquaintance, in the perusal of these writings as a whole ; but the whole emphasis of a subjective appreciation of a period has been too often inter- rupted and lost in histories by the conscientious pains of the student and the leaden sediment of footnotes which in our heart of heart we distrust by instinct yet have rarely the leisure to verify. For however important is the strict and accurate recital of cam- paigns, of embassies, of the rise and fall of ministries, the exact and truthful fixing of some particular date it cannot be denied that in the end we are no further after all our pains than Sallust in his airy VOL. I. B 18 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF INTEO. Tentative and narrative of the Jugurthan wars, or some later annalist w ho might tell us that Heraclius or Leo or Charles marched against the enemies, Persian or Arab or theorist. Saxon, and after killing " many mortals and capturing many cities " was in the end victorious. It must not be for a moment supposed that I disparage this accuracy, or the labours of Tillemont or of Clinton. I certainly do not believe that vague and d priori generalities upon an age (of which we have not patience to master the facts) can form a substitute for a genuine acquaintance ; nor even a creditable rival. But I would maintain that the objective and the subjective treatment of history form two essentially separate departments of the scholar's activity ; yet they should be united in the inquirer, though they must not operate at one and the same time. The limitations and the peril of this subjective or better perhaps the would-be didactic method are clear, and must be freely conceded by any one bold enough to venture on the enterprise ; yet it is the sole and unique vehicle for what is termed " political philosophy " the mind working at tentative sugges- tions upon material stored up and accumulating during many years. We still read with admiration and delight Hegel's " Philosophy of History": who can deny that he has learnt more from one page of his audacious generalities, his subsuming of events coercively under his preconceived categories, than from the dry recital of the most severely conscien- tious historians ? A writer should know when to expatiate freely in a larger atmosphere, and when to tie himself down with a certain ascetic rigour to exact statement and careful reproduction of com- petent witness. In the former there lurks always a kind of self-conscious irony : he is well aware that he is then stating the effect that phenomena produce on himself, is not conducting the reader with him into the "core" and the hidden nature of the phenomena. He bears no incontestable passport into a bygone age ; he must always remain himself, and the child of his own age. In the survey of the INTRO. THE ROMAN EMPIRE 19 distant landscape huge traits and features must lie Tentative and for ever concealed from his gaze. He is drawn to sut) J ect ^ ,. ... . . task oj the generalise upon a single instance, if it seem to sup- po ntical port some pet theory of what " must have been " ; and theorist. to pass unheeding through the silent yet reproachful ranks of witnesses to whom for his own purpose he will remain wilfully deaf. This collection of essays will therefore be a timid attempt to preserve the precise frontiers of the two methods. In the former or larger type I shall be satisfied beyond my hopes if I can suggest, interest, and stimulate, if it only be to question and opposition ; for the subjective historian must not expect to do more. A certain epoch is mapped out for a cadastral or ordnance survey; this, in the first place, is an artificial and personal caprice ; for time, like existence, is solid, unbroken, and continuous. And the student finds that such a circumscription cannot strictly be main- tained ; he will have to recur in a diagnosis of the now clamorous symptom to the " still small voice " of earlier hints and intimations. He will feel sym- pathy with the conscientious annalist of older days who began from the Deluge or the Siege of Troy. Every period will be found to overlap another, and he must often incur the blame of " vain repetitions." As his confidence in the wisdom of his trenchant limit evaporates, he will look disconsolately at the finished chapter which so imperfectly represents, not the subject indeed (that of course), but even his own opinion of it. Such is the reaction which must be experienced by every genuine student of the wider issues of humanity. The scholar is safer though more fettered in a narrow field ; and fields of inquiry grow perforce narrower every day. Yet there must always be place in the growing impatience at mere accurate minuteness of chronicles, in the stifling accumulation of fresh material, in the extraordinary failure of conscious intention in history, in the ironical play of Destiny with the sapient calculations of chief actors and statesmen, for some such subordinate part as the role of the philosophical onlooker. 20 CONSTITUTIONAL .HISTORY OF INTRO. A historian's self-control and limited range; lays no claim to univertal criticism. 7. Such a task must in the very nature of the case show traces of amateur-work. Engrossment in a special line is not the best training for adapting the resulting study into the rest of human knowledge. There must be a sort of intellectual " clearing-house." To say that this is the very highest kind of mental work is not to speak the truth. If highest means useful, then it is obviously untrue ; for human advance on the present lines of civilisation (I am not saying they are the best possible) depends entirely upon the self-sacrifice of the worker, sharply cutting off, not merely his own tiny sphere of activity, but his own mind as well, from fascinating aberration into "Elsewhere." Clearly, and by any standard, the best and highest should be marked by certainty and by completeness, to which qualities political retrospect and prophecy can lay no claim. It is simply a play of a somewhat serious fancy dealing, it may be, without profound conviction or even interest with the future of the race, and hazarding in purely human guess-work at the dim forces and obscure develop- ment going on behind the scenes, on which kings and warriors are playing their part amidst the obvious interest of "alarums and excursions." And once more, a historian too often lays claim to an impossible omniscience. It is not conceivable to-day, for instance, that any one man can be a trust- worthy guide and critic in the development of cam- paigns and foreign policy ; the real question at stake in religious discords, in the art or letters of a given epoch, or in the economic and fiscal issues, which were no doubt almost as obscure and tentative to the actors then as they appear to us ; lastly, in the sympathetic elucidation of the matter and spirit of ancient writers, and the discrimination of the genuine text. The following pages will be found singularly lacking in vigorous and sustained narrative, either of battles, of palace intrigues, or of religious controversy. War is a simple matter in its immediate cause or even profounder motive ; it may usually be traced to the cynical dislike of a near neighbour and INTRO. THE ROMAN EMPIRE 21 to the silent but effective protest of a baftied mercan- A historian's tile interest. But to analyse in its stages and its se ^f^ ol d manoeuvres demands the expert and the strategist, ran g e; i ay8 and not the student ; and I shall not (at least no claim to willingly) surrender myself to the vain and idle un ^ sal function of the Roman youth, who in his academic theses gave grave and well-meant advice to Hannibal, how best he could profit by the victory at Cannae. Nor have I anything to say about the religious debates and discords which form so prominent a feature in the earlier period. That interest would seem to belong to quite a different department of the mind from that faculty exercised in our present inquiry. It is enough to recognise that political interest largely subsided among a population natu- rally subtle and excitable, because of the eager study of transcendental questions and the strange half-racial and half-religious bitterness which arose from these dogmatic niceties. That this ecclesiastical interest diverted men from direct solicitude for affairs, I cannot doubt ; though the charge often levelled at Chris- tianity that it instilled in its votaries contempt for the actual world and left the field open to tyranny and the servile virtues, cannot be for a moment maintained. Indeed, this very point might be taken as an instance of the danger of approaching a special epoch with much modern prejudice, with only a hazy outlook on the vast tracts of history lying be- yond the favoured province. It is difficult indeed to simplify and still be accurate ; to generalise and yet do justice to the whole array of complex facts. And yet there is substantial truth in the old commonplace that the Eastern mind turns away from the world, and the Western tries to make the actual better. I have elsewhere (in my " School of Plato " and the "Bampton Lectures" of 1905) drawn attention to the very early drift of Greek thought (not to mention Oriental) away from nature and the State, floating upwards through a somewhat chilly and intangible ether to the Absolute ; and I trust I may be spared, after this present excursion into a more concrete A historians self-control and limited range; lays no claim to universal criticism. 22 HISTORY OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE INTRO. region, to continue to complete and to justify at greater length the thesis there upheld. It is as easy to prove (or rather adduce arguments) that Western Christianity was the unique instrument in the main- tenance of all civil institutions, all arts and culture worthy of the name, as it is to show that the Eastern fraction perished in a somewhat lengthy death- struggle, of the poison of Christian abstentionism. Nothing would have made the Eastern Christian rate ordinary virtues above speculative retirement ; and nothing, as it might appear, would fit the Oriental from Orontes to Ganges for the debate and execution of commonplace public business. It lay in the adap- tability and sovereign efficacy of the Gospel that it ministered alike to the Oriental love of truth and the Roman love of order and law. It will be interest- ing to note the comparatively trifling influence which Greece exerted over Byzantium ; the brief moments of Hellenic predominance in the administration are rare, ineffective, and only so, significant. It is im- possible to attach blame to the Church, because of the modification which a quietist, yet curious and metaphysical temperament, introduced into the creed. This, in spite of its transcendental basis, which is indispensable, is simple and "democratic" in its influence, appeal, and instruction. I have already dwelt too long on this instance of the limitation from which even the most comprehensive of historians must suffer, if he attempt to do full justice to an age in its entirety in its totality as it stands; to the origin and springs, not merely the phases and aspects of its development. Recognising the prohibitive Socratic warning against intrusion into uncongenial themes, I have resolutely limited by my instinct and inclination the scope of the inquiry pursued in the following pages. And so far as is possible in such a matter where few but notable pioneers are beckon- ing, I have not essayed a task which has been before successfully attempted within similar limits, nor have I consciously built upon another man's foundation. BOOK I THE PAGAN EMPIRE: THE CIVILIAN MON- ARCHY AND THE MILITARY REACTION THE REIGN OF DOMITIAN AND THE ERA OF THE EARLIER ANTONINES (81-180 A.D.) A. First " Flavian " House : VESPASIANUS 69-79 milit. nom. TITUS (son) 79-8i . birth. DOMITIANUS 81-96 . birth. B. Adoptive or Antoninian Period : M. COCCEIUS NERVA 96-98 senat. nom. NERVA TRAJANUS (Spain) .... 98-117 HADRIANUS "7-138 TITUS ANTONINUS I. Pius . . 138-161 \ MARC. AURELIUS ANTONINUS II. 161-180 t M. ANTONINUS III. VERUS . . 161-169 adoption. ? adopt, adopt, adopt, adopt. 1. THE accession of Domitian, the second son of Difficult posi- Vespasian, marks without doubt an important date in tiono/Domt- the history of Rome, and the development of that fluid and complex idea, Cassarism. He was neither the first plebeian that occupied the place of a divine family his father and brother had sat there already ; nor was he the first youth who without any but honor- ary office and titular dignity had been lifted to the most responsible post in the State. The intentions of Augustus, that great master of irony and opportunism, had been veiled in obscurity ; he had adopted his two grandchildren, he had put a ring on the finger of Agrippa, and he had summoned the reluctant Tiberius to be the mainstay of his declining years. But it cannot be definitely asserted at any given moment that he had decided on a successor ; or indeed that his views of a monarchy which looks to us so monu- mental and secular were sufficiently clear to allow him to arrange for the future with any certain prevision. In the peaceful advent of Tiberius, a tried and notable 26 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. r Difficult poi- general, a sedate and austere citizen of the earlier type, tion of Doml- a mem ber of an historic house there was nothing strange. If the commonwealth desired to accumulate once more in a single hand the tangled skein of ad- ministration, discerpti membra monarchi, no one would seem more suitable than the " son " of the late prince, who with his splendid record of State-service had no need to appeal to the " adoption of a dotard " and the intrigues of an empress-mother. Augustus had been aware that the constitution of the State was the re- verse of definite ; he looked forward to a renewal of the struggle for personal power, and in his final words to Tiberius named three or four possible competi- tors. For nothing in the letter or custom of the State forbade the free election of any Roman citizen ; and the "dynastic" precedent into which the succes- sion thus settled was distinctly contrary to the spirit and intention of the State, in founding this novel and exceptional function. Nor did Tiberius, the un- happy Priam of his house, have occasion to deter- mine between his son by adoption and his son by blood ; death and conspiracy swept away the children of Germanicus and left but one to carry on the line. With Caius enters on the scene a character with which we are all familiar the " purple-born," the irresponsible Caesar of fiction and dramatic situation. We have no desire to dispel any of the charm or fascination which may attract the modern mind to a contemplation of the past ; but it is a fact that this favourite of romance, who unites unlimited power and dazzling wickedness, appears but seldom in the imperial purple. We may compute the reigns of these spoilt sons of destiny, who combined an early training in the palace, or its immediate neighbour- hood, with premature tendencies to vice ; but if we take a liberal estimate and include the reigns of Caius, of Nero, of the fourth, fifth, and eighth Antonines, and of Carinus, we shall find, down to the extinction of the Western line, only forty-two years so occupied out of five centuries. Indeed, for this CH. i THE ROMAN EMPIRE (81-180) 27 kind of sovereign the Roman constitution had in Difficult posi- truth no place : and it will be found on closer or il ? n tldft* impartial inspection that many of such heroes of melodrama were in public life adroit, painstaking, and conscientious. And from that list we have withdrawn, in common fairness, all those coldly dig- nified heirs, like the second Constantius or the sons of Theodosius all those promising lads, whom by some strange freak soldiers or senate or people sent to occupy the magistracy created expressly for a veteran. Into the list of Caesars, popularly deemed to be typical of the remainder, we cannot admit the brief and pathetic reign of Alexander or the younger Gordian ; and it must be confessed that the long minority of the third Valentinian belongs to a different category altogether, and was rendered possible by circumstances which had profoundly modi- fied the primitive conception of Caesar and his function. And we cannot embrace Domitian under this head ; though he laboured under the double disadvantage of plebeian birth and untried merit, he was a personal ruler such as the commonwealth demanded from the outset in the elevation of an Augustus. Other youth- ful princelings might reign because they were their noble father's own sons, which for the vulgar, natu- rally loyal to a family, is often quite sufficient reason. But while his father had lived long enough to be the second founder, the " Camillus " of the early empire, and to strike profound respect into the minds of carping senators and sages, his success had not blotted out the memories of his origin. From the decisive recognition of Vespasian to the accession of the third Flavian, barely ten years had elapsed. Men scarcely past middle age could remember the brilliance of Nero's court that age of the gods, as Pliny the Elder seems to convey, after which men fell with a painful drop into the respectable and hum- drum work of middle-class reorganisation. Domitian reigned longer than any other successor of Tiberius ; and in spite of the natural relief felt by the Senate and CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. I Difficult posi- tion of Domi- linii. Complete* Vespasian's task and made An- tonines pos- sible. the apocryphal exultation of Apollonius of Tyana, it may be doubted whether the blow of Stephanus was a public benefit. This son of a " parvenu," early accustomed to the immunity of an imperial prince (tantum licentiam usurpante), hated and (worse still for his peace of mind) despised as an upstart by the nobles, exerted a vigilant and unexpected control over the imperial destinies. He entered indeed into all the fatal heritage of mutual distrust and suspicion which embittered the relation of the Senate and its Chief Ex-ecutive. But he entered too into the great Augustan tradition; and was no unworthy representative of the first political constitution that ever accepted as watchwords peace, justice, order, and plenty. Emperors of later times and better personal character praised him for his choice of ministers ; and in the vapid pages of Augustan writers we find the idle discussion of an insoluble question, whether a prince's private virtues were necessary to the public welfare ? 2. We are amazed at the curious faculty for pains- taking administration and humane considerateness, lying so often dormant in a luxurious or lethargic Roman, until the fullness of time came, and the hour struck for the destined saviour of society. With his disabilities, ascending after an untried or suspected youth a throne owed to the dynastic principle yet unacknowledged, Domitian guides the helm with success, and earned the gratitude of the provinces. Tacitus quietly subtracts from his own life the fifteen years during which he lost all claim to be deemed a member of the human race, after which (in a famous simile) he wandered about in a world un- known, a mere ghost of his former self, "his own survivor." Yet there is no trace of settled or de- liberate oppressiveness in the government of Domitian. The atmosphere of the Senate alone is sultry ; and on issuing from the dignified prison, Tacitus may well have felt like the prisoner of the Bastille, at the sudden recovery of unwonted liberty. The reign of CH. i THE ROMAN EMPIRE (81-180) 29 Domitian (so far as we may judge) is an integral Completes part of the great reconstruction by Vespasian which rendered possible the golden age of the Antonines. We shall discuss elsewhere (and it may be too often) toninatpos- the debated question, whether indeed public order is ** the first mandate of the subject to its chosen rulers ; whether it may not be purchased too dearly by the degradation of an historic assembly, by the ruthless and systematic silencing of all protest and opposition. It is a question which is not likely to receive effective settlement here or elsewhere ; nor is an idle and perilous fallacy of the earlier eighteenth century, that the sword of public order swings only in the hands of tyrants, likely to be accepted in our own time. A republic is, as Machiavelli would have foretold four centuries ago, quite as stern and inexorable in putting an end to disorder, quite as panic-stricken before the suspicion of a plot. The chief events in the modern histories of commonwealths have been bloodily con- nected with the extinction of personal or communal liberties. But for the mass of mankind the great deliverance of the years 69 and 70 from the old triumviral, three-cornered anarchy, and from serious barbarian menace, was welcome and recent enough to make impossible any serious fault-finding with a strong and determined government. The class of thinkers, or posers whose lives were spent in a futile and permanent opposition ; the discontented Roman satirist ; the impractical Hellenic theorist, prating like the Bengali of the rights of man and the beauty of freedom these might be excused if, after shifting the burden, they essayed to criticise the attitude of one who bore it valiantly. Yet the truth remains the reign of Domitian (for all the story of the turbot and aristocratic dismay, the black hangings, the sudden summons and the goblin dancers) put the coping- stone on the work of his father. For this is the record of the Flavian house : a blunt and straight- forward reorganisation on economic and middle-class lines, a wave of personal and perhaps scarce merited 30 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. I Completes Vespasian's task " Xt/iw avTov aTroKretvovcri). It is not merely the clever ruse of a dominant priestly caste to secure indirectly the control of affairs such in- deed is the whole outcome of Brahmin influence in India from the very dawn of history ; the king becomes the mouthpiece and executive of the supreme caste, and if his power is in theory illimitable, it is CH. ii THE ROMAN EMPIRE (180-235) 53 very effectively coerced by their tradition. But the Lamaism seclusion is also due to a curious blending of the super- stitions of totem and of fetich. The tribal representa- vill.) live inherits ancestral powers and must be guarded from harm, just like an idol in a shrine. It is a commonplace that large portions, if not the whole, of the East are ruled from the zenana, from behind the purdah ; and here, as in China, effective power comes to flow naturally to a class or sex which seems to labour under severe but nominal disabilities. If religious awe, semi-divine descent, or priestly prero- gative surround the monarch, the palace becomes both a temple and a prison for the unhappy re- pository of celestial power. The caliphate sank into this insignificant holiness and nominal suzerainty as soon as the Commanders of the Faithful abandoned the simple life of the meditative Arabian priest or spirited warrior, and entered the enticing paradise of Damascus or Bagdad. Two ancient monarchies became conspicuous instances of this curious seclu- sion, and have both issued from gloom to the daylight within living memory. Japan's Mikado represents the motionless centre of the revolving wheel, sacred in descent and altogether too holy for mundane cares. A sincere or interested hypocrisy in a powerful minister establishes side by side or in technical in- feriority an effective office, the Tycoon or Shogun ; which itself becoming hereditary like the French majorate under the Merovingians, is transmitted to a long line of secular royalties. There was some excuse for the early error as to the relation of the two which regarded one as the spiritual emperor, the other as the temporal. In fact, the dormant plenitude of the Mikado's prerogative had never been curtailed or abrogated ; and a long and at last in- fluential series of reactionary politicians and writers had demanded the restoration of power to legitimate hands. Thus the opposite result was reached to the judg- ment of Pope Zachary in the middle of the eighth 54 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. i Lamaism century. It was the Japanese Childeric III. who (under emerged from imprisonment to mount a real throne, Antonmtu p r _ . . _ , VIIL) and it was the modern counterpart of Pepm le Bret who retired with good grace from a usurped and perilous post. Again, from similar causes there grew up in the Potala of Lassa in Tibet (and perhaps too in the kingdom of Nepaul) a divorce of theoretical and effective sovereignty : the nominal ruler being an imprisoned infant whom the regent never allowed to reach maturity ; with what measure of sincerity and odd mixture of hypocrisy and self-deception, it is im- possible to ascertain. It would seem that the present Dalai-Lama has succeeded in passing safely the fatal term of adolescence and has overpowered his regent the same fortunes attending the spiritual ruler (so- called) in both Eastern countries. It is no secret (to those who know the views of the special envoys to Western courts, sent by the palace of Pekin in 1906) that the weakness of the present regimen is largely ascribed to the immurement of the sovereign, to the inevitable ignorance of a ruler who, whether in Ravenna or the Forbidden City, or Tzarskoe Selo or Yildiz, is the worst informed man in his dominions. And if China be allowed, without interference or undue pressure from her Eastern or Western neighbours, to work out her own destiny, it cannot be doubted that a great change may be expected in the attitude of the sovereign to affairs ; in the substitution of imperial progress through the provinces in place of the seden- tary indolence of Pekin. Incompatible 5. We have wandered thus far afield from the with imperial unfortunate youth who was at the same time priest of l de facto' * ne sun anc ^ Roman emperor; for such remote and and'de incomplete parallels are of significance in estimating Imeand 16 tne tendencies of human thought, and in explaining an indivisible. anomalous attitude of mingled criticism and loyalty which subjects assume towards a sovereign. The sacrilegious invasion of Roman temples and the palace of Augustus by an orgiastic cult and a black stone could only be a very transient episode. The proposal CH. n THE ROMAN EMPIRE (180-235) 55 of Soaemias was impracticable the emperor must rule incompatible himself or cease to exist. Religion was not for the witl ^imper . , ? , ,., ., tradition: ancients a supreme or a rival department of life: it 'fa facto' was, at least among the Romans, a subordinate pro- and'de vince ; and had a natural claim (without intrusion or ^ an % encroachment on earthly affairs) upon the attention indivisible. of the citizen, the magistrate, and the general. No exclusive caste prescribed a calendar and ritual to an ignorant and awe-struck mass ; each man was at liberty to worship his own deity, even (within some limit) to follow the grotesque practices of his own special cult. It was the exclusiveness of the God of Emesa and of Calvary that moved the anger or suspicion of the best of the Romans. M. de Champagny need be at no great pains to show that the Gospel alone could save the empire from the debasing Orientalism, which is his constant theme : this we may readily admit. What is more difficult is to apportion the blame to the statesmen of Rome for lacking all power to distinguish between the genuine panacea and the fraudulent imitation. The worship of Mithra penetrates widely over the empire and within the army ; Aurelian is a priest of the sun but it is a spiritualised worship akin to the rising Mazdeism of the new Persian restoration, and bears small like- ness to the rites of Emesa. The claim of religious observance and belief to occupy a transcendent and autonomous sphere was not for a moment tolerated in Rome ; everything must be subservient to the general welfare of the State. The mystic philosopher might find repose in meditation without incurring the suspicion of the State ; but an orgiastic proselytising cult was regarded with the same distrust as is evidenced long before in the " SCtum de Bacanalibus." The Roman official was at best a Pentheus ; and his wise motto was " Surtout point de zele" his sympathy with that sobriety, which with the eighteenth century put an equal ban on the railer at religion and on the " enthusiast." Eclecticism was 56 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. i Incompatible with imperial tradition : 'dc facto' and 's O.VT&V 6 tv r$ u.t>aavvi r($ ^ir' dKpov (pKoSofjLTifdvty (6r rptv\drrovffa>) OVK f)6f\ff QeXOeiv; and so was burnt, like Valens, in his Tower. APOLLON. in true epic grandiloquence (ii. 1026) : Avrdp ev v^larif /3a tvixXeiffdvTes fyovaiv. [It seems clear from the scholiast here that EPHORUS and NYMPHODORUS originated the legend of death by starvation : d5iK&v TI Kpiva.vTa yn\etovffi K. XifjiayxovoSffi. If NYMPH, wrote under Ptol. Philad., APOLL. is no doubt indebted to him.] MELA i. 19 : Mossyni . . . reges suffragio deligunt vincu- lisque et arctissimd custodid, tenent atq. ubi culpam prave quid imperando meruere, inedia diei totius affitiunt. DlODORUS expands the early account as follows (xiv. 30) : The Greeks /card Kpdrot elXov " ty St T(> xuplov TOVTO fjirfrp6iro\i.s ruv dXXwp tpvp.dTwr fv $ K. 6 /SatuXeiij avrwv nartf/cei TOV \>^f/TJ\bro.rov rbirov t'x.uv. "EOos 5' !x et Tfdrpiov ftitveiv iv ai/rijT rbv tcdura. fiiov, ictf-iceiOev SiaSouvai TO(I 6x^ otJ T - ifpoffrdynara. (Strabo dwells only on the shameless and savage life of this barbarous tribe.) I cannot help thinking that the story is due to a misinterpretation of XEN. and EPHORUS ; for ralstern- (270-282) there is nothing but shame and dishonour : the names of Zenobia and Longinus shine out with a faint but familiar light ; beyond that all is darkness on the stage. We picture to ourselves a period of mere feudal tumult ; provinces breaking loose from the imperial federation and setting up rulers on their own account ; separatist or nationalist tendencies rife ; the military leaders with ambitious selfishness seizing in mere caprice the perilous purple, and carving patrimonies and princedoms out of the fragments of the once solid fabric. We seem to see a cowed or empty Senate, gradually fading into complete insignificance ; already so far losing its grasp on the administration and on the obsolete traditions of curial rule, that Diocletian's change comes merely to en- dorse an accomplished fact, not to effect a momen- tous revolution. The whole world seems a chaos of captains or " condottieri," military adventurers with their train-bands, crossing and recrossing in idle but costly mimicry of war, and spending on useless civil tumult the forces, which might have guarded the frontier and set back the barbarian inroads for some hundreds of years. Rarely, perhaps, was a judgment passed more superficial and undeserved. On closer acquaintance these years of seeming confusion unfold gradually to us several striking features and a con- sistent policy. In spite of the turbulence and chaos of election and massacre of short-lived emperors, it may be doubted if any age in the Roman annals shows greater public spirit, more disinterested public service and untiring endeavour, on the part of the chief actors. The Senate appears in a novel and serious light : it enters into a real partnership with the heroic defenders of the frontier. It seems clear that in Senate and Army alike the sense of danger and responsibility awoke some spirit akin to the moral earnestness of ancient Rome. We shall again see such a rising from sloth and ease in the seventh 68 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. i Revival of century, when Heraclius and the religious or crusad- nioralstern- m g fervour smite with amazing courage the enemy 'simple life. f Rome the wrong enemy as many will consider ; but a certain prevision of Islam was not among the mental endowments of the patriotic emperor. The moral revival and the new bluntness and simplicity date from Maximinus. Scarcely a breath of scandal stains the memory of his successors ; even on Gallienus a more favourable verdict must be passed than is usually allowed ; and the annals of continence and unremitting toil in barrack and field are broken only by vague rumours of Bonosus' gluttony, by an astounding but incredible scandal of Proculus, and by the old Caesarian luxury and evil life of Carinus, the last of this series. The spirit of reformation is working in Philippus (244-249), who abolished one form of ancient vice in the idle and voluptuous capital ; and in Tacitus (275-276), who with a puritan rigour wholly in keeping with the general tone of society, tries to root out the houses of ill fame. We know from other sources that after the grotesque license of that spoilt schoolboy Elagabalus, a remark- able reaction set in. It was not without significance that the persecutor Maximin and the supposed convert Philip stand at the head ot this very needful purification of high places. For the Germanic virtue took up the rdle of Roman censor ; and the wily Arabian, whether a convert to Christian religion or not, certainly shows distinct traces of Christian influence. Thus two streams unite the stern and patriotic Roman, careless of self ; the Christian, self- regarding and moral, in the restricted or technical sense. Nor indeed is it without a suggestive reminder that we find again in this period the heroic devotion of the Decii ! However precarious the link in these later families to the earlier houses of the republic, it is not denied that Decius, father and son, perished nobly for the State, just as their fabled ancestors had done. Everything seemed to betoken (after the strange and un-Roman mildness or corruption of the CH. m THE ROMAN EMPIRE (235-285) 69 Afro-Syrian house) an awakened respect for tradition, Revival of for the past glories of a simpler city, when all united moral 8t ^ rn ~ their efforts and sank their differences in the service simple life. of the State. Not without set purpose did Philip celebrate with great solemnity the thousandth year of imperial Rome ; or Decius revive once more, as a colleague's dignity rather than as an adjunct or title of sovereignty, the old office of Censor. Indeed, after Severus II. this very sovereignty receives a new interpretation. We are apt to speak of the offer of ^Emilianus (253) as if it represented merely the personal proposal of a despondent general, seeking to support with the majesty of Rome and the sanction of legitimacy a usurped and already threatened title. But this deference to the Senate is characteristic of the whole period. There was abroad a genuine desire to make the dyarchy a success, a working solution of the new problems of government. That the old jealousies of Army and Senate were lulled would be too much to assert : but the elevation of Tacitus and the "noble feud," when Senate and Army vied in surrendering their rights to the other, was by no means abnormal. Decimated by Severus I., called into a full partnership by his grand-nephew the second of the name, the Senate seemed in the elevation of Pupienus and Balbinus (238) to have recovered not merely its antique independence, but even the archaic form of government. Then for the first time was set in contrast the military duty, "stopping the dykes" against the barbarian flood, and the pacific civil functions of internal rule. The Senate once more rose to its full privileges. It sent despatches to the provinces ; exchanged letters with the provincial governors, or with the municipal councils in those distant cities, which still preserved a measure of actual or nominal autonomy. The dream was rudely shattered, it is true, by the violence of the pretorians. The Senate held firmly to the principle of the "elevation of the fittest," to the theory which reserved the highest magistracy for 70 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. i Revival of moral stern- ness and simple life. Influence of the Senate once more genuine. the elderly grey-beard, who had previously passed through all grades of a civil and a military hierarchy, already drifting apart but as yet parallel. But the army, imbued with a soldiers' love of children, secretly influenced by odd loyalty to deceased com- manders, chivalrously devoted to the beauty and inno- cence of striplings, insisted first on the partnership of young Gordian and at last, on his sole and un- fettered rule. But when this "lama "-minority passed once more under palace or petticoat government, as it had in the case of Alexander, once more power was devolved on the most capable of reign- ing : Philip the " shogun," displaces Gordian the " mikado." 2. In spite of the apparently unchecked control of the soldiers, the imperial government approached within a respectful distance of the ideal of Augustus. The documents and letters of the time, collected by the best of the quintet of historians, Vopiscus the Syracusan, show us infallible tokens of this great moral and republican reaction. The "patrimonial" and hereditary conception is no longer recognised ; and although sons are in practice welcomed as asso- ciates, the right or claim to succeed is again and again in theory disallowed ; and protests are formally raised against the arrogance of purple-born novices which represent public opinion, unmistakably sincere. Carus, one of the best of these efficient, laborious, and elderly rulers, never forgave himself for installing Carinus, Caesar of the West, with the full prerogative of an Augustus ; and it was with this prince, as we see, that the edifice crumbled away. The promi- nence of the senatorial debates, judgments, and decisions is a remarkable feature of this time. It is not a courtly pretence, as might well have been the deference of Hadrian or Aurelius to an obsequious assembly. The Fathers had in truth recovered some- thing of that old fearlessness, when they awaited immovable in their places the onrush of the Gauls. Besides, as we may observe in later and feudal CH. in THE ROMAN EMPIRE (235-285) 71 history, the greater the apparent violence and dis- Influence of order, the greater the passion for legitimacy. The the Senate * momentary captains raised by the irrevocable words of their soldiers to a dangerous height, sought at once to secure recognition from a body, which beyond its immemorial prestige and dignity had defied Maximin, restored, as it were, the consulate, divided Italy amongst its twenty deputies, and refused to be daunted by the first failure of their African candidates. Just for a moment we are strangely familiar with the cries, the aspirations, the emotions that swayed the Roman Senate. We read of the new pride and courage with which they regarded the restoration of ancient right, not merely to choose a prince, but even to control and advise him. It is easy to say that these republican " velleities " were the veriest mockery, a mere piece of vanity and self- deception. But it would appear that the Senate was taken at its own valuation. No one disputed these claims, expressed with unusual clearness. The acceptance or recognition of a military Caesar was not made with the alarmed haste that heaped titles on any and every soldiers' nominee in the earlier part of the century Macrinus, Diadumenianus, Elagabalus. The military leaders, as a rule, paid a genuine deference to the Senate. The crowding business of the empire was largely transacted in the temple, where the Senate met; perhaps the only criticism we encounter at the time is a letter from Aurelian, who wonders at the hesitation shown in consulting the Sibylline Books : " Did the conscript fathers forget that these deliberations took place in no Christian conventicle, but in the temple of the Gods ? " Winning universal respect, recovering many of its ancient functions, delegating to a distant general the duty of defence, the Senate seemed well on the way to establish that principle of division of labour ' which Diocletian afterwards effected on very different lines. Minute as was the personal supervision of the emperor, as we see from Valerian's letters, yet 72 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. i influence of large and ample were the surrenders made to the the Senate Senate in civil affairs ; and this without jealousy or once more . . } J genuine. suspicion. It is true we must distrust the curious and re- iterated statement of Gallien's cruelty to the soldiers ; but we may well conceive that one possible explana- tion of that strange character may lie in a vague desire to re-establish a peaceful and civil regime in the interior of the realm, and a vague compla- cence in making over to other stout champions the more distant and precarious posts of command which, as it appeared, did not menace the supplies of Rome or the dignity of the emperor reigning in the capital. That Utopian or golden age when soldiers, as Probus, himself a successful general, said, " should be no longer needful," floated as a vision before the eyes of many. Even the well-known prohibition of this same Emperor Gallienus, directed against a momentary resumption of arms by the Senate in a crisis, may be due to no suspicion of their loyalty, but to this new conviction that the two spheres were best apart ; and that, even if it was not yet at- tained, a severance of office and department was the goal for which constructive statesmen should strive. We may here point out that when this divorce was actually accomplished in the next century, when Manchu " banners " and garrisons were set over against accomplished but unwarlike "literati," the two contrasted powers were held in leash by a frank and unabashed despotism. Philo had seen that the divine attributes, the kingly (or punitive) and the creative (or benignant), fell under the supreme if anonymous "monarchy." Just in the same way, without derogation to the centralised authority, the two ranks in the hierarchy issued down to the meanest secretary or recruit, from the single fount. But in the system, evolved almost without conscious intent, during the previous half-century, a more republican cast had been given to the whole adminis- tration. Perhaps we may read in the lacunae of the CH. m THE ROMAN EMPIRE (235-285) 73 imperfect annals of Aurelian's reign, the abandon- Influence of ment of this project of peaceful partition. He at the Senate r J * , once more least, in contrast to the simple manners, the free genuine. address, the popular methods of these Caesars of the "barrack-room," affected a monarchic splendour and pomp of dress and retinue which presaged the coming orientalism under Diocletian. The suspicions of the Senate's loyalty once awakened in the breast of some able and popular general, the scheme was henceforward impracticable. Mutual confidence was essential, and this was alien to the traditional feud of Army and Senate, which in imperial Rome, as in France of the Revolution or our own day, seems a natural outcome and an inseparable accompaniment of a republic mainly administered on civilian lines. 3. Another feature of this time is the mutual Solidarity of friendship and sincere personal attachment of the the various princes, the solidarity, if I may so say, of the training, the discipline, the traditions of the duty. staff-corps, which provided a line of able rulers from the single province of Pannonia or Illyricum. Accustomed as the reader is to dismiss these fifty years as a period of bloodthirsty cruelty and inter- necine warfare, he must acquire patience for a closer analysis of the successive vacancies in sove- reign power. He will be astonished to discover how seldom can the hateful charge of cruel treachery be justly levelled at the successful candidate. The com- petitors all arose from the great military caste, which the needs of the empire had raised up and consoli- dated, since the failure of the civilian regime under Alexander (235). A regular school is confidently alluded to as supplying a series of emperors all whether as generals or lieutenants, familiarly known to one another, all trusted by their superiors, and marked by straightforwardness and devotion to duty. No period is so singularly and happily free from personal rancour, from court-intrigue, or from secret assassination. Vopiscus dismisses as the idlest gossip, as unworthy of the character of both princes, the 74 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. i Solidarity of suspicion which some attached to Carus, successor thelllyrian o f ^he murc j ere d Probus. For the frequent vacancies SLCLtt~QfWf)8 " sense of public the soldiers are to blame, and the outbreak of sudden duty. disaffection in an idle camp and the fortune of civil war a civil war which Gallienus refused in many cases to acknowledge by a bold and generous fiction. It is not until we come to the humanitarian preju- dices of later Byzantium that we find instances of such clemency : Aurelian spares and honours Tetricus and Zenobia, Probus had no hand in the massacre of Florianus, is unwilling that Saturninus should perish, and pensions with remarkable kindness the widow and sons of Bonosus. It is clear that in the altered conditions of the monarchy and the conception of office, there is not the same jealous and exclusive claim to sovereign position which will not tolerate a rival. Severus II. thanked Ovinius Camillus with pleasant irony for his kindness in undertaking a share of im- perial responsibility : and there are several cases in this latter half of the same century in which foreign Augusti are recognised by the sovereign at Rome. In fact, for one and twenty years, nearly a generation, the imperium had been divided ; from the associa- tion of Gallienus by his father as sovereign of the West to the willing retirement of Tetricus from the insecure throne in Bordeaux. Claudius II. postpones the conquest of personal rivals in face of the more pressing danger of the public foes. Gallienus had already shown a remarkable forbearance towards usurpers, which may at first sight seem difficult to reconcile with his character a firm repression of military sedition, and a resolute reservation of the military forces of the State for the imperial disposal. In a word, in spite of the frequent duels of pretenders to the empire, "one and indivisible," there is some notable postponement of private interest to general welfare. And this would have been inconceivable had not these princes dimly recognised that the distant rival, though disputing their exclusive claim, was doing CH. m THE ROMAN EMPIRE (235-285) 75 good service. Documents and letters of the period Solidarity of prove to us it was no unnatural welter of selfish rwm ,, ,. - . , ,. staff-corps: egoism: there are glimpses of a consistent policy, sense of public of increased humanity, of a novel attitude to bar- barians, to prisoners, and to mutineers, as well as to pretenders to the purple. This solidarity of the Pannonian or Illyrian staff-corps may be regarded as a remarkable and significant feature of the time. Decius (who like Titus and Tiberius II. won in a few years a renown disproportionate perhaps to his performance) is the pioneer in the work of imperial restoration. All the host of transient but meritorious commanders, whom the force of circumstance and the soldiers' will invested with sovereignty, might trace to this prince their fortunes, their elevation, and their doom. 4. For this sturdy and single-minded staff-corps Thepro- were at the mercy of their soldiers. The real enemies of the emperors, of the pretenders (who guarded or administered in this decentralised separatism), were for merciless not their rivals but their own regiments. To examine treatmf - nt f & . unsuccess. and analyse the fate of these usurpers or legitimate rulers, is not to open a page of despotic cruelty or treacherous intrigue, but to accumulate evidence of the dangers of a headless army, without discipline or proper control ; of that system of independent local militias, which by several historians has been offered to the Roman Empire as a panacea for all its troubles. One is not in the habit of citing Montesquieu for sound maxims or judgments upon a government he could neither understand nor appreciate. But he is right in representing this period as a kind of " irregular military republic " ; like the regency of Algiers, where the dey was the short-lived and embarrassed puppet of a military conclave ; and historical studies will suggest the general analogy of the Mamelukes and the Janissaries. It is the fashion to complain of the absence of representative institu- tions and of " national guards," when the critic of the study reviews or rebukes the system which Augustus 76 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. i The pro- vincial regiments ; responsible for merciless treatment of unsuccess. bequeathed to the civilised world. " Si 1'empire avait su donner aux assemblies provinciales une se*rieuse existence, si les milices communales que nous avons trouve'es au premier siecle avaient subsist^ au troisieme, 1'Espagne aurait eu ais6ment raison de cette poigne*e de maraudeurs. . . . L'isolement des cite*s les empecha d'organiser la defense commune." But one must re- mind such fault-finders that the empire was deliber- ately settled upon a peace footing. The violation of the frontier, the plundering of Thrace or Bithynia, the exposure of the northern limit of Italy, was not within the horizon of the political prophet in the Augustan age. The end of civil strife seemed to be the chief aim of the new monarchy ; and it must be frankly admitted that to attain this laudable ambi- tion much that to us seems salutary and even indis- pensable was sacrificed. The early empire has many restraints upon a full right of association, but very few on that of public congress. There was great freedom of meeting ; and as we shall often have occasion to remark, it was the imperial policy which encouraged the beneficiaries in the province ; who despised or let slip those half-religious, half-poli- tical assemblies which allowed and even fostered the expression of public opinion. But a national or local militia did not come within this wide horizon of imperial liberalism. It was the peculiar pride of the system that it appealed to moral principles, not to force. The interior provinces almost never listened to the tramp of soldiers, rarely beheld the martial pomp of a parade. Respect for the majesty and pacific mis- sion of Rome kept quiet petty envies and neighbourly jealousies in the old city-states. The seeds of decay were sown in the classical peoples and their institu- tions in the very period of their brilliance ; the empire, so far from suppressing, only entered in to undertake the wardship of minors already ageing by a precocious abuse of their powers. And it was a civil and legal tutelage, not a military surveillance. CH. in THE ROMAN EMPIRE (235-285) 77 The barbarian pressure, the unrest of the third The pro- century, was not contemplated in the system of vin ^ ial t t GQ11J1f > tlt,8 * Augustus. The maintenance of military garrisons, responsible permanent, and in some degree independent, would for merciless have seemed a dangerous expedient ; the general peace would be imperilled to guard against an un- likely possibility. We cannot doubt that the stand- ing force was largely increased after the wars of Marcus Aurelius, especially in the needed reforms of Severus I. It was realised, not without sadness, that the civilian role of the early empire must be considerably modified ; and the third century repre- sents a kind of duel between the two functions of administration and defence. The so-called anarchy preceding Diocletian is only a serious warning and protest addressed to the party of " peace at any price." 5. We have hazarded the conjecture that the state-service suggestion of ^Emilianus did not merely represent fP~ a widespread feeling, but was in some sense feasible. no t personal Efficacy might be secured in either department by ambition or a careful separation of duty and function. Such it ^ uco must be confessed was not the view entertained by the two most masterful personalities of the closing century, Aurelian and Diocletian. With the re-estab- lishment of security on the frontiers, the outward pomp of sovereignty and military autocracy, so far from being surrendered, was of set purpose increased ; and the apparent revival of the Senate's prestige, so far from leading to any permanent recognition, was the last flicker of expiring privilege. But whatever were the secret tendencies of the time or the avowed projects of statesmen, the clear lesson of the age was the danger of almost independent military com- mands. It was not the private ambition of the general, but the imperfect control of the troops that roused the " pronunciamentos " of the third century a curious mingling of patriotic and regimental senti- ment. The necessary increase of forces under arms, the 78 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. i State-service of pre- tender t: not personal ambition or local discon- tent. preoccupation of the central authority with other problems or its own peculiar vicissitudes, the urgency of the crisis in the various detached and isolated points of barbarian attack, the high spirit of the armies and their ignorance of this Roman tradi- tion (which seeks to efface the part in favour of the whole), the undoubted prowess and capacity of the new school of generals all this combined to make the creation of a new Augustus the common and acknowledged remedy. In the absence of any definite central control in military affairs, it was felt that the general called upon to repress a genuine danger should possess plenary authority. So far from these mutinies representing local discontent and pretensions to independence, it is quite evident that they sought to maintain the majesty of Rome. Roused by a sense of danger, an unreflected instinct of self-preservation, these movements were continued in a highly patriotic spirit. The whole imperial line in Gaul, ending with clemency and credit to both parties concerned in Pisuvius Tetricus, is a signal instance of this. Elsewhere, the tenure of a power (necessarily, as it seemed, supreme) was still more brief and precarious. Without wanton caprice, with- out the studied cruelty, for example, of the Turkish troops in Bagdad, these regiments inherited the ruthlessness of military life, and pitilessly sacrificed the incompetent or the tottering competitor. It will be noted how large a proportion of these phantom Caesars succumbed to the swords of their own sup- porters. If their own nominee could not win the endorsement of success, he must be surrendered. Thus the soldiers themselves, heartless and arbitrary as their conduct appears, were preparing the way by this holocaust for the advent of the single ruler. The siege and sack of Autun, finding numberless parallels in the civil wars of later and less humane days, stands out as a single instance of the " Cossack spirit," if I may use the term ; which makes the unarmed and civilian provincials the mere sport of CH. iii THE ROMAN EMPIRE (235-285) 79 foreign troops of occupation. From such horrors State-service the later history of Rome is mercifully free. It was j n ^ G ~ . the whole aim of the earlier line, down to the first not personal reconstruction of Severus I. (103-211), to keep this ambition or ... , , , ., , "I / i local discon- mdispensable yet perilous element in its proper place, tent ^ and confine its influence to its fitting and subordinate duties. One chief title to our esteem in the Emperor Augustus is his steadfast opposition to military de- mands. But in the distress of this third century the armies feel their power, and are conscious of being confronted by an antique element which fears and distrusts their influence. Probus (276-282) may or may not have given public utterance to his con- fident hope that " soon men-at-arms will be no longer needed." But in view of the predominance at that time of the military interest, it may have not a little contributed to his murder. The soldiers worshipped success, were brave only in actual danger, and resented the continuous and largely artificial duties in time of peace, which, as Tacitus reminds us, have been excogitated as a remedy against the leisure of camps. We have no desire to screen the renown of Roman armies from the indelible stain of the massacres of Aurelian, of Probus, and of many others ; but the repentance of the army in the former case was at least sincere, and it is possible that the annalist, like the tired copyist of some manuscript, has been too ready to assimilate the doom of princes to one common model, and to assume that no accidental or natural death was possible for a wearer of the Roman purple. 6. One more topic of abiding interest to the Greatproblem student must now be noted, the imperial attitude to ;f **" tune . , .the barba- the new races a subject to which ever and again the historian must hark back, even at the risk of repetition. Permanent and crystallised as the tradi- tion of statesmanship became, effective as was the control of the instituta majorum, the rigor publicus, over the mere Asiatic caprice of an irresponsible 80 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. i Greatproblem ruler, there was at least in this respect no settled ^thebarbo^' P^ c y no systematic idea of warfare, alliance, or rians. incorporation. And this can scarcely be laid to the charge of imperial vacillation. It was impossible to employ a uniform method to tribes so various, to crises so widely differing, to inquiries for entrance and admission ranging from abject humility to inso- lent defiance. Tacitus, who is perhaps neither an unprejudiced critic of character nor a farseeing statesman, is at least a true prophet in his apprehen- sion of the North. His strange sympathy with Chauvinism, with any and every knight-errant esca- pade on the Rhenish frontier, with the most ill- considered and costly campaigns of some immature imperial cadet, is due in part to his well-founded suspicions of that northerly rampart or river, de- batable tithe-land or chain of forts. If in Mr. Ker's happy simile the Norseman throughout his life " hears the boom of the surges of chaos against the dykes of the world," it may truly be said that the Romans of a later day listened in like fashion for the tramp of the Teutonic hordes. This justified apprehension may relieve our historian of this obvious charge, that in the conception of politics he never passed beyond the mere selfish acquisitiveness of the republic, or the privilege and exclusiveness of the dominant clan or caste in an obsolete city-state. But it is this fear which explains his strange yet obviously sincere indictment of Tiberius : " Princeps proferendi imperi incuriosus" It was an odd and indeed unholy alliance of the perpetual militarism of the convinced imperialist with the narrowness of the old city aristocrat. He could understand an Imperator for some venturesome foreign expedi- tion no doubt Trajan was his ideal ; but he could not appreciate the firm hand and liberal policy in the interior combined with a flaccid interest in distant campaigns. His political principles were framed in the reaction of the fifteen years of Domitian's reign and by his own experience in that thunder-laden CH. in THE ROMAN EMPIRE (235-285) 81 suspense of the Senate. He did not realise that to Greatproblem administer is more difficult than to conquer, to retain than to acquire. The third Flavian employed excel- r ians. lent agents, and governed well and minutely ; but he had little sympathy with wars of aggrandisement, and could afford to turn the barbaric danger into something of a laughing-stock. Yet it is very doubtful if this apparent supineness and indifference were altogether to blame, either in this case or with the much - abused Gallienus, some century and a half later. Nevertheless, however unfair may be Tacitus' esti- mate of some great rulers who on the whole de- served well of the State, his pious thankfulness for the internal feud that divided the Teutonic race was a piece of real political foresight. The incorporation of the barbarian in the commonwealth he could not conceive ; enfranchisement to his Whig views had already gone too far. He looks on approvingly, with a kind of gloating delight at a gladiators' show, when two German tribes exterminate each other; and recognises in this " lovely spectacle " the hand of a special providence, whose intervention he is not wont to trace in human affairs. The real crisis, clearing up the situation and setting the future attitude of both parties, occurred under Aurelius. The palmy days of the pacific empire were over with the death of the first Antonine. For not quite fifty years (117-165) the imperial ideal was realised, and it is to this period that Gibbon alludes in attaching his remarkable eulogy. The wave was beaten back; and Commodus Antoninus IV. begins the policy of pensioning the barbarians, of assuring his own position or comfort by disgrace, which we may subsequently note in such different princes as Gallus I. (251), Jovianus (363), and Justinian. With the details of the "later" defensive warfare we are happily unconcerned. The annals of this period are distressingly full of marches and counter- marches, both in barbarian and Persian wars ; which VOL. I. F 82 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. i Greatproblem do not, however perfectly mastered and analysed, ;f tf ^ time j ea( j us one s t e p f ur ther in advance towards a better the barba- . . riana. understanding of the genuine relations. It is this patient and minute survey which in this volume we willingly surrender to another more competent to be the chronicler of war and its alarms. Through all these centuries the Rhenish, Danubian, and Euphratic frontier is maintained, with but slight modification. Rapine and raid may pillage Thrace and Macedonia, or capture and lay Antioch in ruins, but no serious measures of final conquest were ever contemplated either by Goth or Sassanid. As late as Harun al Rashid we must complain of the desultory and inconclusive character of the Oriental campaigns ; of the utter want of purpose in the slave-dealing ravages, which without settled or con- structive policy had the sole aim of inflicting harm and destroying city and village. Indeed in the whole epoch from Augustus to Theodosius, a period of four hundred years, the sole moments of deliberate recession are to be discovered under Hadrian (117) and Aurelian (273). Two of the most imperious and successful statesmen in the imperial line surrendered of their own free will a portion of Roman soil. I am well aware of the pathetic emphasis which historians lay on the evacuation by Jovian of the Mesopotamia!! provinces. But it is difficult to maintain a serious or con- tinued interest in the see-saw of the Eastern frontier ; and we cannot forget that perhaps the greatest extent of Oriental territory was acquired in the reign of the weakest of sovereigns (Maurice), scarcely twenty years anterior to the total collapse of the great fabric. The two " moments " of genuine concern in Eastern relations occur indeed under Heraclius I. and Romanus IV. At an interval of four hundred years, Egypt and Syria are finally cut away from the parent stem, and an integral part of Asia Minor, within the bulwark of the Taurus. Apart from these, the general situation, whether CH. in THE ROMAN EMPIRE (235-285) 83 under Arsacid, Sassanid, or Abbassid, presents features Greatproblem of wearisome identity, whether we are studying the reign of Augustus, of Severus I., of Galerius rians. Maximianus II., of Julian, or of Heraclius ; even, I had almost said, of Constantine IV. It would no doubt be perfectly possible to draw out carefully the exact points of difference in the aims, the arms, the methods of warfare at these various times ; and it is indeed the duty of one indispensable class of historians to emphasise just the peculiar features of each age. But if our task from the first is rather to trace the continuous and inner life of the empire, we must ask if any substantial result or definite lesson can attend the most patient study of border warfare in the East ? We have throughout the same curious and amicable relations between the monarchs, some- times even a chivalrous confidence ; the same ineffec- tive tournaments, in which neither combatant is really in earnest. And if we ask for definite policy or result, the answer must be negative. Sapor and Bahram may sack Antioch and may besiege or hand over Nisibis ; Severus, Galerius, and Heraclius may enter Oriental capitals in triumph, pillage royal palaces or capture harems ; but there is never any question on either side of permanent conquest or incorporation. 7. This is a signal difference from the other Policy of foreign relation of Rome. The barbarian problem exclnstonor i- j r r j u- welcome - implied some sort of conscious policy ; and this latter course was never demanded or implied in the " razzias," under the which defied or retaliated in the East. The main better P 1 " 6 *- interest down to the acute crisis under the sons of Theodosius lay in the receptive or exclusive answer to the ever-present difficulty. How far was the empire really cosmopolitan and world-wide, not indeed in territory, but in citizenship within the magic circle ? The emperors started with the classical bias towards the finite, the limiting principle ; they had none of that vague yearning for the infinite, which led Asiatic hordes under an able prince to spread in a few years from the Japanese Sea to Poland and Denmark, only 84 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. i Policy of to vanish in as many months. It was the first con- Sc^T? W scientious attempt to establish a state, other than a latter course clan-city, on a peace footing. For hitherto the mili- under the tary and the civil conceptions had stood opposed 8 ' irreconcilably. The Oriental monarchies had not attempted any more than the confederation of Delos to incorporate, to instruct, and to amalgamate. It is needless to accumulate words of astonished praise from Polybius and Josephus to the Gaul Namatianus, on this unwonted policy of peace and welcome. Now and again it received a set-back, when the franchise was withdrawn or given sparingly. But the curious privilege of a Roman commander, that of bestowing the citizenship, marks from the first the general tendency. Finding confluent streams of differing voice and effectiveness in the vague theory of the Porch and the genuine practice of the Church, the current surmounted all fragile and reactionary barriers and mastered the whole expanse. We watch with growing interest the barbarian prince as client or feudatory ; the Germanic bodyguard of a Roman emperor ; the rapid transition from treacherous foe to faithful legionary; for example, in the armies of Julius Agricola. And in spite of Arminius and Varus, in spite of the threats of the Batavians and the menace of those years of terror following Nero's death, we feel sure that there was nothing strictly incompatible between Teutonic personality and Roman law rather each was the needful com- plement of the other. Nor can we forget that how- ever profoundly modified in conception and scope and meaning, the imperial idea has lingered as a vital force among the Germans, while among the Latin race it is either extinct or travestied into the mockery of a brutal and spasmodic Caesarism. Let us return to the question of including the Teutonic races ; and in the first place, let us remem- ber the havoc of the years of plague. Finlay strikes a true (and in his age unusual) note by hymning as it were the effect of the pestilences, which slowly and CH. in THE ROMAN EMPIRE (235-285) 85 tragically traversed the empire under Aurelius, under Policy of Justinian, and again under Constantine V. In the exc ^>n or middle of the second, the sixth, and the eighth cen- 7^^. course turies, the population of a large part of the empire was under the entirely renewed. And it is not to be doubted that ** tter P rinces - the statesmen of the third, when they had leisure, must have witnessed with dismay the dwindling numbers of tillers and countrymen, and the fictitious sustenance of the town-dwellers in the larger centres, by the offer of gratuitous asylum to drones and incapables. The influence of Roman tradition transformed Maximinus I. into a zealous defender of the limes against barbarian attack ; he has " forgotten his own people and his father's house " ; he has transferred to his new masters a whole-hearted allegiance, which loses nothing when he himself becomes their lord. The unheard-of catastrophe of the Decii, significantly synonymous with the republican family of typical devotees for the public good, awoke a universal terror. After the feeble interlude of Gallus, the fruitless offer of Emilian, the reign of Valerian witnesses a serious purpose, to defend either frontier by a division of sovereignty. Severus I. in the first decade of this century may have had some such partition in view a kind of family compact by which not the imperium only (according to the archaic republican usage) but the actual territory should be distributed, and a new capital founded for a new realm. Gallienus, a per- plexing enigma, is stationed on the north to repel barbarians, just as the two Valentinians and Gratian a hundred years later. The importance and the uncertain temper of Gaul and its neighbours is a constant theme with Augustan historians. There indeed Latin letters enjoyed a brilliant revival in the panegyrists of the fourth, the poets, prince- bishops and Christian fathers of the fifth century. And the policy of Gallien would appear to have been most liberal and inclusive. While Titus all but destroyed his matchless and somewhat puzzling popularity by a proposed alliance with Bernice, 86 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. i Policy qf Gallien wedded without comment, as a secondary exclusion or par tner of his throne, the barbarian Pipa. One can wekomei . . , . ,. , , . . . , , latter course scarcely doubt that during his prolonged sojourn in under the the north, this accomplished and tactful man of the letter princes. wor | d p er f or med more feats by diplomacy than by arms. He is a type of the later " barbarophil " or Teutonizer, that saw in the untutored and vigorous races the best recruits for Roman armies, the best colonists of Roman soil. Claudius II. will have no parley with the barbarian ; it is the old policy of war to the death ; which was stultified by the inexhaustible and warlike multitudes of the north confronting the pacific and dwindling haunters of the circus as they took their exercise and the hazard of a cruel sport, like our own proletariat to-day, by proxy. Aurelian is no doubt a reactionary by necessity; because armies just then were tiring of the constant parcelling of sovereignty, and after a period of centripetal license were anxious to show obedience to a genuine monarch. And it is Aurelian who gives up Dacia, engrossed in the one duty of interior unification. But with Probus again appears a foreign policy of conciliation and of firmness. He is perhaps the earliest prince to settle barbarians in thousands on Roman soil. We need not intrude into the era of Diocletian, and may well arrest our notice at this point. The armies of Rome had long been recruited from outside the fron- tier. The generals of Aurelian read like a Military Gazette of the fourth century rather than of the third. This internal colonising, this new military caste, are just the two most salient features of the later monarchy. The emperors could centralise and govern when civil and warlike functions were kept rigidly apart, and when the control of the departments was in the hands of groups of officials as widely differing as the Chinese literatus and the Manchu bannerman. But we must leave this period of welter and confusion, having marked the glimmer of con- tinuous and conscious policy, of virtuous and ready CH. in THE ROMAN EMPIRE (235-285) 87 effort which can plainly be detected, if we have Policy of patience : having also traced its failure in the ore- exclusion or r . . , ..... , r ,, welcome? carious existence of senatorial privilege and the latter course difficulty of effecting a satisfactory division of pro- under th ? vince. We are captivated by the suggestion of ttter P Tl ' lwet - Emilian ; we recognise moments when the " dual control " was effectively realised ; but we are in the end bound to admit that the overt absolutism of Diocletian in the next age was the sole remedy for the unsettlement of the third century. CHAPTER IV CENTRALISED ABSOLUTISM ; OR, THE SYSTEM OF DIOCLETIAN AND CONSTANTINE (285-337 A.D.) {C. AUREL. VALER. DIOCLETIANUS . 284-305 M. AUREL. VALER. MAXIMIANUS . 285-305 C. GALERIUS MAXIMIANUS II. . . 305-311 JULIANUS III. (Carth.) CARAUSIUS AND ALLECTUS (Britain) 286-293 H. The " Flavian" Houses (Constantine, Valentinian FLAVIUS VALER. CONSTANTIUS l.\ , (great-nephew of Claud. II.) J 3 ^ 5 3 FLAV. VAL. CONSTANTINUS I. . . 306-337 MAXIMINUS II. (or III. ?) . . . 308-313 SEVERUS III 307-308 MAXENTIUS (son of Maximian I.) 306-312 P. VALERIUS L'IANUS LICINIUS III. \ _ and IV. (son) / 3 3 3> . milit. nom. . co-opt. . adopt. . milit. nom. and Theodosius) : . adopt. . birth. . co-opt. . co-opt. . milit. nom. co-opt. ' Inevitable 1- A GRADUAL and often reluctant advance to tendency to centralised control is the path usually taken by all C tion. a political systems. To say that control is centralised seems to imply to many people that the administra- tion is civilised ; just as many theorists have believed that in the discovery of the exact site or pivot of sovereignty lies the key to the principles regulating the State. And this, in spite of the sympathetic sound on modern ears of the words " federalism " and " confederation." How to acquire the stability, safety, and long life of an organism, worked by a single brain, at the least possible sacrifice of personal or provincial freedom and initiative, is (it need scarcely be said) the chief problem of all earnest inquiry in this field. Against the seigneurial or parochial interest of feudal lord or commune, the drastic scheme of state-supremacy was elevated about the time of the Reformation into a principle, and ex- panded into a theory by an Italian text-book. And 88 CH. iv THE ROMAN EMPIRE (285-337) 89 the one abiding result of that strange uprising of Inevitable mind and matter in 1789 was to fix the triumph not tendency to of individual liberty but of central control. The turn. contest in the new world of America after the middle of the nineteenth century likewise vindicated in its result the principle of centralism. The chief effect of the recognition of republican ideas is the denial of the rights of a minority. Yet by a significant anomaly in our representative usages, government for the time being is always in the hands of a minority. Interest and unanimity are lacking in most elections ; an incontestable majority of the electorate is a pheno- menon of great rarity ; while it is clear in the case of the group-system that the predominance of party or person is almost entirely a matter of hazard and secret intrigue. But the seat of authority once seized by whatever means or right, the modern State inherits the ruthless and autocratic methods of the past. Government is less continuous but it is no less arbitrary. The time being short for the transient reformer or reactionary, every use must be made of a limited opportunity : v& victis ! and spolia victoribus are the freely acknowledged maxims of enlightened administration, tempered by the cautious fear that the prostrate rival of to-day may be the master of to-morrow. Indeed, modern centralism is a some- what curious feature of an age which has lost faith in so many principles. The justification of convic- tion and conscience saved the older State, even in its religious persecutions, from the charge of tyranny. With the recognised freedom of thought in religious belief and observance (following the over- throw of the ancient idea of a ruler's responsibility and a subject's tutelage) there has emerged no similar freedom in convention or behaviour. And the power which may be exercised for the brief span of the supposed mandate is merely concerned with relieving the harm of the previous ruler a Penelope's web. In a word, there is in most administration centralism without a centre ; and the intrigues or self-seeking of 90 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. i Inevitable obscure and irresponsible gangs are concealed under a mischievous generality, 'the Will of the People. Absolutism in the old world meant something more overt, frank, and continuous. However accidental the election, the once elected emperor enters into a full heritage of precedent, sentiment, and tradition, which somehow makes of most rude and unpromising material a national patriot and a careful administrator of the great estate of Augustus. One looks in vain for an absolutely unworthy pretender ; and perhaps in the case of Phocas alone is this half-jesting saluta- tion as Augustus wholly unjustified. This direct supervision and initiative saved the Roman world from those discreditable intrigues, whether of palace or of faction, that make the modern constitutional monarchy or representative republic the despair of honest men ; have led to that abstention of the worthier and weightier citizens from public life, which is the great and inevitable evil, incident upon the nominal and insincere democracy of modern times. It would be wrong to say that public opinion was in the year 300 A.D. as diffused, as sensitive, as alert, as we find it to-day in the more wholesome European societies ; but it was certainly operative. It watched with increasing approval the systematic success of Diocletian, and endorsed the tumultuous election of the crafty avenger of Numerian. The last century had appreciated the mischief of de- centralisation ; and the reaction was certain to go too far in the opposite direction. Yet however we may regret the extrusion of the Senate's partnership, the severance of the departments of state and of arms, the heavy cost of a fourfold court, the deliberate orientalism of a shrewd monarch (himself without a trace of personal vanity), we cannot, save in a "thesis," deny the usefulness of this restoration, judged by any normal standard of the minimum of a State's duty to the subject. Nor in spite of Lactantius' angry protest against the whole system in the " Deaths CH. iv THE ROMAN EMPIRE (285-337) 91 of the Persecutors," can we doubt the genuine public Inevitable contentment which applauded the changes of Diocle- tendejl w to tian, and was upset by the tumults that ensued on his twn. retirement : which once more hailed the reintegrated monarchy of Constantine, and the resumption of the new principles, modified as they were by the novel feature of heredity. 2. The outward history of the forty years between General Diocletian's choice and the founding of Constanti- survey of the nople or the Synod of Nicaea is extremely simple, \oeight' of the With the help of well-chosen lieutenants, an Illyrian Church. commander recovers and once more makes sure the ancient frontier ; Gaul, relapsing into barbarism and disorder, is pacified; Persian insolence sobered; Egypt, brought back from a precarious autonomy, is again added to the empire. The Adoptive System, excellent in theory like elective monarchy itself, breaks down under the pressure of parental bias. Twenty years may be given to the painful and prosperous recon- struction ; and twenty again to its collapse and re- building on newer lines. The principle of adoptive nomination was in singular harmony with the early Roman conception of imperirim a magical gift conferred by a sort of apostolical succession. The holder is entitled to pass on this power undiminished and without further reference to the sovereign power whence he derived. But it runs clearly counter to two strong human instincts : the prejudice of a father who wants to found a dynasty, and the partiality of soldiers who in the young scions of an imperial family discover unsuspected merit. The early mutinies which assailed the insecure throne of Tiberius were quelled by this semi-feudal sentiment. Ready in a moment of pique and sullenness to follow the noisy demagogue, the army, being essentially aristocratic in texture and tradition, refuses in calmer moments to substitute him for the old names : " Pro Neronibus et Drusis im- perium capessent?" At many epochs in this history of the sterile Caesarate, it is pathetic to see how the limited but loyal intelligence of the troops clung to some 92 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. i General stripling of real or fictitious descent from a regnant survey of the f am il v . DGfiod * weightofthe And the sympathy of the average man was Church. w ith Constantine as he climbed to the same unique position, which Diocletian had seized, had fortified, and had surrendered. Both in his attitude to the new creed, and in his relation to the new races, Constantine represented the larger policy, the wider tolerance and receptivity. Standing ninth or tenth in the great series of Illyrian emperors, he inherits and consummates all their purpose, and he adds to their masterful yet generous scheme the adroit alliance with the Church. There is besides these vague, general features of the years 284-324 no dark and tangled principles at war, no secret and half-conscious force pressing to the light. The world is quite content to acquiesce in a firm government ; and had no taste for the renewal of tumult. Society agreed to pay the price demanded. The increasing and homo- geneous body of Christian believers hailed in Con- stantine the "saviour of society" and the bringer of tolerance. In no other section of mankind was there a body of belief so uniform, a public opinion so consistent ; and the Church threw her silent but effective weight into the scale : " Momentumque fuit mutata Ecclesia rerum." Changes of 3. The design of Diocletian was simple and Diocletian straightforward. He had seen the fearful uncertainty adverse to , . , ., , , . , . . . . . . ,. personal rule; * * ne Caesar s life and was determined to safeguard the modem person who embodied the majesty of Rome. In spite royalty. Q f ^ e unc j ou bted revival of moral tone and public spirit after Maximinus I. there had arisen among the troops an absolute disregard of the sacrosanct character of the emperor. This was to be restored at all costs even at the price of adopting expedients very unac- ceptable to the rough soldiers of camps. All historians speak in the same terms of the so-called " Orientalism " of this reformer ; to hide away the chief Augustus in mysterious seclusion and surround him with pomp CH. iv THE ROMAN EMPIRE (285-337) 93 and countless retinue. And of this curious stream of Changes of ceremonial we can trace the course down to the strict jPjjj'f' 811 and sacred court-etiquette of Constantine VII. Nor personal rule; is Finlay wrong in assuring us that to the Byzantines modern this empty parade seemed the loftiest of human sciences ; its punctilious performance the highest earthly privilege and duty. We cannot doubt that the institution of such formula acted upon the ritual of the Church, and itself borrowed much from ecclesi- astical sources. We are just at the point where the very seat and source of earthly power is to undergo a subtle change. No Roman jurist, however arbitrary the exercise of imperial power, ever doubted that the people bestowed and could resume. Justinian him- self, whom Agathias calls the first genuine autocrat, prefaces his work with a candid recognition of his delegated authority, as the people's representative or vicegerent. Whatever halo of divine descent might gather round the early Julio-Claudian house, whatever temples and cult the grateful Orient might establish for the peace-givers, however a natural syncretism might identify, perhaps in distant Spain, the Caesar of the hour with some local tutelar, there was never any serious doubt as to the essentially secular and popular basis of the imperial rule. It is no doubt often pointed out that while the whole prestige and indirect influence of modern royalty depends on antecedent divine right, the Roman Caesar was only God by a free and generous acclamation after a jealous scrutiny of merit when his life's chapter had closed. It is not too much to say that here lies one difference that for ever sepa- rates the modern from the classic world : hereditary right, often derided and explained away, yet none the less (perhaps all the more) valid and influential ; and official rank. And it is interesting to note that the immediate claim of a dynast, without further choice or recognition, is more and more fully established. The Roman emperor would date his reign from a senatorial vote of tribunitian power ; never for a 94 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. i Changes of moment was he allowed to forget the respectable and Diocletian magistratial character of an authority unchecked in personal rule; practice. Teutonic royalty consecrates with a mythic modem h a i o a certain family, but primogeniture is lacking, and in this narrow field there is a distinct freedom of election. The reign dates from the popular " recognition " by the armed host, the elevation on the shield, and later, from the joint civil and religious ceremony of anoint- ing, wherein meet Teutonic custom and the tradition of Jewish monarchy. But in the advance towards a new centralism out of piecemeal disorder, in the re- viving conception of the State as an organism which marks the later Middle Age, the king, or rather the heir to kingship, seems to rise superior, independent of the tumultuous election of his " leuds " or the holy oil of his coronation. Important maxims of state- craft unite with feudal deference to an eldest son to create that strangest fiction, the royal " corporation sole," continuous and undying. The " divine right of kings," " the king can do no wrong," " the king never dies " ; such are the foremost of the new principles. It would be impossible to conceive views more utterly at variance with the maxims of the empire. The "right divine" does not adhere, as with us, to a certain family of mythologic antiquity, "by right" (as King Edward VII. writes to his Indian liegemen) " of immemorial lineage " it is inherent in the people which confers or abrogates, in the assembly which can canonise and beatify, or condemn to lasting infamy. Again and again we must point out the personal re- sponsibility of the Caesar for good government, and the absence of any fiction of ministerial accounta- bility, which has often shielded in the past (and will often in the future shield) the masterful exercise of invisible sovereign power by the sovereign himself. The emperor was not irremovable, and the right to criticise was never in effect denied. In fact, one chief cause of the apprehensive jealousy of rulers, feeling that their popularity was declining, lay in the CH. iv THE ROMAN EMPIRE (285-337) 95 anomalous position. They bore the brunt of misfor- Changes of tune and failure ; it was not recognised as an excuse ^> cletian that "the sovereign had been ill-advised." Lastly, personal rule ; the maxim of the indefeasible continuity of the ruling modern line was unknown to the ancients. Behind the calm roya y ' assumption of the power, as if by hereditary right, lay a civil vote, a military acclamation (endorsed in- deed by a civil vote), in any case the fiction of open and unfettered election. 4. In the transition from the classical to the Government modern conception, Diocletian plays no incon- passed from siderate part. He realises how insecure is the over- C amp, and weighted official, heavily responsible, ever accessible, now to palace. and all-embracing. The sovereignty reposing in him was liable in a moment to be extinguished by the sword of the assassin ; and needed to be ever and again rekindled, as it were, either from the smoulder- ing embers of a sedentary Senate or the brandished torch of military insurrection. It has been well said that the Roman emperor passes from the Senate to the camp, and from the camp to the palace. At first he is merely the executive, the right hand of an unarmed assembly ; which concentrates in itself the wisdom and experience of the State, but being only advisory or consultative cannot give effect to its decision. For it must be remembered that the " prince-president " is as necessary for the safety and integrity of the Senate as he was loudly demanded by the financial classes and by the provincials. The natural feud between a now inopportune clan-govern- ment and the imperialism of successful generals had issued into open daylight. It was in the highest degree expedient that the Senate should recognise one of the powerful pretenders as its own delegate ; and from one point this recognition is just the most salient feature in the establishment of the Caesar. State-needs too summoned the chief noble of Rome, living among his peers, to be the itinerant warder of the marches ; and from the middle of the reign of Marcus this paramount duty only allows infrequent 96 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. i Government visits to the metropolis. It was the deliberate intent passed from o f our Camillus of the Lower Empire to exchange the Senate to , , , , , camp, and barrack-room for the palace, as the centre, the source, now to palace, and the seat of sovereignty. It would have been useless to have restored the nomination to the Fathers, edifying as was the deference of the military caste during the interregnum following Aurelian's death. For the Senate laboured always under this disability ; that being defenceless and without agents it could never enforce and indeed had rarely occasion to initiate. The system of tumultuous salutation by a chance group of soldiers was self-condemned ; and there was no one to propose the modern panacea, a free and popular election by universal suffrage and the ballot. Once more, after a long interlude, the palace (the divina dotnus as it is called, even under Aurelius in the second century) becomes the exclusive seat of power ; and the palatine officials usurp pre-eminence over the servants of the State. Thus the nomen- clature and the precedence of the rough Illyrian peasant survives in the etiquette of modern courts ; and the whole retinue of royalty derives its origin from the Romanising despotism of the Merovingian, and from the conscious revival of Roman tradition by Charles or by Otto III. It was equally derogatory to the dignity of a senator or a Teutonic noble to serve as a menial in the house of the titular sovereign. It was this mistaken pride, as we have noted, and shall have occasion to repeat, which lodged power under the Claudian house in the hands of supple and subservient Greeks. For it is a uniform tradition of autocracy that it prefers a foreign hand to execute its decrees on its subjects ; let the Christian and Georgian agents of early Turkish rule, or the German bureaucracy of Russia to-day, bear witness to this truth. The Teutons, it is true, made an important exception in favour of the "county," the retinue which assembled for purely warlike purpose and the discipline of arms under a notable chieftain of men, CH. iv THE ROMAN EMPIRE (285-337) 97 no doubt acquired more pacific duties during the rare Government intervals of peace. Tacitus remarks with equal sur- passed from ,,..,. , . , , , , , , , Senate to prise that it is no disgrace for the freeborn to be seen camp, and among the servitors of a gallant captain ; and that it now to palace. is the strange custom of Germany to defer the title and perhaps even the rights of prince to some youthful stripling of royal or ducal birth. In the latter part of the third century the staff-corps, tetat-majeur, formed an assembly of notable warriors who disposed of the crown. We shall find this practice again when a crisis once more places power in the hands of officers on a campaign, when the "prince," who unites so many anomalous functions, is pre-eminently for the time being an imperator ; and such was the elevation of Jovian and of Valentinian. But it was mainly Diocletian's object to rescue the succession from this constant jeopardy. And in bringing out once more the sacred and almost magical faculty lodged in the people's representative, and by him alone transmissible to a successor, he believed he had established a permanent solution of that problem, which awaits all but hereditary dynasts. He lived long enough to confess his error ; he saw the inexor- able pressure of the family instinct, the natural reverence of the simple for a father's son. And though he saw it not, he may well have anticipated the further development, which will be illustrated in our next period the supremacy of the courtier and the chamberlain. Indeed, just the same process has, within the past two hundred years, transformed the Manchu sovereigns of China from the warlike and active supervisors of the general welfare into the puppets and prisoners of a palace, where only the sagacity of females can penetrate the deep veil of intrigue. It is indeed possible to fix the exact moment when a policy of mysterious immurement like that of Diocletian succeeded the earlier conception of an accessible if not ubiquitous ruler. Twice in the first decade of last century was the life of the Chinese emperor attempted VOL. I. G 98 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. i Government a rare display of unwonted profanity ; and it was to sa feg uai "d the incarnation of the State, or rather the universal parent and mediator, that the present system now to palace, was unhappily adopted. Thus the greatest and most ideal monarchy, which, whether in theory or in achievement, merited much of the eulogy lavishly bestowed by the Encyclopaedists, became a mere Oriental monarchy of the customary type that is, a complete divorce of actual and nominal sovereignty. For there are two vague desires operative (as we have already seen) in the concept of a ruler ; men wish to see the head of the State at once safe and respected, and vigorous and personal. That these two features are in reality incompatible is plain to any practical statesman or philosophical theorist. There can be no effective permanence in an office which is exposed to the results of criticism and of failure. Volney, in his " Ruins," has a passage pregnant with unconscious irony, where he describes the enfranchised people, at the very moment of recovered freedom, as delegating all its new-found powers to others. It would be interesting to know how he would have justified this prompt and hasty surrender of the costly privilege of self-government. For to us who can speak with the experience of the nineteenth century, it is this indifference of the people to misrule which constitutes the real menace of an age supposed to be democratic, and gives impunity to unscrupulous and self-seeking statesmen. Now although Diocletian is by no means so explicit and candid, he labours, or appears to labour, under the same delusion. He would like to have maintained both the sanctity and the effectiveness of imperial, as our modern idealists of popular, control. But it is clear that this incar- ceration of the sovereign is fatal to the old Roman theory of drastic personal supervision. Nothing, in effect, saved the Caesar from sinking into a mere Mikado or Lama but the undying tradition of his inseparable military duties. It is this emergence CH. iv THE ROMAN EMPIRE (285-337) 99 into a busy and perilous society, where formula and Government etiquette are not everything, which makes the softly- ^^t rom nurtured sons of strenuous leaders, Constance II. and camp, and Gratian, something better than the invisible Honorius. nowtopalace. But meantime, in the long interludes of peace, power quietly slipped into unrecognised hands ; just those men whose personal duties kept them nearest the sovereign, really controlled the promotion of the civilian or the soldier and the general administration of the realm. In fact, this overt acknowledgment of centralism and autocracy then, as always, implied on the practical side a withdrawal of all efficient control from the monarch. As neither one man nor all men can really govern, as strict monarchy or precise democracy is a pure chimaera, the first duty, whether in a republic or a despotism, is to inquire who will do the work, which in their very nature neither monarch nor multitude can perform. The long turmoil to which the sanguine speculators or conspirators of the last century in Europe pointed as the triumph of liberty and enlightenment, did not substitute the "Will of the People" for the caprice of an autocrat. For both these (with rare and striking exceptions) are mere fictions of interested pleaders. A new governing class forces itself to the front, and the State, without relaxing any of its pretensions to absolute sway, is captured by a new party of intellect, or of wealth, or of scientific progress. And it cannot be denied that personal sovereignty and monarchic influence has largely gained by this sometimes ignoble transference of power. Just as Hadrian had more first-hand knowledge of his empire than Honorius, and exerted that open or indirect influence which belongs to the keen-eyed traveller, so to Edward VII. or to William II. is given in virtue, not of defined prerogative, but of effective and matchless insight, a power unknown to Lewis XVI. or the later Philips of Spain. It is one of the paradoxes of history that as a story's moral interest vanishes in the telling and amplification, so prerogative 100 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. i Government will disappear in its promulgation. When you have jxissedfrom established the formal seat of sovereignty on a Senate to . . . , . , . , . , .. * campi a nd logical basis, there is the turther question usurping nowtopalace. all genuine attention, who shall exercise it? Dio- cletian, like so many great rulers, believed he was founding an enduring edifice. But he had estimated human nature by himself. Strangely above petty ends and selfish aims, he had left out of his calcula- tion two important elements in the average man ; and he it is who is " always with us," while the man of genius or the reformer is (as Alexander I. says of a good autocrat) " a happy accident." He hoped that fathers would pass over their sons, and that sons would forget their father's titles and renown, and sink uncomplaining into a private lot. And he believed that a sedentary and secluded ruler could administer the empire. In both these expectations he was deceived. He had made no allowance for the play of average feeling, or for the disability of the average ruler. Both were intimately connected ; for not only the scion of a reigning house but also the people at large believe that he is especially fitted for a certain task by birth ; and these, when they are un- deceived, continue to reproach him with failure or misrule, for which, in the nature of the case, he is the last person who is actually responsible. Diocle- tian, while seeking to restore personal rule, in reality ended it. In the next generation the emperor will be known as one who has a certain influence with his chief minister ! Diocletian 5. From this general appreciation of his policy sums up the an( j forecast of its outcome, we must turn to the types the more special treatment of his reforms. And it would silent changes at once appear that Diocletian is no bold innovator, centurv ^^ e Napoleon or Peter the Great. If we look closely at the preceding age we shall see there in embryo the germ of all ; his revolutionary projects. Nor is it any disparagement to the great talent or. public service of the man to show that he recognised and co-ordinated prevalent tendencies into a system, CH. TV THE ROMAN EMPIRE (285-337) 101 rather than destroyed and built up anew after an Diocletian original design. We have, as may be hoped, shown tums U P the that the apparent anarchy of the third century is ^, s ' ^ re>( by no means lacking in constructive features ; that tilent change the protagonists in this scene of confusion are not ^, devoid of a strong sense of public duty and personal loyalty. It would be unfair indeed to dismiss that age as a mere battlefield of "kites and crows." Diocletian sums up its chief tendencies ; indeed he looks backward rather than forward, and is the child of his own age rather than the parent of a new epoch aurei s&culi parens, as his dutiful histo- riographer terms him. I suppose that the chief sub- terranean currents only issuing later into daylight were three : the fissiparous tendency of East and West ; the divorce of the civilian and military duties and careers ; and the Germanising not merely of the armies but of the soil of Rome. It will be needful to devote attention to these three problems of absorb- ing interest ; to trace the sundering of the two main divisions of the realm ; to analyse the motives for the separation of the two great services of State ; to revert (without, I hope, wearisome repetition) to the undying problem of the relations of the new and vigorous peoples descending on a depleted empire, which suffered from nothing so much as lack of men. And first, it had been long apparent that the unwieldy bulk of the empire surpassed the powers of a single ruler, however vigorous. The tendency to split appears as early as the first serious barbarian menace under Marcus Aurelius. Every succeeding monarch who was something more than the well- meaning creature of circumstance, reverted to some kind of scheme for halving immediate responsibility without impairing the solidarity of the empire ; for the imperium was not a concrete realm in our sense, but a unique ; cujus (as Cyprian might say of it no less than of the Christian episcopate) a singulis in solidum pars tenetur. Itself, since the 102 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF UK. i Diocletian days of kingship, still infinite and comprehensive, sum* up the it was capa bie o f ^ide distribution, without the past; stereo- r . types the general representation losing its integral validity ; silent changes ft was a sort of " sacrament " miraculously multiplied cent, ur y, in its integrity without losing its inherent grace. Against centralised power in wrong hands the ex- pedient was to multiply checks and colleagues ; and it was to remedy the dislocated mechanism that once more authority was given in the aggregate to a single ruler without a partner. Yet after the close of the second century a partner was often voluntarily chosen, and the duties divided. We vainly desire to know what truth lies beyond the fable of Severus' partition of empire. Would he have forestalled Con- stantine and Theodosius in choosing a new capital and two stripling princes to succeed to rival thrones ? or again, was it a mere expedient to alleviate the suspicious jealousy of two brothers, like Romulus and Remus ? or lastly, is it a mere suggestion of a rhetorician ? It must be remembered, if it is this last, if Herodianus fancies where Dio Cassius knows nothing, it is none the less significant. If one chief purpose of this volume is to show the hidden and unconscious forces which long before recognition have already accomplished their aim, it is also our design to show the bias of contemporary feeling, and to seek to gather what the actors and writers of the time thought of that wonderful and yet perplexing heritage which they were too near to understand fully. And Herodianus, writing some forty years later, may well reflect a current interpretation of the fratri- cidal quarrel and of the suggestion which was to cure it. Towards the close of his history comes the dual empire of Maximus II. and Balbinus; and although this regards the discrepant duties of peace and war rather than any partition of territory, yet it certainly contemplates two separate places of official residence. The next reign which has any leisure for a definite policy shows the division of East and West an accomplished fact ; under Valerianus and Gallienus CH. iv THE ROMAN EMPIRE (285-337) 103 the severance is as real as under Valentinian I. and Valens, or Gratian and Theodosius. G. The example they set seems to have influenced Division of the firm but impressionable Diocletian. East and Ea -^ern and West had different problems; in the West robber- rea i ms . bands, jacquerie, and (to believe the brilliant specu- different fate. lations of Seeck) a predominant population of foreign and Teutonic birth, replacing the void left by a plague which cost the empire half its subjects. In the East, religious and racial feuds, which in a later age introduced triumphant Islam without a blow into Egypt and Syria ; and the long-standing enmity with Persia, of which we have already spoken enough. The character and tone of the two spheres differed essentially. In the West, Rome had introduced her own culture and urban life. Eastern institutions and religions long pre-existed the conquest ; and Roman control, leaving alone with Gallic the strange bitter- ness of rival creeds or neighbourly animosities, partook largely of the nature of a protectorate, which only interferes when affairs reach a crisis. A Roman emperor in Antioch, like Julian or Valens, is something of an alien, an " outsider." He may have and exert power of sword or pen, but he does not enter into the inner life of the people, either religious or social. Indeed he resembles much an Austrian commandant in Venice before the reunion of Italy in our own time. When therefore the Roman emperor passes to a definite seat of his own in the East, he insensibly changes character. Diocletian is still a successor of Augustus and the Antonines, in spite of his jewels, his diadem, and his servitors. But Constantine is not ; and this is due not merely to his change of creed, but largely to his novel orientation. With Constance II. the type is entirely modernised ; we have a ruler who in scrupulous behaviour, limited but sincere aims, resembles no one so much as Philip II. of Spain, un- less indeed it be Philip III. Thus the divorce of East and West had long been threatened ; and our reformer 104 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. i Division of in vain disguised the reality of the separation by his JF**/T and own na ^ ve superiority to his colleagues ; " to his nod " realms: their (says one historian) "all things were administered." different fate. The appointment of Maximianus Herculius seems to revive the ideal of the Senate in 238 ; one Augustus to be the brain, sedentary and pacific, the other to be the arm, of the State in fact, Odin and Thor. But it was really the prelude to the great struggle of the fourth century ; Constantine against Licinius, Constance II. against Magnence, Theodosius against Maximus III. and the nominee of Arbogast ; to the great rivalries and suspicions of the fifth century, between the ministers of Honorius and of Arcadius, Johannes and Theodosius II. : to the failure of the last expedition of a united empire, against Africa. Nor had the Church been a bond of genuine union : the West had followed with puzzled surprise or in- difference the intricacies of the Arian controversy; the Oriental temper made of the Christian religion a very different matter. We wonder if Diocletian was under any veritable illusion as to the outcome of his policy of two Augusti, each with a separate capital. Whatever his intention, it is clear that he followed rather than initiated. He set his seal to the whole development of the third century, to the subtle and tentative changes, on the new path, when perhaps the African Severus was the pioneer and can justly lay claim to originality. He used the materials which lay ready to his hand, like every great man ; for it is only the visionary or the logician who sets up an abstract Utopia and would reconstruct only by tearing down. We may indeed doubt if Diocletian was at any given moment conscious of taking a step in a new direction. Like Augustus, he deemed himself a restorer of old traditions, and he went back to the Antonines for an ideal. Thus in this partition of the republic, "one and indivisible," he was following precedent and obeying the clamorous demand of the State for a multiplied, a more efficacious, executive. CH. iv THE ROMAN EMPIRE (285-337) 105 His unique contribution is the complicated machinery Division of of the Sacred College, the attempt to bring even into ^^ n ond the Principate the rigorous discipline and slow pro- realms: their motion that prevailed elsewhere. The future master differentiate. of the world, or at least of one half, must learn in a lengthy apprenticeship, and come late and expert, after laborious wanderjahre, to the place of head of the imperial firm. And while the division became a necessary and permanent tradition, it was precisely this original and peculiar suggestion that vanished in a few years as lifeless and obsolete as the paper constitutions of De Siey&s. BOOK II PROBLEMS OF THE NEW MONARCHY AND THE NEW SUBJECTS; OR, THE LIMITA- TIONS OF AUTOCRACY AND THE BAR- BARIAN OFFER CHAPTER I THE NEW SYSTEM OF CASTE AND OFFICIALISM ; THE SEVERANCE OF CIVIL AND MILITARY ORDERS; AND THE INFLUX OF ALIENS 1. LET us now turn to our second feature of Civilisation interest in the reforms of the age of Constantine, the tends ^ th to severance of civil and military function. We are on an ^ to spe . still safer ground in proclaiming the indebtedness of dalise. the reorganises. Here Diocletian did but ratify and endorse ; he completes a tendency working to an inevitable goal, in this century of ferment and confusion. The origins of this separation we may trace as early as the great African house of Severus I., which thus again comes before us, guide and innovator. Rather is it hard to conceive how the two careers could have remained so long intertwined so far are we from feeling surprise at the change. Here an existing usage is reduced to conscious system ; and the hasty student is tempted to believe that the moment of recognition and formula is also the moment of birth. The antique conception of the citizen represents to us an interchangeable peasant- The ' Admir- farmer and volunteer-soldier, of which Cincinnatus able Crichton' may well stand as type, passing easily from camp to a c(m fiding plough, and from field to council-chamber. The State. revolution in economics and in policy, which rendered a citizen-army impossible, tended directly to the v overthrow of civil government without penalty or sanction, and to the reign of force and egoism. We have occasion again to repeat that in the very con- stitution and nature of the Senate lay two good reasons for its failure in a far from perfect world : it had no agents to carry out its wishes in general 100 and the confiding State. 110 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. n The 'Admir- administration, and in a special crisis it had no means * self-defence. It may appear to be a paradox to assert that the singular innocence of the early State did not, as we do, contemplate the need of police and physical reinforcement of custom and law. Yet the whole political current the development of Rome and the break-up of the Colossus into the rival fragments of modern Europe would seem (in one aspect) to take its rise from this generous confidence in human nature. It is quite true that in its primitive stages the code of tribal custom, usage, and prohibition is mixed up, indeed confounded, with religious taboo ; and it may be asserted that this generally implies an immediate physical penalty as well as a moral disability. Yet I do not think most students of our origins will dispute the unshaken dominion over the savage mind of what we must call moral influences ; such as are not by any means directly translated into the obvious discomfort of scourging or mutilation. Law and penalty really come into existence, not for the members of the family or the clan (where disobedi- ence and ostracism are sufficient to deter), but to regulate the relation of this group with the new neighbours or inmates, the captives of war whom a growing sense of humanity or of interest preserves for serfdom. The ancient State, in spite of its civil tumults, is singularly slow to establish any effective machinery of control over its refractory members. Though dissension and feud is, at least in historic times, the rule rather than the exception, the State seems always puzzled and taken aback when it is defied. It comes only gradually and with extreme reluctance to recognise the perversity or depravation of human nature, which will yield only to the persua- sion of force. It has recourse to coercive measures just at the same time when interest in a narrow city and belief in the divine tradition seem to dwindle and expire together. The old fallacy vanishes that men will obey law because it " is so written," will entertain CH. i THE ROMAN EMPIRE 111 an instinctive respect for ancestral custom when the The'Admir- reason for it is forgotten, the performance incon- a ^ ( ?r^ flton ' venient. Only a few vociferous and sentimental confiding idealists to-day can entertain such a view ; but their ill-founded conviction, denied by history and per- sonal experience, constitutes a real danger to the basis of the modern State ; and if realised prepares the way for the release of restraint, the quarrels of nation or of class, and the inevitable outcome the armed, ruthless, but at least impartial, " saviour of society." 2. Such was the position of the Roman Senate. The Senate The wider the commonwealth and the more numerous superseded as the elements of race or creed that refuse to amalga- ^g ^ O f mate, the more urgent is the need of an incontest- permanent able seat of authority, to act, if the crisis demand, militar y ' caste - instantaneously and irresponsibly. It was the signal merit of the imperial system that, having won its place by arms, it began at once to rule by pacific methods and in the interests of peace. It merely held in reserve, and at a great distance from the centre, the armies whose personal loyalty had served Caesar and Octavianus so well. Prompt public opinion upheld Vespasian in his reconquest of autocracy ; two years saw the end of a struggle which about a century earlier was painfully lengthened, in the rivalry of Pompey and Caesar, of Antony and Augustus. There was much sincerity in the attempt to make the dual control a working expedient. But if the Senate had no power of direct initiative, and no ready hand of executive, it had unlimited power of conspiracy. Re- lations were embittered, and the degeneration of the reign of the "bad prince" can be traced invariably to such suspicion. Yet the civil element was still predominant, whatever might have been the emperor's summary right of court-martial and of execution. The essentially pacific character of the Senate is recognised from the outset : Augustus, in appropriat- ing the military provinces of doubtful security, is the forerunner both of Gallienus and of Diocletian. When once the older form of rule was pronounced incom- 112 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. n The Senate patible with the newer and more strenuous, the definite SSc^ * outcome ma y ta ^e three hundred years to reach, but fate rise of it is merely a question of time. Individual members permanent indeed of the Senate might rise, like Agricola, up a * ' staircase of offices, in which civil and military func- tions were beautifully blended or alternated. But the august body itself becomes merely majestic and con- sultative a relic of the old group of elderly clansmen with whom the father would discuss a family crisis. It was in vain that Augustus and indeed Tiberius endeavoured to give it a genuine share in government, confiscated popular privilege to enhance its dignity, and complained, not without real frankness, of its disinclination for business. It laboured under two great disabilities ; it disdained to take subordinate and responsible office under its elected chief, and it had no independent executive apart from the emperor. And now we are confronted with another phase of the eternal problem who is to blame for the badness or the mischievous measures of a government ? Has a people always the rulers which it deserves ? Is the absence of public opinion due to inherent weakness of the governed or to the despotic suppression of the governors ? At the moment, our problem takes this form : was it the fault of the Senate's insolent and mistaken pride that it refused to serve under a master, retired into a voluptuous or learned seclusion, and left the field open, like the nobles of France at the present time, to a very different class of men ; more supple and capable, often more trustworthy, but with- out traditions, sense of personal or family honour, or that deference to public opinion, which is in truth typical of the aristocrat and not of the parvenu ? Or was it the fault of the emperor's jealousy ? Up to our own days this latter verdict has been almost unanimously accepted ; it fitted in with the now ex- ploded belief that national character or prosperity depended on the precise form of government, and that the ruler was responsible for all the sins and shortcomings of his subjects. But in truth, the real CH. i THE ROMAN EMPIRE 113 solution must lie midway ; senatorial incapacity or The Senate suspicious reserve, emperor's doubt as to the wisdom ^P^'^eded as i i i XT archaic: or employing senators, acted and reacted. No one late rise of can deny that the imperial line, whether its members permanent consciously willed it or no, sought the public good, military caste ' the impartial administration of law, the maintenance of unbroken " Roman peace." It represented, so far as the economic, racial, and religious difficulties would permit, freedom and equality ; and it worked persist- ently, with incredible industry and patience, sometimes through the strangest of instruments like Caracalla, towards a lofty humanitarian goal. But the Senate always represented a narrow and exclusive oligarchy, and was even to the very last out of sympathy with the aims of liberal imperialism. 3. After long disuse of arms, the empire was Empire rudely awakened under Marcus to the pressing needs pacific in of self-defence. Severus, a foreigner, was obliged ^^^ w to stamp out civil war, and to refuse explicitly the professional offer of a dangerous partnership. The reconstruc- soldiers ' tion of the African ruler is largely a matter of con- jecture ; but we cannot doubt that his distrust of the senatorial order was well-founded. He may not have given his children the cynical advice which historians put into his mouth ; but he must have seen that the military basis needed strengthening in the interests of peace and safety, and that a school of experts, of professional soldiers, reared and nurtured in the traditions of the camp, was essential to the State. It was to be a set-off, a make-weight, to the other side of Roman and pro- vincial life. And no doubt the good Septimius believed it possible to confine the interests and the activity of the military caste within due limits. He could not foresee, in a reign notably marked by the brilliance of its legal achievements, that it would soon claim and acquire a monopoly of interest. Military revolutions dominate the scene after the extinction of his line ; though we have been at pains to show the definite policy and undoubted usefulness VOL. I. H 114 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. 11 Empire of these pretenders. And it was still thought possible pacific in to ^ ee p a p ar t the civil functions of the Senate and need of the duties of frontier defence. Direct evidence of professional an imperial prohibition for a senator to carry arms is (as is well known) confined to a single passage in Aurelius Victor ; besides, we have a vague surmise that Antoninus V. (211-217) dispensed with the pre- sence of nobles in his eastern or northern camps, and wrote bitter and ironical letters to the Conscript Fathers contrasting his hard and simple life with their studied inactivity. There are besides some traces in epigraphy of personal immunity granted as a favour to individuals, at least as early as the time of Commodus Antoninus IV. (180-192). If the edict of Gallien did not perfectly represent one aspect of a tendency which elsewhere we know to have been predominant, we should never attach such weight to a fragmentary testimony of a late writer in the reign of Valens. But it accords well with our surmises, and forms a presage of the future division. Yet, to tell the truth, it is not quite like Gallienus, who attempted to curb the pride of the soldiers, was a bold and sagacious defender of the frontier, and managed to maintain his throne longer than any Caesar in the third century, from Severus to Diocle- tian. The passage somewhat resembles the narve aetiology of a chronicler, who has to explain the retirement of the noble class from active life, and wishes to give chapter and verse and a definite moment of time for a long and insensible process. I find it hard to reconcile with his character, a mixture of studied and not impolitic indifference and of real ability both as statesman and warrior. That he was terrified at the rare enterprise and public spirit of the Senate in taking arms to defend Rome, that he trembled lest the "empire should be trans- ferred to the best of the aristocracy," seems inherently improbable. If we may believe the plain teaching, of the third century, this exclusion was already an accomplished fact; and we prefer to place in the CH. i THE ROMAN EMPIRE 115 years 200-230, in the first quarter of the century, Empire the obscure steps of this process ; which in the end P^ift in left a well-born but effeminate nobility confront- need of ing an army of foreigners and of mercenaries who professional despised them. A definite imperial policy to deci- mate and enfeeble the Senate only dates from the return of Severus from the overthrow of Albinus ; and even Dion praises his clemency in pardoning thirty-five senators implicated in the scheming of the rival camp. With Bassianus Antoninus V. defiance of the Senate became a mania ; and the nadir of their prestige and authority is reached in the reigns of Macrinus and his son, and of the last and unworthiest of the line of Antonines. Never were they consulted as to the transmission of the purple ; and the East celebrates its most signal and degraded victory over the West, under the youthful priest of Emesa ; then truly, in Tiberim defluxit Orontes. I am obliged to recall, that this section may be complete in itself, the decision already reached in the last ; namely, that an entire reconstruction of the principles of govern- ment took place under Severus II. and Mammaea (222-235). Then a great reaction swept away the strange foreigners who had shown open hate or contempt for Rome and its Senate, had deified Hannibal, the foe of the republic, and Alexander of Macedon ; or had disgusted what still remained of public opinion by the open display of Oriental vices. We attach some importance to the contrast between lt praesidial " and " legatorial " provinces (Lamprid., Alex. Sev. 24). It is difficult not to sympathise with the rapid but tempting conclusion of Borghesi, who believes that henceforward a " president " held the pacific functions, jurisdiction, and administrative work, while a dux controlled the often itinerant forces of alien origin. But I cannot conceal the fact, that at the very moment when presses seems to acquire a special and technical use, Macer, writing under the same reign (Dig. i. 18), tells us it is a general term and will cover all governors 116 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. n Empire sent out to administer the provinces ("Ptcesidis patifa in nomen generate est, eoque et proconsules et lerati aim; new . * / \ j need of Cccsans et omnes (m.) provinctas regent es . . . prcestaes professional appellantur"). At the same time no reader of third soldiers. century annals will, I think, deny that the military caste tends to assume a crisp and definite distinc- tion, a needful continuity of function ; in the domestic and foreign perils, which would allow little leisure for the old vicissitudes of office, and the easy and harmless passage from one service to the other. We have besides convincing testimony that the third century was in common life not the scene of con- fusion which we usually picture. There was in civil and social life nothing of that hopeless and despondent anarchy which marked the reign of Phocas (602-610), the absolute overthrow of old institutions which rendered imperative the work of Heraclius : nothing of slow and almost unnoticed ebbing in the tide of Roman dominion, such as we must witness in Britain, Gaul, and Spain during the fifth century. It is sur- prising to find that no disturbance took place during the six months' interregnum that ensued on Aurelian's death. We may indeed assume, in that period of rare modesty and temperateness in the military de- partment, in the now penitent armies of assassins, that the civil service can have relaxed none of its accustomed vigilance, and that the great machine of government continued its task with the same pre- cision as if it had still a visible head. It would be a paradox to style the chief feature of that age an irrepressible tendency to bureaucratic government ; yet it is clear that such work was effectively done and that the transient princes had no time to devote to its supervision. Is it not possible that the reign of the second Severus witnessed the careful excogita- tion of a safeguard to the caprice or minority or uncertain tenure of the sovereign ? After the strange anti-Roman sympathies of " Caracallus," and the still stranger excesses of his supposed son, it was no wonder if more serious minds embraced the oppor- CH. i THE ROMAN EMPIRE 117 tunity of a peaceful interval to establish some definite Empire and systematic procedure. The pretensions of the P^fa in Senate to regulate and to control, which we find in nee dof the Augustan reigns of Tacitus and Probus did not, professional I imagine, represent mere vague recollections of dim soldterg - republican or early imperial tradition, but a certain reality within their own experience, when the entire body or a committee settled civilian procedure and promotion. Diocletian indeed disqualified the Senate from the competition for power, not indeed with the jealous and set purpose of humbling aristocratic pride and unmasking the power of the sword ; but because the meridian no longer passed through Rome, a suburban capital with a great past and the present burden of an idle, needy, and riotous population. He centralised, just as in a later century Basilius I. and Leo VI. will be said to centralise. He made everything issue from the sacred palace, which was now guarded with redoubled care. He abolished the co-ordinate source of authority, at least in its general recognition or effective control. Civil and military provinces alike were to be accountable solely to the head of the State ; but in the severance of these two, into parallel lines which run side by side but never meet, he followed a current which had been flowing steadily for perhaps sixty years. 4. There has been, I fear, a departure from the influx of usual design, both in repetition of matter from a barbarians; preceding section and in the introduction of detail i eg i on f : or testimony. Nor can I hope to have convinced division of students, or probed the matter beyond controversy. P a y^ s an(l r . J J workers. But it seems important at the opening of a new age, to point out the contrast ; what is judged to be original, and what is strictly only an endorsement and continuance of preceding policy. The subject of the separation of the civilian and military careers is by no means exhausted ; but enough has now been said for the general survey, already tending to the over- minute and particular. And I will only point to the third and final feature, the Germanising of soil and 118 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. n Influx of barbarians ; land and legions: division of payers and workers. of army at the beginning of the fourth century, and the issues with which this transformation is pregnant. Nor need we spend much time now over a subject which has already engrossed our attention and must do so again. Indeed, the entire tendency of civilisation leads to a Platonic specialism of function. The advance of culture and complexity rather narrows than enlarges the vision, sphere, and the usefulness of average man. The greater number are fixed immovably in certain sedentary occupations, whether of brain- work (so-called !) in office and bank, or of manual labour in manufactory and warehouse. As each year passes, some further subdivision of territory is made, some new piece cut off to make a separate study. Not for these are the wider conquests of science, the loftier and more tranquil outlook upon things. We do not exaggerate in saying that to the average mind religion alone gives a sense of value to the person and his work, and a certain integrity to the whole of life, which apart from this comprehensive faith, is nothing but several atoms and piecemeal happenings, loosely and artificially bound together by the stress of daily needs and the authority of the State. And government, once part and parcel of a free-man's privilege and duties as such, passes more and more into the hands of the expert. This is a statement which few would care to contest, yet it is in manifest contradiction to the complacent common- places with which the men of our day disguise their disappointment in the earlier hopes. Even in our own country, the active intervention of the people is limited to a vague approval once in five years of candidates whom they did not select, to the endorsement or rejection of some general policy, sketched for them in broad outline and concerned not with administration but with some moral prin- ciple or some secular interest. And this, at the most favourable estimate ; for it seems probable that the case will not be fairly represented to the electorate, CH. i THE ROMAN EMPIRE 119 and that the people, quite ready and able to decide Influx of on matters of right and wrong, or general expedi- barbarians; ... i i j * j r it- land and ency, will be cleverly diverted from the mam issue legions: by the dexterity of rival politicians. Elsewhere, division of matters promise worse ; and it is impossible for a friend of the people to contemplate without anxiety the dangerous turn towards cynical indifference, which appears the only alternative to a profound ignorance. The world's society which handed over a contractual, and finally surrendered an absolute, authority to the Caesarian head of the State, suffered from a similar disease. The people and the nobles did not wish to administer or to fight. The municipal councils in the provinces had no real attachment to the petty and onerous duties of finance, police, and public works ; and the age of the public benefactors came to an end with the Antonines. Gradually the imperial system, driven by irresistible pressure to fresh duties, assumed with reluctance the task of administering, and governed as well as reigned. It drew to itself (like the later barbarian monarchs) faithful servitors from every class but the highest, loyal soldiers from every race except the so-called predominant nation. And the two main needs of this colossal task were to defend and to provide adequate funds for defence. And these two duties should be specialised ; as in later days, when cultiva- tion and warfare were separated, the owner instead of guarding his homestead, commuted or com- pounded with an outside and independent system, which promised to undertake the task. With a similar tendency, and no doubt in the interest of the commonwealth at that time, the freeborn citizen had delegated to some central authority his right of private vengeance, of feud or of "vendetta" : and the more enterprising and restless looked with anger and contempt on the successive surrenders of right by this craven troop to the central power ; just as Nietzsche scoffs at the spiritless democracy of our time. Yet the people " love to have it so " ; and Influx of barbarians ; land and legions: division of payers and workers. CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. n against the ambition of irresponsible men of talent have welcomed the " Prince " of Machiavelli, who appears as the Greek or Italian tyrant, as the Roman Caesar, as the gallant soldier of fortune, who has before now righted the grievances of France and may be expected to do so again. Without conscious purpose or open display of principle at any given time, the empire divided its subjects into two classes : those who paid and those who worked ; and if after the turmoil of the third century the increase of expert help implied additional expense, those who profited could scarcely complain. May we again recall the analogy of China under the present Manchu dynasty ? To an inquirer about the abuses or corruption of this unique democratic government, an educated Chinese merchant answers, " Do we not then pay our Mandarins enough ? " ; best means of securing good government being not to intervene oneself, but to pay something above a mere " living wage " to a highly disciplined professional ; and it might well be an exorbitant and fancy fee to the most notable expert. In the growth of the scientific conception of the universe and human society, the very first principles of government must be trodden under foot. For with the settlement of all the higher moral questions, the equality of man before the law, the abolition (in effect) of slavery, the raised status of women and the poor, government naturally ceases to interest the loftier minds. Having no big issue, no Titanic duel of two popular heroes, to set before the electorate, the eagerness of the lowlier must evaporate as well. There are no fresh principles to discover ; all that remains is the steady application of the old, vague, and already seriously criticised idealism. And then comes the awakening ; science makes short work of the rights of man, and will only condescend to recognise the individual, as an interest- ing or submissive instance of a general rule. And then must come the government of the professional CH. i THE ROMAN EMPIRE 121 adept : the Russian bureaucrat, the American place- Influx of man, Mr. Wells' " new republican," the modern JjjjJ^' French functionary, indeed, a centralised abso- legions: lutism under the empty forms of freedom. These, division of it is true, show different stages of the specialising ^^ers^ process ; which, instead of adding interest and inter- vention in public affairs to the function of the citizen, runs counter to the whole moral and idealist ten- dency of the nineteenth century by sharply dividing the official from the mass. The absurd infinality of the old distinctions of autocracy and republic is shown by this precisely similar development, similar agents, similar abuses ; nor is it at all clear that wholesome public opinion is in any sense a peculiar advantage of the freer constitution. 5. But in Rome, where the people made no pre- Society tension to self-government, and only asked to be c ^ a f ises: saved trouble, spoon-fed and delicately nurtured as experts; they were, the power of officials increased as time admission of wore on, the contrast between the taxpayer and ^id spear collector deepened. And it was to keep the former and spade. at his task of ceaseless and unembarrassed payment that the lines between civil and military were so firmly drawn. It is quite possible that some local militias, suppressed in the interests of peace or economy, even some senators of Rome, fired with a spark of genuine lineage or tradition, may have resented, when it was too late, peremptory prohibition ; they had once sought such discharge as a privilege. It was essential for the costly system of defence that the paying class should be carefully maintained and artificially sup- ported. Hence the tyranny over the decurions ; hence the " prison-house " of the curia, whence the unhappy inheritor of ancestral land might not escape into the fresh air of the military class, or the safe asylum of the clerical profession. A general /' disinclination for effort and hazard, and therefore for the career of arms, set in early in Rome, after its i gates were flung open to the dexterous Greek and I the undesirable alien. It is impossible for us to ' 122 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. n Society conceive the splendid comfort and magnificent spec- crystailise* : tacles which the poorest citizen could enjoy under rule of . . experts; * ne empire, not merely in the greater centres, but admission of even in the distant provincial towns ; built after the t^e/a *spear R man fashion, on the Scottish frontier, where the and spade. baths and porticoes seemed to the carping and irre- solute critic, Tacitus, a mere engine of serfdom, not a serious sign of culture ; or buried in the sand of the Sahara, melancholy evidence of the great African civi- lisation which, like that of Asia Minor, seemed to depend on Rome, and to have vanished with its genial influence. Nothing but compulsion could have drawn these pampered paupers from the cheap plea- sures of the city to the dangers of a frontier cam- paign, where " from the very tent-door fierce and hostile tribes can be descried " ; nor indeed was the usefulness or good faith of these urban or " Cockney " levies very conspicuous. We are confident that some sentiments like the modern Chinese contempt for a soldier must have been secretly entertained under the so-called military despotism of Rome. Literary harangues by Hellenistic rhetoricians accustomed men to believe in the exclusively pacific mission of the empire ; and encouraged a large public to confide implicitly in their stolid but honest guardians, and devote the time snatched from games and spectacles to the serious studies of style and grammar. It is a pathetic irony to remember that Marcus Aurelius, on whom "the ends of the world are come," was chided by Pronto for his love of philosophy and his neglect of rhetoric and the niceties of vocabulary and archaism. For him, Aurelius might have been turn- ing a neat phrase, or hunting up an obsolete synonym of agreeable roughness for a jaded palate, when the barbarians had already gained admission, and the integrity of the empire and its Roman character had been for ever ruined. But happily for later generations, there were never wanting notable successors of the old Roman worthies, who from time to time arose to revive a CH. i THE ROMAN EMPIRE 123 dying tradition and invigorate a spirit almost extinct. Society But they stand more and more alone, and have to Cr ^ ta ^ ise8: depend on alien help and foreign hands. Ancient experts; Rome, says Ferrari with truth, was a society of admission of military peasant farmers, acquiescing cheerfully in ^d spear aristocratic government, not of merit, but of family, and spade. Both these characteristics had long since disappeared. The Roman citizen wielded neither spear nor spade. A uniform type of urban comfort spread through the civilised world, with its well-known results : a rapidly dwindling birth-rate and an alert but fragile population. The empire was unable to resist the suddenness of the Great Pestilence in the second century; there was no reserve-force, and no recruiting ground. Desola- tion spread in the rural districts ; for the sole known remedy (even as late as Constantine V.) for filling the depleted capital was to transplant vigorous citizens from use to idleness. These ravages, either of bar- barian raid or interior policy still more disastrous, were supplied, on soil or in legion, by foreigners. The third century sees a vast increase of settlers and of soldiers ; and the military caste is reinforced either by barbarians or Roman citizens from the distant corner of Illyria. The issues of this policy (or rather this drift) we shall endeavour to analyse in a later section, when the results of this welcome come to be appraised. We may here be content with noting the fact that the most pronounced defiers of bar- barian threats, the most convinced champions of the violated frontier, are also those who, in default of other sources, draw largely from these alien races as cultivators and defenders of Roman soil. We need not here discuss the wisdom of this design or neces- sity ; we merely point out the inevitable division of the Roman world into peaceful and oppressed con- tributors to the exchequer (the o-wreXets or t/TroreXefc of the historians) ; the military caste, which forms still an imperium in imperto, and represents more and more influences hostile to the old traditions of the empire ; and again, the settlers of foreign birth 124 HISTORY OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE BK. 11 Society who took the place of a disappearing native populace, crystallises: anc j SU ppii e d by their labour the idle voracity of the experts; capital. Lastly, the bureaucracy of adroit and well- admission of trained civilians, who endeavoured to control with 'wield 'spear unequal success the strong hand which had been and spade. summoned to protect the republic. CHAPTER II LEGITIMACY; OR, THE DYNASTIC EPOCH AND THE SUCCESSORS OF CONSTANTINE (337-457 A.D.) /FLAV. JUL. TINUS II. { FLAV. CONSTAN-\ CONSTAN! l s ns ][ of r337-34o birth. 337-35 350-353 351-353 JUL. ONSTAN TIUS II I VFLAV. JUL. CONSTANS I.J MAGNENTIUS (Gaul) . DECENTIUS (brother) . VETRANIO 350 NEPOTIANUS (in Rome) . . . 350 . . SILVANUS (Gaul at Cologne) . . 355 . . FLAV. CLAUDIUS JULIANUS IV. . . ) , , (cousin of Constance II.) . . . [ 3DI 3 3 FLAV. JOVIANUS 363-364 337-3 6 i . birth. birth. inilit. nom. milit. nom. milit. nom. milit. nom. birth, milit. nom. birth, milit. nom. WES- r FLAVIUS VALENTINI- ANUS I 36d 37? . mil. nom. C FLAVIUS GR ATI ANUS O T 1 O/ J I. (son) . . . . 375-383 . birth. j FLAVIUS VALENTINI- \ ANUS II. (brother) . 375-392 MAXIMUS III. . . 383-388 . milit. nom. EUGENIUS . . . 392-394 . BARB. nom. FLAV. THEODOSIUS I. 394-395 FLAV. HONORIUS . . 395-423 . birth. In Britain MARCUS .... 405 I GRATIANUS II. . . CONSTANTINUS III. 406 407-411 j-mil. nom. 1 CONSTANS II. (son) 409-411. In Spain MAXIMUS IV. . . 4IO . BARB. nom. At Mentz JOVINUS (Gaul) . . 411 SEBASTIANUS (bro. 412 PR. ATTALUS . . 409-410 . BARB. (in Rome) nom. FLAV. CONSTANTIUS III. (bro.-in-law to Honor.) 421 JOHANNES I. ... 423-425 . BARB. nom. FLAV. PLAC. VALEN- TINIANUS III. . . . 425-455 . birth. (son of Const. III. and Placidia) EAST FLAVIUS VALENS (bro.) 364-378 . birth. PROCOPIUS . . . 365, 366 . birth. FL. THEOD. I. . . 378-395 . co-opt. FLAV. ARCADIUS (son) 395-408 . birth. FLAV. THEODOSIUS II. (son) 408-450 . birth. 126 FLAV. MARCIANUS (husb. of Pulcheria) . 450-457 . FEMALE right. 126 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. n 1. IT is my purpose in this chapter to review government of Rome under the successors of legitimacy and the succession. Constantine, down to the extinction of the house of Theodosius rind Valentinian in the West, the death of Pulcheria's husband, Marcian, in the East. In these years the system, organised by Diocletian and modified by Constantine, is allowed to work itself out. It may at once be said that the most striking feature is the triumph of the hereditary principle. Definitely banished for a time, this natural human prejudice revives, not merely in the parental fond- ness, but in the loyalty of the troops, in the approval of the subjects. And with this veneration for descent is closely allied the influence of females ; and in con- sequence, the predominance of the palace chamber- lain over the civil or military official, in the two jealous and strictly separated hierarchies of the new system. History almost everywhere shows us the same development. The needs of the State demand the tumultuary election of some able general ; we would prefer to express in this manner the sudden elevations to supreme power, which are usually put down to the vain sallies of ambition, and thus to assert the democratic basis of sovereignty. Personal adroit- ness may count for much, as in the theatrical stroke by which Diocletian succeeded and avenged Numerian, and so changed the course of history ; but the man can do nothing apart from the need of the hour. The family instinct will suggest to him that his own sons are fittest to succeed him, and the public verdict will ratify his choice ; for the people cling with pathetic tenderness to the hereditary principle. As I have often remarked, the imperial system turned out an amalgam of birthright and competitive election ; and it must be confessed partook of the weakness of either system. The immediate offspring of a great man is often the most inefficient of the entire line ; to justify heredity it is necessary to take a wider survey. The Romans fondly expected the same virtues to emerge in the son as had shone CH. ii THE ROMAN EMPIRE (337-457) 127 in the father ; and repeated failures of princes of the Legitimacy blood royal until the age of Diocletian made them a^ite 11-1 r imperial impatient of any heir-apparent who did not fulfil succession. early promise. All kinds of reasons were alleged to account for a very natural phenomenon changelings, adultery, necromancy. The period of the early Caesars is unusually sterile in the reigning houses. Only Britannicus is born in the purple ; the suc- cessful competitor for the throne has not to dislodge a host of imperial cadets or even poor relations. The way to the palace is comparatively clear ; and the tragedy of the succession is content with a single victim. Under the supremacy of frugality and the middle- class, during the last third of the first century (69-96), one son was good and one was bad ; but the verdict of the story-books or folk-tales was reversed, which recognises merit only in the younger son. In the adoptive period a natural procedure, in a State which professed to revert in some measure to republican usage, was helped out by the prevailing sterility in high life. Commodus or Antoninus IV. appeared to a not very discerning populace to be a monster, a hybrid, or a mongrel. It seemed to them, innocent as they were of experience or Platonic lore, inconceivable that he could be the son of Marcus the philosopher. He was swept away, amid general approval or indifference ; and within twenty years the Romans were again bewailing the enormities of another purple-born, who carried the same name and may be termed Antoninus V. The seventh and eighth were mere lads, and are better known as Diadumenus and Elagabalus, both boasting descent from an actual or a deceased emperor. In the rough and tumble which followed the death of Alexander (235-285), the rapid and gory series did not allow the principle of heredity a fair trial. These simpler Caesars, barbarian or Pannonian soldiers, men of pure lives and such ordinary family attachment as a camp-life could permit, associated their sons in 128 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. n Legitimacy and the imperial succession. Direct lines in West; hereditary later in East. their brief administration. Maximin, Gordian, Philip, Decius, Gallus, Valerian, Carus, all had sons in partnership, doomed to the same speedy fate. None but Gallienus (253-268) had any chance of retrieving the bad repute of the " heir-apparent " ; and though a more favourable estimate of his character is recom- mended in these pages, the common verdict sees in him a typical argument against heredity. Still, in the case of Elagabalus and of Gordian III., we see a kind of soldiers' chivalry towards a young and handsome scion of an imperial family, a partiality on which Senate and army were in absolute opposition, as on most other points. It is curious to contrast the cries of the Senate in the third period, " No more youths born in the purple," with the shouts of the people at Constantinople, "No more old men with forked beards," some nine centuries later on the dethrone- ment of Andronicus Comnenus (1185). Twice the brothers of Claudius II. and of Tacitus made the most of a shadowy fraternal claim, which was promptly ruled out of court ; the amiable Quintillus and Florian were the victims of the strange silence or inconsistency of the system on one essential point, surely the most important and cardinal point of all. 2. But these " transient and embarrassed phan- toms" passed by without impressing any conscious purpose on the State, -fatis Imperil urgentibus. Only with Diocletian was there given leisure and breathing-space to take serious account of the re- public and its assets. He is represented as banishing this lineal or dynastic principle of set design ; and yet his quadripartite college of emperors is in some sense a family alliance, and, at least at the outset, depends upon marriage. It was a compromise ; the son, often the worst legacy of a good father, must give place to the son-in-law. Nature and Reason might here be said to ally the Nature which blindly produces, the Reason which calmly chooses the best adoptive son ; and like all compromises the system failed. Once more the "fork" of paper-charters, CH. ii THE ROMAN EMPIRE (337-457) 129 constitutions, legal obligations, was powerless against Direct lines a natural prejudice. Constantine is what he is, largely JJ^JJ^IL because he had the training and opportunities of his later in Ea*t. father's son ; and after he had removed Licinius from his path, he overthrew the well-planned but imprac- ticable scheme of Diocletian. He reigned as sole sovereign some fourteen years and left a divided empire to his children, partitioned out like a patri- monial estate. How large a portion of this fourth century passes under the nominal or effective sway of princes who were either born in the purple, or could remember no other surroundings than the etiquette of the palace, the reflected glory of an heir-apparent ! Constan- tius II. was the third of his line, and Julian IV. was the fourth ; Gratian and Valentinian II., after the ten years' interval of their father (a parvenu who rein- forces the imperial series by a new strain), are typical representatives of hereditary kingship, called perhaps immaturely to an exceptional responsibility. The former marries the posthumous daughter of the son of Constantine, but leaves no issue ; the latter is the son of Justina, the widow of Magnentius, sometime em- peror in Gaul. From 305-363 the sovereignty was in the hands of a recognised " first family," and during the greater part, the ruler had never remembered a "private lot" (nunquam sortem privatam expertt). The years 375-392 fell under the sway of the two stripling sons of Valentinian I. ; and Theodosius is the nominee of Gratian and the husband of his half- sister, Galla. Both in East and West, on a new par- tition of the realm, minors occupied the throne at the close of the century; the new house rested mainly, no doubt, on the prowess of its Spanish founder, but it might claim some enhanced dignity also in its alliance with the Pannonian line, in the union of Theodosius with Galla. And the second quarter of the next century rests with the latter ; for with Pla- cidia remains the real power from 425-450, and in her son expires (455) the last genuine emperor of VOL. I. I 130 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. n Direct lines the West. Thus sons of emperors in the direct line AewKfo' account, in the West, for just half of the fourth cen- iater\n East, tury (337-363, 375-392, 395-400) and for the full moiety of the fifth (400-455). In the East, matters throughout this period were somewhat different. There was not the same emphasis on the " dynastic " principle ; or if such emphasis was laid it was ex- tremely unfortunate. Gallus, the Eastern Caesar, had not been an encouraging instance of an imperial cadet ; Valens (364-378) was a novus homo, and neither forgot the circumstance himself nor allowed others to forget it. He had not the prestige of a throne successfully won, nor the dignity of a crown tranquilly transmitted. And hence the anxious sus- picions of others' merit, the well-founded diffidence of his own, which made the rule of this conscientious and untiring prince a veritable reign of terror. Theo- dosius I. is a son of one of his victims, the brave conqueror of the African revolt under Firmus, and a worthy precursor of the excellent Boniface in the fifth century, and of Solomon in the sixth. When Gratian atoned in some degree for his father's murder by elevating him into full partnership with a noble confidence, Theodosius deserved his promotion as his father's son and as a capable general. But he is the first of his line, and it is not until the reigns of Arcadius and Theodosius II. that the East falls under hereditary sway (395-408, 408-450). And here we once again see the curious unlikeness of great men's sons to their parents ; the warrior, pushed forward by popular approval that is never wholly flattery or an accident, leaves behind the respectable, well- nurtured offspring of an orderly but luxurious palace- life. Some paltry suspicions attach to the moral life of Constans I. (337-350) ; but until Valentinian III. (the Athalaric of the decaying empire) not a syllable is breathed against the high personal character of the sovereigns ; an austere and decorous chastity reigns in the palaces of Ravenna and Byzantium, and the lives of Pulcheria and of Placidia are as edifying as the CH. ii THE ROMAN EMPIRE (337-457) 131 biographies of the saints. Piety, humanity, modesty Direct lines of manners and deportment, are to be marked in * n _. . hereditary these Eastern Caesars, whose throne is never threat- i ater i n ened by pretender for more than half a century, whose will is never thwarted merely because it has never been exerted. Thus we may complete our comparison and our picture, by pointing out a slight contrast between the Eastern and the Western realm. The former was not so habituated to " dynastic " obedience, though after the accession of Arcadius the instinct or preju- dice in favour of a peaceful succession took even stronger hold. On the death of the pious hunter and calligraphist, Theodosius II., his sister devolved the empire upon Marcian (450-457) ; and it is an inte- resting problem whether the subsequent reaction towards an elective or adoptive method, in favour of mature State-servants of tried merit, was in any sense an intentional reversal of the family or patrimonial system. It is at least a significant accident that from 450 to the death of Heraclius I. (641) no son is called to succeed his father, except the infant Leo II. The highest place may seem struck with barrenness ; or more probably, if we remember the numerous and ill-fated progeny of Maurice, only grave and isolated seniors without encumbrance are chosen certain it is that the annals of Byzantium from 457 to the great upheaval in 602 reveal a kind of papal nepotism in the nephews of Anastasius, of Justin, and of Justinian ; or a curious recognition, so common in mediaeval Europe, of right descending through the female line, or conferred actually by wedlock with an heiress. It may be interesting, and possibly instructive, to point out in this period the singular absence of direct suc- cession in the male line ; but we cannot, in the dearth of genuine scientific knowledge, build any theory upon it. At any rate, it is the sole duty of the historian to point out such facts, and to leave his readers to form conjecture or hypothesis at will. The future of the great Byzantine monarchy will rest with the dynasties. 132 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. n Direct Urns The isolated champion, the momentary " man of the in West; hour " or " saviour of society." tends always to appear hereditary J> j i r later in East. l ess frequently, and the whole tone and principle of the empire, half-republican and civil, half-despotic and military, will be reversed and annihilated at last by the Comnenian family. For the house of Alexius is neither Roman nor Byzantine ; it is Greek, and already mediaeval. Empire never 3. But the epoch of which we write is the palmy acquiescedfor period for the heir-apparent and his uncontested suc- promotion of cession ; and having established this, we must now untriedyouth. inquire into the probable features and special char- acter of such a government. It is superfluous to repeat here that the subtle, indistinct, and durable constitution of Augustus never contemplated any- thing of the sort. The empire started indeed not with the blunt dictatorship of Julius, but with the " pious " duty of a youth of eighteen to wreak venge- ance on a parent's murderers. But the scheme as it left the grasp of the septuagenarian at Nola was an office, a supreme magistracy, or congeries of offices, and had nothing to do with family or patrimony. Human nature is stronger than republican sentiment : for indeed of all governments, a republic is that which is least conformable to human nature, least intelligible to the average man ; is the work of a calculating and purposive reason, and not the spontaneous growth of years or the free development of national character- istics. And democracy (if it indeed be anything more than a euphemism for a Whig camarilla or a Vene- tian oligarchy) seems signally disinclined to dispense with the family, or regard with envy the recognised supremacy of a dynasty which is usually foreign. In Rome in the first century, the vague yet powerful current of the popular influence set undoubtedly in favour of the members of a certain reigning house, the regnatrix domus of Tacitus. Thus early do we find applied in bitter irony a title familiar enough to us in these so-called democratic days ; for the hard- and-fast distinction between the royal line and the OH. ii THE ROMAN EMPIRE (337-457) 133 subject class (unknown to antiquity) is a real guarantee Empire never of peace and freedom. No personal sanctity could *jyfftf* attach to the emperor in Rome, except as a represen- promotion of tative of the majesty of the people. He was the exe- untnedyouth. cutive ; the hand that guided or smote. It was plainly an anomaly when Caius and Nero, who had never served in the field or advised in the Senate, were invested with the supreme power. The emperors of the " year of tumult " were able generals and ad- ministrators ; only with the third member of the Flavian house was a youthful novice elevated above the greybeards of the Senate, owing to the dim but cogent sense of hereditary right. Once more, with Verus or Antoninus III., was youth set above experience ; and with the caprice or playful chivalry of the camp, the star-like Diadumenus, the handsome bastard of Caracalla, the dutiful Alexander, the youthful but serious Gordian, were clothed with the purple, that implied not a princely dignity but the hard work of a responsible and elective office. The imperial system demanded personal government ; and to the end of the chapter the sole complaint of the critic or the historian is that the emperor does not reign enough, not that his absolutism is unlimited. The popular origin of this revived monarchy was never forgotten ; and the sole remedy against an inefficient Caesar was to elect one who would do his own work and not leave it to subordinates. If we examine without bias the records of the empire, we should find this close alliance between the throne and the people, unbroken. Both were, sometimes perhaps unconsciously, in full harmony of aim ; both were Liberals and Imperialists ; both regarded with the same jealous distrust the proud senatorial families, which either wasted their time in idle and arrogant leisure, or seized on office not as a public duty, but as a means of gain, or possibly, the stepping-stone to a " tyranny." It was clear that this vigilant super- vision of a suspected governing class could not be exerted by a lad of ten or even fourteen years. The 134 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. 11 Empire never revolt of Maximin had its deepest cause in the dislike acquiesccdjor o f c i v iii ans anc j o f female influence : in a contempt long in the promotion of for a youth who had been the darling of the troops as untriedyouth. a boy, but who had never been permitted to become a man. After a brief reaction, when the senatorial candidates, Balbinus and Maximus II., were slain in their abortive essay to revive the consulate, Gordian III., still under tutors and governors, gives way to Philip ; and in the forty years that followed, no minor reigns without a colleague. The emperor directly administers or guards the frontier, and the distrusted intermediaries vanish into insignificance. Carus on the Persian frontier, bald and roughly dressed, is found by the Persian envoys, eating the supper of an ordinary soldier. It must be confessed that sanguinary and violent as are the annals of this turmoil and military anarchy, it is wanting in some of the defects of that purely civilian government which the last members of the house of Severus strove to set up. The times were not ready for the rule of queens-regent and barristers. Indeed, the meri- dian of the empire no longer passed through Rome ; and the work demanded from the ruler was not the affable, business-like accessibility of a young prince, but the straightforward and, if need be, severe court- martial of a soldier. Now it is clear that the changes instituted by the reforms of the fourth century, in the direction of the awful and invisible seclusion and ignorance of the sovereign, were harmless to their inventors, but highly mischievous to their successors. The Pannonian soldiers, who restored the empire, from Aurelian (270-275) to Constantine (306-337) adopted of set policy a pompous demeanour and multiplied, not we may imagine without a secret smile or sigh, the number of court functionaries, the prelim- inaries of an audience. Constantius III. (421-422) was probably not the only successor of Diocletian, in Old or New Rome, who felt the irksome restraint of imperial etiquette, thought out in strange irony by a Dacian peasant and elaborated by Greek chamber- CH. ii THE ROMAN EMPIRE (337-457) 135 lains. For the first time in Roman history, a palace Empire never cabal or camarilla became possible. The emperor, o^itiee0djbr . long in the safely guarded from public gaze, saw and heard only promotion of with the eyes and ears of those whose chief aim was wnMedgauth. to preserve his inviolable ignorance. The dignity of emperor, paramount though it was, was to the last degree precarious ; but the ring of interested officials who surrounded him was in a large measure perma- nent. We are tempted perhaps as we chronicle the orderly annals of the house of Constantine or of Theodosius, and the decent sequence of scions of an imperial family, to attribute a sense of security and assurance to the wearers of the purple, which is inseparable no doubt from the mental equipment of a modern dynast. We are even unfair enough to rebuke the needless alarms and cruelty of a Constantius or a Valens, when they might have known the firm basis of their power, and have foreseen the speedy doom of any usurper. Such confidence, it is needless to say, was never felt (even if it might be displayed) by the uneasy nominee of the staff-corps or the palace- clique. The revolt of Magnentius or of Procopius was a serious menace not merely to the person of the reigning monarch but to the integrity of the empire. The sole aim, indeed the highest ideal of these Caesars, was to preserve the unity of the realm. For this, Theodosius temporises with Maximus III. (383-388) ; for this, Honorius (395-423) vanquishes his pride and sends the habiliments of empire to the upstart Con- stantine III. (407-411), who has as much right to claim a place in the Caesarian line as the dour and furtive Pannonian Constantius III., who provided the West with its last " legitimate " ruler. 4. In the great world of officials, there was no Prompt and vestige of the modern, I may almost say Teutonic, P ersonal sense of personal loyalty, and there was but little pr ince ; as trace of personal honour. The later barbarian kings general repre- burst into Roman territory, accompanied by a trusty senta band of retainers who gradually supplanted the nobles of long descent ; forming, as later feudalism shows, 136 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. n Prompt and an uncomfortable counterpoise to royal authority. personal The emperors, deterred in the allotment of public /l/llffl/iJl ft/ prince; as office by senatorial sullenness or incapacity, sought general repre- their agents elsewhere, and especially in their own household. The influence of freedmen, conspicuous under Claudius or Domitian, must have been very genuine. Historians love to contrast the generous pride of the Roman aristocrat who could not take office under an upstart, or who chafed at the restraints of a central assessor upon provincial malversation. With a show of humility, they point to the low estate of the modern noble, who deems himself honoured, while he is in fact degraded, by the menial and house- hold offices at court, which supply his highest title. Yet to a tranquil observer many of the difficulties of the administration were due to this idle vanity, which would not brook control or the recognition of a master. Indeed, it is directly responsible for the prevalent palace-administration, which everywhere in theory, and largely also in practice, has superseded the diffused and co-ordinate regimen of a decentralised State. The emperors were driven, in their honest care for the public welfare, to select trustworthy agents ; and the meaning of the " military despotism," a title of reproach so often applied maliciously to the Roman Empire, is merely this : an order was given and promptly obeyed without cavil ; " and to my servant, do this and he doeth it " ; Sallustius' advice to Tiberius at the uneasy opening of his reign in Nola. Now the entire machinery of the republic was almost of design calculated to arrest this promptness and unquestioning obedience ; the various duties of a State-executive were wrested from a single hand and parted out among a number of equal and, in effect, irresponsible officials, whose negative duty was rather to check a colleague's enterprise than assist his zeal for reform. There was a vast expenditure of heat and friction to secure equilibrium ; and the Roman senator sent out to a province with regal powers abused his freedom and impunity, in a very natural CH. ii THE ROMAN EMPIRE (337-457) 137 reaction. And, as we know, it was this reaction that Prompt and carried the armed proconsul at the head of a faith- personal ful army into the defenceless capital of the world, prince; as Centralisation (whether we regret or approve) is the general repre- inevitable climax in the development of organised 8enta> society ; and if the emperor sought among the lowly and unscrupulous for his immediate executive, it was rather the fault of those who could not stoop to relieve him of a portion of his responsibility. The whole imperial system is a denial of senatorial, Roman, Italian privilege : in a word, it is a provincial protest against a Whig oligarchy, the emperor was a "patriot king," not indeed of the narrower Rome, but of that larger State, which was conterminous with the world, "urbem fecisti quod prius orbis erat." It was in the very middle of the Adoptive period that the scattered elements of this unrecognised or personal retinue were gathered into some semblance of a civil service. There was no crafty or studied encroach- ment of central power ; but through no fault of the prince, even against his will, the direct reference of a helpless world to a master had become the rule. Pliny's correspondence will be proof enough of the host of new and minute duties which pressed upon Caesar. Nothing, it would appear, could be settled without him, "Ea sola species adulandi superemf." It cannot be doubtful to any unbiassed student of history that this confidence was both genuine and deserved. We have perhaps happily ended that epoch of criti- cism which traced all human institutions to hypocrisy and guile ; saw in the willing obedience of the subject only the cringing humility of the slave ; and detected in the endless and artificial broils of a narrow and malicious city-life or the perpetual feuds of savages, the ideal of human existence. The worship of the imperial genius was a sincere if misplaced token of gratitude for a peace and a justice hitherto unknown. From the first, the immediate agent of Caesar had better credentials than the nominee of the Senate ; " Onera deprecantes levari placuit proconsulari imperio," 138 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. n Prompt and writes Tacitus of Achaia and Macedonia. Who can of doubt ^at the immense Balkan peninsula was the prince; as gainer by the indefinite prorogation of Poppaeus general repre- Sabinus' command under Tiberius ? or that the easiest way to satisfy the remonstrance of the pro- vincials was to diminish the number of semi-inde- pendent governors and unite under a single " servant of the crown," well-qualified and tried in office, but at any given moment responsible to a vigilant master ? The great tragedy of the reign of this second emperor was largely due to the unreceptive "old bottles" of misrule, of which Piso, the Syrian proconsul, was a typical representative. Growing 5. The c i v il service, which thus of necessity grew \ionofagenis: U P * o perform the humbler or more delicate duties of autocracy an ever more engrossing task, became in its turn limited by its the Frankenstein monster " to its creator. Roman recognition, society (indeed all primitive society) had been founded upon the affectionate relations of high and low, the patronus and the cliens. By this device they atoned for the narrowness of State interference and found a salve for the jealous division of classes both in place and in sentiment, which civilisation seems to increase rather than to alleviate. And in this spirit the " in- tendants" of the Roman Empire began their work. But the dizzy succession of meteor-like princes during the Great Anarchy (235-285) effectively quenched the personal allegiance. Devotion to an abstraction was substituted, to an Ideal which clothed itself in a variety of individuals and soon tired of these im- perfect representatives. It is conceivable that the inmost provinces during that time enjoyed com- parative peace, but were ignorant of the name and features of the reigning Caesar ; with whom indeed only the most patient of historians can keep pace. The abstraction Rome, or the Roman Republic, exerted a far greater influence on the world at large than the personal character of the sovereign. The great machine went on, even although for a time it was headless. CH. ii THE ROMAN EMPIRE (337-457) 139 The first duty, as we have so often remarked, Growing of any absolute government is to discover a remedy insubordma- . J , ., , , J tion of agents: against its abuse, or a temporary exercise of power autocracy during an interregnum. When the political theorist limited by its is satisfied that he has put his finger on the rec 3 nition - "seat of sovereignty," he has nearly always dis- covered a caput mortuum. To say that the people have the power, is to utter a truism or a fallacy ; and of either sense the present age has grown heartily tired. To say that an autocrat exercises absolute authority is to say nothing at all. Absolute monarchy and democracy are convenient formulas ; they are not facts ; and the man of sense instead of gazing awestruck at imposing phantoms will inquire, " Grant- ing your formula, which does not matter to me, where does the effective control reside ? " And in nearly every State, reactionary or progressive, it will be found elsewhere than in the admitted and recognised channels of authority. For nearly all influence is indirect, and to proclaim publicly the irresponsible prerogative of king or people is to rob it of half its power, and to turn men's thoughts to other quarters for the discovery and maintenance of social order. Now the safeguard against the madness or incapacity of a despotic crown lies in the removal of its tem- porary representative, who only enjoys its honours during good behaviour. Roman public opinion was merciless towards a Caesar who had failed, or proved unworthy of high office. Their code of proportion- ate criminality is as strange to us to-day as any barbarian wehr-geld. The manly pursuits of Gratian (375-383) were as fatal to his popularity as the cruelty which accompanied the same dexterity in Commodus (180-192), just two hundred years earlier. There is more than mere irony or exaggerated satire in the excuse of Juvenal for Orestes, " Troica non scripsit" ; it was the artistic tastes of Nero that hurried him to a doom which his State-crimes would not have exacted. Roman literature is haunted by this hyperbole, this entire want of perspective, the fatal legacy of the 140 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. n Growing Stoic school ; recognising no limit or degree in good I tianof dt ent8- or ev ^> anc * * n conse( l uence never finding in this autocracy mixed world either the perfect sage or consummate limited by its wickedness. In the indictment of an emperor, the last and most damning charge is nearly always some amiable trait, some redeeming characteristic that to our eyes at least makes the sinister figure almost human. But to return : the Roman emperor held his place " during pleasure " like any other official, and accepted its tenure on these conditions. There is not a trace of " right divine to govern wrong " until we observe Christian influences at work ; until power is a trust from above and not an office delegated from below. The immediate retinue of the transient sovereign saw through the weakness of the repre- sentative to the eternity of the system. Who has not smiled at the French courtiers, bowing low to the chair of state and jostling indifferently past King Lewis himself ? yet beneath this inconsistency lies a great truth ; which no one saw more clearly than the much maligned Tiberius : " Principes mortales, Rem- publicam ceternam esse." The per- 6. The civil service or the army, with its regular manent grades and orderly rules of promotion, has the start ofnorninai e * anv monarch, even with the best intentions, bent and actual on reform. When in a vacancy or a minority the ruier - central authority was in abeyance, the staff-corps or the body of household troops or chamberlains would become charged not only with ordinary business, but with the old patrician privilege of devolving the suc- cession. In a certain sense, the imperial records from Constantine I. to Majorianus (457-461) tell of nothing so much as a long struggle between the supposed sovereign and his ministers, between the nominal and the actual wielders of power. We shall find later that the whole crisis in the years 565-602 is due to the unavailing fight of sovereigns, wanting neither in tact nor ability, against license and privilege in high places. Sometimes the foe will be an unofficial class of wealthy and irresponsible citizens ; sometimes the CH. ii THE ROMAN EMPIRE (337-457) 141 subordinate agents in the provinces ; sometimes the The per- unscrupulous servants of a monarch's intimacy, manent ... ... official: duel the eunuchs, who become a necessity m a court qf nominal when once the principle of royal and unapproachable and actual seclusion is recognised as chief among the arcana n imperil. An absolute monarch is frequently tempted to exclaim with Nicholas II. in our own times, "Will no one tell me the truth ? " Among the most valuable and convincing documents of history lies the speech of Justinus II. (578), when he warns his successor in simple, even broken utterance, against the wiles of the palace-clique. This unequal contest by no means exhausts the interesting crises of this period ; but it may pass unnoticed, because so much is matter of surmise rather than of express record. The palatines share their power with the more honest chiefs of the army-corps, and in fact during this century and a half a vacant throne is filled by military suffrages ; and in the unique apparent exception, Joannes the primicerius notariorum (423-425), who figures as the nominee of a palace intrigue, we may suspect with reason the influence of Castinus, the " master of troops," and the reluctance of one who grasped at the substance of power, to cumber himself with its trappings. So Arbogast, so Gerontius, so Orestes, propose other heads than their own to wear the diadem and endure the ceremony in the obscurity of a palace. But while in this age of Constantine, Valentinian, and Theodosius, the military is very distinctly the final arbiter, the bestower of power, it must be remembered that such intervention is exceptional ; that everyday matters in the still extensive field of civil, social, fiscal, and judicial activity lie outside (or perhaps above or below) the range of a soldier's interest. "Nee deus intersit nisi dignus vindice nodus incident" The real government, concerned with details and routine, is the work of the obscure official. It takes its tone, its spirit and its principles, from this potent but half- unrecognised hierarchy. And while it is easy to trace the career, and estimate the influence of some able 142 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF UK. n The per- manent official: duel of nominal and actual ruler. Mutinies of Dynastic era : seclusion of sovereign : influence of chamber- lains and ' Shogun.' general, of Theodosius the elder, of Stilico, of Ae'tius, or of Boniface ; or the change of policy, the active enmity or open partnership of Alaric or Ataulphus ; we often find ourselves at a loss in essaying to ap- preciate the character, the motives, the policy of Eusebius, Chrysaphius, Ruffinus, Eutropius, Olympius, and Jovius. And again, what shall we say of those supreme instruments of imperial justice, or engines of imperial confiscation, the pretorian prefects, divested of their military power, but in the civil sphere the alter ego of the sovereign and the veritable dis- penser of his awards ? To a more careful diagnosis of these agents a special section should be given ; it is now high time to pass on to other aspects of the empire during the Dynastic Period. 7. It must not be supposed that a single family, by right of election in great measure accidental, was permitted to enjoy this unique position without question. The precedent of the third century was too fresh in men's mind, when the imperium was a prize within the reach of any bold adventurer. But in justice to the dynastic principle in this first Christian century, the supreme place was never the aim of mere vulgar ambition and greed, never a mere family appanage, the means of enriching needy relatives. Such it became in the age which follows the close of this historical study, the age of the Comneni. There still survives something of the old Roman spirit of disinterested public service, which ennobles the individual citizen, and merges his personality and caprice in duty to the State. Office is still a sacred trust, not a patrimony ; behind the emperor of the moment was the republic. It was therefore with no passionate indignation against dynastic claims that the usurpers of this period set up their banners against the " legitimate " sovereigns. Constantius II. (as Ammian repeats with irksome iteration) was uniformly successful in civil war and in quelling domestic disturbance. Pretenders were rife in the West ; Magnentius murders Constans I. CH. ii THE ROMAN EMPIRE (337-457) 143 (337-350) and heads a barbarian, perhaps a nationalist Mutinies of rising: Nepotianus seeks to revive in the peaceful Dynastic era . . ,, , , -, ,. ,, , . . ,, seclusion of capital the days of Maxentms ; Vetranio in the sorm ,^ n . general confusion and uncertainty assumes the influence purple ; Silvanus is tempted by the malicious in- trigues of courtiers to try this last desperate means of reaching safety. But the interest of these military " pronunciamentos " was confined to the armies and generals in question ; and the discredit brought by Gallus on the Constantian house was amply retrieved by the Gallic laurels of his brother Julian. Stern necessity drove the staff-corps to a hasty and very possibly erroneous choice on the banks of the Tigris m 363 ; every one would be first to salute the new emperor, and no one could venture to rectify a mis- take by inquiring if this was really the Jovianus in- tended ? So too with the elevation of Valentinian I. : necessity and the peril of anarchy could not stop to consider precedents or weigh merits. No one was more conscious of his shortcomings than Valens himself ; and it caused little surprise that Procopius, a cousin of Julian, maintained himself for some months in the years 365, 366, as emperor at Con- stantinople. It does not appear that this seizure of the capital threw the general administration out of gear, any more than a similar revolution at the beginning of Constantine V.'s reign, when Artavasdus - usurped power (740-743). But the results of the daring of this " pale phantom " (as Ammian suggests) were terrible indeed. Henceforth, the slow and suspicious mind of Valens was open to informers ; and from the Gothic alliance with the baffled pre- tender, on the score of " hereditary claims " and legitimacy, sprang the distrust of the Eastern court, which dared not refuse the suppliants at the Danube in 376, 377 ; yet gave them only a half-hearted welcome. The disaster of Adrianople was the dying curse of Procopius. So completely was the choice of a new sovereign the perquisite of the staff-corps, that during the illness of Valentinian I. in the West, 144 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. n Mutinies of Dynastic era : seclusion of sovereign : influence of chamber- lains and * Shogun. 1 his successor is already seriously debated in military conclave ; and no thought is given to the problematic rights of his children to the reversion. On his re- covery, the wise sovereign loses no time in presenting Gratian to the troops and securing their approval of a father's partiality. Maximus III. (383-388) voices the public murmurs against Gratian's alien body- guard and barbarising proclivity ; just as Arbogast is the first of a series of barbarian " protectors," leading about a tame Augustus, not venturing, or perhaps scorning, to assume the purple which they were ready enough to bestow. Eugenius, the pagan rhetorician, is the precursor of Attalus, the artistic Ionian whom the Senate sends out to treat with Alaric ; of Jovinus, the " client " of the Burgundians (and for a brief space of Ataulphus also), of Avitus, of Libius Severus IV., and of Ricimer's pageant- emperors, down to the extinction of the line in Romulus. This is the significance of the events of 392, 393, and the great battle of the Frigidus. Historians remind us that it is the first time in this later empire that East vanquishes West ; hitherto the balance of success has been uniformly with the latter. But it is for our present purpose mainly instructive as being the earliest protest of a proud barbarian minister-of-war against the fancied inde- pendence of a purple-born stripling ; the last in- effective protest in the West against a Christian government (unless we except the dalliance with Sibylline books and Etruscan soothsayers during the siege of Rome). The last pretender of our list seems at first sight to belong to a very different class : Joannes, chief of the notaries, spectabilis not illustris, seems elevated by a peaceful civilian in- trigue ; yet as we have seen above, it is more than probable that pure military influence was in reserve. Now a survey of such facts will lead us to this conclusion : that the reign of immature and secluded youths largely contributed to the establishment of a foa/barian protectorate in the West ; and it was just CH. ii THE ROMAN EMPIRE (337-457) 145 a question whether the ascendancy lay with the Mutinies of functionaries who thronged the sacred halls, or the Dy^^cera barbarians who bivouacked outside. The problem sovereign: which has to be settled in the next period is, " Shall influence the empire accept side by side with a secluded fa^^' nominal ruler an effective barbarian 'Shogun' ?" It 'Shogun.' is now time to consider what part is being played in the governments of East and West by this new element ; and we are called upon to explain why the Western Caesar vanishes until 800 ; why the crime of Leo I. in the murder of Ardaburius marks for the East a new era of independence. VOL. I. CHAPTER III LIBERAL IMPERIALISM ; OR, THE FUNCTIONS OF THE EMPEROR AND THE PROFFER OF BARBARIAN LOYALTY Unvarying j RESTRICTION, exclusion, and privilege such 'Liberal- ,, , . , '. , ., ' . . ism' of were the chief maxims of the city-state, when km- Monarchy: ship, genuine or fictitious, constituted the sole tie. Atrium h ^* u * an em P^ re stands for expansion and liberalism ; of liberty' its very existence implies that efficiency and defen- the success of s j ve cohesion have superseded as end or motive power, the mere aimless cohabitation of relatives. It is not without reason that feudalism distrusts the purpose and essays to thwart the methods of sove- reignty ; for it is largely a reaction to that more primitive society, which takes form in the clan, the tribe, or the city-state. The noble has a well- justified suspicion of a monarch, who from his very position is no " respecter of persons." The chief ruler, with his selfish interests and enterprise merged in the general welfare, is commonly identified with the party of progress and enlightenment. In the very nature of the case, a sovereign before whom all are equal, is a well-qualified and impartial representative of the whole mass. Indeed, he is coerced against his will into this unconscious position of champion of popular rights. The new reading of the old feudal or parliamentary struggles brings into clear relief the popular basis of monarchy, as the enemy of privilege and exemption. Magna Charta, the Great Rebellion, the Revolution, in our own history, re- present to us to-day certain successful efforts of a solid minority in the State to usurp control and win exclusive benefits. That under Providence good 146 CH. in HISTORY OF ROMAN EMPIRE 147 results have ensued does not exonerate the prime- Unvarying movers from selfish and reactionary aim : an aim '. Li ^ ra j r - J ism of none the less selfish because united with perfect Monarchy: good faith. It is the pardonable self-delusion of modern small but convinced minorities who often meet in /7tkrty* discussion and arrive at idealist conclusion, to con- the success of fuse their own advantage or views with the common a f actlon - good. In the past, it is a commonplace which as a truism is often forgotten, that a single rule is the only obstacle to the endless jealousy and recrimina- tion of classes, or the still more odious rancour of religious and national bitterness. While the kings of England strove to unite a people and make justice uniform, a powerful minority fought for special privileges ; which through no effort of theirs were destined to become the common heritage of all in the fulness of time. A democratic plebiscite or referendum (which so far as the will of the people can be elicited seems the only convincing method) would have nullified the demands of the barons, the overthrow of the Catholic Church, the deposition of the Stuarts, the supremacy of the Venetian oligarchy through the eighteenth century under cover of popular government. And indeed, the Roman Empire as we interpret it to-day, so far from being a retrograde movement, was a distinct advance, upon which few modern constitutions can be said to make any substantial improvement. It was a reaction of the provinces against the metropolis ; such as might well take place once more between the colonies of the British Empire and Downing Street. It would be idle and vain to assert that the chief heroes in this drama of transition played their part with eyes open and fully conscious purpose. Such a theory seriously impairs the entire work of Theodor Mommsen, the first careful, untiring student to suggest a more equitable judgment on the imperial aims. His picture of Caesar, singularly untrue to experience and the possibili- ties of human nature, merely to-day provokes wildest 148 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. 11 Unvarying 'Liberal- ism ' of Monarchy : modern ' triumphs of liberty* the success of a faction. Wise and gradual liberalism of early empire ; anti-aristo- cratic, anti- national : necessary appeal to force and interest reaction in the opposite direction ; the clear-sighted and consummate statesman, who looked steadfastly at an outlined plan of preconceived architecture like a Platonist, becomes for Guglielmo Ferrari the arch- opportunist, always embarrassed by his unexpected success ; the founder of the line of Caesars and Kaisers and Tzars of all time is merely for him the arch- destroyer. Neither account is true ; Caesar is neither the tranquil guide of events towards a predestined goal, nor the worried creature of circumstances. But he represented the larger interests and the wider suf- frage, the more spacious opportunity. His curious breach with ceremony and tradition, his neglect of precedent and of prejudice, taught his followers a much needed lesson. The success of Augustus was due to the clever disguise of Liberalism in the garb of religious and national patriotism. Only tentatively did he proceed in throwing open the world to an impartial administration, this cautious nephew of the Dictator who made Gauls senators and granted the franchise wholesale. With moderate steps did the great movement advance towards the breaking down of racial barriers ; and with a wisdom rarely shown in these days of logical contrasts, it fostered a measure of genuine autonomy and local interest, while retaining an effective but limited supervision and right of interference ; it did not hurry, as if only capable of superlatives, from one extreme of centralised control to complete independence. 2. The emperors were almost uniformly abreast of the time. Law, religion, public opinion, Stoic philosophy (in its finer aspect), combined to shake the fetters of privilege, to display the natural equality and likeness of man as man. It was reserved for a strange wearer of the title Antonine (212) to register or endorse this revolution, by an edict as notable and theatrical as Alexander II.'s ukase of emancipation. Rome ceased some years later to be the centre of gravity, and the last vestige of Italian superiority was swept away by Diocletian. The problem was no CH. in THE ROMAN EMPIRE 149 longer the supervision of civil magistrates in the Wise and unarmed provinces along the Mediterranean, but the 9 ,^ U r l . defence of the frontier. The ablest defenders are of early the most doubtful in lineage : Maximinus I. (235-238), em P?; \ jj j >> Qjiii-aristo- a barbarian, performs valiant service in keeping his erotic anti- countrymen out ; Publius Licinius Gallienus (253- national: 268) does his best to let them in. ^Tto The new converts to Roman allegiance are more force and royalist than the king, more nationalist than the interest - nation. Again and again the empire retreated to the ancient limits marked out by Augustus, and resumed its defensive attitude. What at such times was to be the policy towards those who knocked at the gates as suppliants or as marauders ? Was the process of expansion to be indefinitely applied in the matter, not indeed of new territory, but of new settlers ? The imperial idea was of course supra-national not anti-national ; it did not destroy a country, but it gave an additional fatherland and a new pride of citizenship. There was nothing untoward in the settlement of barbarian tribes in depleted districts ; and it is difficult for us to-day to appreciate the ravages which the plagues of the second and third century had made in over-populous regions. Extensive solitudes took the place of busy countrysides and thriving towns. The latifundia, by the accumulation of vast estates in single hands, had been the creation rather of necessity and obdu- rate physical law than of any deliberate greed. Once again the empire had taught men to live at peace with each other ; for the gathering at Ephesus in the Acts the town-clerk feared an inquiry only on the ground of uproar ; Dio Chrysostom's pages are full of references to the small jealousies and petty spites which only a good-humoured central authority, embodied in such men as Gallic, could hold in check. And during the long repose which followed the re- constitution of the empire under Vespasian (70-180), the interior provinces, unaccustomed even to the sight of soldier or the glitter of steel, unlearnt the 150 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. n Wise and gradual liberalism of early empire ; anti-aristo- cratic, anti- national: necessary appeal to force and interest. art of defence. As we shall often remark, careful study must relieve the imperial line of the charge of needless intervention and tutelage. The multiplica- tion of imperial duties and, as we saw, of direct imperial agents, was an inevitable effect or resultant of various causes ; in which intentional interference played perhaps the smallest part. It is not to the discredit of the system, if it happened, that amid the financial or civil embarrassment of the network of city-states, even the worst of the emperors was trusted above every one else, as an equitable and impartial referee ; if the control of arms (whatever this might entail) was confidently surrendered to a single arbiter, and no further thought was given to national defence or the problem of conscription. The triumphant campaigns of Trajan (98-117), the adroit royal progresses of Hadrian (117-138), lulled the world into a false security. Henceforth after a brief interval, the emperor was to be a homeless and restless vagrant, beckoned hither and thither at the summons of some frontier crisis. The situa- tion was assuredly much changed since Tiberius proposed the maxim, then undoubtedly of highest sagacity, " Non omittere caput rerum," and since Nero in the prime of life and vigour waged war by legates, just as Domitian, the proud and suspicious, paid visits of courtesy by deputy (ex more principatus per nuntios visentts). The Romans grumbled in their usual irresponsible fashion at the wise decision of Tiberius, who sent his sons to hear the complaints of mutinous legions, and refused to leave Rome to superintend measures for repressing the Gallic revolt. But they complained equally of the long absences of later Caesars on im- portant business, anywhere rather than at the capital. Whether the " Folk- wandering " and the reconstruc- tion it entailed took the statesmen of the empire unawares, it is impossible to say ; but with the exception of the station of the Rhenish and Danubian legions, everything else had to give way to this new CH. in THE ROMAN EMPIRE 151 pressure on the frontier. The imperial regime was Wise and eminently calculated to satisfy a pacific State or gradual ll fifj'f'd 1 1 $))l aggregate of States, whose sole aim was peace and O f early the calm enjoyment of material comfort. Around empire; the basin of the inland sea, which Pompey had ^atiT'ant delivered from its last pirate-vessel, dwelt, or rather national: slumbered, peoples with historic names and homes, necessai '.v . u r i i appeal to carrying on the innocent mimicry of local govern- f orce and ment under a firm yet tolerant control. In spite of interest. the blind or credulous belief of humanitarians to-day, the race, at least in Western Europe, has not pro- gressed with stately and measured step to the final triumph of Peace from unspeakable riot. Just as coercive measures, police, prison, death-sentence, were comparatively unknown in the family conclave, or its larger form, the city-state ; so war was to all early nations a displeasing if frequent episode in the social life. It was neither a business nor a profession, but a regrettable expedient. Part in its dangers was the inseparable right and duty of a citizen : TroXe/toO/ie/ iva elprjvyv ayapev. A mercenary class of expert champions was a later invention ; just as the foreign bodyguard which protected the despot, himself like war, a mere needful but regrettable expedient, mark- ing a period of transition. The idealist meditation of Hobbes discovers in early society, bellum omnium contra omnes, because homo homini lupus. We need not at this date point out the unhistoric char- acter of such surmises, which are but the arbitrary background on which to depict his favourite thesis, the centralised monarchic State (that is, France since Napoleon, under any and every superficial formula of government). As a fact, early society, when it begins to be human in a real sense, when it issues from the "pack" or the "horde," is profoundly pacific and knows no force but moral, no need for any other. The patriarchal authority is acquiesced in, not because it is potent, but because it commands respect, instinctive it may be and not easily to be uprooted. No doubt the father is obeyed in fear, 152 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. n Wise and gradual liberalism of early empire ; anti-aristo- cratic, anti- national: necessary appeal to force and interest. whether of his present wrath or future displeasure as a maleficent spirit ; or of the whole system of unalterable rules, which seem to influence savage life quite apart from any visible sanction of force or penalty. And this we may surely not inaptly call moral. It is as the world grows older that appeal to force becomes necessary in the ultimate resort. This the doctrinaires of human progress on their own lines are reluctant to admit. Yet the fact and the reason should be alike obvious. The agreement upon the father's authority, the content of the legal code which is but family tradition and precedent crystallised, the unseen yet dreadful menace of ances- tral spirits, to whom all change in custom is impiety, the entire and significant absence of all compulsion or caprice under the " dead hand " of tribal usage ; all this is unmeaning in the larger aggregates which go to make up a state ; different peoples and classes and tongues, each with their own special code and cult, which in their neighbours excite only horror or derision. In the " spacious times " of early society, tribes and clans with the natural instinct of a savage, carefully avoided each other and kept by some un- spoken agreement to their own hunting-grounds (" invicem vitabundi," as Tacitus might say). It is pressure and increasing population that makes war ; just as it is economic or fiscal distress which pre- cipitates revolution among peoples deaf to the sermons of Idealism and the eulogies of Liberty. War is a natural expedient to prevent overcrowding ; the con- quering caste will, as humanity and sympathy made way, spare to enslave, their captives in battle ; and thus the first great step toward international law is taken. This tribe, welded into compact discipline by the successful leader, imposes its will on the conquered people, whether as distant provincial, or resident alien, or client, or lastly, as slave. It is only this latter, who in the merciful treatment of antiquity is taken into any real relation, partnership of interest rights and religion. The rest are and must remain CH. in THE ROMAN EMPIRE 153 outside ; and in the utter want of any common prin- ciple of code usage or superstition, they are amenable solely to an irresponsible force, the will of the superior. There was much truth in Thrasymachus' estimate of State-law, TO trv^epov rov Kpeirrovos. 3. Until Alexander showed glimpses of a better Empire way, until Rome effected a consummate realisation reverts to of his dream, the only conception of foreign dominion P arnti was self-interest. Rome had already progressed far needful] on this road, when the last century before Christ was ' ,ty J and the, open filled with domestic tumult, largely arising from this career: problem, the relation of the subjects to the dominant tiberal policy. race. Once more the far-sighted and liberal states- men, sages, and jurists of the first two hundred years reverted to the early pacific conception of the State and its duties. It was with surprise, reluctance, and secret alarm that the emperors resumed their arduous post as sentinels on the frontier. It is probable that the revolution which summarily displaced Severus Alexander (235) was, at least in part, a protest of the military against the civil element ; a recall sounded by blunt and straightforward soldiers from a policy of barristers, women, and philosophers to a recog- nition of the real dangers, which lay not in the Senate's rivalry but in the barbarian menace. Yet so sincere, so ingrained is the pacific and defensive character of the empire, that no attempt is made to enlarge its boundaries, except by Probus (276-282) ; and it is significant that the same emperor who wrote joyfully that Germany would soon be com- pletely subdued, also wrote that in a short time soldiers would be superfluous. Enough, and perhaps more than enough, has been said to show that the whole justification of the imperial system lay in its stoppage of war or domestic disturbance ; that the nations who had gladly welcomed the imperial figure, and rested beneath its shadow, were entirely unversed in warlike pursuits ; in the profound quiet which was its immediate outcome, and in the deep- seated principle to which the empire reverted, that 154 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. 11 Empire war is a regrettable episode in the life of nations, reverts to ^ Q ^ e en t ere( j on on i v as a means to peace. Thus pacyum: J i" . armies again the protection of the frontier or of Caesar, divine needful; b u t vulnerable, fell upon expert and professional andlhcopen shoulders ; son succeeded father in the moral and career: orderly camp-towns, which recognised and encour- Uberai policy. aged in the so idi e r the ties of the domestic hearth, the pursuits and influences of peace. For the army was the hereditary civiliser of the waste and desolate places, the pioneer not of brutal force but of useful mastery over nature, of the refinements of Helleno- Roman culture, which Tacitus in his malevolent apotheosis of the "noble savage" called an integral part of slavery. So far was the empire from being a military despotism, with Cossack and " najaika " ; the army was rather the most liberal of all its insti- tutions ; and its commanders the most advanced of statesmen. In merit, in loyalty, in ability, the emperors recognised no distinction of country or of lot ; or indeed of religion, save in the exceptional periods when popular suspicion and nervous panic was excited by a secret sect, which refused a simple homage to the generalissimo. Just as the later Teutonic kings displaced an intractable nobility of birth by an aristocracy of efficiency ; so the emperors substituted less arrogant agents for the Senate, and more valiant guardsmen for the disloyal and under- sized recruits of Italy. Others have traced the gradual extension both of the civil franchise into complete equality, and of the coveted right to join the legion and rise to the highest place in the service of Rome ; and it is not the purpose of this work to repeat what more competent students have already done. For we have only to call attention to the great but largely unconscious contest in this age, not merely between paganism and the Church, but between barbarian and Roman influence in the State and its defenders. A natural preference for good material turned Constantine and Theodosius into the deliberate CH. in THE ROMAN EMPIRE 155 partisans of the newer races. It is doubtful whether Empire this favour was of necessity mischievous. The empire, reve fj s to ., ,. , . ., ' e pacifism: the negation of privilege, the redressing of excrescence armies again and anomaly, might reasonably argue, like modern needful;^ statesmen, that settlers and soldiers of whatever race and l ^ were naturalised subjects of equal rights with the career: original stock. If the supreme place was thrown BboralpoKcy. open to competitive merit without distinction of race, why not the lower steps of the hierarchy ? If the imperial system had produced desolation in the provinces, and unwarlike if turbulent effeminacy in the great urban centres, why should it not retrieve its unintentional error by grafting new life into the decaying trunk ? Pestilence, the curial system, slave- cultivation, such were the obvious causes of decline. How far, so the question presents itself, is the remedy of barbarian soldiers and colonists an " active element of disintegration ? " 4. It would appear that this welcome to the Teutonic necessitous but stalwart alien, if extended with 0o*** >** mingled firmness and sincerity by a succession of ofs e uo~ l tactful princes, need have implied no sinister conse- bureaucracy quence. It was a natural and logical corollary of the whole imperial policy. The Roman emperor was bound by no Spanish etiquette to wait immovable in a chair, slowly roasted by a fire which precedent would not allow him to touch. He was under no obligation to guard with stubborn zeal a frontier for a people which was slowly becoming extinct. There is ample proof, beside the notable profession of loyalty by Ataulphus (Orosius, vn.fin.'), that the Goths might have become the stoutest and most trustworthy sup- porters of the throne and system. It is true that certain usurpations, like that of Magnentius, seemed to constitute a genuine peril not for a dynastic family alone, but for the empire. And yet, if we look back into the third century, the heroic but usurping de- fenders of Gaul were no nationalist pretenders or anti-Roman separatists. They were Augusti, and doing the work of Augustus, preparing the way for 156 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. n Teutonic egoism and loyalty, an offset to bureaucracy and con- servatism. an abler and more efficient sovereign, and yielding, as Tetricus, not without relief. It is, no doubt, poor comfort to a threatened representative of a dynasty to assure him that it is only his personality and not the imperial system that excites hostility ; Ammianus reminds us in a notable passage of apology for the vindictive Valens, that a ruler in whom the majesty of Rome is centralised cannot but identify his own safety with the maintenance of the system, to which (as others view the matter) it is just the standing objection. It is quite possible that the reign and character of Licinius Gallienus (253-268) might be rewritten in a very favourable light ; and that the seeming indifference to pretenders and schism was due to the farsighted policy of a statesman, who saw in local stirrings and home-rule no serious menace to the stability or solidarity of the empire. The line of British and Gallic Caesars forms an interesting table ; especially the last few names, the obscure Marcus II., Gratianus II., and finally Constantine III.; who with his son Constans II. did good service for the empire, and (as we have seen) secured a tardy recognition from a prince, singularly jealous of his formal ex- clusive prerogative, and as singularly careless of its exercise. In a narrow sense, no doubt the Gallic sedition in the middle of the fourth century shows the presence of an " element of disintegration " ; but the successful pretender, like many a one before and after, would gladly have sheltered himself beneath the respectable aegis of legitimacy, and like Maximinus I. himself have become "more Romanist than Rome itself," or "more ultramontane." It would, I think, be truer to say that two conscientious princes of weak and therefore stubborn character, were respon- sible for the great misfortunes which befell Rome : Valens, whose insincere response to the Gothic plea for asylum created irksome and dishonourable con- ditions, which his ministers had neither means nor intention to enforce ; Honorius, whose repeated refusal of Alaric's demands, by no means without CH. in THE ROMAN EMPIRE 157 precedent, turned a champion of the empire into a Teutonic ruthless foe. It seems evident that the whole system W * 8 and of Teutonic settlements would in time have profoundly O ff se t to modified the bureaucratic and centralised adminis- bureaucracy tration then in vogue. But this need hardly be deplored or regretted ; and the clear delimitation of the civil and military department by the wise (though not omniscient) reformers of the fourth century might point to a long and harmonious co-operation between barbarian and Roman, soldier and administrator. In a later division of this work, it will be pointed out in justification of the wantonly destructive policy of the great Imperial Restoration (535-565) that there was no principle of cohesion or of progress in the Gothic or Vandal royalties, nor even in the Prankish family, that strove to fill in vain the vacancy in the West. It must be clearly understood that a vague allegiance to Roman suzerainty was never thrown off ; and curious instances recur in unexpected quarters of the genuine and abiding affection with which the Caesar was regarded, absent and heretical though he might be. Nor did the imperial tradition ever die, or the reverence for the idea become extinct, until the great event of Christmas 800 gave once more the Western world an Augustus of its own. It must be confessed that the empire, receptive of all that was genuine and efficient, would have found the uncouth barbarians a better agent and a more wholesome influence than the obscure chamberlains of the court, with their nerveless quadrisyllable names and uncertain ancestry. Vacillating between confidence and mis- trust, Valens and Honorius gave alternate hearing to the friends and the foes of the larger policy. It must be feared that the anti-foreign or " xenelastic " crises, the "pogroms" aimed against imaginary criminals (as in the drastic treatment of the Stili- conians in 408) partake of the hatred of interested and corrupt place-holders whose long impunity is threatened. Orosius and Namatianus, Christian priest and archaic Gallo-Roman noble, unite in abusing 158 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. n Teutonic egoism and loyalty, an offset to bureaucracy and con- servatism. Signal defect of empire (as of all professed absolutism) : cannot con- trol own agents. Stilico ; yet if Rome was to suffer an emperor who "reigned but did not govern," it was surely better to leave the helm of State with Stilico than with Olympius or Eutropius. But with the early death of Theodosius and the massacre of the " tutor " he left for his sons, the final breach with the barbarians was merely a question of time. 5. Again, a whole-hearted welcome to these inter- esting but dangerous suppliants might have opposed an obstacle to one of the mischievous currents, which was driving the ship of State on to the quick- sands. And here we approach a topic which is of signal interest to us to-day. The tendency of all civilised institutions is towards uniformity and central- isation. The local usage, the special immunity, caste- privilege, hereditary office or exemption, district autonomy, are out of keeping with the fully realised modern State and must disappear, unless the present lines of development are arrested. The earlier empires, as the continent of Asia, true officina gentium, grew fuller, gathered the scattered tribes into a precarious unity for the new uses of war, or the gratification of ambitious sovereigns ; but they were contented with tribute, acknowledgment of allegiance, and military levies in time of need. It was only with Alexander and with Rome that some inexorable pressure from the unseen tried to force an imperial regimen into a strict and uniform model ; and this very gradually. It is a mistake of the recently departed idealism to believe that every ruler must needs be a jealous and interfering busybody ; every unhappy subject a critic and rebel of this encroachment, striving to break the chains and emerge into independence. The exact opposite is, of course, the spectacle which history or experience provides us : the multiplication of duties and responsibility, as a rule, is unwillingly undertaken ; and the deadweight and reactionary conservatism of the people is much too supine to assume its majority and look after itself. Little by little the sphere of government enlarges, and takes CH. HI THE ROMAN EMPIRE 159 under its protection private leisure and unexplored Signal deject departments of life. $$% It has often been said that the empire failed professed when it ceased to govern and began to administer, absolutism) : Tit. JAM r j i- / u- u -r i 11 cannot con- The details of organised routine (which if centrally trolown controlled, must be uniform) ill befit the spacious agents. generalities of a protectorate or a " hegemony." And yet subject and prince alike were pushed irresistibly along a path which led to the servitude! of the former, the curial dungeon and the caste-system, and to the overwhelming of the latter by a high-tide of duties, to none of which could he personally attend. And yet it must be confessed that, compared with modern attempts at "empire," the princes of Rome succeeded to a wonderful degree in reconciling the two inte- rests, what Tacitus calls, "Res oltm dissociabiles prin- cipatus ac libertas." The empire was no*doubt happily free from the turmoil and artificial feuds and parties of the representative system. No great " council of the empire" gathered together for useless debate small groups of rival or inimical nationalities and creeds. Other and perhaps more effective means were invented or to hand, for the free vent of public opinion and criticism. For this was by no means behindhand in finding expression, in caustic satire or in those riots and tumults, which aimed disloyalty only at the agents of government, never at the system itself. Tiberius, as we have seen, complained very reasonably that the Senate did not take a serious share in the care of justice or administration ; he spoke, we must believe, with the perfect sincerity of an ancient aristocratic, even Whig, family. Modern writers point out that very little substantial independence underlay the specious phrases of alliance and autonomy among the more favoured cities in the realm. I would not willingly impugn the municipal honesty of the first and second century ; but we need go no further than the New Testament and the tenth book of Pliny's letters to satisfy ourselves that the control of local justice and finance rested more safely in the hands 160 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. i Signal defect of empire (as of all professed absolutism) : cannot con- trol own agents. of an imperial representative than with the local authorities. The whole end and aim of the imperial system was to secure responsible government, amenable to discipline, to law, to prescribed routine, and (if I shall not be thought paradoxical) to a well-defined moral standard. Let the doubter contrast the serious behaviour of the governors in the Gospels and the Acts, under Tiberius, Claudius, and Nero, with the viceroys of a modern State, ruling defenceless de- pendencies. It is quite likely that really responsible government is only possible either in countries and under constitutions like our own ; where the public opinion of the higher classes is the real controlling influence ; where a national and somewhat self- conscious Puritanism (irrespective even of religious orthodoxy) keeps a vigilant watch over public life ; where (once again) the government or the ruling class is not sharply distinguished from the commonalty ; where really momentous issues are settled anywhere else but in the formal homes of debate and executive. Or responsibility may be found under genuinely despotic but spasmodic rule, that regimen for which Liberals of all ages have sighed so inconsistently. But the benevolent tyrant was in the early days of the Roman system not an exceptional event, or a " happy accident " (as Alexander I. said of himself with par- donable vanity). The real happiness of peoples lies not, as the older Liberalism fondly imagined, in the formula of the constitution, but in the behaviour of the official world. Experience proves that the bureau- crat of an unlimited monarchy, and the functionary of an advanced republic, claim and exercise a power of petty tyranny, an opportunity for dishonest gain, an exemption by " administrative right " from the general rules which regulate a citizen's life. In the disconcerting freedom of the French republic no less than under the " unspeakable tyranny " of its ally the Czar, a private house may be ransacked without redress or reason given, a subject haled suddenly to CH. in THE ROMAN EMPIRE 161 the confinement of a prison and hectored into a con- Signal defect fession of imaginary guilt ; a large and industrious J empvre portion of the community may feel so outraged by the professed indifference of the centre to their interests, that districts absolutism) like Moscow or Montpellier may present all the appear- ance of civil war ; irreligious rancour may persecute the agents. conforming Catholic official in France, as in the East the State-orthodoxy may attempt to extirpate Jews and dissenters ; and in both we may notice the same evil, the absence of any outspoken and honest public opinion in the upper classes, and the consequent rule of an insignificant minority. Much has been heard of late of the Grand-Ducal Camarilla ; but this secret and unauthorised influence (even if it exist outside heated, though Liberal, imagination) has its exact counterpart in the coalition of the wealthy in the States of America, in the unaccountable force wielded in France by the anti-clerical Freemasons. The Roman nobles had formed a class apart, im- mune from many of the restrictions of the average citizen. The exacting standard of moral tone was in- sensibly relaxed when, like an English cadet in the early days of Indian annexation, he left the society of his equals to rule inferiors. The empire, we have seen, restored in a great measure the idea of government as a trust for which the exercise was accountable to a central tribunal of known impartiality; not to a venal assembly of men who only longed for similar oppor- tunities. Officials were, in effect, controlled as they had never been before ; and the trust of the provincial in the central authority had every reason to increase. When the agents of the sovereignty, still merely super- vising, were recruited more and more from the less conspicuous classes, and the State-service presented an open career to any man of ability, the easy ideal of Caesarism, such as we have it in France at the present moment, was accepted by all. The subjects were saved from the trouble of self-government ; and the smallest question was sent up to the personal head of the republic : just as the replacement of a VOL. I. L Signal defect of empire (as of all professed absolutism) : cannot con- trol own agents. CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. n tile on a French parsonage had to go up to Paris even before the Revolution, which started in a vague cry for liberty, and ended in riveting the fetters of State-supremacy. The exceptional luxuriance of transcendental literature and interest in the first four centuries must strike every student. The din of war and tumult never penetrates into the pages of Plutarch, of Apuleius, of Origen ; and it is hard to believe that the serene and optimistic principles of the Plotinian system were elaborated by a favourite professor at the court of Gallienus ; and that the most troublous epoch in Roman history should be marked by the finest and least austere presentation of the pantheistic hypothesis. The central office became more and more charged with public burdens ; and Caesar's functionaries were drilled and organised into fixed rules of behaviour and promotion, irrespective of the caprice of the transient ruler ; a firm check not only upon his arbitrary will but, it must be con- fessed, on any project of generous reform indeed, as in every civil service or bureaucracy, a final obstacle to change, whether for good or evil. The members of this official class were thus emancipated from that severe and vigilant supervision, which had been applied under the early Caesars and the adoptive emperors. It is easy to exaggerate the effectiveness of this control ; and I have no desire to lose my case by pleading for a verdict of perfection. But the regretful retrospect of those who suffered in later times from irresponsible bureaucrats and a powerless monarch, may help us to understand that responsible govern- ment under the empire was something more than a pretence. Men like Laurentius of Philadelphia, like Synesius of Cyrene, looked back to the times of per- sonal government as to a golden age, never to return. And meantime, so conscious was a serious prince of the impossible task, that we again direct notice to the famous offer of ^Emilianus (253), who desired to retain as the chief imperial duty watch and ward on CH. in THE ROMAN EMPIRE 163 the frontier and surrender the whole civil administra- Signal defect tion to the Senate. This premature division of the -i j -i-i L j u i- (as of all civil and military sphere very naturally proved abortive professed in the middle of the third century ; and the sweeping absolutism) : reforms of Diocletian and Constantine fell once more froi^wn' into complete centralisation. The departments were agents. effectively severed, but both were amenable to the overworked emperor. Little was secured by dupli- cating Augustus and Caesar ; or by multiplying the prefectures, and "cutting the provinces into morsels/' as Lactantius calls it. Still the credit or the dishonour of the whole administration, in its failure or success, fell on the shoulders of one. Every one recognised in Diocletian the ruling spirit of the " quaternion " : the years 306-324 were given up to mere anarchy ; Con- stantine resumed undivided sway after the dismantling of Licinius ; and to the end of our chosen period (324- 457), in spite of partnership, men respected or detested the chief and single Augustus, as the author of their woes or their prosperity. Something like a rough-and- ready control, as of a military court-martial, was indeed exercised by princes who rose from a private station ; inured to habits of discipline and obedience before undertaking the difficult task of guiding others, and living in the open light of day the vagrant life of an active warrior. The conscientious but "shadow- bred " royalties who succeed these greater men are (as we must often repeat) at the mercy of a flattering "entourage," who lay aside their hatred or envy of each other for the sole purpose of deceiving their master. 6. How could the emperor be relieved of this Possible use intolerable burden? for whether he controlled his of Germanic agents or not, in the eyes of the world he was solely and mb^ec- responsible. It might be hazarded whether Teutonic tivity: inde- subjectivity might not have formed a salutary alliance C with the great Roman objective, ideal and abstract objective as it was, although ever embodied in a personal ruler. The Teuton was incapable of the classic veneration for law, but he was capable of a 164 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. n Possible use of Germanic frankness and subjec- tivity : inde- cisive policy of Rome. strong personal attachment. I am far from being able to endorse the following generalisation of the Greek attitude to life as a full and complete account of a versatile spirit, that had in it at least as con- spicuous an element of subjective criticism and rebellion ; but it undoubtedly represents a phase of mind common enough in East and West alike, and especially in the age we are discussing. "We can" (says Professor Bury, H.L.RI. i. 4) "regard our ex- perience as destiny fortune and misfortune as alike determined for us by conditions beyond our control. It was in this objective spirit that the old Greeks regarded their experience, and in this way they were content ; for it never occurred to them [?] to exalt subjective wishes of their own in opposition to the course of destiny, and grieve because such wishes remained inachievable." Now the whole confident blitheness, if you like boisterousness, of the Teutons lay in the opposite belief ; that the world lay open to the knight-errant, that a strong will can impose its canons on others and win success over material things and human minds. No over-indulgence in the studies of Reason had produced in them the torpor of despondent culture. They formed a novel, sanguine, and enspiriting element amid a prevalent fatalism. Their ideals had little regard for State, public spirit, general welfare, or indeed with any august but in- tangible abstraction. They understood and appreci- ated the sanctity of wedlock, the call of personal loyalty, the silent appeal of helpless infancy, born to inherit the cares and splendour of a great name. Of their simple character it might truly be said mentem mortalia tangunt, if we limit these mortal happenings to the home, the family, the dynasty, the tribe, and exclude the larger possibilities of nation, race, and universe ; in which many thinkers, born to be agents, have found in seeking peace, only an indolent lethargy. This reversal to the rudiments (as I have elsewhere tried to show) is by no means a step back- wards. After a long reign of culture and traditional CH. in THE ROMAN EMPIRE 165 institutions, it makes for healthiness to have an inrush Possible use of the open air and of primitive emotions. TheJ^' democratic basis of the imperial system, the lowly and subjec- birth and late promotion of some of its finest <%' *fe champions, saved it from the enervating uniformity, the fRome. equilibrium of balanced forces, into which a modern State is apt to subside ; unable either to advance or to retreat, to reform effectively or to check remonstrance criticism and discontent. What hinders progress to- day and leads to apathy is the uncertain relation between human effort and natural forces, what I may term the democratic as compared with the scien- tific outlook. Even the Romans had some suspicion of the futility of enterprise, and a deep sense of coming calamity brooded over the mind. To this, Teutonic subjectivity provided a very useful con- trast and antidote. Might there not have ensued a new alliance between imperium and libertas, in a sense other than Tacitus comtemplated ? Unques- tioning obedience to law, as if sacrosanct and divine, is a mere trait of savagery. Mere acquiescence or pious resignation (whether in an attitude to the world of nature or of man) is not merely the nega- tion of progress but the denial of man, of worth, of reason. The ' Meditations ' of Marcus Aurelius happily for the Roman world never represented any but an insignificant fraction. Under the thin veil of abstract pietism, his creed conceals a complete distrust in the meaning and efficacy of thought and of action ; for to no school is the title d\oyot more completely suitable than to the Stoics, who professed to discover in the universe, and to apply in every department of human activity, the sovereignty of Reason ! To this fatalistic despondency the Teutons were entire strangers. Into their native mythology, which is one long eulogy of conscious enterprise and reflection against brute force, they had engrafted a peculiar form of Christian belief, which suited their temperament and their earlier legends : even the unquestioned heir-apparent had to 166 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. n Possible use of Germanic frankness and subjec- tivity: inde- cisive policy of Rome. win his spurs, to be " made perfect through suffering." Their political temper united loyalty with independ- ence. In the same way the Anglo-Saxon race to-day is faithful to hereditary chiefs ; but is suspicious of its own ministers and representatives, and jealous of the encroachment of the central power. It was eminently suited to become the bulwark of a throne, tenanted by an Arcadius or a Honorius. There was the birth- right, which excited the wonder of the Roman historian : " Insignis nobilitas aut magna patrum merita Principis dignationem etiam adolescentulis assignant." There was the ample liberty, which Salvd Roma majestate would permit the settlement and the free exercise of gentile and tribal usage, under the valuable conditions of allegiance and military subsidies. Even the suspicious eye of Valens had seen the inestimable reinforcement of the dwindling armies of Rome in the Gothic petition of 376. Ammianus, xxxi. 4, " Ex ultimis terris tot tirocinia trahens . . . collatis in unum suis et alienigenis viribus invictum haberet exercitum " cf. 10. Gratian drafts the enemy into his own legions, "Oblata juventute valida nostris tirociniis permiscenda." But it is wasted energy to prove the confidence with which the Romans incor- porated the vanquished into their own ranks : the policy which meets us as early as the days of Caesar and Agricola, they never reversed, and never repented. In a word, the barbarian settlers, whom Salvian acclaims as setting a high ideal of conduct to a corrupt civilisation, whose rulers Sidonius paints with favourable brush in striking outline, might have pro- vided everything that Rome needed : free yeomen, honest officials, and good soldiers. The blame of this failure to incorporate lies not with the " barbarising " party, with Constantine or Theodosius, but with the indecisive and often treacherous counsels which pre- vailed in the courts of Ravenna and Byzantium. After the extinction of the Stiliconians, and the refusal of Alaric's heart's desire, it was apparent that the two civilisations could not settle down together in amity. CH. in THE ROMAN EMPIRE 167 The West solved the problem by expelling a nominal Possible use Caesar and overrunning Latin culture; the East (as of Germanic we shall see in our next division), by expelling i^Q andmbjec- barbarian and rekindling the still glowing embers tivity: inde- of Roman life and Latin traditions amid the Oriental <*?**!& of Rome. peoples. CHAPTER IV THE ERA OF THE PATRICIANS; OR, THE BARBARIAN PROTECTORATE PETRONIUS MAXIMUS V. . . . 455-456 . ?nom. AVITUS (in Gaul) 456-457 . prov. nom. FLAV. JUL. VAL. MAJORIANUS . . 457-461 . BARB. nom. FLAV. LIBIUS SEVERUS IV. . . . 461-465 . BARB. nom. [Interregnum] FLAV. PROCOP. ANTHEMIUS . . . 467-472 . co-opt. East (? birth) OLYBRIUS 472 . . BARB. nom. and FEMALE right. GLYCERIUS 473-474 BARB. nom. JULIUS II. NEPOS 474-475 co-opt. East. ROMULUS 47S-47 6 . milit. nom. FLAV. ODOVACAR (patric.) . . . 476-491 THEODORIC (patric.) .... 489 king in Italy 493 Growing in- 1. THERE are three principal divisions of class and dependence of function, of which even in primitive society traces can ora&0nj?- r ~ be detected ; and;they correspond nearly to our modern Church, Civil list Church, Army, Civil Service. The process of s ^ nnce > evolution in society, while it implies a centralising of Army. " responsibility, implies also a specialising of function. The career of the citizen in Athens or in Rome displayed the ease with which he served as a judge, fought in the ranks, or as a magistrate took part in those religious rites which were the condition of the divine favour. With the gradual extension of interest beyond the city-walls arose the need of special work and expert concentration. The early empire shows the beginning of distinctness in duty and function. It was particular training, definite if narrow sphere, and clearly marked employment that made Caesar's officials useful and capable ; no less than their immediate accountability to a personal critic, in- stead of a corrupt or corruptible assembly of peers 168 CH. iv HISTORY OF ROMAN EMPIRE 169 or fellow-criminals. The bureaucracy of Rome fell Growing in,- into the hands of specialised and unpretentious men de P e J ldence f . ; various cor- of business. The army of Rome followed the same porations : path ; it was recruited, at ever-widening intervals Church, Civil from the seat of government. For in the end the military profession became the natural calling of the dwellers in the Balkan peninsula ; whence in the hour of need proceeded the long series of emperors who restored the shattered state to solidarity. Beside the local cults, to which Rome showed at all times a kindly indulgence or a tolerant indifference, the State worship consisted in a vague and universal recognition of the sacred mission of Rome and of the emperor. But a new belief or tendency, running parallel and rival to the imperial development, had once more specialised a certain department of human life and interest. At last its claims appear irrecon- cilable with the comprehensive system, which prided itself on the inclusion and consecration of all mun- dane business, pursuits, and studies. Unprofitable time is wasted in the inquiry, whether the adoption of the Christian faith by Constantine hastened or retarded the disintegration of the realm. However tempting the application of a moral, the deduction of a significant lesson, from the facts of history, much valuable energy is misspent in this unfruitful idealism. We trace the course of human affairs by attempting to enter sympathetically into the motives and the troubles of the chief agents ; and by seeking to trace the secret currents flowing beneath the surface, of which they were often the unsuspecting manifes- tations. In such a survey, the apportionment of praise or censure on a modern standard is surely out of place. We record with interest the sincerity of the actors, and the steady and irresistible march of unconscious forces. The alliance of the chief but independent powers of the present and the future kingdom was inevitable ; and it is idle to specu- late upon its beneficent or malign influence on the development of mankind. This emergence of the 170 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. n Growing in- Church, as the successful competitor or valued partner dependence of of the State is the final st in the specialising pro- various cor- ' porations: cess, which had operated by splitting up the m- Church, Civil terests and the business of the early citizen. Advance Army 6 ' m culture is fatal, in highest and lowest pursuits alike, to the fable of the " admirable Crichton " ; the good student or administrator or soldier or artisan, must give his time to some exclusive task, well-chosen and congenial, but limited. And the whole tendency of the later empire was towards firmly drawn lines, dis- tinguishing and divorcing class from class, and trade from trade. It is a commonplace of the tiro, in that easiest and most fallacious study, historical aetiology, that the foolish and isolating policy of the emperors in the matter of finance and of caste caused the ruin of the imperial system. We may, in the first place, adduce strong reason for objection to the phrase " ruin " ; and we might, if we were in a Hegelian mood, show that an institution or organism is not condemned but beatified, if it passes with easy tran- sition into other forms of life : and that, strictly speaking, the imperial system is with us to-day, modi- fied and transformed, but still potent with a magical charm, as well as the influence of more sober legacies. Our province is limited to noticing the irresistible tendency towards a crystallised society, each class with its peculiar duties, habits, aspirations, and schemes of life and behaviour, owning to little real sympathy with the members of another community or guild. It is no paradox to say that each town or city in the empire, whatever its distance in miles from the seat of government, was in truth nearer to the capital than to its next-door neighbour : that peculiar topical isolation which is the wonder and the despair of humane workers among the poor, in those districts especially which have a local significance for the rate- collector and the police, but no vestige of organic or articulate life. Each small township pursued its usual unchequered existence in unconscious or deliberate mimicry of Rome or Byzantium itself ; and within it, CH. iv THE ROMAN EMPIRE 171 each class had its traditional rites, banquets, assem- Growing in- blies, trades-unions, from the once honourable de P endenc ^ of curia, now filled with distinguished but embarrassed p0 rations : prisoners of the decurionate, down to the smallest Church, Civil and meanest corporation of handicraftsmen. It is im- Armv e ' possible to saddle individual or system with the blame of this resistless movement to uniformity and to iso- lation. We may pronounce it in effect mischievous, but we are not therefore nearer appreciation of its origin or effects. Like all facts in history, it is there to be accounted for, not to be censured or made the vehicle of a schoolroom moral. Thus the specialism, which attends naturally on advancing civilisation, in- vades and penetrates all relations of life, and all classes in the State ; it marks off sharply and distinctly ; and this atomism made the control of the State still more indispensable, not now indeed as an actual adminis- trator, but as a dominant idea. 2. For the emperor, representing the State, had La r g e sur- handed over large rights to the two independent renders of powers, that will monopolise all our attention, in the autocracy; Middle Ages. Arbogastes, like the French major thepioneersof Grimoald, was some eighty years before his time, MeduKvallsm - in the blunt defiance to Valentinian II.: "he had not conferred, and could not revoke, his military commission." Yet the independence of the army- corps or its complete predominance is a feature of this fifth century. But power is usually exercised indirectly, and loses much of its force by public re- cognition ; and men are ready enough to acknowledge a new master if the old forms are kept, if the fresh influence enjoys the substance without the preroga- tive. So too with the Church, its chief officers, be- coming more wealthy and more trusted, usurped with the fullest popular approval and imperial sanction the control or supervision of municipal affairs ; but, apart from this wide and generous usefulness, the episcopate was still an autonomous and independent corporation. It derived its powers from no congt d'Jlire, which marks to-day in our own country one 172 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. n Large sur- last expression of expiring Erastianism, of the fallacy ^ttular* ^ * a "Christian" commonwealth. Here, acquiring autocracy; form, esprit de corps and solidarity during the Dynastic thepioneersof period, were two great institutions or corporations, MedicEvalism. -,, , , . ... , , . . ,. Church and Army, with whose mutual interaction, alliance, suspicion, lies the future of Western Europe. We may debate, in idle and innocent academic sport, the exact moment when the Middle Age begins ; but it is clear that Constantine in recognising the authentic and parallel credentials of the Church, Theodosius in leaving as guardian to his sons an estimable barbarian general, are the unquestionable pioneers. These avowals implied the surrender of the old theories ; the ideal integrity of the State and of its self-sufficing- ness, of the unique and indivisible source and fount of authority. Here are powers loosely indeed united, under the still sovereign unifier, the emperor ; but they are co-ordinate ; and the spiritual and the mili- tary force look elsewhere than to the civil authority for their mandate and their duties. We are reminded of Philo's immediate dichotomy of the divine powers into kingly and creative; which together take so much attention that the invisible and secluded Ground of both (like Schelling's Absolute) receives little notice. The supposed autocracy of the Byzan- tine sovereign, which Agathias attributes to Justinian, which Finlay regards as consummated in the ninth century, need by no means involve the independence or free choice of the monarch, rather his serfdom by tradition and usage (as in the case of China) ; not the supersession of the consilium, which was the legacy from the Roman magistrate who had been transformed into the Oriental potentate, but its paramount influence on affairs. There is a curious passage in Laurentius, the disillusioned civilian, who sheds so much light on some inner phases of the fifth century. We must elsewhere do justice to his estimate of the functions of kingship, worthy to be set beside the outspoken criticism of Synesius ; and shall content ourselves here with a brief summary. " The monarch is no CH. iv THE ROMAN EMPIRE 173 tyrant, but is elected by the free suffrage of his subjects Large sur- to higher grade : and his peculiar mission is to shake r ^"^ rs J * titular none of the laws of the commonwealth but constantly to autocracy ; preserve the traditional aspect ; to do nothing beyond the the pioneers of , i . . -77 . r , , T / . Medicevalism. laws in his own irresponsible caprice but put his seal to the unanimous decision of the chief men in the State ; to show to his subjects the affectionate care of a father and ruler" (De Magistr. i. 3). It is abundantly clear that step by step with the increase of prerogative, we must note the increase of actual restraint. If the philoso- phic statesman of Philadelphia had been able to read Hegel, he would, in the picture of the constitutional prince who dots the " i's," have recognised something akin to his own ideal. But we are speaking of the By- zantine half, wherein both Church (in spite of much creditable frankness to the autocrat) and Army (in spite of occasional turbulence) remained duly subordinate ; and the emperor was rather the puppet of civilian or chamberlain, and the slave of custom, rather than the figure-head of military adventurers or even ambi- tious prelates. It is the Western development rather, which now challenges our attention ; and it is obvious that the central authority under successors of Theo- dosius places sovereignty " in commission " : and, while an oath by' Honorius' head is more binding in sanctity than appeal to God himself, effective power, in spite of eunuchs and their cabals, drifts steadily away from the palace to the patrician, the patriarch, the patrimony. 3. We have called this age the epoch of the imaginary Patricians, and although it is not our wont to burden annals of this section with dates and names, it may be neces- ^jjf^ sary to justify the title by a comparative table. In West: its the chapter entitled the " Rejection of the Barbarian deriv f ive * Protectorate," we shall draw notice to the different destiny of the Eastern realm, which for two-thirds of this century seems dominated by the same Sho- gunate ; and it is in this connection that we shall notice the importance of the reign, or rather of the crime, of Leo I. 174 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. n WESTERN " PATRICIANS" ARBOGASTES (c. 388-394) Valentinian II. 375- 392, Eugenius, 394 STILICO (395-408) . Honorius (395-423) AETIUS (434-454) . Valentinian III. 425- 455 [Afajorianus RlClMER (456-472) .\LibiusSeverusIV. \Anthemius Glycerins Romulus (abdic. 476) GUNDOBAD ORESTES ODOVACAR THEODORIC (472-474) , (475-476) (476-493) (493-526) EASTERN " PATRICIAN " [Pulcheria, 408-450 (Theodosius II. Mar dan Leo I. \Verina, Ariadne, .] Zeno, 474-491 Anastasius I. 491-518 Imaginary annals of ' Patrician ' rule in the West: its derivative mandate. It would be easy to rewrite the history of the empire from Honorius to Justinian, after the fashion of an ancient chronicler, somewhat in this manner : ' Now it pleased Theodosius to leave Stilico as guar- ' dian and regent for his two sons, and especially for ' Honorius, who was married to his daughter. He ' governed the realm well and carefully, until wicked ' men murdered him in 408. And after that certain ' ladies of the imperial family directed affairs, Placidia, 'widow of Constance III., and Pulcheria, virgin 1 daughter of Arcadius. They sent Aspar and his father ' Ardabur to reinstate Valentinian on his uncle's throne, ' when for a time a low-born clerk had seized it. And ' in the West, Placidia governs through her Minister ' and Patrician, Aetius ; and in the East, Pulcheria, ' through Aspar ; though in truth Theodosius the 1 younger had the emblems of rule and was pious ' exceedingly, so that he copied Holy Writ in fair ' colours. Now when Valentinian was grown a man, ' and had reigned longer than the blessed Constantine ' himself, he slew Aetius the Patrician, in a fit of f passion, thereby, as was said, cutting off his right ' hand with his left ; and, being murdered himself by ' certain henchmen of Aetius, he left Rome in con- ' fusion ; for he had no son. Then Eudoxia, his widow, ' called in an alien king, who reigned in Africa, to ' avenge her, and he came and made Rome his prey, ' carrying away treasure, so that all were downcast and ' afraid to choose an Emperor. But in Gaul, Avitus is CH. iv THE ROMAN EMPIRE 175 1 made Caesar, and Rome receives him gladly. And Imaginary 1 Ricimer, who was a son of a Sueve and of a Goth, f ' comes and governs Rome as he listed for sixteen rule i n 'years (456-472), though one Majorinus wrote many West: its ' laws which were not obeyed, and lost many ships at mandate. 1 sea to no purpose. And when he died, his nephew, ' Gundobad, of a Burgundian father, has power as 1 Patrician in Rome ; until he be obliged to go and take ' the kingship in his own country. And the councillors ' in Byzantium send over once and again some one to 1 bear the name of Emperor in Rome, and to make ' Regent whom he would. Then rose Orestes against ' his master, and sent the Emperor away to the palace ' of Diocletian, where the man he supplanted was then 1 a holy bishop ; and he made his own son Emperor, ' little Romulus, and got from him the name of patri- ' cian, without which it is not lawful for a man to do ' anything in Italy. And it is said that he learnt this ' device from a man of Isauria, whose name is not meet ' for Christian ears to hear, so barbarous is it ; he 1 marrying Leo's daughter became father to the new ' emperor, Leo the Little. And on a day the child, before ' all the people, put a diadem on his father's head and ' called him Emperor. Thus he became more than ' ever Orestes could become ; for he was Emperor for ' seventeen years (474-491), and held his place, though ' many tried to turn him away, and above all his ' mother-in-law. But this Zeno, as the men of Byzan- 1 tium were taught to call him, liked not the pride of ' Orestes, who had set up his own son as Emperor ; ' and he sent against him a true Patrician, whom he ' named himself, to rule over Italy and Rome a brother ' of one of his own bodyguard, Onoulf. And Romulus 1 being but a boy, asked leave to put off the crown ; and ' a great house and much money were granted to him. 1 And Zeno took over the affairs of the West, and the ' Senate sent to him all the purple robes and diadems ' which Romulus had worn ; for they said, ' one em- ' peror was quite enough at one time.' And some say ' that Zeno thought to send back Julius, his kinsman, 176 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. n Imaginary annals of ' Patrician ' rule in the West: its derivative mandate. who was governing his own realm in Dalmatia, instead of Odovacar ; and others say that Odovacar first over- threw Orestes, and then prevailed on the Senate to make Zeno name him Regent of Rome. But Zeno was a prudent man and full of wiles ; and I think that the device was his, that he might get back Italy ; as our Lord Justinian hath again done in our own time. And Odovacar ruled well ; but pride lifted him out, and he engraved his face on a coin, contrary to the law of the Roman commonwealth, which will have none but the visage of the Emperor alone on its money. Then Zeno, though aged, was wroth, and sent Theodoricus to overthrow his wicked servant, who had lost shame and knew not his place. And he made Theodoricus Patrician ; and for a reward of his labours promised him the government, ' until,' said he, ' I come myself and take the crown.' And he got the mastery of Odovacar, and governed well for thirty years (493-523). For he was faithful to the emperor ; and when he overcame, he sent to tell Zeno, and to take from his hands the right to govern. But his envoys were downcast, for Zeno his lord was dead and another reigned in his place, who had taken his widow and the kingdom as well ; for this too is a notable law among the Romans. So they returned and saw not the countenance of the new ruler ; and that is the reason why Theodoricus on his moneys engraved the head of a young girl and not of an old man of seventy years, though the superscription, 'Our Lord Anastasius,' is right, if the image be false. Yet they so loved Anastasius that long after he was dead, and when the regents of Italy were rebelling against their master, they put his head on their pieces, to show they were still servants of the empire. And the Frankish king, Clodovicus, who overcame the Wild Boar who rose against the emperor in Gaul, sent humbly to Anastasius ; and he sent him gifts in return and made him Patrician, and as some say, even Consul too. So he ruled the Romans and the Franks, and the land had peace, and was obedient to the CH. iv THE ROMAN EMPIRE 177 ' Emperor who reigned in the city of Constantine. And Imaginary ' indeed to Zeno before had the Senate and people of f"f 0/ * f JratTlCldll ' Rome put up many statues. But Theodoric grew rule in the 1 old, and was a heretic; and this same Senate and West: Us ' people sent over to Byzantium to demand help from ' the ruler there. And his name was Justin, and he ' could not write, but he was wise and prudent above 1 others. Then Justin told his nephew, who is our lord ' to-day, that he must deliver Rome from the evil 1 regent who persecuted the Church, and killed those ' who were friends with the Emperor and the true faith. 1 But in time he died, and a wicked man, Theodatus, 1 forgetting whose servant he was, slew his daughter, ' and put his head on coins, which are to be seen ' to-day, as proof of his rising against his lawful master. ' And after many days and much fighting under Beli- ' sarius the general, Narses is sent by the Emperor to ' be the Regent and Patrician in Italy.' So far by a writer in the very middle of the sixth century; but we might complete the fictitious chronicle by the words of a " continuator " in the first half of the seventh : ' Now it came to pass after the death of the great ' Justinian, that Narses, being but a eunuch, dealt 1 treacherously, and called in the Lombards, because ' the Empress Sophy had sent him a distaff. So they 1 spread over the land ; and the Emperor sent Patri- ' cians who ruled in Ravenna, and were sometimes 1 called Exarchs. And to Carthage, too, were rulers ' sent, bearing the name Patrician ; and though in ' Italy the Lombards had much land and cared nothing ' for the Emperor, and in Africa many Moors ravaged ' the open country, yet was the greater part faithful, and ' sent tribute and cornships to the city of Constantine, 1 until Heraclius the Patrician refused to give food to ' the wicked Phocas, and sent his own son to become 1 Emperor instead of him. And too, in Spain, great ' cities and havens were obedient to the Emperor, ' and sent tribute and heard Roman law ; but within, ' the Goths held the land and took counsel with the 1 bishops how they might administer the country and VOL. I. M 178 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. n Imaginary annals of ' Patrician ' rule in the West: its derivative mandate. ' elect their kings. Now the Prankish king was more ' faithful to the Emperor ; and when Heraclius sent his ' edict that the Jews be made Christian all over the ' world, Dagobert the king, as in duty bound, carried ' out the emperor's will.' This mythical history was never written in effect ; but it might well have been written. The title " Patrician " implies the position of regent or viceroy in the fifth century ; and although at its revival by Constantine it involved no official duty, only titular rank, its very indefiniteness was of use in concealing the enormous powers wielded by an Aetius, a Ricimer, or an Aspar. And it was under the garb of this decent fiction (as we have essayed to show) that the Western Empire slowly expired ; or rather by insensible gradation, detached itself from the Byzantine system. The entire history of this transition is better written under the title " Patrician " than any other heading. Vespasian, himself a plebeian, when he enrolled Agricola among the patricians, could never have guessed the exclusive and dignified part this title would have to play in the future. Until the middle of this century, its use is vague and purely honorific, as it became in later Byzantine history. We cannot doubt it was borne by Aetius, as by his contemporary Aspar, " first of the patricians." It emerges into a precise meaning and a technical use in the famous rescript of Majorian to the Roman Senate : " I, with my parent and patri- cian Ricimer, will settle all things well." It is far more definite in West than in East. Here it tends to become unique and exclusive ; as there could be but one empire (though the emperors might be two or many), so there was one patrician claim to the title. This was the tendency, not any legal limitation. Is not Ecdicius, the brother of Sidonius' wife Papianilla, named patrician for his military services in Gaul ? and do we not learn from that passage (Ep. v. 16) that in popular esteem it occupied a position mid- way in the hierarchy of dignities between prefect and consul ? The special mission of Odovacar and CH. iv THE ROMAN EMPIRE 179 Theodoric turned them into plenipotentiaries of the Imaginary Byzantine court ; High Commissioners for the settle- ' n a f*. f ^ ment of Italy and the re-establishment of order, rule in the There was no question as to the strictly derivative w t: its r AU AU -A derivative nature of their authority. mandate. 4. The ruler of the Roman commonwealth inter- Tribal fered in no way with the barbarian choice of "king" ; chieftain he did not even at present claim to invest feudally the elected barbarian ruler, as he did later in the land of official. Aetes, Colchis and Lazica. But the Western hemi- sphere was largely occupied by Teutonic immigrants, settlements made by imperial sanction, allotments given to alien veterans, and the gradual "infiltra- tion" rather than hostile inroad, which had taken place since the opening of the third century. The Latin population, that society into which Sidonius or Paulinus introduces us, held aloof and apart ; and as the tastes of the two communities lay in opposite directions, they agreed amicably to differ. The Latin peoples had long been used to respect any and every official, indifferently, if only armed with imperial credentials. Even in the disorder of the fifth century, the success of the exploits and bold deceit of Numerianus under Severus would be inconceivable. But it was a matter of supreme in- consequence to what nation or race the emissary of Caesar belonged. It is true that the savage pulpit- invective of Salvian suggests a virulent hatred of the whole venal and oppressive system ; from other sources we know that this was not the general feeling ; I need not quote for the hundredth time the language of Rutilius, who in spite of the fame of Claudian or Ausonius, is really the most familiar poet of this age. Indeed, the impeachment and con- demnation of Arvandus, prefect of Gaul, described by Sidonius, reminds one how little in outward cir- cumstance the imperial system had altered since the earliest days of the empire, that is, of responsible rule in the provinces. Still, as under the vigilant Tiberius, a culprit was haled before his peers ; and 180 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. n Tribal still, as if " an image of their former independence," chieftain a f ree Senate weighed the evidence and convicted the becomes ... imperial criminal, without any reference to august inclma- tions : still a powerful friend could obtain remission of an extreme sentence by pleading with the sove- reign's prerogative of pardon. Yet gradually the tide of imperial officialism ebbed in retreat ; first, Britain saw the last of the Roman eagles, then the north of Gaul. But in the towns there was little change in the outward features of administration ; and when an anomalous Roman usurpation in mid-France of ^Egidius and his son Syagrius was overcome by Clovis, in the last years of the fifth century, the Latin provincials, so far from seeing in it the end of Roman dominion, settled down once more under the rule of a man "whom the emperor delighted to honour." Clovis was nothing to them but a chieftain of a barbarian army and judge of a barbarian settlement ; until the title vir illuster and the consular insignia and largess in- formed them that Anastasius, the distant but unique lord of the world, had recognised in him the legiti- mate ruler of all he could get. It is another story to show, with the help of the careful and convincing studies of De Coulanges, how largely Merovingian royalty borrows of Roman absolutism ; and how this curious and inopportune policy of imitation led first to the roi faineant, and next to the Teutonic reaction of the majorate ; and lastly, how this vigo- rous Shogunate itself fell a victim to the centralised pretensions (which it borrowed from its fallen pre- decessor), and to the disintegrant wave of local particularism, which finally in the tenth century submerged the imperial ideal. Thus, authority was derivative ; and the craving for legitimacy led to some curious postures and problems. As when the Norse ruler seeks ratification, in all sincerity, from a monarch he heartily despises and can insult with impunity ; and his cousin in the south of Italy humbly pays homage for the Neapolitan realm to CH. iv THE ROMAN EMPIRE 181 a baffled and defenceless pontiff, whom he has just captured in fair fight. 5. But we are not yet in the tenth or eleventh Connotation century; and we must draw attention to the part of parent' ftftCL 'DCLlTO'Tl * played in the restoration of a Western Caesar by the the modern said title. The significance of the word is by no 'advowson.' means yet exhausted. First, a comprehensive name for the heads of houses, whose coalition formed the kinsman-State ; it became a generic designation for the older families ; and afterwards by a legal fiction dear to the Roman mind, this exclusive aristocracy was recruited by arbitrary selection, so that there might never be wanting "patrician" families in the Senate. The formulators of the new tables of pre- cedence in the fourth century, casting about for titles which should express dignity rather than office, happily not yet aware of the sonorous re- sources of the Greek tongue invoked seven cen- turies later by Alexius, revived the word as a personal rank. It denoted neither ancient family nor official post, but recognition of past service and a titular dignity. In later Byzantine usage it forms the in- evitable complement of every list of hierarchic distinc- tion, thus continuing the precedent of Constantine. But in the period just reviewed, a special connotation was undoubtedly attached. It may have now carried with it in the usage of Ricimer's age the further idea of "father of the emperor," as Stylianus was termed by his grateful son-in-law, Leo VI., bdsiUopator. Majorian, we have seen, couples it closely with the word parens ; and there can be no doubt that gradually with the title patrician became associated the further notions of adopted father, and of patron. Weighted with these pregnant ideas, the term was launched in the West for a further period of usefulness. The secular traditions of republican Rome, never utterly extinguished before the middle of the fifteenth century, allowed and fostered periodic revivals of obsolete nomenclature. Thus, in the tenth century we find the term " senator " and 182 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. IT Connotation of parent' and 'patron ' : the modern 'advowson.' "senatrix" used in a special sense by those who claimed to represent genuine Roman aristocracy, and to hold in check the clerical pretensions ; and many students have been puzzled to trace the connection between these self-dubbed " fathers " and the ancient Senate, which can never have survived the wars and desolation of the sixth century. In like manner the gradual aversion of the Pope from the religion and the policy of the Eastern emperor, led to a fresh use of our adaptable title. Constantly borne by the exarchs, it must have represented to ordinary ears incapacity, intermittent meddling, and sometimes overt oppression ; for even in the fifth century is the term graculus applied with Juvenalian scorn to the Byzantine nominees, Anthemius and Nepos, and Italian experience of the exarchate after Narses can scarcely have improved the unfavourable connota- tion. But, as applied by the Pope to the Prankish " Shoguns," speaking in the name of the still autonomous city of Rome, it revived all the earlier association of lay support and patronage. Just as the emperor leant on the arm of a patrician in the period of fifty years from Valentinian III. to Romulus, as the indispensable and effective supporter of the throne, so later the pontiff appealed to the secular and armed championship of the orthodox Frank. And in this conferment of an ancient title, we see glimpses of that furious conflict which agitated the Middle Age, the precedence of pope or of emperor. The moral sanction, represented by the successor of S. Peter, needed the arm of flesh in a wicked world ; but it did not thereby confess its dependence, its inferiority, or its derivative character. Rather, as with the Brahmin conception of royalty and its use, was the protector of the Holy See to take title and mandate from it, and act merely as the blind and loyal executive to its decrees. The whole issue (as among many others Pope Pascal II. clearly saw) was compromised and all hope of definite delimitation abandoned, by the immersion of the CH. iv THE ROMAN EMPIRE 183 Church in territorial concerns and ownerships. As Connotation the Apostles selected certain men to "serve tables," J^^ron'; so the defenceless Church appointed protectors to the modern guard and even to administer. But the celibate caste tadv W80n -' of ecclesiastics, with the elective character of the office, permits frequent vacancies and interregna, even snapping the continuous thread of policy : and there is nothing to hinder the transmission of the lay- post of defender from father to son, with increasing wealth and means of encroachment, until the quondam servant is transformed into a redoubtable master. 6. In the choice of a civic Defensor in the Clientship, reign of Valentinian I., or of an "Advocate" orj^JJJ^ Vidame of later benefice bishopric or abbey, of society where patrician in the eighth century, there is much that State-duties .,, & , , J ' . limited or is congruent with old Roman usage, and with an in- rudimentary: stinctive demand of human nature. The need of the superseded. correlative position of patron and client is not felt when the world is young ; the tie of kindred and the custom of the tribe is all-sufficing. But war destroys a primitive equality, and sets in isolation or mere un- happy atomism the captives who manage to escape. Usage, kinder than man's intention, makes the slave a true member of the family he serves, a partner in its religious rites, and a bearer of its name. Later, the intermediate condition is devised , and the " freedman " marks the earliest instance of alien enfranchisement. Without, in hopeless estrange- ment, are the metacs or " plebeians," whereas the released slave is a member, integral though sub- ordinate, of the house. When the functions of the State (only just issuing from domestic duties and councils to larger interests) are still scanty and ill- understood, a natural tie between great and small grows up of itself, whether among Latin or Teutonic races. The frequent and gaping interstices in the ruling of the city-state are filled up by voluntary relations, entered into for mutual defence, or for the exchange of dignity and protection between rich and poor. Where everything else moved along the rails 184 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. n Clientship, common feature in society where State-duties limited or rudimentary: superseded. of strict precedent, with a heavy and fatal slowness, this spontaneous tie was a matter of free choice : the Roman client, whether individual or distant city, might select and even change the patron ; and the days of Roman glory were bound up with the honour paid to this relation. So the German youth was free to choose his Count, and enter the retinue of the strongest, bravest, and most generous chieftain. Thus the essence of the personal tie of Feudalism is found equally in Latins and Teutons ; and it becomes for the student an idle or misleading problem to inquire whether the germ of the system is found in Rome or in the forests of Germany. It is indeed useless to find a special origin or habitat for a sentiment which is as old as human nature itself ; which will always be strong when the State is weak. We may say that the empire dealt a fatal blow at this primitive relation of faith and affection ; or that it was already disappearing in mutual distrust and malevolence. Certain it is that the empire charged itself with functions which hitherto had been matter of private venture, confidence, contract. So pleased was the society of Southern Europe with this offer of uniform administration and treat- ment, that it seems eagerly to have surrendered the various unauthenticated safeguards which had been devised, against the absence of police, legal code, religious unity, impartial referee and standing army, in the old cousinly State. The history of the new imperial functionaries, who came to fulfil all these manifold duties, is a melancholy record. At the outset, welcomed and revered as the bearers of justice and clemency hitherto unknown, they end by incurring the dislike and jealousy of the master, who cannot control them, and of the people, who cannot escape. The institution of the Defensor has been well described as the first instance of a government setting up of fixed intent a counter- weight to its own power : " Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" and the surprised interrogation is echoed CH. iv THE ROMAN EMPIRE 185 when we see the Merovingian threatening the Counts, CKentship, presumably his own chosen agents, if they dare c mon . to encroach and intrude on the hallowed areas society where of privileged estates. The Defensor was freely state-duties chosen ; and we cannot doubt that, like hereditary ^^^fy patrons of pre-reform boroughs, like noble high- superseded. stewards to-day, this office ran in certain families, and was transmitted by a natural instinct or pre- judice to the heir. So too, when the imperial power and prestige was giving way before the martial vigour of the new settlers and recruits, the emperor was free to choose his regent or protector. So once more (and here we rejoin again the main current of the argument) the Pope and people of Rome were free to choose their patrician. In a humble way, the owner of a modern advowson (advocatio) stands in the same relation to the Church, to which he can present, as the patrician Charles to the See of Rome ; and it must be regretted that the mortality of families, the unrest of migrating landowners, the partition of estates, and finally, the whole modern conception of mere contract as the basis of every relation, has altered this honourable and responsible post of advocate or patron into a matter of pur- chase ; though, in passing, we must deprecate any attempt to remedy a natural and perhaps inevitable development, by raising a ludicrous and artificial charge, the legal fiction of simony. When the early disinterested pride in a loyal retinue, a grateful bishop or chaplain, a devoted borough council, is corrupted by the modern query, " What direct advan- tage shall I reap from this duty ? " then the ancient titles become mere disguises for a relation purely contractual and mercantile. For it cannot be stated too explicitly by the impartial historian or philo- sopher of history, that it is primitive human nature and earlier ages which are under the sway of Ideas, and not, as is fondly supposed by superficial Meliorism, our own days : for these demand, with dispassionate accuracy, the casting-up of accounts 186 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. n Clientship, common feature in society where State-duties limited or rudimentary : superseded. Western realm relin- quished to rival factors, Church and Army : future in hands of priest and knight: East retains civilian ( = imperial) and central control. of profit and loss. We may here conclude this already long section on the later development of the patriciate. Theodoric was clearly recognised as charged with the right of passing on this title and dignity ; the anomalous and indefinite relations with the Eastern suzerain and with "his Senate" were never crystallised ; but it is clear that no resentment was felt at the faithful copying of imperial fashions, officials, etiquette, by the court of Ravenna or Verona. And when in Italy there ceased to reign a " patrician " exarch who had taxed but not protected, when the detestable Lombard race paid the penalty of their insolent behaviour to the Holy See, this was the most natural solution of the matter ; that the Pope, ruling and representing a capital largely autonomous by tacit agreement, under Heraclius as under Theo- doric, should appoint a new and effective protector. In the term "patrician" once more, the old idea of earthly parent and gratuitous champion or patron was found as an integral part of its use and meaning. 7. We have surveyed the rise of one of these two independent powers into which the ancient State divided. As the Middle Ages represent the struggle of the two leash-mates, Church and Army, so in our modern time the conflict is waged between Church and State ; and even if we make large allowance for religious indifference, there is ample scope for new and serious developments in this interminable duel. While the strictly civil power disappears in the West, except as unconscious machinery at the disposal of the first-comer, the Church and the Army (or its fragments) are left in sole possession. In reading the history of Epiphanius, bishop of Pavia, we are already in a mediaeval atmosphere. He is the great mediator between insolent barbarian king and trembling Augustus, between Augustus himself and his overbearing task-master, the patrician regent. One short scene in a chronicle (representing nearly coeval opinion) is for us of profound significance : CH. iv THE ROMAN EMPIRE 187 John the Pope has died after the fatigues of a fruitless Western mission to the Eastern emperor : and before his body real relin ~ 1-1 .- * i__ i jji j quishedto laid out in state for burial, a man, suddenly seized rival factors, by a demon, is cured by contact with the bier and Church and leads the funeral troop. " And when the people and senators saw this, they began to take relics of the hands of Pope's cerements : and so with great joy is the body ? r *? 8 f and L * i * -j ^u M_ x Mt_ i. knight: East taken outside the city. It is with such a scene re t a ins and with the death of Boethius and Symmachus, civilian that the history of imperial and classical Rome ends, ^^central and the records are opened of the mediaeval and control. ecclesiastical town. Having thus ushered the reader into the full story of clerical interest, it is no part of our purpose to pursue either the development or the methods of the new spiritual power. Neither the niceties of dogma nor the intrigues of prelates will find a place in these essays, dedicated as they would fain be, to quite different topics. Our concern is not with Church nor with Army, neither with councils nor campaigns. For these, a straight- forward narrative is sufficient ; and however difficult to trace the detail of dogma or discipline, there is but little genuine complexity in the issue. Starting with a certain and closely circumscribed aim, it is enough in this connection to recognise the patent facts ; that the Church has already great power, and will have still more ; that the armed forces abroad in the Western hemisphere, loosed from any central control, will fight with each other ; and that from this welter the conception of the civil and secular State will once more emerge and put an end to the feudal era. For us in this epoch, our task would lie rather in extricating some tokens of the strange and anomalous survival of ideas, other than those of spiritual tutelage or the strong arm. The concern of a mediaeval historian who is not a mere chronicler is to trace the continuity of the imperial tradition, the break-up of Christendom (later synonym of the older empire) into fragments, and the present system (which can scarcely be a final State) of jealous 188 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. n Western and militant nationalities, onpressed by urgent perils, realm re/in- wn ich are simple, social, and economic, rather than rival factors, -profound or political. Let us therefore leave the Church and future of Western Europe to the priest and the future in knight, to the pope and the emperor. Centralism hands of and the Roman Idea will find an heroic exponent in priest and Charles the patrician and Augustus ; but it does not /might: East * ... retains g am rnore than momentary recognition. We must civilian wait until the fall of the Eastern throne, until the and central P emn g of the sixteenth century, before the con- control. ception of the civil State emerges once more from the background. Long the obedient vassal of the Church, or the puppet of baronial particularism, the State comes forward under the aegis of Monarchy, to demand once more the absolute subordination of both its late masters. strangely 8. It is now time to compare the destinies of < y%*** East and West, significantly unlike. From the ' barba- abdication of Romulus until the last decade of this rta d ls f 'L Zeno century (476-491) there were ruling in both Roman vacar: in hemispheres two men, whose history and character this contrast, and fortunes present in strange mixture startling 'diverse points of resemblance and of contrast. Both are, destiny. to speak candidly, barbarians from an uncivilised verge or " march " ; Zeno (son-in-law of Leo I.) is captain of an Isaurian train-band, with whose effec- tive but dangerous and costly assistance the emperor threw off a Teutonic (?) protectorate ; perhaps saved the realm from the fate of Rome, not by leaning on alien arms, with alternating confidence and sus- picion, but by the bold policy of identifying this company of wild mountaineers with the whole majesty of the Roman tradition : and Odovacar, brother of one of Zeno's henchmen, at first captain of mercenaries from the banks of the Danube, Rugians, Scyrians, Herulians, Turcilingians, and hailing from that quarter himself, claiming for his troops a more definite land - allotment than the patrician Orestes was inclined to bestow ; finally, no worse than Philip in 244, merciful supplanter of the CH. iv THE ROMAN EMPIRE 189 last handsome boy-Augustus, and viceroy and dele- Strangely gate of this very Tarasicordissa, son of Rusumbleotus, di ffi irent tot who by a happy accident is now Zeno and Augustus. l barba- We have no intention of challenging comparison rians,' Zeno with the eloquent and picturesque narratives of three a vacar: l n great English historians, who have made the last half- this contrast, century of the Western empire live again for us. **"*** f UfUfiFSfi Let those who will, consult these pages to learn how destiny. the two grotesque rulers fell out, were reconciled, and were again embroiled ; or to trace the romantic histories of Basiliscus, actual emperor for two years, of Illus and Harmatius, or the pathetic and untimely death of Zeno's two sons. All we would here point out is the problem, why was the solution so different in East and West ? Why does one barbarian quietly put an end to the imperial line, and another, in spite of defects of character, tide over the same eventful period of fourteen years, and hand on to an aged and pacific successor a realm undeniably strengthened and reinforced ? We cannot help proposing the idle and unanswerable question ; what if Orestes, far more of a Roman than the Isaurian, had become emperor himself, and by tactful diplomacy had won the recognition of Zeno ? or what if, a year later, Odovacar had become acknowledged partner on a legitimate throne rather than a precarious vassal ? We are on firmer ground when, confining ourselves to the palace and capital of the East, and to the temperament and interests of its inhabitants, we en- deavour to trace the causes of the development there. Accordingly in the next book we shall again refer to the most signal event in the reign of Leo. Honorius had consented to the death of Stilico in 408, believ- ing in his treachery and in his design to substitute Eucherius for the son of Theodosius. So too, forty- six years later, had Valentinian III. cut the chains of his bondage to Ae'tius. But the fortunes of the West lay with the successors of Ae'tius and Stilico ; not with a fictitious imperial sovereignty : the results were ephemeral and there was no settled policy, only 190 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. n Strangely different lot of two ''barba- rians, 1 Zeno and Odo- vacar: in this contrast, secret of diverse destiny. sallies of spasmodic and personal spite. In the East, both circumstances and intentions were altogether different. The advisers of the crown had definitely wished to be rid of the Teuton. Under Arcadius there had been the affair of Gainas and of Tribigild, told for us in the curious mythical and fabulous form by Synesius. Then there is the long paradynasteia, as it was termed, of Aspar the "king-maker"; and the expedient of Leo, which at first sight seemed so unpromising, as he called in one barbarian captain to oust another. Yet while Odovacar remains to the end of the chapter " one who secured a third of Italy for his troops," Tarasicordissa is transformed into a very respectable representative of the imperial line, which as we must not forget, has already included the two Maximini, first and second. No doubt one effective reason of the stability of the Orient was the influence of family tradition and of feminine prestige. Galla Placidia had left no successor ; and the imperially connected " Greeklings " sent over by the Eastern court were unacceptable to the Romans and founded no house. Detached and isolated are the last strictly Roman figures in Roman history ; there is no bond of union or of sympathy between them except the now almost unmeaning title of Augustus. But in the East, Pulcheria had ruled till the middle of the century, and after the astonishing elevation of Leo, Aspar's bailiff or intendant, a similar venera- tion soon grew up for the imperial ladies, Verina and Ariadne, or at least they acquired a similar power. For sixty years Ariadne inhabits the palace of Constantine ; her dowry is the empire, and Marcian, Zeno, and Anastasius alike inherit through the wife. We shall record a similar tendency in the eleventh century, when the Senate and people accept without a murmur or a doubt the rapid succession of Zoe's husbands. We may perhaps wrongly surmise the complete servility and indifference of the capital and the palace to the person, the character, the nationality of Augustus ; we should be forgetting the outspoken- CH. iv THE ROMAN EMPIRE 191 ness of the patriarch to a heretical ruler, the license strangely of tongue and action in the Byzantine populace. It di ff erent tot is clear that very obvious limits to sovereignty still 'barba- existed in the fifth century ; when Anastasius had rians,' Zeno to gain by a pious fraud the account-books of his ^car^in own officials ; and sat humiliated and penitent for this contrast, all his eighty years in the circus to hear the verdict s *j?t of of the people on his proposed abdication. It may destiny. be that the Eastern mind was more inclined to a peaceful succession and acknowledgment of the rights of dynasty and even of distaff; while the West held on with mistaken stubbornness to the fiction of an open and competitive magistracy. But be this as it may, nothing is to our modern minds so surprising as the successful reign and peaceful demise of such sovereigns as Zeno, Justin, or Basil I. some three centuries later. Here then, whatever the reason, is Zeno the Isaurian confronting as Augustus Odovacar the Scyrian (?), and the history of the two portions of the empire is bound up in this contrast. With the one barbarian, the imperial idea is strengthened and so transmitted to a successor ; with the other, it is extinguished, and nothing is left standing of the institution or the policy of the man, who is said to have " overthrown the Western empire." BOOK III RECONSTRUCTION AND COLLAPSE UNDER THE HOUSES OF JUSTIN AND HERAC- LIUS: VICTORY OF CIVILIAN AND RE- ACTION TO MILITARY FORMS VOL. I. N CHAPTER I THE EASTERN REJECTION OF THE TEUTONIC PAT- RONATE ; AND THE ADOPTIVE PERIOD OF MATURE MERIT (457-527 A.D.) I. Later Pseudo-Flavians : FLAVIUS LEO I. (Thrac.) .... 457-474 . BARB. nom. FLAVIUS LEO II. (son) 474 FLAVIUS ZENO (father) 474-475 . FEMALE right. BASILISCUS (bro. of Leo's widow) . 475-477 . FEMALE nom. ZENO (restored) 477-491 FLAV. ANASTASIUS I. (husb. of) Ariadne) .[491-518 . FEMALE right. 1. THE Eastern empire never accepted the "divi- East retained sion of labour" proposed by the new settlers. The p chand emperor never sank into the mere president of a Army: the civilian hierarchy, leaving to barbarians the defence decisive of the realm and the military force ; which in the last ^spar's resort is the ultimate appeal of authority in all States, murder. however highly civilised. The Roman system was to an extent undreamt of to-day founded upon moral influence, upon confidence in the subject's loyalty, which events justified. It betrayed the same almost laudable weakness before foreign aggression as China ; because these two monarchies alone in human history contemplate peace as the normal condition of man- kind. Around the favoured area of their realm they drew a line of real or imaginary defences to protect their fortunate citizens. It is impossible then to re- peat, except as a paradox or academic " thesis," the fiction of a military despotism. Yet, on the other hand, the sovereign was imperator ; commander-in-chief as sole fount of honour ; and while the Western Caesar forgot, the Eastern always remembered. A barbarian protectorate was proposed and rejected. The Byzan- 195 196 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. m Church and Army: the decisive moment in Aspar's murder. East retained tine annals alone among long lines of rulers, have no puppets or helpless nominees. That centralising * , . . ..,., of power, inevitable in civilised States, was secured under the form of a popular absolutism. A firm hold was kept over the various departments : the Church, the Army, and the Civil Service. The old fallacy of the "dyarchy," the dual control, was wisely aban- doned. Hitherto, the emperors had shared their power with some colleague ; till Diocletian, with the Senate ; after Constantine, with the Church ; after Theodosius, with the barbarian generals. The sons of Theodosius, as we have seen, represent just that mild secluded sovereignty of a well-nurtured civilian, of which we have abundant instances in later European royalty. It is our task to inquire into the cause, and perhaps the conscious motives of the sturdy resistance of the Byzantine Caesars. Why did not the successors of Theodosius II. follow the example of the successors of Valentinian III., on the path of painless extinc- tion ? Why did not a series of crowned phantoms, appointed and dethroned by a powerful minister or foreign general, pass noiselessly across the stage and disappear as uneventfully as Romulus, son of Orestes ? For the century following the accession of Marcian is an unbroken record of solid work and reorganisa- tion ; and each mature sovereign, winning experience as a humble subject before being misled by the splendour of office, built something of permanent value into the great Eastern rampart. We must acknowledge the fact, but the explanation is not so easy. Indeed, the answer lies partly in the nature and character of the peoples included in the Eastern empire ; partly in the absence of any definite bar- barian settlements as they moved on with the fatal impulse of destiny, always westwards ; partly in the peculiar and successful policy of adoption, which dominated with the notable exception of the great Justinian, in the councils of the Court and Senate of Constantinople. The sovereigns come to the throne CH. i THE ROMAN EMPIRE (457-527) 197 in middle life, some approaching the verge of old age ; East retained they are without conceit or youthful illusions ; they P mac y r J J . J Church and are no travellers or generals, and care nothing for Army: the the parade of office ; they toil with ceaseless personal decisive .,..., . , , , ,, moment in interest in the work of supervision ; they are their ^spars own ministers of war and of finance, their own murder. foreign secretaries ; they are content to remain the invisible and responsible centre of administration, whence the threads of government issue east and west. They can remain firm and impassible in the midst of a riot; and sustained by their conscience, despise the misrepresentation of their policy and overlook the insults of idle factions. War they dele- gate, as a modern constitutional king, to generals who are never allowed to become their masters. In this whole epoch there is no " power behind the throne." They are less deceived perhaps than a modern auto- crat by their own officials ; they resign nothing, sur- render nothing. It is true that the epoch must open with a crime; but it is done for the sake of the empire; Leo the " butcher " kills Aspar his benefactor. But the personal crime is an imperial benefit. "Aetium Placidus mactavit semivir amens" ; Valentinian III., like his unhappy namesake sixty years before, had tried by a similar murder to release himself from tutelage. But he could not bear freedom ; and he had no policy. Born in the purple and ignorant as a Chinese monarch or the heir-apparent of the Ottoman throne, he knew nothing of affairs, of the state of the realm which still acknowledged him. But Leo had learnt economy as steward of the foreign general's household ; and his ingratitude seemed to save the empire from a pernicious precedent. The attempt to seclude or to coerce the sovereign had failed in the time of Arcadius ; it failed again under Leo. Perhaps that action settled the question, whether the Caesar of New Rome would follow the way of the Western. 2. Old Rome in the third century had revolted against a woman's influence, and henceforward we 198 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. m feminine influence : law of succession never laid down. Century of hear nothing of female usurpation, if we except the glorious venture of Victoria in Gaul. Indeed, until Helena, mother of Constantine, we do not hear of aught but the names of imperial ladies ; and her pious cares are confined to religious interests. Under Constantius, Syria dreaded the wife of Gallus Caesar ; but the tyranny was soon overpast, in the emperor's usual success in all civil and domestic sedition. Justina has some power in the West and a marriage unites the houses of Valentinian and Theodosius. But in West and East alike, the fifth century is guided by females ; Placidia, wife of Constantius, and mother of Valentinian, was the successful regent in the minority of a wayward son ; and Pulcheria, with unobtrusive sagacity, guided the ingenuous Theo- dosius II. and chose the elderly and effective Marcian as his successor. Henceforth, some vague right to the purple is transmitted through females. The per- petual interference of Verina, during the troubled reign of Zeno, was mischievous to the State ; but Ariadne chose her second husband well, the Silen- tiary Anastasius. The accession of Justin opens up a new chapter ; but Theodora is soon empress, not merely consort of Caesar ; and of her influence in public matters we know nothing but good. Up to the disastrous year 602, the mothers and wives of the rulers come frequently before us in the historians' page. The Empress Sophia selected Tiberius, and perhaps had reason to resent his coldness or ingratitude : and once more the Caesar Maurice received the right of imperial succession as a wedding-gift. In the seventh century all is changed ; we read of Leontia's coronation, of Eudocia's happy marriage to the knight-errant Heraclius, and of her early death, of the luckless second nuptials within the prohibited degrees, of Martina's abortive attempt to associate herself in the government; of the respect- ful rebuke of the capital. Afterwards, there is scarcely a mention of Caesar's consort : the name- less wife of Constans III., we know was detained CH. i THE ROMAN EMPIRE (457-527) 199 as a kind of hostage with her sons during his long Century of absence in the West: Justinian II., like Gallienus f? imne u u influence: in the third century, marries a barbarian princess, i aw O f but we are ignorant of her character and influence ; succession and it is not until the close of the " Isaurian " house that we find Irene, the Athenian, following the prece- dent of Pulcheria and Placidia in this fifth century : and we may note that this usurpation becomes dis- astrous both to the dynasty and to herself. The monstrous regimen of women is a familiar feature in all centralised monarchies which have attained a certain measure of civilisation. National affairs are conducted in the security of the palace rather than on the field of battle or popular assembly ; for it is only with the so-called advance of culture that the primitive methods of democratic debate are dis- carded in favour of swift and secret measures. It is noteworthy that such influence is greatest in countries where the official status of women is lowest ; the Sultana Valide, or queen-mother in Turkey, the conspicuous power of Mohammedan princesses " behind the veil," and the regency of a Chinese empress will readily occur. This influ- ence is thus greater where it is uncovenanted and unrecognised ; indeed, just in proportion. And this may serve as a caution to reformers, who believe that recognition of full prerogative ensures sub- stantial power. For the sole question of interest is not how the sovereign shall govern, but who shall govern for him. The recognised claim to omnipo- tence, whether in heaven or on earth, is at once discounted, and men pass by to do homage to meaner but nearer agents. In the course of the evolution of Roman imperial- ism we have often occasion to remark on the rigid principles and fixed methods which restrain caprice or accident in the administration of law, in the choice of officials, or in the routine of executive. A permanent civil service, we have seen, acquires and jealously maintains its own code of rules, of honour. The 200 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. m Century of feminine influence : law of succession never laid down. sovereign cannot at any time be ubiquitous and is often non-existent ; yet the government must be carried on. The " Romans " had not unlearnt the wholesome lesson of Roman law, of Roman peace ; and if we could penetrate some of the gloom and of the Great Anarchy from Maximin to Diocletian, we might find a curious and unexpected calm in ordinary social life, a peaceful provincial routine, in spite of the constant civil wars and massacres. But the election of Caesar himself, pivot of the whole, was left through- out to accident. The wide and genuine democratic sentiment, which can be descried through the flattery of courtiers and behind the trappings of autocracy, would never tolerate the presumption of an un- questioned or hereditary title. The Augustan com- promise or hypocrisy, with its train of fortunate and unfortunate results, continued to the last, at least during the first millennium. The emperor is still in theory the people's nominee, the people's delegate : the conception of a royal house of immemorial and perhaps sacred origin, is peculiar to the Germanic races ; and in spite of the protests of equalitarians the peace of Europe must largely depend upon the recognition of this unique and valid title. It is true that such legitimacy implies a very large curtailment of effective power, even of usefulness ; the sovereign and his family may not be placed in any but assured position ; they cannot be exposed to the risk of error or of failure. It is by no means a petty envy, but rather this perhaps mistaken respect, which excludes royal princes from responsible posts, for which they may be eminently qualified. Now it was precisely this heavy responsibility which the emperor under- took : it was for this task that the people chose him. A second delegation was well-nigh impossible ; he continued to be his own prime minister and general- issimo. Many of the prerogatives of a magistrate under the republic depended on his actual presence in person ; just as the grant of pardon to criminals depended on the chance meeting with a Vestal. The CH. i THE ROMAN EMPIRE (457-527) 201 centring of different offices in a single ruler meant Century of the shifting of the entire burden: the temptation to-jjjjjjjjjj. encroachment upon local rights and liberties came law of from below : it was due (we saw above) to the idle- succession never laid .. . ,, rj ness, the mismanagement, or the supine confidence of the subject, not to the grasping ambition of the ruler. In theory the emperor is always the first official of the republic and cannot shirk his duty. Again and again, the principle of free and unfettered election comes up to secure the State against the perilous effeteness of a once strenuous house : the people resumed its dormant but undoubted rights ; just as the lord of a manor resumes possession over a wasted or "ruinated " copyhold. But it is to be noticed this is a last resort in a desperate emergency. The popular sympathy, the unspoken yet effective popular senti- ment, was in favour of a peaceful transmission of hereditary right. The " Roman " people jealously guarded its privilege as ultimate repository of all power ; a principle only revived in a half-hearted manner of late years. But being after all human, it looked with affectionate interest on those born in the purple, and never questioned the right of a son to succeed a father. But the elective principle was never given up : the son must be solemnly associated in the presence and with the consent of those who by a decent fiction still represented the scattered millions of "Romans." Protest was made in the constant rebellion against the person of the monarch, never against the system of the monarchy. 3. Thus in the Roman Empire there was always Uncertainty, at the root of things a certain precarious element, a source of a measure of uncertainty; which, though a constant ^weakness: source of peril and disorder, was at the same time emperor a a " reservoir of vitality." The " Romans " never gave a meaningless homage at the temple of a house, doomed to slow and lingering decay ; they had no Merovingians, no Abbassid califs, no mikados im- mured for centuries in the wooden city of Kioto. A stagnant, reactionary, effete family was recruited 202 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. in Uncertainty, a source of strength and of weakness : emperor a responsible agent. by a brilliant adoption, a barbarian marriage ; or violently but seldom set aside by a wholesale ex- termination. Abstract legitimacy, in default of every other quality of a ruler, had no charm ; the con- ception of government, we must repeat, was strictly utilitarian. A Roman emperor was expected to do, not merely to be. In the period before us, the personal activity of the monarch is conspicuous, though, as Agathias rightly reminds us, the fulness of absolute power was not enjoyed until Justinian. The " Roman " people was no more servile in its attitude to the sovereign than the American people to-day in its genuine admiration for a tireless and outspoken president. It is impossible not to believe that the permanent civil service with its realm of officials, the bureaucracy, and the fresh vigour of some blunt and unlettered general formed a judicious balance of order and life ; that a system so prolonged met in a way that few modern constitutions can claim to do, the needs of society and the wishes of the people. We cannot say, however, that the Byzantine rule represented in any strict sense the national will, and to-day this would be perhaps the one in- dispensable title to approbation. Neither Rome, nor the Christian Church, nor its rival Islam, recognised nationality as the basis of a State. It has been well said of a later epoch, that the Eastern empire was a "government without a nation"; and it is even true of this century before us. We have seen in the past annals of the empire that the supreme place was thrown open to competition long before the titular caste-predominance of the Romans was merged insensibly in the wider State. In the third century the " Pannonian " emperors, of doubtful parentage in the Balkan peninsula, completely saved, and in saving profoundly modified the constitution. The Russian peasant of to-day looks upon the Czar as a foreigner and a German, who cannot speak his language ; but the sensitive and highly-cultured officials of the Eastern empire saw no anomaly in CH. i THE ROMAN EMPIRE (457-527) 203 receiving the commands of a Thracian Leo, of an Uncertainty, Isaurian Tarasicordissa, of a Dardanian peasant, who a source of could only write his signature through a tablet speci- O f weakness: ally prepared and perforated. A modern State, with emperor a all its pretensions to absolute freedom of com- petition, to a clear avenue for merit, the marshal's baton, the woolsack, or Canterbury within the grasp of competent ambition, sets out nevertheless in framing its fundamental laws to exclude the chief place from the list of possible prizes. It is our main concern to-day to make a disputed election impossible. Now the " embracing" nationality of the " Romans " was an ideal one : it was independent of parentage and place of birth ; it was additional to that which these accidental circumstances conferred ; St. Paul is no doubt first and foremost a Jew, next an in- habitant of Tarsus, and finally, a Roman. It was essential to this theoretical equality, this ideal nationality, that there should be no set or formal qualification for the chief place ; that no surprise should be felt or expressed at the sudden elevation of a guardsman, a steward, a centurion ; that the Senate, the polite world, the official host (to take the signal instance of Basil four hundred years later than Zeno), should acquiesce in the capture of the autocracy by an ignorant and ungrateful murderer, who had enjoyed neither the training of a soldier nor the experience of a civil servant. The result of this strange union of formula and caprice, of routine and accident, was the avoidance of two dangers : the menace to a free people of a selfish feudal nobility, who cut the royal power into minute fragments, and parcel up the State ; and the stagna- tion of an inert bureaucracy. The central power in its admitted ignorance of sound finance and true fiscal policy might oppress, but it allowed no one else to compete in the work. Conscientious accord- ing to its lights, it showed a real sympathy for the people at large, and a well-founded distrust of its 204 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. m Uncertainty, a source of strength and of weakness: emperor a responsible agent. Disappoint- ing character of coeval re- cords : claim of emperors to speak 'for the people ' amply justified. own agents. Especially do these post-Theodosian emperors turn their attention to the distribution of fiscal burdens, to the abolition of unfair taxation. The growth of a powerful " optimate " influence was checked, and will not appear again until the dis- closure of the strange weakness which lay behind the splendid mask of Justinian's system. Sovereignty throughout history springs from the people and depends on their goodwill. The single desire of the average man is to be " saved from many masters." Whatever the title or form of government, he knows well how limited is his power of protest, remon- stance, interference. His unspoken wish is to be left alone ; he prefers a distant but effective despo- tism to the pride of a feudal noble or the undue and indirect influence of a merchant "ring." The strongest testimony to the genuinely representative character of Caesar lies here ; that the formation of a National Council was never once suggested. Yet Caesar was not infallible, and no strange doctrine was accepted of the "divine right" of kings, that "the king can do no wrong." In the most despotic periods we find the plainest speaking to the inefficient monarch. The people never surrendered their right to criticise and to remove. For to the last, Caesar was "the chosen of the people," as well as the "anointed of the Lord." 4. The historians of our epoch, garrulous about the trivial or the transcendental, supply us with singu- larly scanty news on topics of real importance : the condition of the poorer classes, the social life and habits of the subjects of the empire, their interest (other than theological), their studies, their agri- culture and economics ; the relations of workman to guild and to employer, the proportion of freeman and of free tenants to slaves ; the obscure general causes that were insensibly changing the face of the empire ; the state of Thrace and of Thessaly, gradually depeopled and exposed to the hostile attack, or perhaps still more unwelcome settlement, of CH. i THE ROMAN EMPIRE (457-527) 205 barbarians from beyond the Danube. We would Disappoint- wish to know more of the constitution and functions in 9 charac ter of the still active Senate ; of the bureau and de- cords: claim partments of officials ; of the rules which guided of emperors the training, the duties, the promotion of the civil servants ; of the sovereign's initiative, how far an amply illiterate emperor without experience was at the mercy of his private chamberlains or his official ministers ; how far he took counsel with his ad- visers, and what means they had for compelling his attention or guiding his choice ; again, of the condi- tion of the garrison, of the outstanding armies, of the frontier troops, of the composition of the imperial forces, and the proportion of foreigners and mer- cenaries ; and lastly, of the power of the provincial satraps, with barbarous names and ancient republican titles, of their dependence on the personal will of the sovereign, or on the vigilant interference of a colonial secretariat ; of the remnants of local autonomy, how far respected, how far extinguished either by careless indifference or the governor's high hand. And, to conclude, the greatest problem of all, why a mode- rate scale of taxation and the goodwill, ceaseless supervision, and unbounded generosity of the em- perors should have resulted in a fiscal system, acknowledged by all critics to be mischievous and oppressive. On all these and similar questions, of paramount value to the student of humanity, we are singularly ill-informed. Even the impersonal interest of the Church is largely reduced to the personal rival- ries of Timothy the Weasel, Timothy Salophacidus, Peter Mongus, Flavian of Antioch, Macedonius, and the solitary but imposing figure of Simeon on his pillar. Nor does it become a writer of the twentieth century to disparage this interest in the personal ; for in this age we are coming back once more to the concrete, the actual, the individual, and leaving behind the Utopia, the ideal, the unsub- stantial abstraction. Yet genuine history cannot be 206 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. in Disappoint- ing character of coeval re- cords : claim of emperors to speak 'for the people ' amply justified. written with the childish naivete" of the chroniclers : a portent, an earthquake, an imperial edict, a great war, a palace-scandal, an ecclesiastical synod, all is told with equal emphasis and good-faith ; we pass discursively from one to the other, and lose sight of the movement and development of mankind and of the large features of the State, in the empty list of court cabals, or the curious gossip on an emperor's personal habits or suspected vices. We find ourselves suddenly in a new country, a new society ; we cannot trace the steps that lead to this transformation without the greatest difficulty ; we pass as it were blindfolded and without clue into a strange land, and the familiar names and titles still in vogue are seen to cover features and persons that we fail to recognise. Into such a scene are we ushered in Italy for example, at the opening of the tenth century : novel faces and characters, of which the previous age has given but scanty hints ; general disarray and a masquerade of satyrs under the digni- fied dress of older gods. So in our own history we shall note the gulf which separates the reign of Maurice from that of Heraclius I. ; the conspiracy of ashamed silence which keeps secret the details of the unspeakable Phocas' rule ; the terrible intima- tion of Theophanes, twice repeated, which assures us of the total extinction of the Roman army in eight years, two soldiers only being saved like the more faithful leaders of the children of Israel. When the curtain rises again the old landmarks have disap- peared and we do not know our bearings. These complaints are part of the stock-in-trade of the modern historian ; it is his task to create anew a plausible theory of the current or tendency whither things are setting. He sees the goal, the end, and is alive to scanty facts or detail which may help to explain. He magnifies (while warning himself against over-certainty or pragmatism) a single observation into a general statement, and builds his fabric of hypothesis with the slenderest of material. He does CH. i THE ROMAN EMPIRE (457-527) 207 not seek to chronicle and to record, but to interpret Disappoint- tentatively ; and if he be wise, he will not dogmatise in Q character but suggest. Finlay not seldom shows a real power C ords : claim of insight and intuition into the probable cause of a of emperors certain development ; he has not accumulated data the^people' 01 for a conclusion, but he feels that he must be right in amply ' 4 "V? fi his assumption, and puts forward his views, on the J mtl J ie(l - aristocratic reaction after Justinian, or the effects of conservatism and reaction in the eleventh century, on scanty evidence, but without hesitation ; and he is justified. The limits and strict duties of a pro- fessed historian will always be canvassed with dubious result. Few are competent (although unfortunately many profess) to examine all sides of a single age, a special period. It is unlikely that in detail or in principle the accurate chronicler of a campaign can guide us without slip through the tangles of a heresy or the labyrinthine palinodes of Church councils. The art and architecture may be a sealed book to a patient and sympathetic student of the literature. The political and constitutional development, in itself a special and a comparative science, cannot be rightly traced by one who is unfamiliar with the evolution of mankind in general ; and to-day, specialism (with whose demands the span of human life has not alas ! kept pace) cannot allow such a leisurely and im- partial survey. In confining our attention mainly to the political development, which is above and beyond the springs of personal motive or character, we are indebted for our superior knowledge to the fact that the result and the issue lies on the page of history before us. We can trace the rudiments of the weak- ness which beset the successors of Justinian, not merely in his own policy, but in the very conception of the Caesar's office. In taking for our subject so large a portion of accessible human history, we are aware that the treatment must seem superficial ; but it is after all well-nigh impossible to deal successfully with a period in strict isolation ; and the defects of premature specialism are too clear in the industrious 208 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. m of emperors to speak 'for the people ' amply justified. Disappoint- toils of others that we need surrender the one signal ^coevafrc- mer ^ f British historians, a large canvas and cords: claim sympathetic if subjective colouring. That much in an epoch so remote and obscure must rest on sur- mise, is to be regretted ; but, while we complain of the meagre treatment of contemporaries, we may justly inquire if it is possible for a writer to understand his own age ? Will any one to-day be bold enough to prophesy the social and political development in the century which is before us ? And can we expect his- torians of the fifth and sixth centuries to understand the drift of the current that carried the critics along together with everything else ? For the stream of time does not permit the voyager to disembark and gain the bank at his leisure or convenience, to take accu- rate measurement of the rapidity of the stream or the destination of the vessel he has just quitted. With all our ignorance, we must feel ourselves better qualified to appraise the work of these princes than their own subjects who watched them at their task. We shall not fall into the error of Carlyle or of Hegel ; we must neither depreciate nor overrate the personal initiative. We cannot doubt the true repre- sentative character of the imperial line of Rome ; no ignorant and moribund dynasty, ruling long, as some Eastern family, in a country to which they had come as alien conquerors, to which they remained ever since complete strangers. But they spoke for the people, from whom they sprang ; they inherited and reverenced the traditions of Rome, the instituta majorum ; in their most daring innovations, they still assumed the humility of pious restorers, and be- lieved themselves instruments of a purpose not en- tirely their own. If we may believe in a Race-Spirit, continuous and undying in a nation or a great political system, we can recall at once the instance of Rome. From it receive inspiration and guidance princes drawn from the four quarters of heaven and almost every known race. It was a favourite boast of the "Romans" that they lived under a consti- CH. i THE ROMAN EMPIRE (457-527) 209 tution and were ruled according to law ; while the Disappoint- Persian, slave yesterday, general to-day, and headless in 9 character J ,, , of coeval re- trunk to-morrow, could only watch with anxiety the cords: claim capricious moods of a master. It is this general con- of emperors tinuity of principle from Augustus to the end of our the^peopW chosen period, that renders the history of the empire amply not only instructive, but to a large extent certain. 3 mti fi ed - There is nothing arbitrary or personal in this develop- ment ; the oneness of the empire ; the grandeur of Rome (long after Rome had ceased to belong to its own realm) ; the welfare of the subject (TO VTHJKOOV) ; the purity and uniformity of religious belief and practice ; the orderly succession to office ; the wel- come extended to loyal foreigners ; the resolute sur- render of aggressive warfare ; even (in its defect) the constant tendency in the enjoyment of profound peace, to relax the care of the military chest ; in a word, the pacific, tolerant, and civilised aim which Rome in the West was the first to propound to an astonished world ; many centuries after China had stereotyped the idea of their celestial civilian, the emperor ; and shown the truth of the motto, " U em- pire c*est la paix." 5. The period before us is one of quiet recovery, Easternrealm of which we see the fruit in the expansive policy of s j l . a ^? 1 ^ Justinian. We are mercifully relieved for a space of urban and the tedious and unmeaning campaigns on the Persian rustic popula- frontier. For more than seven centuries these wars lon ' had been waged with varying issue and with no result ; the changes on the map are insignificant ; for neither Arsacid nor Sassanid dealt a serious blow to the substance of the empire ; and the falling away of the South-east under Heraclius was due to the spiritual zeal of Islam and the new forces of disintegration in disaffected schismatics. But at this time there is an almost unbroken peace on the Eastern side ; and the raids of the trans-Danubian tribes have not assumed the menacing significance, which they will have after Justinian's death. The sagacity of Anastasius con- structs the Long Walls, a strange monument of VOL. I. O 210 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. m Easternrealm strength and of insecurity, which recalls to mind a "dirided similar precaution in the Chinese Empire. The general urban and well-being is attested both by the number of usurpers rustic papula- anc j by the intensity of the religious, or rather theo- logical, interest. We cannot doubt that a wide gulf separated the instincts, the sympathies, and the beliefs of the country and the town. The empire was no novel constitution ; which swept all previous systems into a centralised monarchy. Nothing was formally abolished ; neither the simulacrum of republican usage at Rome nor the distinct local administration of the city-states, which went to make up the vast aggregate. It was a network of such city-states under a protectorate, or a hegemony. The inhabitants of the chief towns in the Eastern empire were idle and turbulent, and lent themselves readily to any vio- lent propaganda, especially of abstruse metaphysics; as in later times the streets of Bagdad ran with blood in the disputes on the created or uncreated Koran, the precise nature of the Beatific Vision. Religious persecution is not the entertainment of kings or the monopoly of inquisitors. In dealing with the urban population (in spite of the episode of Thessalonica), we must find fault rather with the meekness than with the tyranny of the central government. Without formal representatives, without political rights or safe- guards as we understand them to-day, the noisy spectators of the circus and amphitheatre, allotted into arbitrary colour-factions like German students, often become the arbiters of imperial policy and the real masters of the situation. It is true they were without genuine aims or sincere convictions, without a true patriotic regard either for their empire or their birthplace ; and so far from deploring the absence of representative institutions, we must trace the orderly development, the disinterested policy of the empire to this exclusion of the populace, when we find so much to regret in their uncertain interference. The townsmen of the great cities were an idle and theological mob, interested precisely in those CH. i THE ROMAN EMPIRE (457-527) 211 insoluble problems which delight the child and the Easternrealm savage. Fickle and spasmodic in their political s j l - a ^? 1 ^ interest, they betray no knowledge of affairs, no urban and sympathy with the difficulties of a ruler, on whose rustic popula- shoulders they put the whole burden of government. The Nika riots, which seemed likely not merely to end the dynasty of Dardania but to herald the dissolution of the whole imperial system, found their counterpart in the other great capitals. Sedition, on pretext the most transcendental, personal, or purely frivolous, convulsed Antioch and Alexandria, and found material in the envious divisions not of sect merely, but of religion and of nationality. This breach, on what then seemed the fundamental and essential of life, was the chief cause of the dis- memberment of the seventh century. It cannot in fairness be too often asserted that the spirit of the Gospel reinforced rather than weakened the empire ; but the constant inspection of its dogmatic secrets was an obvious element of dissolution. It is not easy to overestimate the part played by this constant debate in opening the gates to the Infidel. The countryman, aloof from the prevailing ab- sorption in the insoluble, continued his plodding way, unvisited except by the tax-collector, and leaving no trace in the record of historians. In spite of the admirable system by which the most distant parts of the empire communicated for imperial purposes with the centre, there was no real unity or uniformity, of creed, of culture, or of interest. There was ready intercourse with the capital, but little with neighbours. The decay of the township which set in mysteriously enough in the second century was by no means arrested by the reforms of the third and fourth. It may be presumed that the small occupier was almost completely ousted ; and that while the great centres were thronged with the idle and unprincipled, a deathly stillness settled on the country, tilled by slaves or "colons" and spreading out more and more into large estates. How little the anxious 212 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. in Easternrealm sympathy and foresight of the emperors could effect divided * c ^eck these tendencies, we may gather from the urban and acknowledged incompetence of statesmen to-day to rustic papula- deal with similar evils. Both parties in the State are fully alive to the growing evils which seem inseparable from an over-mature civilisation, the desertion of the country districts, recruiting ground of arms and of health ; the crowding of poverty, disease, and crime into unlovely suburbs of great commercial centres. But goodwill is powerless to cope with these evils ; and above the benevolent schemes of small holdings or compulsory purchase hangs the veto of an irresistible law. We are less ready to blame the failure of older nations, when we are gradually but surely learning the lesson of the impotence of reason and conscious purpose. With the best intentions we press in vain against the force of circumstances which only a later genera- tion can estimate ; because before it lies the whole tendency worked out to its logical end, by some other power than that of man's device. Problem, 6. Indeed nothing remains for those who criticise was integrity fa e i a ter empire but the somewhat barren question. worthwhile? . ., ., , ,, . , r .1 whether it was for the genuine advantage of the provinces' and subject-races that this strange and largely unmeaning semblance of unity should be preserved at all ? It is perhaps an unprofitable con- undrum, clearly incapable of solution, to inquire if the day of the once precious protectorate of Rome had not passed ? Yet it is one which must ever and again recur to the student of history. When we trace the heroic efforts of these rulers of alien race to enter into the heritage of imperial Rome and live true to its traditions, we are sometimes tempted to ask, was it worth while ? Should not an epoch of disintegration have been allowed to succeed, in which might be formed and at last set free, a genuine national life in the several limbs, held so firmly and yet so artifi- cially together by the empire ? Now in the common censure of despotic methods, it is difficult in the CH. i THE ROMAN EMPIRE (457-527) 213 extreme to distribute the blame. Until quite recent Problem, times, it has been taken for granted that citizens. was integrity , ,. * . , , 'worthwhile? pining to be free fellow-workers in the fortunes of a State, have been held in chains to a tutelage, wholly mischievous and inopportune. But it is now con- tended with much greater plausibility, that a people usually deserves and creates its government, and it is abundantly clear to-day that the revolutions which replaced autocracy in Europe in the nineteenth century were the work of a small knot of resolute and voluble Idealists, whose influence was of short duration and questionable value. The heterogeneous races which took their orders from Byzantium have at any rate not since shown that tolerant patience of routine and of opposition, which is the prime essential of successful self-government. And it is impossible to say whether the centralised authority of Caesar pro- duced these nations of slaves intermittently dis- orderly ; or whether this very temper made neces- sary and justified, first the unwilling encroachments of Caesar upon local liberties, and lastly, the entire system which kept the reluctant team in the leash. It is certain that Constantinople did not arouse the same warm feelings as we find expressed in the eulogy of Aristides in the second, or of Rutilius in the opening of the fifth century. Finlay, with amiable inconsis- tency, overrates sometimes the hatred of the Byzan- tine oppressor, sometimes the blind devotion of the provinces to the capital and the system. Yet it may fairly be said that the conception of the true remedy was to alter the " personnel " and not the system ; and that wherever the calm judgment of the community found expression, it endorsed the principle and only sought to remove a representative who abused it. No one perhaps at the present moment would ven- ture to reproach Caesar with denying a parliament to his realms, at one time the rough-and-ready panacea for all social evils. We are indeed interested to find that so far from interdicting assemblies for the discus- sion of local affairs and general welfare, the emperors 214 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. m Problem, was integrity worth while ? No seed of national freedom or power of self-govern- ment : alternative, chaos not autonomy. were (as it might seem) the only persons who en- couraged or suggested them. I am inclined to agree with those who see in the worship of Augustus in the provinces, a check and restraint upon the authority of the governor, by no means negligible ; and a sound influence which, mainly no doubt religious, was also largely political in the best sense. It is impossible to deny the plutocratic basis of society in the Roman Empire : but it is difficult to prove that the rich oppressed the poor, or that the latter suffered by this nominal inferiority. Caesar's officials at least might be chosen from any rank ; and the burden rather than the honour of office fell on the "privileged" classes. The only definite proposal of self-govern- ment came from the advisers of Honorius, in the famous edict to the cities of South Gaul, about the close of his reign. There was certainly no fear of popular assemblies ; or the delights of the circus would long ago have been suppressed. Indeed through many centuries the rulers fostered of set purpose that bugbear of monarchical or republican police to-day, an idle and pampered proletariat. Yet the proposals for local responsibility met with no response ; and the scheme of reform failed ; not merely because it was applied too late, but because it was out of harmony with the people's requirements. I cannot attempt to explain the reason why the suggestion of a great Debating Council excited no enthusiasm in the highly civilised inhabitants of South Gaul ; but it is worth while bringing the fact of their coldness before the notice of the over-zealous parliamentarist of to-day, if indeed he is still to be found. 7. As to the suppression of nationality, a charge often laid at the door of the empire, we must candidly confess that the conception is modern, and is perhaps not lasting. We have pointed out that the greatest systems or " objectives " that have swayed the world : Rome, the Church, Islam, set themselves to abolish it as a narrow and unworthy prejudice, or to rise CH. i THE ROMAN EMPIRE (457-527) 215 superior in a loftier sphere. Idealists have regretted No seed of the break-up of Christendom or the Holy Roman Em- .... , . J , , ,. freedom or pire into jealous fragments. We are assured by the power of optimist that the resulting burden of militarism is self-govern- destined to disappear, but we look in vain for any faf^ative warrant for this pious hope. It is the essence of chaos not ' nationality and of patriotism to be exclusive and autonom y- suspicious ; though we may not grant with Mr. H. G. Wells that democracy spells ignorant war. An empire implies a central power, able to keep the peace among the feuds of race or of religion. A con- quering caste, the Normans, the Ottomans, the Man- chus, settles into peaceful civilian duties ; forgets, it may well be, the manlier virtues of the camp and the field, but at least ensures peace among the factions. There is no sign in Eastern Europe and Asia at this time that there was either conscious desire or opportunity for national sympathies or national councils. That the unwieldy aggregate resisted the centrifugal tendency so often, and arose after each curtailment or deliquescence into a fresh integrity, was due to the traditions and the appeal of imperial Rome, finding an echo in the heart of a Justinian, a Heraclius, or a Leo. I have no wish to magnify the debt which such restorers laid on their own or sub- sequent generations. It is quite possible that such rigorous welding together may have stifled some local aspirations, preserved some fiscal features of costly government in districts which would frankly have preferred to be let alone. But it is doubtful if such sentiments were ever expressed, or even con- sciously felt. A pacific civilisation implies costliness and centralisation, two very obvious disadvantages, when it is remembered that the burden of taxation always falls in the end on the weaker and poorer ; and that a centralised government cannot afford to allow them liberty in the single sphere which these classes can understand or pretend to influence. Yet if it be allowed that this blessing is worth all the sacrifice it entails, the imperial administration, in 216 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. n No seed of national freedom or power of self-govern- ment: alternative, chaos not autonomy. refusing to surrender, its dormant rights (as over Italy under Justinian) in resolutely forcing back into the fold the straying members, in struggling to re- create the antique ideal or its shadow against the pressure of outward circumstance, was only per- forming its imperative duty, and being true to itself. The alternative was political and social chaos, not the emergence of free and self-respecting nationalities. The interest of the meditative Asiatic lies else- where than in the humdrum routine of life. If they cast a glance at political conditions, they secretly approve the caprice and haphazard which places supreme power in the zenana or the vizierate, that is, in the alien and the slave. We have seen that this element of chivalry and hazard was by no means lacking in an imperial system ; nay, it was often the source of rejuvenescence. But another side was a silent protest against this insecurity. The discipline of the civilian and the soldier, severed by the wise specialism of Diocletian's reforms, remained alike severe, precise, and methodical. It was upon the loyalty of its officers and the steady work of the civil servants that the empire depended for its stability during the frequent vacancies ; interregna which in other elective monarchies, as Persia and the Papacy, have been scenes of disorder and permitted license. Wide as was the personal influence, great the ini- tiative of the sovereign, the " republic " was not a prey to riot and plunder, because there was no visible director of its policy or champion of its laws. We must conclude then, as we have done so often before, that the system was adapted to the needs of its sub- jects and to their welfare, and that nothing else stood between a permanent chaos of racial and religious animosities. We have not been careful to apportion the blame for this lack of centripetal spirit in the dominions of the East ; whether autocracy stifled local consciousness and effort, or merely arose be- cause it was conspicuously absent. There may be those who regret the costly reconquest of Italy, and CH. i THE ROMAN EMPIRE (457-527) 217 perhaps of Africa, where some semblance of a modern No seed of nationality under a ruling caste was in process of 1 ^ ltlo j ial t * u -*uu u *u freedom or formation ; but we cannot withhold our sympathy power of and appreciation from the efforts of the seventh and seif-govern- eighth centuries, which without doubt secured Chris- ^alternative tendom and the promise of our present age from chaos not Islam. That this result would not have been attained auton< >my. by a wider welcome to the provinces to share the burden of government, is evident to any impartial student of the time. Whatever merit is due in oppos- ing a rampart against the Muslim, belongs entirely to the narrow and conscientious circle of administrators ; and in spite of the necessary power of a centralised bureaucracy, or of a standing army, the sovereign for the time found in them faithful instruments of a continuous design and purpose. And the sovereign himself in succeeding lost much of his own capri- cious individuality, and became an inheritor and a simple exponent of the undying policy of Rome. CHAPTER II THE RESTORATION ; OR, PERIOD OF CONQUEST AND CENTRAL CONTROL UNDER JUSTINIAN (527-565 A.D.) The Dardanian House : FLAV. ANIC. JUSTINUS 1 ..... 518-527 . ' praetor ' nom. / USTINIANUS L [ S27-S65 . birth. Fabulous 1. THE reign of Justinian has been compared to figure of a fortunate island in the midst of a raging sea. Its prevalent' chronicles are full, its interests wide and its achieve- dccayof ments conspicuous. No longer confined to the nionarchies ^ scure intrigue of the palace, the student is taken from East to West in a rapid series of triumphs. Justinian himself belonged to the school of Tiberius. He never left the capital or commanded in person ; it was "his settled policy not to abandon the seat of government " ; fixum . . . non omittere caput rerum. But he controlled everything with minute, sometimes jealous care; and the victories of the Roman arms, the codification of Roman law, and the fortifying of the Roman frontier, must all be referred to his untiring initiative. During his long reign he never ceased for a moment to be the chief actor, the ruling spirit. Belisarius fought, Tribonian compiled, John the Cappadocian and Alexander the Scissors collected revenue, Solomon governed and built, Narses administered, but throughout Justinian was the master. Yet we know the emperor only through the deeds of his ministers ; the central figure is a singular mystery. It is clear that he left a very strange impression upon the men of his* time and their immediate successors. His ascetic and secluded life, his sleepless vigils spent in deep metaphysical debate, his unwearied attention to cares of State, his 218 CH. ir THE ROMAN EMPIRE (527-565) 219 curious avenues of secret knowledge, his nightly Fabulous pacing through the corridors of the palace (sometimes. fip u f & > ' Justinian it was alleged, carrying his head under his arm), the prevalent terror he could inspire in the officials of his closest dec y f . .. , , , , i_ / Teutonic intimacy, when as they gazed upon his face every feature seemed to vanish in dark red blur, and after an interval gradually struggle back into outline, all these facts or fictions point to a genuine atmosphere of nervous mystery which surrounds, for us as well as for them, the greatest and the least known among Byzantine Caesars. About him there was something supernatural and occult : we may dismiss the violent prejudice of the pseudo-Procopius, when he tells us that he was the " Prince of the Devils " ; but we cannot doubt that he was regarded in an age gradu- ally lapsing into superstition as an incarnation of " demoniacal " force. One-seventh of the whole work of Theophanes is devoted to his reign of forty years, though his chronicles cover five and a quarter cen- turies (285-812 A.D.) ; but we read only of the exploits of the emperor's lieutenants, little or nothing of himself. Even for the empress, with whose mythical childhood the Procopian memoir is so painfully familiar, the news is scanty and altogether incom- patible with this record and with her alleged char- acter ; and it has been well pointed out that one who prolonged her morning slumbers till well-nigh noon, and her siesta till after sunset, could not have been a vampire, preying upon the life of the empire, and encroaching unduly into^every department. The certain and historical resolves itself in her case into the bold decision to resist to the end during the Nika riots, and a charitable interest in an unfortunate class. Thus the history of the reigns of Justinian and Theodora is the history of his lieutenants ; and the subjects' inquisitiveness that was never a personal loyalty satisfied itself with the same vague hints of horror that we find in Tacitus or with the more good-tempered gossip of Suetonius. When we turn to foreign politics, the first half 220 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. in Fabulous figure of Justinian prevalent decay of of the sixth century marked the early dissolution of ^ e barbarian monarchies in West Europe. The victories of Belisanus and Narses were perhaps already won, at least ensured, in the languid society ^ COUI "t intrigues, which ruined Vandal and Goth alike, in the failure of the compromise between the two nations. The barbarian protectorate was singu- larly short-lived as a political expedient ; it implied just that dangerous "dyarchy" which had caused trouble and ill-will in the earlier empire. In Italy, there was the Roman Senate with its immemorial traditions and that curious provincial autonomy and dilettante Hellenism which it enjoyed and displayed since Diocletian. Opposed to the Arian belief of the dominant caste was the steadfast orthodoxy of the rising papacy. There was political and religious disunion, as well as the discontent of warriors who found their king (like another temporiser, Alexander) too much inclined to conciliate the more cultured and critical part of his subjects, and to imitate the absolute methods and prerogative of the emperor. It must be remembered that a barbarian monarchy on classic ground implied the reversal of all barbarian ideals. Wars of aggression were sternly forbidden; the comitatus had to be content with an honour- able title and ample leisure. The king became, in addition to his dynastic claim to a nominal supremacy, a representative not merely of the conquered peoples, but also of the vanished and absentee Caesar. While he could not satisfy the greediness and discontent of his own peers, he could not disarm the suspicion of those whom he did his best to protect. Historians complain of the reconquest of Italy, that it made a desert and disappointed for thirteen centuries all hopes of Italian unity. But it is easy in a laudable admiration of the great Theodoric, to see permanence and stability in an entire system, when the success lay solely in a single commanding yet tactful personality. It is difficult in the later wars to withhold our sympathy from Totila Vitiges and Teias. But it is CH. ii THE ROMAN EMPIRE (527-565) 221 evident that such characters were exceptional : they Fabulous rose to power only when the stress of conflict de--fi? u f manded and brought to light the best man. In the prevalent ' anomalous system of Teutonic royalty which clung deca y f to a family, without recognising the right of the eldest monarchies. son, they had no chance except in these moments of peril. The ruling stock, which it was sacrilege to thrust aside, had become degenerate both at Car- thage and at Ravenna. That the wars of restoration inflicted serious mischief cannot be denied ; that the political system, which they replaced at such dreadful cost, had the seed of peaceful and prosperous de- velopment cannot be maintained. To go to the root of the matter ; it is never pos- \ sible to settle the age-long dispute between the Realists and the Nominalists of politics. To the one, supreme value lies in the Church, the Empire, the State in the objective and ideal, that is to say ; and the welfare \ of the whole is too often measured in the aggregate by the dignity and wealth of the centre, which seems to entail the atrophy or the conscious distress of the limbs. To the other, all wideness and vagueness of scope is abhorrent ; the sole and genuine test must be the happiness and comfort of the individual, the freedom of the citizen ; or at least of the smallest and narrowest group which the statesman conde- scends to recognise, the family, the manor, the parish, the commune. If the central authority drain the vitality of these for its own unknown purposes ; if it sacrifice ruthlessly the constituent members in war and commerce, with the sole consolation of being an unhappy part of an imposing whole, it stands condemned. We but lately contrasted the grandeur and effectiveness of Russian foreign policy with the misery of the famine-stricken peasant. We may well understand that the outward glory of Justinian's reign concealed a similar weakness, un- ease, and discomfort. But the reconquest might well have suggested itself as a plain duty ; and it is diffi- cult for rulers, whether monarch or multitude, to Fabulous figure of Justinian : prevalent decay of Teutonic monarchies. CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. ui abandon schemes of vain or mischievous ambition and to apply industriously to petty detail and the welfare of persons. We can forgive Justinian's mistake, if mistake it was; the empire to Caesar was a solid and integral whole ; the recovery of lost provinces was a recall of subjects long neglected to the joys of civilisation, an enforcement of undoubted rights, never explicitly abandoned. Of no great undertaking is the age which undertakes and achieves an impartial witness ; for in achieving it must suffer. We have again and again occasion to mention the blindness of the most sagacious politicians on questions of immediate interest ; and the historian who passes verdict on the worthies of the past, is often an incompetent judge of the duties and of the tendencies of his own day. Politics must be largely a science of opportunism ; and its chief maxim is, " Do the next thing." To-day the number of certain aims and principles has grown alarmingly scanty ; and the great disputes range round the question, how far are the sacrifices to Imperialism to be justi- fied ? Our recent war in South Africa destroyed for an Ideal the past fruits of civilisation and retarded their renewed life. It is easy to point out the defects of Byzantine policy and administration. We may like Juvenal's schoolboys advise Justinian to deal a decisive blow at the rotten fabric of Persia, that strange rival and foe of Rome, so often her close personal ally, her suppliant and humble friend. We may see to-day that a "scientific frontier" on the East might have spared the most populous and civilised part of Southern Christendom from the unceasing and unmeaning raids of Persians and Arabs, from Chosroes to Harun al Rashid. It is easy to point out the folly of achieving costly victories thousands of miles away, in provinces that would never repay the cost of maintenance, while the capital itself (but for the "Great Wall" of Anastasius) stood at the mercy of any barbarian horde, who could effect the passage of the Danube. Easy too CH. u THE ROMAN EMPIRE (527-565) 223 to contrast the incongruous splendour of the triumph Fabulous of Belisarius, the submission of Gelimer, the constant &> u f and ceremonious " infeudation " of converted princes prevalent as vassals of the empire, with the almost incredible deca y f panic of Constantinople at the close of the reign ; ^wrchies. the hasty fitting-out of slaves and domestics, the inglorious last success of the great general over a band of disorderly savages. 2. Yet the policy of the court is eminently intel- Religious ligible. The integrity of the empire, unbroken, as we P retext f r know by the insignificant event of 476 (which unified rec overy; rather than dissolved), was an incontestable article of Catholic and faith. The motive for reunion was in a great measure rian ' religious ; it was not national sentiment, as in the Pan-Germanic or Pan-Slavic tendencies to-day ; ; nor was it the mere pride of a ruler. The issue of the restoration might be unfortunate : the Italy of Alex- ander the Scissors ; the Africa of Solomon no longer garrisoned by Vandals and exposed to the Berbers. But the initial enterprise is dignified and Roman ; a deputy had proved inefficient and mutinous, and a Catholic people sighed in their bondage to Arian persecutors. And no secret of political advance or national unity lay with the foreign protectorate. It was, as we have asserted, out of sympathy with its own followers and the classic nations which it essayed to govern justly. The new position was indeed quite anomalous. While the king aspired to the double dignity of barbarian king and Caesar's delegate, he failed to enlist the loyalty of either party. It is perhaps significant that the most successful of bar- barian royalties was the earliest to conform to ortho- doxy, and the most obsequious in recognising the distant suzerainty. The Prankish king accepted the Catholic faith just a century before it occurred to Recared of Spain to proscribe Arianism, and yield to the influence of the Roman Church. The Lombard dominion in Italy received a new lease of life, after they had made peace with the Pope. Wherever this change occurred, it may be said to indicate much 224 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. m Religious pretext for wars of recover*/ ; Catholic and Arian. Scanty evidence on public feel- ing: agents withdraw themselves from control. more than a mere personal conversion ; it meant the permeation of Roman and Hellenic ideas, the advance of administrative centralising, the capture of the monarchy, still confined to a Teutonic family, by Roman influences ; it implied subservience to central clerical authority at Rome. Frank and Visigoth and Lombard, in spite of this opportune alliance, showed unmistakable traces of decay, both in the reigning dynasty and in the entire governmental system of compromise. Ostrogoth and Vandal owed their much hastier exit to their Arianism, implying, as it did, a complete divorce, not merely of religious but also of political feeling. That heresy might stand for particularism, for nominalism, for a compromise with Teutonic hero-worship ; but in the Catholic faith was an air of finality and of unity, which ministered in- sensibly to reaction. We are dealing with religious questions in this volume, on the side only of their connection with political development ; but it is per- missible, indeed inevitable, to call attention to this fundamental difference between Arian and Catholic belief. The conversion of these nations to full ortho- doxy marks a step not merely in their religious en- lightenment, but in their political education, in their complete fusion with the conquered races. Justinian restored the empire, Catholic and centralised, in Africa and in Italy. He recovered some of the most pros- perous cities of Southern Spain. Had the empire been less unwieldy, had his successors enjoyed leisure from pressing perils in East and North, the reoccu- pation of Spain might have become an accomplished fact ; and it must not be forgotten that it was only owing to the invitation of an imperial officer that the peninsula was at last opened to the Arabs in the eighth century. 3. The Annalists, and even Procopius, throw little light on the sentiments and secret motives of the time, whether in the policy of the Centre or in the public opinion of the subject. But it is not impos- sible to reconstruct a probable attitude of mind. A CH. ii THE ROMAN EMPIRE (527-565) 225 permanent estrangement of the Western provinces Scanty was inconceivable. It was well known that Zeno ^^f 1 ^ f , , , , , u . . . . , TT , , public feelr- had graciously accepted the insignia in 476. He had, i ng: agents some thirteen years later, commissioned Theodoric to punish an arrogant deputy, and occupy Italy in the name of the empire. The resumption of rights, indeed of full ownership, if the copyholder should " waste " his portion, was perfectly natural. Such " wasting " had indeed, as we have seen, taken place both in Africa and in Italy. In spite of her acute tendency to engross interest at the Centre, Constantinople was satisfied with a recognition of suzerainty over the more distant provinces ; and the freedom and loyalty of Naples, Amalphi, Venice, Cherson, is a pleasant chapter in the annals of Byzantine despotism. It is not mere vanity that still included renegade provinces in the total of the empire ; the Church of Rome has her system of prelates in partibus infidelium ; what has once belonged can never be wholly lost. Nor was this century entirely hostile to local privi- leges and autonomy, as has been maintained ; the supposed destruction of municipal liberty is an ob- scure transaction, and seems to be contradicted by the very evident desire of Justinian's immediate suc- cessors to consult local feeling, and to encourage local preference in the choice of administrators. So far as we can interpret public opinion (often most intense when most silent), the " Roman " world en- dorsed the policy of Justinian, without perhaps counting the cost. It is impossible for the vindicator of Byzantine policy to justify the system of finance ; but it is equally impossible to explain, from any known figures, the oppressive incidence of a taxation in its general sum so moderate. With the best intentions, the revenue was collected with difficulty, and left a constant deficit. Yet it would ill beseem the citizen of a free State to-day to criticise too contemptuously, or pass judgment too harshly. We are on the point of overhauling the entire system of national finance. We are conscious of the unequal burdens, of vexatious VOL. I. P 226 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. in Scanty inquisition, of the discouragement of enterprise by ^ Ca * H1 J ust * ce or extravagance, of the wanton mis- agents management of amateurs, of the gradual extinction of withdraw the lesser middle-class, whether in town or country. fromlontrol. Putting aside the common indictment of all centra- lised governments, the irresponsible venality of offi- cials, there is little that we can lay to the charge of the Byzantines that cannot be re-echoed in modern times. Still, as ever, those who pay do not control ; and the supreme voice in raising or apportioning national wealth for national purposes lies, as always, with those who directly contribute least. "Taxation without representation " ; this, and not the pursuit of an imaginary ideal, has lain at the root of revolutions, which always betray economic rather than political origin. It is no new thing to-day, whether in England or in Russia, whether the discontent arise in the mind of a virtuous and hard-working middle-class or re- spectable " rentier," or in the stagnant intelligence of a sturdy proletariat. It will always be true : " Quic- quid delirant reges plectuntur Achivi" the great middle- class; between a vague and irresponsible multitude and a cabal of courtiers or of plutocrats. But no ad- vocate can exonerate the Byzantine government from this grave charge that it could not control or super- vise its own agents ; and whether administrator or re- venue-officer was in question, malversation and petty oppression were only too common. Yet this tendency to extricate an office from such supervision is uni- versal at this time. While we look in vain for any distinct nationalism, such as would separate from the empire, we see in individuals a well-marked centri- fugal tendency. Feudalism is a curious union of the old patriarchal system, reinforced by the novel and perhaps selfish desire for irresponsibility and petty sovereignty. From the third century onwards this spirit is abroad. It culminates in the baronial inde- pendence under the Carolingians ; the bureaucratic power under the Byzantines ; the fissiparous emirates which divided and subdivided like sects in the Chris- CH. ii THE ROMAN EMPIRE (527-565) 227 tian Church, the once integral Caliphate. The con- Scanty quests of Justinian may be said to struggle in vain evid ^nce on , . , ,,. A / 1 ,. public feel- agamst a certain form of this centrifugal particu- i ng . ^ gents larism. His administration, like that of Constantine withdraw or Theodosius, strove against the abuse of power in subordinate officials. It is easier, however, to acquire than to retain ; and to conquer than to govern. 4. We have traced some of the chief motives and Transient principal results of the Imperial Restoration in the and personal sixth century. The barbarian monarchies in a pro- IhTwp? cess of slow decay were unable to offer a final solu- pressed tion to any political problem. Certain conspicuous n larc s f es: personalities, like Gaiseric and Theodoric, make one Justified. lose sight of the want of purpose or of merit in the protectorate. The difficulties began with its recogni- tion. When these strong characters were removed, the seeds of decadence seem to ripen at once and bear almost immediate fruit. There is the same rapid decline in the Visigothic monarchy ; in the house of Clovis barely a century after his death ; in the cali- phate, rent by civil war within fifty years after the Hegira ; in the house of Charles, with whom the Caroline Empire may truthfully be said to begin and end. The recuperative powers and robust vitality of the " Roman" Empire throughout this period challenge our attention and our homage. A great concentration of force accumulates under a masterful will ; but lasts scarcely longer as effective and operating, than the empire of Attila or of the Avar Khan. The empire saw their rise and decline, and outlived them all. It could not surrender its ecumenical claim; it drew the repentant provinces into the fold once more, and governed them with that archaic Roman system, which at least guaranteed to the subject a security of life and property elsewhere unknown ; a justice, so far as the imperial will could enforce, steadfast and incorruptible ; a freedom of commerce which in spite of obsolete prejudices and restrictions, made Constantinople the changing-house of the world's trade, a marvel of almost mythical riches, and the Transient and personal character of the sup- pressed monarchies : conquest justified. CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. in goal of all the pirates : Avar, Arab, Russian, knocked in succession at her gates, happily for the pride of Western culture, in vain ! Still the empire preserved its traditional attitude of peace : and herein lay the secret of its longevity. Other political essays implied the momentary triumph of a dominant caste or a kingly family, or a single will, which ceased to be efficient in the very moment that its dignity was legally secured and transmitted. Everywhere else, in- stitutions fell into premature decay : there was no prin- ciple or policy, no cohesion. The next four hundred years are for West Europe and the Arab Empire alike, a continuous retrogression, a return to the embarrass- ing simplicity of the primitive rudiments. Not that the ideals of unity or of Christendom, with its common aim, had disappeared or ceased to attract. But as so often happens in history, they were recognised only to be at once forgotten ; like an orthodox lip-service, that repeats and enforces formulas, but will not trouble to translate them into practice. Justinian, the Janus of his time, as he has been called, looks backward and forward. He is a pious restorer, and a daring innovator. But he is through- out true to the old Roman belief in a single empire, a single church. In spite of the heavy burdens which it imposed, his rule secured for the subject one chief aim of a civilised commonwealth, peaceful develop- ment upon historic lines. In other nations law ceases to be a bond of union, and local custom and usage replace the uniform administration of a code. We must repeat that it is often hard to answer the question, who is the ultimate gainer in the complex and centralised government, to which all civilised society approximates ? The unifying conquests of Justinian, the regular procedure of law, the incidence of a scheme of taxation, somewhat ill-adjusted in- deed, but in theory and principle equitable, the rigid formula of Catholic confession, seem to carry with them a heavy atmosphere of finality. And it may safely be maintained that while the world lasts, a CH. ii THE ROMAN EMPIRE (527-565) 229 large number of men will prefer insecurity, hazard, Transient and hope to the most consummate organisation. It j . t , . ,. ... , . .. , character of is urged against the cold impartiality and justice of the sup- the British rule in India that it has taken the pressed romantic element out of life. The citizen who re- ^2**' turned to the empire under Justinian could forecast justified. his future ; the place of his children in the social hierarchy ; the prescribed formulas of belief and of worship ; even the necessary deductions for im- perial taxes (though here perhaps he might find at times an unwelcome uncertainty). Elsewhere, separa- tism was rampant ; and as a consequence, arbitrary caprice had free play. Where a modified success was attained in the art of governing (as among the Lombards of north and central Italy) a great debt was due to Roman traditions and the Roman Church. We may conclude, then, that the empire was justified in demanding the personal sacrifice of its subjects in the matter of taxation ; in attaching once more to itself its scattered fragments ; and in maintaining that preoccupation with peaceful pursuits and ad- ministrative routine, which so often seemed like culpable negligence. Yet while we desire to do ample justice to the motives, the industry, the suc- cess of Justinian in carrying on these traditions with unflagging hopefulness, we cannot disguise the weakness, whether the fault of circumstance or of design, which exposed the empire after his death to disloyalty within and wanton attack without. 5. The reign of Justinian is the age of great names irreconcilable and great achievements, vivid personal pictures, and features of biographies almost complete. But when the student conflicting endeavours to conceive for himself or portray to testimony. others the motives or the character, the aims and the policy of these actors, or to comprehend the period under some general formula, he finds himself con- fronted by insoluble problems, and forced to the utmost extremes of dissent and approval. He advances gaily and securely enough for some time, guided by a certain group of writers who offer themselves as 230 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. m Irreconcilable pioneers in a tangled forest ; he is prepared to gather features of up ^jg conclusions, when he is confronted with another t ilC (14JG * conflicting set of witnesses, whose evidence he is unable to adapt testimony. i n t o his plan. It is the custom for the historian, baffled and perforce inconsistent in his statements or his verdict, to take refuge in the hypothesis of a "period of transition." This universal excuse is perhaps more admissible in this reign than on most other occasions. Changes, not the result of deliberate intention or conscious power, were passing over human society. Pestilence, stealthy migration, hostile inroad, imperial welcome of foreigners, or a slow process of natural decay, well-nigh extinguished during this reign the ancient population of the empire. The archaic names and titles survive ; but their wearers are of a different race, and have little understanding of the original meaning and implica- tion of the offices they hold. Within the shell of the ancient fabric a new structure arose ; and in the dearth of general knowledge, in the admiration squan- dered, it may be, upon the prowess or the intrigues of persons, it is impossible to do more than guess at the actual issues slowly but certainly working under the artificial excitement and glitter of the surface. The generalisation of one path of research must be hastily withdrawn by \ testimony equally authentic which carries one steadily against an earlier convic- tion. And the historian cannot help creating on the reader's mind the same impression of helplessness and irresolution, which the epoch has somehow left upon his own. Finlay, the most gifted and eloquent of English chroniclers of this reign, and the deepest student of the obscure tendencies which are gradually supplanting in interest the records of camp and court, displays here as elsewhere erudition, sympathy, insight, and political acumen. Yet his pages are crowded with anomalies and inconsistencies ; and within a few lines the verdict on the same evidence is reversed or suspended, the judgment on matters of fact or CH. ii THE ROMAN EMPIRE (527-565) 231 behaviour contradicted without shame or excuse. Irreconcilable Earnestly candid, scrupulously patient and honest { n f e ^ ure8 f his detail, generous and sympathetic in his estimate of conflicting long-past men and things, he is utterly powerless (and testimony. doubtless through no fault or negligence of his own) to present us with a convincing picture of the time. Justinian, the genial and accessible, is also the " Mystery of Iniquity," the " Prince of Demons," the obscene " Dweller on the Threshold " ; Theodora, the incomparably corrupt, is the devoted wife of an austere and simple husband ; and is known out- side private correspondence and secret memoirs, as the brave defender of a throne, the untiring ally of misfortune, the determined foe to official wickedness. Now, in our treatment of provincial matters, we seem to approach the final dissolution of the artificial frame- work of empire ; everywhere the hatred of the central power and the government, and the rapid formation of effective local centres and new corporations, heralds the approaching detachment of the several units into novel and independent organisms. And again, the slow and determined process of centralisation goes on its way like the Car of Juggernaut, crushing autonomies, closing schools, persecuting heterodox, confiscating municipal revenues, forbidding the use of arms, and striking deadly and irretrievable blows at all local freedom and institutions. Greece in particular is alternately represented as full of impotent hatred and defenceless decay, and as show- ing every sign of prosperity and good order. Now his favourite encomium, safety of life and estate, and equity of administration, is still the undisputed title to the general esteem of the subject ; and again, venality and cruelty in the official world, the heartless grinding of the poor, and the determined "war against private wealth," or the least trace of noble independence, constitute all through the Roman dominions a sufficient pretext for the "general hostility" felt towards the " Roman administration." The bureau- cracy carefully built up by Diocletian and Constantine 232 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. in Irreconcilable against the violence of the soldiers and the caprice of features of an au tocrat, now appears as the sole guarantee of conflicting order and the friend of State and subject alike ; now testimony. as a " distinct nation rather than a privileged class," with interests, hopes, and aims utterly at variance with the welfare of the citizen. While they are recognised to be the "real nucleus of civil society in the Roman world," the people aloof and antagonistic " stand completely apart from the representatives of Roman supremacy ... in a state of direct opposition." The number of functionaries taking their orders from the capital can now be conceived as costly and over- whelming, no less venal and incompetent than the bureaucracy conceived by the irreproachable middle- class regimen of Louis Philippe, and bearing the same outrageous proportion to the number of impoverished citizens who lag outside the magic circle of " adminis- trative right." While on close inspection, we find a careful supervision maintained over this "corps" of functionaries ; their limit is frequently fixed by imperial decree ; and if we may rely on the figures given, we must allow with a sigh that the Romans far outstripped modern rivals in the art of cheap and effective control with the least possible waste of men and material. At one time we see in Justinian's abolition of schools and consulate, the jealous tyranny of a despot, striking at the memories of the past with colossal vanity, like the Egyptian Rameses, so that his own name alone may appear upon a heap of ruins. At another, a wise and kindly prevention of an ex- travagance which pressed heavily either on individuals or on the State, and an economical endorsement and recognition of facts, by suppressing professors who could no longer command an audience : who indeed like some favoured emulators to-day, drew golden salaries for preserving a discreet or enforced silence. Sometimes the whole financial system of Justinian seems to us a gigantic blunder, and we know not which to blame the most, the costly and needless extravagance of his public works, or the futile in- CH. ii THE ROMAN EMPIRE (527-565) 233 consequence of his fiscal designs, or the incredible Irreconcilable rapacity of his agents whom he encouraged, or at f eatur 8 f least failed to control. Yet from other sources, we conflicting know that he set before himself the ideal of a simple testimony. life, that he was careful and saving even beyond his predecessors, and managed to effect without serious disturbance of commerce or interference with indi- vidual rights, enterprises and conquests for which his ministers prophesied only disaster and ruin. Now, the emperor appears as an inopportune successor of Trajan in a bold and aggressive policy, as " lifting " (in Ammian's picturesque phrase) "the horns of the military caste," and wringing taxes from the poor to sustain a policy of costly " Chauvinism " : at another, he is summoned before the bar to receive sentence for starving the army, for jealousy of the commanders, for halved or belated pay, for preference for that civi- lian office which in its new Chinese pride demanded the humble obeisance of the staff-corps at the im- perial receptions. Even the mission of Alexander the Logothete to Italy may be depicted as extorting the last farthing from a country already ruined by civil war ; or as wisely putting an end to lavish expenditure, reducing the troops of occupation, and abolishing the useless pensions which, with the corn distribution, turned highest and lowest alike into the paupers of the imperial bounty. Once more, in military matters is Justinian a heartless victor at the cost of innumerable lives and the devoted loyalty of an ill-requited friend ? or is he the continuer of that especially Byzantine policy of wise and humane parsimony which reposed the safety of the empire, rather in defensive measure than rash hazard, rather in a careful system of forts and palisades than in the constant heroic exposure of the troops on every provocation ? And in this connection let us pose a question not of judgment but of fact ; how was it that the splendid chain of northern fortresses offered no check to the marauders of his last years ? was the scheme carried out at all, as in Africa we know it to 234 CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BK. m Irreconcilable features of the age : conflicting testimony. Simple and conscientious energy ofJ.: malevolent witness of disappointed placemen. have been, by the magnificent reliques of Solomon's masonry, or were the guard-houses emptied of their necessary garrisons ? And again, in the abolition of local councils, militia, and franchise, can we detect the true motive or measure the extent of this gratuitous crusade against tradition ? Is it envy or economy, or a wise provision against tumult, such as raged in his own capital in the " Nika," and almost overturned the throne ? or is it a necessary step in centralising all effective forces under a single (and that a civil) command, which is confessed to be an indispensable measure for the safety of the civilised State in modern times ? May not the vague complaints, which our historians repeat, of the wanton destruction of local liberties, be due perhaps to the malignity of " Pro- copius," when he might attribute to the direct policy of Justinian the Hunnish overthrow of the Hellenic municipalities in the Crimea, which indeed occurred in his reign, but for which he can only remotely be held accountable ? 6. This section is by no means an ungrateful indictment of the mental distress or incompetence of the great and generous Hellenophil, to whom Byzantine studies owe so much. Some, indeed, of the problems posed will not be found in his pages or are rather implied and suggested there than placed in naked contrast. Finlay is not the only writer who cannot make up his mind, whether Roman rule at this stage in human development was a boon or a curse to mankind : and every earnest inquirer must confess that a study of this period, beyond any other in Roman history, leaves him dizzy and baffled, fatigued by the endless and futile task of reconciling the competing testimony. In the last resort, we shall find our verdict both of character and events, according to a personal bias in favour of autonomy or centralisation. Our view of men and things must in the end be sub- jective; perhaps more so in dealing with the problems of Justinian's era than in surveying the revival of CH. ii THE ROMAN EMPIRE (527-565) 235 Heraclius or of Leo, the wars of Basil, or the feudal Simple and triumph of the Comnenian clan. I must then, ^t^T. GnGiyy OJ / . while freely confessing my inability to conceive or malevolent to portray the age as a whole, reconciled and self- wi ^ S8