CHAPTER II CHAP. II. century. THE ROMAN EMPIRE BEFORE THE ENTRANCE OF THE BAR BARIANS THAT ostentation of humility which the subtle policy of Augustus had conceived, and the jealous hypocrisy of Tiberius maintained, was gradually dropped by their successors, till despotism became at last recognized in principle as the government of the Roman Empire. With an aristocracy decayed, a populace degraded, an army no longer recruited from Italy, the semblance of liberty that yet survived might be swept away with impunity. Republican forms had never been known in the provinces, and the aspect which the imperial administration had originally assumed there soon reacted on its position in the capital. Earlier rulers had disguised their supremacy by making a slavish senate the instrument of their more cruel or arbitrary acts. As time went on, even this veil was withA.D. 193-211. drawn; and in the age of Septimius Severus the Emperor stood forth to the whole Roman world as the single centre and source of political power and action. The warlike character of the Roman State was preserved in his title of Commander (Imperator); his provincial lieutenants were military governors; and a more terrible enforcement of the theory was found in his practical dependence on the army, at once the origin and the support of his authority. But, as he united in himself every function of government, his sovereignty was civil as well as military. Laws ema distinctions. nated from him; all officials acted under his commission; CHAP. II. the sanctity of his person bordered on divinity. This increased concentration of power was mainly required by the necessities of frontier defence, for within there was more decay than disaffection. Few troops were quartered through the country: few fortresses checked the march of armies in the struggles which placed Vespasian and (a century later) Severus on the throne. The distant crash of war from the Rhine or the Euphrates was scarcely heard or heeded in the profound calm of the Mediterranean coasts, where, after the extinction of piracy, fleets had ceased to be maintained. No quarrels of race or religion disturbed that calm, for all national distinctions were becoming merged in the idea of a common Empire. The gradual extension of Roman citizenship through the Obliteration founding of coloniae, first throughout Italy and then in of national the provinces, the working of the equalized and equalizing Roman law, the even pressure of the government on all subjects, the movements of population caused by commerce and the slave traffic, were steadily assimilating the various peoples. Emperors who were for the most part natives of the provinces cared little to cherish Italy or even, after the days of the Antonines, to conciliate Rome. It was their policy to keep open for every subject a career by whose freedom they had themselves risen to greatness, and to recruit the senate from the most illustrious families in the cities of Gaul, Spain, and Asia. The edict by A.D. 211-217. which Caracalla extended to all natives of the Roman world the rights of Roman citizenship, though prompted by no motives of generosity, proved in the end a boon. Annihilating distinctions of legal status among freemen, it completed the work which trade and literature and toleration to all beliefs but one were already performing, and left, so far as we can tell, only one nation still cherishing CHAP. II. a national feeling. The Jew was kept apart by his religion but the Jewish people was already dispersed over the world. Speculative philosophy lent its aid to this general assimilation. Stoicism, with its doctrine of a universal system of nature, made minor distinctions between man and man seem insignificant: and by its teachers the idea of a world-commonwealth whereof all men are citizens was for the first time proclaimed. Alexandrian Neo-Platonism, uniting the tenets of many schools, and bringing the mysticism of Egypt and the East into connection with the logical philosophies of Greece, had opened up a new ground of agreement or controversy for The capital. the minds of all the world. Yet the commanding position of the Roman city was scarcely shaken. The actual power of her assemblies had indeed long since departed. Rarely were her senate and people permitted to choose the sovereign more rarely still could they influence his policy. Neither law nor custom raised the inhabitants of the city above other subjects, or accorded to them any advantage in the career of civil or military ambition. As in time past Rome had sacrificed domestic freedom in making herself the mistress of others, so now in becoming the Universal State, she, the conqueror, had descended to the level of the conquered. But the sacrifice had not wanted its reward. From her came the laws and the language that had overspread the world: at her feet As to this gift of citizenship, reference may be made to an essay on the Extension of Roman and English Law throughout the World in the author's Studies in History and Jurisprudence, Vol. I. b As it was said, Urbs fiebat Orbis. e Under Diocletian, the provincial land tax and provincial system of administration were introduced into Italy, and the four imperial residences were Milan, Treves, Sirmium (in Pannonia), and Nicomedia (in Bithynia). d Condita est civitas Roma per quam Deo placuit orbem debellare terrarum et in unam societatem reipublicae legumque longe lateque pacare. - St. Augustine, De Civit. Dei, xviii. 22, the nations laid the offerings of their labour: she was the CHAP. II. head of the Empire and of civilization, and in riches, fame, and splendour far outshone as well the other cities of that time as the fabled glories of Babylon or Persepolis. Scarcely had these slowly-working influences brought about this unity, when other influences began to threaten it. New foes assailed the frontiers; while the loosening of the structure within was shewn by the long struggles for power which followed the death or deposition of each successive emperor. In the period of anarchy after the fall of Valerian, generals were raised by their armies in A.D. 253-270. every part of the Empire, and ruled great provinces as monarchs apart, owning no allegiance to the possessor of the capital. The breaking-up of the Western half of the Empire into separate kingdoms might have been anticipated by two hundred years had the barbarian tribes on the borders been bolder, or had there not arisen in Diocletian a prince active and skilful enough to bind up Diocletian, the fragments before they had lost all cohesion, meeting A.D. 284-305. altered conditions by new remedies. The policy he adopted of dividing and localizing authority recognized the fact that the weakened heart could no longer make its pulsations. felt to the body's extremities. He parcelled out the supreme power among four monarchs, ruling as jointemperors in four capitals, and then sought to give it a factitious strength by surrounding it with an oriental pomp which his earlier predecessors would have scorned. The sovereign's person became more sacred, and was removed further from the subject by the interposition of a host of officials. The prerogative of Rome was menaced by the rivalry of Nicomedia, and the nearer greatness of Milan. Constantine trod in the same path, developing the system Constantine, of titles into a sort of nobility, separating the civil from A.D. 306–337. the military functionaries, placing counts and dukes along CHAP. II. 4.D. 364. A.D. 395. the frontiers and in the cities, making the household larger, its etiquette stricter, its offices more dignified, though to a Roman eye degraded by their attachment to the monarch's person. The crown became, for the first time, the fountain of honour. These expedients proved insufficient to prop the tottering fabric of imperial administration. Taxation, which grew always heavier as the number of persons who bore it was reduced, depressed the aristocracy: population decreased, agriculture withered, serfdom spread it was found more difficult to raise native troops and to pay any troops whatever. The removal by Constantine of the imperial residence to Byzantium, if it prolonged the life of the Eastern half of the Empire, shook the Empire as a whole, by accelerating the separation of East and West. By that removal Rome's self-abnegation that she might Romanize the world was completed; for though the new capital preserved her name, and followed her customs and precedents, yet now the imperial sway ceased to be connected with the city which had created it. Thus did the idea of Roman monarchy become more universal; for, having lost its local centre, it subsisted no longer by historic right only, but, so to speak, naturally, as a part of an order of things which a change in external conditions seemed incapable of disturbing. Henceforth the idea of a Roman Empire might stand unaffected by the disasters of the city. And though, after the partition of the Empire had been confirmed by Valentinian I, and finally settled on the death of Theodosius the Great, the seat of the Western government was removed first to Milan and then to Ravenna, neither event destroyed Rome's prestige, nor * According to the vicious financial system that prevailed, the curiales in each city were required to collect the taxes, and when there was a deficit, to supply it from their own property. |