Part 29

Diocletian remained quiet during all these changes; but old Maximian did not approve of them. He returned from Lucania to Rome, where he again came forth as an Augustus, and got the senate to proclaim his son Maxentius a Cæsar instead of Severus. Soon afterwards, Constantius died, and the legions proclaimed his son Constantine Augustus; but Galerius, who had formerly plotted against his life, wished to acknowledge him as Cæsar only, and on the other hand, appointed Severus Augustus, and set him on against Maximian and Maxentius. But Severus died in his attempt to invade Italy, and Constantine for the present submitted to the degradation.

Constantine was the son of Constantius’ first wife Helena, a woman of low birth from Roussillon, whom her husband had been obliged to put away that he might marry Theodora, a stepdaughter of Maximian. Constantine was thirty-two years old, when his father died. He is a truly great man, and on him the attention of the whole of the then Roman world was directed. Though not an accomplished scholar, neither yet was he an untaught barbarian, as he spoke Greek and Latin.

Whilst Constantine contented himself with establishing his power in the three western provinces, Galerius undertook to avenge the death of Severus on Maxentius. He therefore came with an army to Italy, and advanced as far as Narni; but there he found himself so closely hemmed in by the forces of old Maximian, and so little supported, that he had to retreat and make peace. How it was concluded, we have in truth no account whatever. After the death of Severus, Galerius had given up Illyricum to Licinius, and had bestowed on him at the same time the title of Augustus; the east he had assigned to Maximinus Daza: he acknowledged Constantine as Augustus. Thus the Roman world had no more Cæsars, but six _Augusti_,—Galerius, Licinius, Maximin in the east; Maximian, Maxentius, and Constantine in the west. Notwithstanding this, there was no peace, and the artificial combination of Diocletian proved insufficient. Maximian had given his daughter Fausta in marriage to Constantine, who therefore divorced himself from his first wife Minervina. But dissensions arose between Maximian and his son Maxentius. Maxentius, who was a fell tyrant in the style of Caracalla, had no dutiful feelings towards a father who had raised him to the throne; and he answered the claims of his father to rule the state, by the counter demand that he should retire from public affairs. The prætorians, whom Maxentius had brought out again from the obscurity into which Diocletian had thrown them, decided that Maxentius should reign alone. Maximian now went to his daughter in Gaul, where at first he met with a friendly reception; but he soon got embroiled with Constantine. When the latter tried to secure himself against him, Maximian, who was not able to stand his ground at Arles, fled to Marseilles, where he was besieged, and delivered up as a victim by his own troops. He fell into Constantine’s power, who made him kind promises; notwithstanding which, under the pretext of his having set on foot a conspiracy, he was soon afterwards put to death.

Shortly after began the war of Constantine with Maxentius, so memorable for its important consequences in history, and not less memorable for the triumphal arch of Constantine and Raphael’s painting of the battle. Maxentius ruled Italy as a tyrant, and the oppression of the people had increased. Italy had hitherto been free from the land-tax, having only indirect taxes and a legacy duty to pay; but Maxentius, to whom this, and the revenues raised from Africa, did not yet appear sufficient, proceeded to lay a land and an income tax on Italy. Then was Constantine called upon for help.—In the meanwhile also, Galerius had died, and the European part of his empire had been taken by Licinius, and the Asiatic by Maximin.—Constantine, at the head of a greatly superior force, crossed Mount Cenis; defeated the troops of Maxentius near Turin; marched against Verona, a very strong fortress; besieged it and beat an army which came to its relief; took it, and advanced by the Via Flaminia towards Rome. Maxentius met him three Italian miles from the Porta Collina, near Ponte Mollo. But his whole army was routed and himself killed; and Constantine, amid the general exultation, took possession of Rome.

Soon afterwards, a war broke out in the East between Maximin and Licinius, Their forces encountered near the Thracian Heraclea, when Licinius conquered with a considerably weaker army: Maximin surrendered at discretion in Tarsus, and was condemned to die. There were now but two emperors left, Constantine in the west, Licinius in the east. Between these two, before long, the first war arose, A. D. 314, in which Constantine gained the victory at the battles of Cibalis and Mardia, and Licinius sought and obtained peace on condition of giving up Illyricum, Macedon, and Greece; so that he had only left to him the Asiatic countries, Egypt, and Thrace, such a large and rich dominion, that no state of modern Europe is to be compared to it. After nine years (323), a new war broke out, although Licinius was married to Constantia a half-sister of Constantine, and had children by her. For this struggle, Licinius had equipped a fleet, as had also Constantine: it was the first war since the battle of Actium, in which the Roman Emperors brought fleets into action. Constantine gained a victory near Adrianople; and Crispus, his son by Minervina, who commanded the fleet, decided the war by the battle of Scutari, and forced the Hellespont. Near Chrysopolis, he crossed over to Asia, and again beat the enemy’s reserves: on this, Licinius fled to Cilicia. Here he capitulated. Constantine at first promised him his life; but he did not keep his word: nay, after some time, he even had Licinius, the son of his own sister, a guiltless and most hopeful boy, likewise put to death. Here Constantine first showed signs of cruelty, from which he had hitherto kept himself quite free.

Thus the whole world was again brought into unity. The rest of Constantine’s reign is not very rich in remarkable events. He carried on wars against the Goths and Sarmatians, the latter of whom dwelt in those days from the Theiss to Moravia, whilst the Goths were masters of Dacia. The Sarmatians make their appearance as the lords of vanquished Germans; and these serfs, when arms are put into their hands, take advantage of the opportunity to rid themselves of the yoke. Now were the Sarmatians obliged to apply to the Romans for protection, and they were scattered in all directions under the name of Limigantes: hence a Sarmatian colony as far off as the Moselle, is mentioned by Ausonius. Constantine undoubtedly ruled from the Roman Wall in Scotland to the borders of Khurdistan, and to Mount Atlas, just as Diocletian did.

The restoration of the Empire had begun under Diocletian, and it must also have quite recovered under the rule of Constantine and his sons. One great drawback, however, was the very heavy weight of taxation which Diocletian had devised and Constantine had completed, and the system of indictions. A province was valued in the lump, and assessed at a fixed sum, which was divided into _capita_ (quotas); and these _capita_ were imposed in an arbitrary manner, sometimes several of them on one man, and sometimes one on several persons. The details of this system are not yet sifted as much as one would wish, although Savigny has written a very fine treatise on the subject.[65] The chief revenues were those which were derived from the land-tax, and from personal taxes. These burthens daily became more oppressive as the expense of the army increased, which was more and more composed of mercenaries. It is evident that the value of every kind of produce had now quite fallen off, and with this the complete change of the monetary system was connected. In the third century, silver of a very bad standard was coined, but the currency was not changed: the state seems to have paid in bad silver, and to have required gold in exchange at the rate of good old silver. The sesterces are done away with, and henceforth we meet with the _aurei_, which were formerly mentioned only in connexion with the pay of the soldiers, and even then but seldom. This most wretched coinage, of which all the collections of the kind in Europe may afford specimens,—these chiefly belong to the times between Valerian and Probus,—gave occasion for a great deal of counterfeit money, of which the dies and the whole apparatus have every now and then been found in France. The bad money also accounts for the strange story in Aurelian’s life of an insurrection, of which the master of the mint is said to have been the prime mover. Aurelian, in fact, may have tried to bring in again the good currency, whereas the master of the mint, on his side, may have found his profit in the bad money; just as Itzig and others did in the Seven Years’ War. Constantine, however, made the _aureus_ lighter, in the ratio of 72 to 45, which, as it was a very great relief to the rate payers and to those who were in debt, was a very wise measure. On the whole, there are among his laws not a few sensible and beneficial ones. Others, on the contrary, are mischievous; for instance, he pressed very hardly upon the municipalities.

Historians say that in the beginning of his reign, Constantine was _optimis principibus accensendus_; but afterwards _mediis_, or _vix mediis_. Gibbon judged of him with great fairness; otherwise, he has met with scarcely any but fanatical admirers or detractors, and the manner in which he was idolized by the Eastern church is so bad, that one might easily go into the other extreme. The war against Maxentius was a benefit, and the subjects also of Licinius were freed by his defeat from a very harsh master. The death of Licinius, on the other hand, and that of Crispus, are very ugly facts: but we ought not, after all, to be harder upon Constantine than upon others. His motives in establishing the Christian religion are something very strange indeed. The religion there was in his head, must have been a rare jumble. On his coins, he has the _Sol invictus_; he worships pagan deities, consults the _haruspices_, holds heathen superstitions; and yet he shuts up the temples and builds churches. As the president of the Nicene council, we can only look upon him with disgust: he was himself no Christian at all, and he would only be baptized when in _articulo mortis_. He had taken up the Christian Faith as a superstition, which he mingled with all his other superstitions. When therefore eastern writers speak of him as an ἰσαπόστολος, they do not know what they are saying; and to call him even a saint, is a profanation of the word.

In other respects, Constantine was not a bad man. He had much about him which was like Hadrian, except only as to learning, in which he was very deficient; for though indeed he knew Greek very well, he was destitute of every literary accomplishment: the increasing irritability of the last years of his life, which betrayed him into deeds of cruelty, he has in common with Hadrian. Well known is the unfortunate death of his son Crispus, whom he first banished to Pola, and then caused to be executed: but as yet no proof has been brought to show that he died innocent. His father refused him the title of Augustus, and he was also the son of a repudiated wife; so that hence may have arisen feelings of jealousy against the children of Fausta, his brothers, and he may thus have been drawn into a plot against his father. Yet, even then, his death must be deemed a shocking event. There is another story, which is that Constantine’s wife Fausta was suffocated in a bath by his orders. Against this, Gibbon has raised very weighty objections, as even after Constantine’s death, Fausta was still alive: in the accounts, she is represented as a Phædra. In the meanwhile, Constantine had founded a new Rome in Constantinople, of which the situation is so fine. With his three half brothers, Constantius, Dalmatius, and Hannibalianus, he lived in exemplary harmony. Hannibalianus died without issue; Dalmatius had two sons, Hannibalianus and Dalmatius; Julius Constantius likewise had two, Julian and Gallus: he himself had three sons, Constantine, Constans, and Constantius. He now, towards the end of his life, divided the empire among these three sons and the children of Dalmatius; and he died at Nicomedia, after having completed his darling city of Constantinople, A. D. 337.

THE SUCCESSORS OF CONSTANTINE. JULIAN THE APOSTATE. JOVIAN. VALENTINIAN I. VALENS, GRATIAN. VALENTINIAN II. THEODOSIUS THE GREAT. MAXIMUS.

It would seem that people are wrong in thinking it strange that Constantine should also have appointed Dalmatius and Hannibalianus. He did it, not because they had any claims; but without doubt that he might be able, if any dissensions should arise between his sons, to throw one weight more into the scale; so that his family might, at all events be kept on the throne. His wish to promote harmony was not, however, fulfilled. The causes of the outbreak are by no means clear, nor do we know how it happened that the provisions of the will were not adhered to: the statements which have been made about it, may have some truth in them, but they sound rather apocryphal. Just as little can we make out how far Constantius was guilty: heathens and orthodox Christians unite in their hatred against him, which is perhaps the reason why he seems to us still blacker than he really was. In short, there broke out a military insurrection at Constantinople; the will of Constantine was declared to be a forgery; the brothers of Constantine, and the two princes Dalmatius and Hannibalianus were killed, and with them the _præfectus prætorio_ Ablavius, and many other followers of Constantine. The division was now made in the manner which we have already seen in the times of Aurelian and Diocletian: Constantine, the eldest brother, who was twenty-one years of age, got the West, and had Gaul, Spain, and Britain; Constans, who was twenty, the _præfectura Italiæ_, and also Illyricum; and Constantius, who was a youth of seventeen, the _præfectura orientis_. Constantius was soon involved in a war with Sapor king of Persia, which lasted with uninterrupted ill success from 337 to 361. Constantine and Constans likewise soon became at feud, as the former demanded from his brother the cession of Africa as a compensation to maintain the balance of power, because Constans had Illyricum and Dalmatia:—it seems that Constantine likewise had Rhætia and Noricum. Constantine (who on coins is called _junior_) burst upon the states of Constans from the Norican frontier; but soon met with a decisive overthrow, and lost his life. Constans now took possession of the West, for which Constantius may have had a slight compensation in Illyricum. Constans enjoyed his triumph for some years, but at last had his reward. He was a worthless prince. Of the three brothers, Constantius seems to have been the most bearable, although he himself also was not good for much: he was entirely under the government of his chamberlains the eunuchs, who, quite in the Persian fashion, held the first place in his court. Constans was a profligate, violent man, and thus he gave rise to much exasperation in Gaul where he resided. In that country lived Magnentius, a general of barbarian origin, altogether rude and illiterate, who very likely could not even read nor write:—such a thing would have been impossible in the second century, and it is a proof of the utter degeneracy of the times, that such ignorant people could become generals. Magnentius raised a rebellion at Autun, on which Constans fled, trying to reach the sea so as to cross over to Africa; but before he was able to embark, he was overtaken and slain at Illiberis (also called Helena) in Roussillon by the horsemen of his foe. Against Magnentius, another general, Vetranio, arose in Illyria; but he sought to connect himself with Constantius, and being welcomed as a friend and enticed into a conference, he had to lay down his diadem at the feet of his ally, who was proclaimed emperor by the soldiers. On this occasion, Constantius did not show himself cruel. He now marched against Magnentius, and near Mursa (which is now Essek in Sclavonia), he won a victory over a superior force: in this battle, he seems to have behaved well. Magnentius then fled to Italy: but every body there zealously espoused the cause of Constantius, and he afterwards lost another battle in Gaul; so that no other choice was left him but to take away his own life. Constantius was now sole ruler again.

In the meanwhile, the affairs of the East had got a great deal worse. Of nine great battles in the Persian war, eight were decidedly unfavourable to the Romans: the night-engagement alone near Singara, was somewhat of a success; but even then their attack upon the camp was likewise a failure. Constantius gave his cousin Gallus the name of Constantius, and the dignity of Cæsar: he may even have thought of adopting the children of his uncle, as he had not any children of his own. Julian and Gallus, the sons of Julius Constans, had by a lucky chance been preserved in the general tumult after Constantine’s death, the former of these being six, and the latter twelve years old at the time of their father’s murder: Constantius’ having no children had saved their lives. They were removed from the court, and kept prisoners in a castle of the old Cappadocian kings near Cæsarea, not being allowed to go out of the bounds of the district; they, however, received a careful education, for which Julian was most happily fitted, but Gallus had no capacity whatever. In this manner they lived, until Constantius (when he marched against Magnentius, an affair which engaged him for two years) sent for Gallus, and must have adopted him. He made him Cæsar, and gave him the command of the East, where Sapor was carrying on the war very sluggishly, having perhaps plenty to do on the borders of India, and on the banks of the Oxus. Gallus made a very bad use of his good luck: he and his wife Constantina, the daughter of the great Constantine, were equally savage and cruel, and the East suffered severely. When Constantius had ended the war in the West, the grievances of the East reached his ears. Gallus had murdered two commissioners of the emperor, who had been sent to watch him: this deserved to be punished. He was summoned to Constantinople without his having any the least foreboding of what awaited him; in Thrace, he was separated from his legions, which in the meanwhile were made to take the oaths to Constantius; then he was arrested, and brought to trial, and, as he was not able to clear himself, executed at Pola, where Crispus also had been put to death.

The emperor now sent (A. D. 355) for Julian, who by the Christian writers is called _Apostata_, παραβάτης, while the few pagan ones of later times, Eunapius, Zosimus, and Libanius, speak of him with enthusiastic epithets, and cannot exalt him too highly: he was twenty-four years of age. Constantius proclaimed him emperor, on which he went to court with a trembling heart, expecting to meet there with his death; but he found a friendly reception, and even a protectress in the empress Eusebia. He was married to the princess Helena, who in all likelihood was much older than himself. He had some time before that been set free from captivity, and allowed to reside in Ionia and at Athens, for which last place his heart yearned. He was a true Greek, having always lived in Hellenized countries. Greek was his mother tongue: he thought and felt like a Greek, Latin being to him as a foreign language. Constantius bestowed on him the command of Gaul, the whole of which land he himself, for the sake of making a diversion in his war against Magnentius, had brought into a wretched plight by abandoning it to the Alemanni and the Franks. Of this they had made a fearful use: Cologne, Mentz, Treves, Tongres, all the towns in Roman Germany were sacked and burned to ashes; the whole country was thrown into a state of desolation from which it did not recover. The Franks were already settled in northern Brabant, and the Alemanni on both banks of the Rhine; the Roman _limes_ was lost altogether. Julian, although the forces which he had were most ill-fitted to free Gaul from these enemies, fulfilled his task very well: the Roman discipline was very much fallen off, so that the soldiers looked upon their antagonists as one would upon a superior foe; and besides this, the intrigues at court, perhaps without any fault of Constantius, were busily employed in foiling Julian’s undertaking. In five campaigns, he marched as Cæsar against the Germans, and won brilliant victories over the Franks and the Alemanni; but though he more than once crossed the Rhine, he never penetrated far into Germany. At the end of his warfare, he had regained possession of the _limes_ from Helvetia to the Lower Rhine: yet he was obliged to leave the Franks in Belgium, though indeed they acknowledged the supremacy of Rome, and furnished troops for which she paid money. After these splendid successes, when he had gotten the love of the soldiers and the provincials, the intrigues at court revived: they wanted to take away from him the most considerable part of his army; his soldiers were to leave him, and to set out for the East. But as these had become quite domesticated in the province, being bound to it by family ties, inasmuch as on the whole they had been changed about but little; they were filled with despair when they were told to march, and—so say Julian and his partisans—giving loose to their ill humour, they renounced Constantius and had proclaimed Julian emperor. Now it is indeed possible that the agitation originated with the soldiers; at least, there is nothing said anywhere to the contrary: but, for all that, I cannot believe that he was so amazingly conscientious as he makes himself out to have been, especially as with all his great qualities, there was a good deal of ostentation about Julian. Certain it is that he made overtures to Constantius, and that he wanted to be his colleague as Augustus; but Constantius, although he had no children of his own, was foolish enough not to enter into them, and chose rather to embark in a civil war, when Sapor had already taken Singara and Amida, and was now threatening the whole of the East. Blood would have been shed, had not his death luckily put a stop to it. Constantius, who often kept his court at Antioch, was on his way from thence to Constantinople, travelling in the wake of his army, when he died in Cilicia, whilst Julian was already approaching.