Part 24

The emperors Caligula and Domitian were assassinated in their palace by their own domestics. The Roman world, it is true, was shaken by the events that followed the death of Nero, when, in the space of eighteen months, four princes perished by the sword. But, excepting this violent eruption of military licence, the two centuries from Augustus to Commodus passed away unstained with civil blood and undisturbed by revolution. The Roman citizens might groan under the tyranny, from which they could not hope to escape, of the unrelenting Tiberius, the furious Caligula, the profligate and cruel Nero, the beastly Vitellius, and the timid, inhuman Domitian; but order was maintained, and it was not until Commodus, the son of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, the philosopher, succeeded to the authority that his father had exercised for the benefit of the Roman Empire that the army fully realised, and did not fail to exercise, the power it had always possessed.

During the first three years of his reign the vices of Commodus affected the emperor rather than the state. While the young prince revelled in licentious pleasures, the management of affairs remained in the hands of his father's faithful councillors; but, in the year 183, the attempt of his sister Lucilla to assassinate him produced fatal results. The assassin, in attempting the deed, exclaimed, "The senate sends you this!" and though the blow never reached the body of the emperor, the words sank deep into his heart.

He turned upon the senate with relentless cruelty. The possession of either wealth or virtue excited the tyrant's fury. Suspicion was equivalent to proof; trial to condemnation, and the noblest blood of the senate was poured out like water.

He has shed with impunity the noblest blood of Rome; he perished as soon as he was dreaded by his own domestics. A cup of drugged wine, delivered by his favourite concubine, plunged him in a deep sleep. At the instigation of Lætus, his Prætorian prefect, a robust youth was admitted into his chamber, and strangled him without resistance. With secrecy and celerity the conspirators sought out Pertinax, the prefect of the city, an ancient senator of consular rank, and persuaded him to accept the purple. A large donative secured them the support of the Prætorian guard, and the joyous senate eagerly bestowed upon the new Augustus all the titles of imperial power.

For eighty-six days Pertinax ruled the empire with firmness and moderation, but the strictness of the ancient discipline that he attempted to restore in the army excited the hatred of the Prætorian guards, and the new emperor was struck down on March 28, 193.

III.--An Empire at Auction

The Prætorians had violated the sanctity of the throne by the atrocious murder of Pertinax; they dishonored the majesty of it with their subsequent conduct. They ran out upon the ramparts of the city, and with a loud voice proclaimed that the Roman world was to be disposed of to the best bidder by public auction. Sulpicianus, father-in-law of Pertinax, and Didius Julianus, bid against each other for the prize. It fell to Julian, who offered upwards of £1,000 sterling to each of the soldiers, and the author of this ignominious bargain received the insignia of the empire and the acknowledgments of a trembling senate.

The news of this disgraceful auction was received by the legions of the frontiers with surprise, with indignation, and, perhaps, with envy. Albinus, governor of Britain, Niger, governor of Syria, and Septimius Severus, a native of Africa, commander of the Pannonian army, prepared to revenge the death of Pertinax, and to establish their own claims to the vacant throne. Marching night and day, Severus crossed the Julian Alps, swept aside the feeble defences of Julian, and put an end to a reign of power which had lasted but sixty-six days, and had been purchased with such immense treasure. Having secured the supreme authority, Severus turned his arms against his two competitors, and within three years, and in the course of two or three battles, established his position and brought about the death of both Albinus and Niger.

The prosperity of Rome revived, and a profound peace reigned throughout the world. At the same time, Severus was guilty of two acts which were detrimental to the future interests of the republic. He relaxed the discipline of the army, increased their pay beyond the example of former times, re-established the Prætorian guards, who had been abolished for their transaction with Julian, and welded more firmly the chains of tyranny by filling the senate with his creatures. At the age of sixty-five in the year 211, he expired at York of a disorder which was aggravated by the labours of a campaign against the Caledonians.

Severus recommended concord to his sons, Caracalla and Geta, and his sons to the army. The government of the civilised world was entrusted to the hands of brothers who were implacable enemies. A latent civil war brooded in the city, and hardly more than a year passed before the assassins of Caracalla put an end to an impossible situation by murdering Geta. Twenty thousand persons of both sexes suffered death under the vague appellation of the friends of Geta. The fears of Macrinus, the controller of the civil affairs of the Prætorian prefecture, brought about his death in the neighbourhood of Carrhæ in Syria on April 8, 217.

For a little more than a year his successor governed the empire, but the necessary step of reforming the army brought about his ruin. On June 7, 218, he succumbed to the superior fortune of Elagabulus, the grandson of Severus, a youth trained in all the superstitions and vices of the East.

Under this sovereign Rome was prostituted to the vilest vices of which human nature is capable. The sum of his infamy was reached when the master of the Roman world affected to copy the dress and manners of the female sex. The shame and disgust of the soldiers resulted in his murder on March 10, 222, and the proclamation of his cousin, Alexander Severus.

Again the necessity of restoring discipline within the army led to the ruin of the emperor, and, despite thirteen years of just and moderate government, Alexander was murdered in his tent on March 19, 235, on the banks of the Rhine, and Maximin, his chief lieutenant, a Thracian, reigned in his stead.

IV.--Tyranny and Disaster

Fear of contempt, for his origin was mean and barbarian, made Maximin one of the cruellest tyrants that ever oppressed the Roman world. During the three years of his reign he disdained to visit either Rome or Italy, but from the banks of the Rhine and the Danube oppressed the whole state, and trampled on every principle of law and justice. The tyrant's avarice ruined not only private citizens, but seized the municipal funds of the cities, and stripped the very temples of their gold and silver offerings.

Maximus and Balbinus, on July 9, 237, were declared emperors. The Emperor Maximus advanced to meet the furious tyrant, but the stroke of domestic conspiracy prevented the further eruption of civil war. Maximin and his son were murdered by their disappointed troops in front of Aquileia.

Three months later, Maximus and Balbinus, on July 15, 238, fell victims to their own virtues at the hands of the Prætorian guard, Gordian became emperor. At the end of six years, he, too, after an innocent and virtuous reign, succumbed to the ambition of the prefect Philip, while engaged in a war with Persia, and in March 244, the Roman world recognized the sovereignty of an Arabian robber.

Returning to Rome, Philip celebrated the secular games, on the accomplishment of the full period of a thousand years from the foundation of Rome. From that date, which marked the fifth time that these rites had been performed in the history of the city, for the next twenty years the Roman world was afflicted by barbarous invaders and military tyrants, and the ruined empire seemed to approach the last and fatal moment of its dissolution. Six emperors in turn succeeded to the sceptre of Philip and ended their lives, either as the victims of military licence, or in the vain attempt to stay the triumphal eruption of the Goths and the Franks and the Suevi. In three expeditions the Goths seized the Bosphorus, plundered the cities of Bithynia, ravaged Greece, and threatened Italy, while the Franks invaded Gaul, overran Spain and the provinces of Africa.

Some sparks of their ancient virtue enabled the senate to repulse the Suevi, who threatened Rome herself, but the miseries of the empire were not assuaged by this one triumph, and the successes of Sapor, king of Persia, in the East, seemed to foreshadow the immediate downfall of Rome. Six emperors and thirty tyrants attempted in vain to stay the course of disaster. Famine and pestilence, tumults and disorders, and a great diminution of the population marked this period, which ended with the death of the Emperor Gallienus on March 20, 268.

V.--Restorers of the Roman World

The empire, which had been oppressed and almost destroyed by the soldiers, the tyrants, and the barbarians, was saved by a series of great princes, who derived their obscure origin from the martial provinces of Illyricum. Within a period of about thirty years, Claudius, Aurelian, Probus, Diocletian and his colleagues triumphed over the foreign and domestic enemies of the state, re-established, with a military discipline, the strength of the frontier, and deserved the glorious title of Restorers of the Roman world.

Claudius gained a crushing victory over the Goths, whose discomfiture was completed by disease in the year 269. And his successor, Aurelian, in a reign of less than five years, put an end to the Gothic war, chastised the Germans who invaded Italy, recovered Gaul, Spain, and Britain from the Roman usurpers, and destroyed the proud monarchy which Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, had erected in the East on the ruins of the afflicted empire.

The murder of Aurelian in the East (January 275) led to a curious revival of the authority of the senate. During an interregnum of eight months the ancient assembly at Rome governed with the consent of the army, and appeared to regain with the election of Tacitus, one of their members, all their ancient prerogatives. Their authority expired, however, with the death of his successor, Probus, who delivered the empire once more from the invasions of the barbarians, and succumbed to the too common fate of assassination in August 282.

Carus, who was elected in his place, maintained the reputation of the Roman arms in the East; but his supposed death by lightning, by delivering the sceptre into the hands of his sons Carinus and Numerian (December 25, 283), once more placed the Roman world at the mercy of profligacy and licentiousness. A year later, the election of the Emperor Diocletian (September 17, 284) founded a new era in the history and fortunes of the empire.

It was the artful policy of Diocletian to destroy the last vestiges of the ancient constitution. Dividing his unwieldly power among three other associates--Maximian, a rough, brutal soldier, who ranked as Augustus; and Galerius and Constantius, who bore the inferior titles of Cæsar--the emperor removed the centre of government by gradual steps from Rome. Diocletian and Maximian held their courts in the provinces, and the authority of the senators was destroyed by spoliation and death.

VI.--Reign of the Six Emperors

For twenty-one years Diocletian held sway, establishing, with the assistance of his associates, the might of the Roman arms in Britain, Africa, Egypt, and Persia; and then, on May 1, 305, in a spacious plain in the neighborhood of Nicomedia, divested himself of the purple and abdicated the throne. On the same day at Milan, Maximian reluctantly made his resignation of the imperial dignity.

According to the rules of the new constitution, Constantius and Galerius assumed the title of Augustus, and nominated Maximin and Severus as Cæsars. The elaborate machinery devised by Diocletian at once broke down. Galerius, who was supported by Severus, intrigued for the possession of the whole Roman world. Constantine, the son of Constantius, on account of his popularity with the army and the people, excited his suspicion, and only the flight of Constantine saved him from death. He made his way to Gaul, and, after taking part in a campaign with his father against the Caledonians, received the title of Augustus in the imperial palace at York on the death of Constantius.