Towards the end of the third century the cities in Gaul were surrounded with substantial walls, Rome itself had to be fortified against the attacks of the barbarians, and was once more provided with a circumvallation, as in the days of hoary antiquity, by one of the most vigorous of her rulers. Diocletian ceased to make the Eternal City his capital, and realised in practice the idea of division into an Oriental and Occidental world which had stirred the minds of men three centuries before. His successor put a final end to the Roman Empire; but all he had to do was to bury the dead.
FOOTNOTES
[1] [See Professor Harnack’s article on Church and State on page 629.]
Roman Trophies
BOOK II
THE EARLY ROMAN EMPIRE
INTRODUCTION
THE SCOPE, THE SOURCES, AND THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE HISTORY OF ROME UNDER THE EMPERORS
Professor Hirschfeld has pointed out that there is a general misconception as to the true meaning of later Roman history and that the time of the Roman Empire is, in reality, by no means exclusively a period of decline. In point of fact, there were long periods of imperial history when the glory of Rome, as measured by its seeming material prosperity, by the splendour of its conquests, and the wide range of its domination, was at its height. But two prominent factors, among others, have served to befog the view in considering this period. In the first place, the fact that the form of government is held to have changed from the republican to the monarchial system with the accession of Augustus, has led to a prejudice for or against the age on the part of a good share of writers who have considered the subject. In the second place the invasion of Christianity during the decline of the empire has introduced a feature even more prejudicial to candid discussion.
Yet, broadly considered, neither of these elements should have had much weight for the historian. In the modern sense of the word the Roman commonwealth was never a democracy. From first to last, a chief share of its population consisted of slaves and of the residents of subject states. There was, indeed, a semblance of representative government; but this, it must be remembered, was continued under the empire. Indeed, it cannot be too often pointed out that the accession to power of Augustus and his immediate successors did not nominally imply a marked change of government. We shall have occasion to point out again and again that the “emperor” was not a royal ruler in the modern sense of the word. The very fact that the right of hereditary succession was never recognised,—such succession being accomplished rather by subterfuge than as a legal usage,—in itself shows a sharp line of demarcation between the alleged royal houses of the Roman Empire and the rulers of actual monarchies. In a word, the Roman Empire occupied an altogether anomalous position, and the power which the imperator gradually usurped, through which he came finally to have all the influence of a royal despot, was attained through such gradual and subtle advances that contemporary observers scarcely realised the transition through which they were passing. We shall see that the senate still holds its nominal power, and that year by year for centuries to come, consuls are elected as the nominal government leaders.
Nevertheless, it is commonly held that posterity has made no mistake in fixing upon the date of the accession of Augustus as a turning-point in the history of the Roman commonwealth. However fully the old forms may have been held to, it is only now that the people in effect submit to a permanent dictator. The office of dictator, as such, had indeed been abolished on the motion of Mark Antony; but the cæsars managed, under cover of old names and with the ostensible observance of old laws, to usurp dictatorial power. There was an actual, even if not a nominal, change of government. This change of government, however, did not coincide with any sudden decline in Roman power. On the contrary, as just intimated, the Roman influence under the early cæsars reached out to its widest influence and attained its maximum importance. Certainly, the epochs which by common consent are known as the golden and the silver ages of Roman literature—the time, that is to say, of Augustus and his immediate successors—cannot well be thought of as periods of great national degeneration. And again the time of the five good emperors has by common consent of the historians been looked on as among the happiest periods of Roman history. In a word the first two centuries of Roman imperial history are by no means to be considered as constituting an epoch of steady decline. That a decline set in after the death of Marcus Aurelius, some causes of which were operative much earlier, is, however, equally little in question. Looking over the whole sweep of later Roman history it seems difficult to avoid the conclusion that the empire was doomed almost from the day of its inception, notwithstanding its early period of power. But when one attempts to point out the elements that were operative as causes of this seemingly predestined overthrow, one enters at once upon dangerous and debatable ground. At the very outset, as already intimated, the prejudices of the historian are enlisted pro or con by the question of the influence of Christianity as a factor in accelerating or retarding the decay of Rome’s greatness.
Critics have never tired of hurling diatribes at Gibbon, because his studies led him to the conclusion that Christianity was a detrimental force in its bearing on the Roman Empire. Yet many more recent authorities have been led to the same conclusion, and it is difficult to say why this estimate need cause umbrage to anyone, whatever his religious prejudices. The Roman commonwealth was a body politic which, following the course of all human institutions, must sooner or later have been overthrown. In the broader view it does not seem greatly to matter whether or not Christianity contributed to this result. That the Christians were an inharmonious element in the state can hardly be in question. As such, they cannot well be supposed to have contributed to communal progress. But there were obvious sources of disruption which seem so much more important that one may well be excused for doubting whether the influence of the early Christians in this connection was more than infinitesimal for good or evil. Without attempting a comprehensive view of the subject—which, indeed, would be quite impossible within present spacial limits—it is sufficient to point out such pervading influences as the prevalence of slavery, the growing wealth of the few and the almost universal pauperism of the many fostered by the paternal government, and the decrease of population, particularly among the best classes, as abnormal elements in a body politic, the influence of which sooner or later must make themselves felt disastrously.
Perhaps as important as any of these internal elements of dissolution was that ever-present and ever-developing external menace, the growing power of the barbarian nations. The position of any nation in the historical scale always depends largely upon the relative positions of its neighbour states. Rome early subjugated the other Italian states and then in turn, Sicily, Carthage, and Greece. She held a dominating influence over the nations of the Orient; or, at least, if they held their ground on their own territory, she made it impossible for them to think of invading Europe. Meantime, at the north and west there were no civilised nations to enter into competition with her, much less to dispute her supremacy. For some centuries the peoples of northern Europe could be regarded by Rome only as more or less productive barbarians, interesting solely in proportion as they were sufficiently productive to be worth robbing. But as time went on these northern peoples learned rapidly through contact with the civilisation of Rome. They were, in fact, people who were far removed from barbarism in the modern acceptance of the term. It is possible (the question is still in doubt) that they were of common stock with the Romans; and if their residence in a relatively inhospitable clime had retarded their progress towards advanced civilisation, it had not taken from them the racial potentialities of rapid development under more favourable influences; while, at the same time, the very harshness of their environment had developed in them a vigour of constitution, a tenacity of purpose, and a fearless audacity of mind that were to make them presently most dangerous rivals. It was during the later days of the commonwealth and the earlier days of the empire that these rugged northern peoples were receiving their lessons in Roman civilisation—that is to say, in the art of war, with its attendant sequels of pillage and plundering.[2] Those were hard lessons which the legions of the cæsars gave to the peoples of the north, but their recipients proved apt pupils. Even in the time of Augustus a German host in the Teutoberg Forest retaliated upon the hosts of Varus in a manner that must have brought Rome to a startling realisation of hitherto unsuspected possibilities of disaster.