CHAPTER IV

THE DIVISION OF THE EMPIRE

The causes that led to the dividing up of the Empire are easily understood. What is far less easy to understand is how Rome ruled the world, as the world then was known, so long as she did. Remember this: at that time you could only travel, and you could only send a message, as fast as a horse could gallop, if it was by land that you went or sent; and only as fast as a ship--a ship with a very simple and primitive way of setting the sails--could be urged through the water by sailing or by rowing, if your going was by sea. For practical purposes of getting news or of moving troops, the world of the Romans of that date, say from Egypt to Britain at its furthest points, was a very great deal larger than the whole of the globe is to us to-day. If you can understand it in that sense, their Empire was very much larger, much less under the eye and the direction of the centre of government, than the whole British Empire to-day. And we find that large enough. The Romans had the further trouble, which we have not, that the leaders of the legions in the provinces, when they had repelled the barbarians, sometimes claimed to be independent of the central authority, as we saw both in Gaul and in Asia Minor.

So the wonder really is, not that Rome should at length fail to govern all this Empire from one centre, but that she should have succeeded in doing so at all, {24} and for so long. From causes which I have spoken of already, the home government was not as strong as it had been; and as the power at the centre grew less the pressure of the barbarians on the boundaries grew more. Especially it became convenient to have a centre of government nearer the boundary on the south-east, where the eastern barbarians were constantly making their attacks and where a great leader of the army, if he checked the attack, might become too strong for the authority of Rome to control unless it put forth all its force. A solution of the trouble was attempted by the Emperor Diocletian, who came to the imperial throne in 284. What he did was to appoint a colleague for himself to whom he gave his own title of Augustus, though he also retained the title for himself. There were, therefore, two Augusti. And besides the Augusti, he appointed two leaders of armies in the provinces to bear the title of Cæsar. Thus there were two Cæsars and two Augusti. The Empire and its armies were portioned out between these four great persons. Diocletian himself had the command of the army of Syria. His colleague, the other Augustus, commanded the armies of Italy and of Africa. One of the Cæsars had the armies guarding the Rhine, and the other the armies guarding the Danube boundary.

In this way were the Empire and its defending forces divided up. The Cæsars were considered to be in an inferior position to the Augusti, and as between the Augusti themselves Diocletian was supposed to to be the superior of the other. We may think it likely that the Emperor, in making these appointments, did little more than give his formal approval to arrangements that already existed, in fact. Very probably these important persons would have been able to make themselves practically independent of the Emperor, even if he had not given them these {25} offices, and very likely they were the more ready to pay him some show of deference because he had given them his approval.

There is one point about the arrangement to which I would call your attention, and that is that Diocletian, who claimed to be the superior of them all, assumed, for his own command, the army of Syria, of the East. You will perceive what that seems to indicate--that the Romans had begun to look upon the Eastern side of the Empire as more important than the Western. As early as the year 300, or even earlier, this was their view.

In Diocletian's time we find that any claim of power by the people, the democracy, was entirely given up. The government was an autocracy; though there might be more than one autocrat. There was no longer any value in being a citizen of Rome. Rome and Italy had no privileges above the rest of the Empire. They were administered and taxed in the same way as all the provinces.

[Sidenote: Constantine the Great]

This formal division of authority under Diocletian did not long answer the purpose for which he designed it, and he and his fellow "Augustus" abdicated in 305, and for nearly twenty years there was continual fighting between rival "Emperors" elected by the different armies. For a time, but for a time only, peace within the Empire was gained under Constantine I.--Constantine the Great, as he was deservedly called. He deserves that distinguishing title if only for two acts of his reign which made a very great impression on the story of the world: he accepted the Christian religion as the recognised religion of the Empire, and he built the City of Constantine--Constantinople--to be the new capital of the Empire, the new centre.

He died, however, in 337, and immediately the fighting between rival Emperors was resumed. It {26} was nearly thirty years before the world had any peace from these rivalries. At length Valentinian is proclaimed Emperor by his soldiers, and he appoints, as his colleague and fellow "Augustus," his own brother Valens. To Valens he gives the title of Emperor of the East, with the capital of that Eastern Empire at Constantinople. For himself he takes the Empire of the West, with its capital still at Rome. It appears that the independence of the two Empires is complete. Their boundaries are defined, the limit of the Eastern Empire being drawn so far to the west as to include Macedonia and Greece.

Of all the Indo-European tribes or nations the most powerful, the most numerous and that which occupied the largest territory, was the great nation of the Goths. They may have come down from Scandinavia--from Norway and Sweden. There are some evidences which make that likely, but the evidence is not very clear. They owned the country along the boundary of the Roman Empire from the Danube to the Vistula.

[Sidenote: The Huns]

And behind all these tribes of Indo-Europeans settled for the most part in what we now call Germany and Austria--behind them, that is to say to the north and east, in the region of that great hive or nursery of mankind which seems to have been somewhere in the north of Asia--there was another nation, not belonging to the Indo-European family, not speaking a language that resembled theirs, not made up of persons at all like these Indo-Europeans in appearance. The Indo-Europeans, whom it will perhaps be more convenient to call Germans, because they lived in the countries now occupied by Germans and Austrians--these German tribesmen were tall and fair. This other nation, to the eastward, was of small dark men. They were called Huns.

You may remember that antiquaries--men learned {27} in ancient history--tell us that man, in his progress to civilisation, has passed through two rather distinct stages--the hunting stage and the pastoral stage--and through them came to a third stage, the agricultural, when he settled down to grow crops. The German tribes were already in this third stage, at the point which our story has reached, but the Huns were in the second stage only; they wandered, with their flocks and herds.

This nation of little dark men seems, by their language and by other evidences, as if it must have been related to the Finns, of Finland. The evidences, however, are not very clear; but what is tolerably clear is that they were a numerous and a warlike race of little dark men, and that they kept up a constant pressure, from the north and east, upon the Goths and other German tribes; especially on the more eastern Goths, called Ostrogoths.

And very often it seems to have been that pressure of the Huns from the North and East that made the Germans try and try again to break through the boundary of the Roman Empire and work their way towards the west. The first of these breaks through, however, which had any success, was in a southward, rather than a westward direction. It was a break through of the Goths towards Constantinople, and it was very formidable indeed.

When Diocletian appointed a colleague for himself, a second "Augustus," he, as we saw, took the Eastern command for himself and gave the Western to the colleague. When Valentinian finally divided the Empire between himself and his brother Valens, he took the West and gave the East to his brother. It is possible that he may have foreseen something of the trouble that was soon to come on that eastern side. Within three years of his accession to the throne of Constantinople Valens was called upon to lead his legions to {28} repel a great incursion of the Goths. He met them at Adrianople and suffered a terrible defeat. He himself was killed in the battle. The barbarians pressed on. They were at the walls of Constantinople.

[Sidenote: Barbarian tribes]

A hundred years before this, Goths, crossing the Danube, had fought and conquered Roman legions and had killed an Emperor, namely Decius, who is notorious for his cruel persecution of the Christians known in history as "the Decian persecutions." The Goths had at this time been checked by further Roman forces that were brought against them, but it was then that the Empire lost the province of Dacia, which lay north and east of the Danube, and the Danube thereafter became the boundary.

Now the children of these Goths, rather more than a hundred years later, were across the Danube again, had again conquered the legions and again a Roman Emperor had been slain by them in battle. Constantine had himself been forced to fight the Goths in Thrace, and, when building his new capital, had encircled it with defensive walls. It was well for his successors that he did so. The Gothic army was held before the walls. A large number of their nation had already crossed the Danube and had been admitted as peaceful settlers within the bounds of the Empire. It is certain that Gothic invaders from north of the Danube would find many friends, for the Goths already settled in the Empire were dissatisfied with their treatment by the Romans. And even in the Roman legions that they defeated there would be many of their countrymen, for the recruiting of barbarians among the legionaries had been going on for more than one century. Theodosius the Great, who had succeeded Valens, killed by the Goths, as Emperor of the East, made a treaty with the conquerors, which was faithfully observed until the death of Theodosius in 395. But then the Goths {29} threw off the yoke which the treaty had put upon their necks.

It was fortunate indeed for the Empire that the Persians were no longer a danger on the eastern boundary. A peace with that nation had been arranged in 364, and was not broken for nearly 150 years.

The Goths were divided into several different tribes, not always at peace with each other; and especially into Visigoths and Ostrogoths--that is Western Goths and Eastern. They were so completely divided by the end of the fourth century that the Ostrogoths had fallen under the domination of the Huns, while the Visigoths, further westward, were independent of that fierce and strange people.

But even these Western Goths felt the pressure, pushing them westward, of the Hun, though not so directly. They had the Ostrogoths in between, and sometimes we actually find the Ostrogoths, with the Huns, fighting against the Visigoths. Thus intermixed was the fighting.

And you should know too that although the Romans still called these nations barbarians, many barbarians had come to high honour and great power in one or other of the Roman cities. The division between Roman and barbarian was not nearly so distinct and sharp as the word "barbarian" suggests to us. It was not possible that there should be much idea of inequality between them, seeing that the barbarian could hold such high honour in the chief places of the Empire.

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