Part 43 (1/2)
The close of the third century thus found the empire engaged in a struggle for existence. No part of the Roman world had escaped the ravages of war.
The fortification of the capital city by the emperor Aurelian was itself a testimony to the altered condition of affairs. The situation was desperate, yet not hopeless. Under an able ruler, such as Aurelian, Rome proved to be still strong enough to repel her foes. It was the work of the even more capable Diocletian to establish the empire on so solid a foundation that it endured with almost undiminished strength for another hundred years.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE WALL OF ROME Constructed by Aurelian and rebuilt by Honorius. The material is concrete faced with brick, thickness 13 feet, greatest height 58 feet. This is still the wall of the modern city, although at present no effort is made to keep it in repair.]
75. THE ”ABSOLUTE EMPERORS,” 284-395 A.D.
REIGN OF DIOCLETIAN, 284-305 A.D.
Diocletian, whose reign is one of the most ill.u.s.trious in Roman history, entered the army as a common soldier, rose to high command, and fought his way to the throne. A strong, ambitious man, Diocletian resolutely set himself to the task of remaking the Roman government. His success in this undertaking ent.i.tles him to rank, as a statesman and administrator, with Augustus.
WEAKNESSES IN THE IMPERIAL SYSTEM
The reforms of Diocletian were meant to remedy those weaknesses in the imperial system disclosed by the disasters of the preceding century. In the first place, experience showed that the empire was unwieldy. There were the distant frontiers on the Rhine, Danube, and Euphrates to be guarded; there were all the provinces to be governed. A single ruler, however able and energetic, had more than he could do. In the second place, the succession to the imperial throne was uncertain. Now an emperor named his successor, now the Senate elected him, and now the swords of the legionaries raised him to the purple. Such an unsettled state of affairs constantly invited those struggles between rival pretenders which had so nearly brought the empire to destruction.
DIOCLETIAN'S REFORMS
Diocletian began his reforms by adopting a scheme for ”partners.h.i.+p emperors.” He shared the Roman world with a trusted lieutenant named Maximian. Each was to be an Augustus, with all the honors of an emperor.
Diocletian ruled the East; Maximian ruled the West. Further partners.h.i.+p soon seemed advisable, and so each _Augustus_ chose a younger a.s.sociate, or _Caesar_, to aid him in the government and at his death or abdication to become his heir. Diocletian also remodeled the provincial system. The entire empire, including Italy, was divided into more than one hundred provinces. They were grouped into thirteen dioceses and these, in turn, into four prefectures. [4] This reform much lessened the authority of the provincial governor, who now ruled over a small district and had to obey the vicar of his diocese.
THE NEW ABSOLUTISM
The emperors, from Diocletian onward, were autocrats. They bore the proud t.i.tle of _Dominus_ (”Lord”). They were treated as G.o.ds. Everything that touched their persons was sacred. They wore a diadem of pearls and gorgeous robes of silk and gold, like those of Asiatic monarchs. They filled their palaces with a crowd of fawning, flattering n.o.bles, and busied themselves with an endless round of stately and impressive ceremonials. Hitherto a Roman emperor had been an _imperator_, [5] the head of an army. Now he became a king, to be greeted, not with the old military salute, but with the bent knee and the prostrate form of adoration. Such pomps and vanities, which former Romans would have thought degrading, helped to inspire reverence among the servile subjects of a later age. If it was the aim of Augustus to disguise, it was the aim of Diocletian to display, the unbounded power of a Roman emperor.
CONSTANTINE, SOLE EMPEROR, 324-337 A.D.
There can be little doubt that Diocletian's reforms helped to prolong the existence of the empire. In one respect, however, they must be p.r.o.nounced a failure. They did not end the disputes about the succession. Only two years after the abdication of Diocletian there were six rival pretenders for the t.i.tle of _Augustus_. Their dreary struggles continued, until at length two emperors were left--Constantine in the West, Licinius in the East. After a few years of joint rule another civil war made Constantine supreme. The Roman world again had a single master.
REIGN OF CONSTANTINE
Constantine was an able general and a wise statesman. Two events of lasting importance have made his reign memorable. It was Constantine who recognized Christianity as one of the religions of the empire and thus paved the way for the triumph of that faith over the ancient paganism. His work in this connection will be discussed presently. It was Constantine, also, who established a new capital for the Roman world at Byzantium [6]
on the Bosporus. He christened it ”New Rome,” but it soon took the emperor's name as Constantinople, the ”City of Constantine.” [7]
FOUNDATION OF CONSTANTINOPLE
Several good reasons could be urged for the removal of the world's metropolis from the Tiber to the Bosporus. The Roman Empire was ceasing to be one empire. Constantine wanted a great city for the eastern half to balance Rome in the western half. Again, Constantinople, far more than Rome, was the military center of the empire. Rome lay too far from the vulnerable frontiers; Constantinople occupied a position about equidistant from the Germans on the lower Danube and the Persians on the Euphrates.
Finally, Constantine believed that Christianity, which he wished to become the prevailing religion, would encounter less opposition and criticism in his new city than at Rome, with its pagan atmosphere and traditions.
Constantinople was to be not simply a new seat of government but also distinctively a Christian capital. Such it remained for more than eleven centuries. [8]
AFTER CONSTANTINE, 337-395 A.D.
After the death of Constantine the Roman world again entered on a period of disorder. The inroads of the Germans across the Danube and the Rhine threatened the European provinces of the empire with dissolution. The outlook in the Asiatic provinces, overrun by the Persians, was no less gloomy. Meanwhile the eastern and western halves of the empire tended more and more to grow apart. The separation between the two had become well marked by the close of the fourth century. After the death of the emperor Theodosius (395 A.D.) there came to be in fact, if not in name, a Roman Empire in the East and a Roman Empire in the West.
POLITICAL SITUATION IN 395 A.D.
More than four hundred years had now elapsed since the battle of Actium made Octavian supreme in the Roman world. If we except the abandonment of Trajan's conquests beyond the Danube and the Euphrates, [9] no part of the huge empire had as yet succ.u.mbed to its enemies. The subject peoples, during these four centuries, had not tried to overthrow the empire or to withdraw from its protection. The Roman state, men believed, would endure forever. Yet the times were drawing nigh when the old order of things was to be broken up; when barbarian invaders were to seize the fairest provinces as their own; and when new kingdoms, ruled by men of Germanic speech, were to arise in lands that once obeyed Rome.