CONSTANTINE THE GREAT

AND

THE CHRISTIAN REVOLUTION

BY

G. P. BAKER

 

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CHAPTERS

I The First Death

II Diocletian

III Constantius, Constantine and the Beast

IV The Start from York

V The Second Career of Maximian Herculius

CHAPTER I

THE FIRST DEATH

 

After New York has sunk and vanished on the skyline, a modern liner ploughs her way for nine days through the waste of waters. On the ninth day she raises Cape Clear and the Old Head of Kinsale. Passing up St. George’s Channel, the traveller sees Snowdon to the eastward, and comes slowly into the Mersey, between the long dark wilderness of buildings on the Cheshire shore and the endless sea wall of Liverpool Docks, surmounted with its crowded achievement of shipping. From Liverpool it is a short day, or thereabouts, by rail, over the Lancashire flats and through the hills of the south riding of Yorkshire—a land still one of the centres of human energy and industry. Towards the end of the day, in a wide flat country bordered by low and far-off hills, we may find a strange, most ancient city, bearing in it the visible marks of another world and another age—with its battlemented and banquetted ring-wall, its huge castle, and its vast cathedral, standing like some miraculous jewel in the sunset. Over its gates still hang the shields blazoned with the heraldry of its prime—the red cross on the silver ground, the sign of St. George.

It is old York.

It was no mean city which gave its name to that wondrous daughter across the Atlantic. The men who carried her renown abroad did so in no idle mood. Old York had a long history of commerce and battle and statesmanship. But her name and fame, which made that history, were built upon those of a still older and more venerable city which stood there before her. Long before her walls were built, or her cathedral began to grow to the sky, ancient walls, now long dust, stood there, and a city which also gave rise to a mighty city.

That mother was Roman York—Eburacum: and the daughter-city was Constantinople.

Eburacum was first built on the river flats during the reign of those rulers who ever since have been a pattern for magistrates and kings—the Roman emperors Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius. It was a small, an almost unknown fortress when it began. When Marcus Aurelius, having fought the foes of his country, governed his realm and written his books, died, it was not much larger.

Let us watch the events which made her the starting point from which the builder of Constantinople set out —events which first gave to Eburacum the name and fame that men afterwards carried to build a modern Constantinople in the west.

Mankind progresses in a series of reactions. The reaction from Marcus Aurelius was violent to a degree as tremendous as his virtues. His son was by far the most sensational of his works. Commodus was a tall, handsome, athletic man, with a loathing for all the things his father had loved, and a passion for all those that his father had despised. He loved the fierceness of wild beasts, the strength of men, the nakedness of women, the scent of blood—he loved almost anything that was not like Marcus Aurelius. He was even persuaded to take a benevolent interest in Christianity—a vulgar religion of which his father disapproved. Can we blame him? He had received one of those careful educations which are more dangerous than none.

The career of Commodus is one of the most scarlet scandals of antiquity. Our shocked amazement at the sensational particulars may, however, be somewhat tempered when we ask ourselves whether their lurid colour has received any assistance from human art. Few of us will be conscious of very great surprise when we learn that more than one party had an interest in damaging the reputation of Commodus. The son of Marcus Aurelius was nothing like the monster depicted by his foes. He would probably have attracted attention in any age as a distinguished Buck or Corinthian; but he had the misfortune to be entangled in a political contest from which both his person and his repute emerged a wreck.

The Roman emperors, from Nerva to Marcus Aurelius, represented a compromise between the army and the senate. The battle which had raged during the reign of Tiberius was suspended, but not terminated. Throughout the reign of Marcus this compromise had been dying. With the accession of Commodus the compromise was dead. A new generation had arisen which had forgotten the civil wars of Galba, Otho, Vitellius and Vespasian, and all that those wars had meant. Men were once more ready to try for their extreme claims.

Commodus himself was not a co-opted emperor. He ruled by hereditary right as the son of Marcus, accepted by the senate and the army. His very person was a revolution. When it became evident that he was little likely to have a son, and still less likely to co-opt a successor acceptable to the senate, the imperial succession, for the first time since the end of Nero’s reign, was thrown open to doubt and intrigue. Long before the death of Commodus the protagonists were preparing to struggle for the throne as soon as his light should be.

Commodus was not an easy emperor to dethrone. He was a popular fellow who never did any of those things which alienate the common people. He was capable of fighting his weight in men—and was only too happy to do so. It was difficult to find a woman who would betray him. In the earlier days of his reign he was no nervous tyrant fidgeting about personal danger. The lost secretary of the rebel Avidius Cassius was run to earth, after having lain in concealment for years, and was captured with his papers upon him. The young emperor showed generosity and good feeling by refusing to follow up the case. He burned the correspondence unread, considerably to the relief of many persons in Rome. The answer to this gesture was the knife of a man who sprang at him out of a dark corner, crying: "The senate sends you this!”. The attempt failed; but it set going the wheels of war and destiny.

Although investigation failed to reveal any direct complicity on the part of the senate, and indeed proved that his sister Lucilla had armed the assassin, Commodus evidently did not think that these facts exhausted the case. It is difficult to see what Lucilla had to gain, and what her motives were; and Commodus looked further for the full truth.

The delators—who had not been employed on political cases since the days of Domitian—were accordingly set to work: and the historians began to enter in their diaries the usual improbabilities concerning the gentle senators of beautiful character and perfect innocence, who were unexpectedly arrested by the brutal myrmidons of the young emperor... The Praetorian prefect, Perennis, began a policy of excluding the senatorial class from military commands. The senate was powerful enough to force the downfall and death not only of Perennis, but of his successor Cleander. A second attempt, of a very curious nature, was made to assassinate Commodus. The assassins, men of the Rhine army, were to assemble secretly at Rome during the festival of Cybele... This attempt, too, miscarried. Some one “blew the gaff” at the last moment. The third attempt succeeded.

Commodus had a shrewd idea that his immediate entourage was being tampered with, but the persons really implicated he was not able to discover. They proved to be his mistress Marcia, Eclectus his chamberlain, and Lastus, the new Praetorian prefect. They did not dare to give the athletic young emperor a chance for his life.

Marcia drugged him; and he was then strangled by a professional wrestler brought in for the task. The body was removed without anyone else in the palace being the wiser. The Praetorian prefect, who seems to have been the leading spirit, proceeded to report to Publius Helvius Pertinax, a senator. Pertinax convoked the senate, and informed it that he had been accepted by the army. The senate joyfully confirmed him in his new rank.

The murder of Commodus is one of the determining events in history. It was the beginning of a process of action and reaction which, as we shall see, almost involved the running-down and stopping of that immense machine which we call the Roman empire. And that it was the work of the senate is fairly sure. According to the emperor Julian, Pertinax was accessory to the murder; and although Julian is by no means an impeccable historian, he may be allowed, on such a point, to speak with a certain amount of authority. The murder of Commodus was a senatorial coup d’état... The army certainly thought so... All the efforts of Pertinax to make his government popular and acceptable were fruitless. Eighty-six days later he was assassinated by the men of the Praetorian guard.

The events which followed are famous. So little had the Praetorians any concerted plan of their own, or any considered programme, that as a last resort they put the throne up for sale and sold it to an able man named Didius Julianus. The Rhine, the Syrian and the Illyrian armies at once moved to suppress this proceeding. After a little disorder, Septimius Severus, the Illyrian commander, was placed upon the throne of Augustus.

There is not much doubt about the political significance of Septimius Severus. He was the nominee of the army, a military emperor, who came with a mandate to avenge Commodus and to recover control of the empire. In his person, and under his government, the compromise with the senate was utterly destroyed. Thinking to grasp at power, the senate had lost even that which it had.

Septimius Severus was an extraordinarily able man, but the government instituted by him and his sons possessed one or two defects fatal to its permanency. He had not sufficiently thought out the problem of the succession, or at all events he could not grapple with it, and his sons were not able to make good the lack. Hence, the new military rule began to disintegrate as soon as it was formed. So great was the moral impress left by Septimius himself—the last Roman of the earlier age—that his mere prestige was enough to uphold, for a few years, two strange Syrian youths who claimed the throne in virtue of an alleged connection with his family. At last the world could wait no longer. A vigorous soldier, Maximin, overthrew the confectionery Stoic emperor, Alexander Severus. With Maximin, the struggle between senate and principate reached its culmination; and before we proceed further we shall do well to examine what this contest was, why it occurred, and who were its leaders—for all these are matters important to have clearly in mind.

The power of the army and the power of the senate did not rest upon fancy or opinion, but upon the services which they were able respectively to render to the state. The relative value of these services varied a good deal from time to time. There had been periods— such as that following the battle of Magnesia in 192 B.C., or that following the death of Domitian—when the army had very little to give, and had occupied a back seat in the estimation of men. At other times the army had been the heart and soul of Rome, the protection of all her gifts to mankind, and the repository of her traditions. Such clear cut distinctions led to equivalent clear cut political conditions. The case was harder to deal with when bot the competing powers could put for­ward claims to importance... If they had been able so to arrange their affairs that they both wielded power alternately, as modern party governments do, in and out in turn, both of them might have done their work without injury to the other or to the state. But this was beyond their horizon. The Roman world had to accept one and to reject the other, in each case with a good deal more finality and absoluteness than was good for anyone concerned—or, perhaps, than anyone wished.

It ought to be needless to say that the army was certainly not able to impose its arbitrary will by the mere process of stamping with its boots and issuing its orders.

Senators controlled the formidable bloodless weapons which are employed in the market-place and the exchange. Both parties needed to appeal to the public opinion of the world at large. The supremacy of army or of senate was thus to be achieved only by demonstration of benefits to be conferred. What were these?

They fell into two categories. First, the economic maintenance and strengthening of the empire; secondly, the protection of the empire from external force. If the latter is at times a much more spectacular service, and liable to more dramatic publicity, the former has the advantage of coming much closer home. To the average Roman, the Rhine and the Danube were as remote as the Yang-tse-Kiang or the Orinoco are to us. Who cares about such places? But all men care to find their income increasing; all are interested in moving into a larger house, and patronizing a more expensive seat at the theatre. Economic benefits touch men on a very sensitive nerve. Hence the senate was far from being a delicate unprotected thing, obliged to suffer meekly the arrows of outrageous fortune. The soldier on the Rhine probably felt it to be a power of tremendous magnitude, straddling the world.

The senate represented that ancient tradition which had come down from the days of the city states: the tradition of the self-governing city with its trading, manufacturing, agricultural population, fighting tooth and nail for its own hand, the founder of the world’s arts, literature, laws and philosophy: in short, the senate stood for civilization. Unfortunately, civilization had proved a most unreliable thing: it could not be trusted alone. Its history had been the tale of one step after another in the process of disarming, cautioning, policing and controlling the lethal activities of the more civilized classes in the interests of the less. It was always undercutting the ground it stood upon, and kicking away the ladder on which it had climbed. This self-destructive tendency was a marked characteristic in its nature.

So far, it had noticeably failed to reach any permanent equilibrium. For short periods, such as the age of Pericles or that immediately preceding the Punic Wars, the statesman and the commercial man seemed to have found a modus vivendi. But it had turned restlessly away. Its activity had a streak of femininity in its savage egoism and its inconsequence, its proud defiance of common-sense, its charm and its exactingness. Sulla had tempered some of its enterprise by a little blood-letting. Augustus had calmed it with a considerably freer use of the scalpel. The civil wars of the Caesarean revolution had implied the downfall of the immense fortunes which had dominated the Roman world, and the subordination of the economic power to the political power. The imperial period ushered in a golden age for the small capitalist and farmer. The impulse then given to finance and commerce had covered the Roman world with flourishing towns and crowded ports. Civilization, education, intelligence and morals had all taken a good step forward.

But there are certain limits to the work that can be done by small capitalists and small farmers. Some forms of enterprise demand the huge capital and the large estate. Moreover, the small men, having duly earned their returns, quite naturally proceeded to eat, drink and be merry—or at least, to attend philosophic lectures. They had no scope for anything more. The emperors ensured that it should be an age of moderate fortunes and a certain genial enjoyment of life. No great schemes were formed; no big enterprises were floated. The days of the giants were over.

No point of human experience is clearer than the necessity of building up reserves against emergency. Such reserves can be built up in various ways. They can be packed away into human flesh and blood and training; they can be stored away in material form; they can be treasured as bullion, or kept in the more ethereal form of credit. But Roman civilization had not built up any adequate reserve at all. The human quality, originally matchless, had by degrees become inferior to that of the tribal north, whence its Dempseys and its Deerfoots were derived. Neither in bullion nor in credit had it much to show. The strain came before the death of Marcus Aurelius. During the wars upon the Danube and in the east, a certain inadequacy became visible in the economic resources of the world­state. Everything was bespoken. There was nothing that could be called upon without injuring the processes of daily life and common prosperity. The emperors tried the old and effective expedient of broadening the agricultural basis. They settled men upon waste land. Apparently something went wrong, for a few years later the land was still waste. The economic scheme would not expand.

We all know what the average boy does when his engine will not go. He makes it go. It is not surprising that the emperors did likewise. They proceeded to make the economic scheme expand. At any rate, they taxed it just as if it had duly expanded when told to.

Economic systems respond very sensitively to taxation. The Roman capitalist and landlord objected, upon general principles, to the ruinous expenses he had to meet. To pass them on to the consumer only partially met the problem. He had already, in all likelihood, passed on to the consumer all that the unfortunate brute would bear. Further burdens merely broke his back and left the producer without a customer. As most men are both producers and consumers, the solution amounted to men mutually passing the burden along to one another. The only resource was to resist the new taxation.

It was for these reasons that slowly, from the reign of Marcus Aurelius onwards, the old struggle between the economic and the political power was renewed. The inability of the economic world to expand, and the growing burden of taxation it had to meet, were in the reign of Marcus intensified by a new trouble. Plague ravaged the empire: and we know by later experience how serious such an event can be. All these difficulties piled themselves upon the man of commerce and finance.

There were two aspects to the claims of the army: one was strictly military; the other was political. The army—that is, the empire—embodied the democratic tradition of Rome; the tradition of the small farmer and small trader, who demanded of government that kind of justice and administration which safeguards the small man against the big one. The empire, throughout its days, made a systematic point of checking the big man. There are limits to the process—not only limits of will and prudence, but limits of power and possibility. Nevertheless, whithersoever we turn we find the emperors and their administrators supporting the small farmer and business man, and receiving from them that support which made imperial rule indestructible.

This claim upon the support of the people at large was strengthened, from time to time, by the strictly military one. Augustus and Tiberius had made the Rhine frontier. Trajan and Hadrian had completed the Danube frontier and had made the world safe for Rome against the dangers of invasion by the tribally organized peoples of northern Europe. But just about the time when Commodus was murdered, and Septimius Severus reigned, and Maximin rose to power, something began to happen which made the wars of Tiberius and Trajan seem small and unimportant... The tide of ethnic migration from Asia, which has ebbed and flowed for thousands of years in a curiously regular pulsation, began to flow.

The educated Roman (like, until recently, everyone else too) was not prepared for any such event. He knew of no regular recurrence of these migrations; he had no reason to expect them; least of all was he forewarned of their possible immensity. His tradition only just spanned the period from the Scythian and Cimmerian wars to the Marcomannic war of Marcus Aurelius. He would have smiled at the notion of connecting fabulous legends of centaurs and Cimmeri with the military situation on the Danube. He would have found it hard to believe any theory about the regular recurrence of ethnic migration out of the pastoral regions. Yet such a theory was true. The Roman was feeling the first breath of what, when it came, was to be a tornado.

Against this new aggressive force the task of the Roman was to call up his reserves and to take the lead. He needed to do at once all those things which centuries afterwards were done by the Frankish emperor Charles the Great and the German king Henry the Fowler. He could not do them. He had not the money or the organization, and he hardly knew whither to turn to get either.

Although they had no knowledge of the full import of what was coming, the heads of the Roman army instinctively responded to the call of necessity. They demanded reorganization, reform and the bringing up to date of the old military machinery which had been created for purposes of a quite different nature. They might have had some difficulty in making this demand effective against the scepticism of men still less aware of the need for it: but at this point the political aspect of the army came to its help. The military chiefs could carry public opinion with them by raising some suitable, even if irrelevant, slogan. Translated into practice, this meant the murder of Alexander Severus, for until Alexander was gone, the necessary steps could not be taken.

Young Alexander was an admirable example of the ornamental or gingerbread Roman emperor. He might have been created by a committee of typical middle­class Romans who aimed at producing the Perfect Man. Educated by his strong-minded mother and his august aunt, he had no vices, and only the more decorous virtues. His private chapel contained a statuette of Abraham, as well as one of Apollo. He possessed, in fact, that beautiful spirit which is developed by a generous belief in everything. He illustrates the profound though natural error of the notion that amiability is the first, instead of the last, of the virtues. He was sincerely deplored by many who did not miss him in the least.

The new emperor Maximin had some of the less lovable characteristics of a Prussian drill sergeant. When he directed the senate to efface itself from the scene, the senators fell over one another in their haste to comply, and the less eager members of the illustrious body came to a regrettable and frequently abrupt end. It is no matter of surprise that the character of Maximin has been painted by the survivors in the darkest colours. He was, however, on the other hand, a man of unblemished character, and he certainly had a softer side to him. We might sum him up as a soldier quite in the tradition of Gaius Marius, with the same stern democratic temper, and the same large military ideas. He projected nothing less than the conquest of Germany right up to the shores of the Baltic. Under his administration the necessary military reforms were begun.

An attempt to assassinate Maximin was repressed with energy. The next answer of the senate came from a very fitting quarter—Africa, the province furthest removed from the danger of invasion. The two Gordians, who raised the revolt, were eminent examples of the Petticoat Man which grew up in the protected and slightly hot-house atmosphere of the Roman provinces: a sentimental, domestic, sensual atmosphere, heavy with a stuffy material prosperity. They formed an admirable dramatic foil to Maximin... She-men of this type are much less efficient than the hundred per cent feminine woman who can get her way from Samson. The local garrison of Africa suppressed the Gordians: and the senatorial party dropped a sympathetic tear over the sad fate of the twenty-two widows and sixty-six children of the younger Gordian, who had lost their breadwinner.

Promptly upon the death of the Gordians two men—emperors in name; republican consuls in spirit—were elected by the senate to take their place. The choice of Balbinus and Pupienus was by no means a bad one, but it provoked, in the populace of Rome, certain memories every whit as keen as those which persisted among the senators. If the republican era were to be restored, it should be completely restored. The mob proceeded to claim a share in the election by enforcing the choice of a nephew of the younger Gordian as Caesar.

Neither of the two emperors adopted young Gordian, and it remained a problem what status and power (if any) were in these circumstances possessed by a Caesar. Solution of these puzzles was postponed by the advance of Maximin from Sirmium to repress the whole amazing affair. He laid siege to Aquileia too early in the season. The morale of the troops suffered from the hardship. Exactly what happened is uncertain. Some say that Maximin was murdered by his men. Some say that he killed himself. In any case, killed he was.

Maximin’s army, without its leader, and without a candidate to take his place, surrendered to the victors. The senate’s triumph was unprecedented. The work of Caesar and his successors seemed to be reversed. The republic was restored; and had the senatorial party been equal to the emergency, it is quite conceivable that the restoration might have been permanent. Where it fumbled and lost control of the situation was in its undue haste. It proceeded to reduce taxation regardless of the purpose for which it had been imposed; and it went on to limit and tie up the power of the army by legislation. This was imprudent, and was far ahead of its mandate. Worse than this, individual senators, rendered over-confident by their victory, came to blows with the Praetorians. The gladiators and bruisers of the senatorial party besieged the Praetorian camp, broke the water-pipes, and attacked the garrison. Behind their defences, the professional soldiers held their own, and repulsed every effort to oust them... Peace, after desperate efforts, was patched up by Balbinus. It was not a cordial peace.

When the army of Maximin arrived in Rome, the views of the military party rapidly took definite form. As soon as the Praetorians were assured of support, they acted. Balbinus and Pupienus were separately murdered, and the senatorial counter-revolution was at an end.

The termination of the senatorial triumph did not provide the army with a new policy or a new leader. The Praetorians filled up the vacant throne by proclaiming young Gordian, who lasted a few years, as a stop­gap and fell to Philip, a soldier of the Persian wars. But a man of the Persian border was not what the empire needed. Philip fell in turn to Decius, a man—himself Illyrian by birth—put forward by the Illyrian army. By this time, however, the dissensions between the senate and the army had gone so far, and had wrought such mischief, that the whole position of the empire was in peril. Gothic invasions were growing more and more formidable. They threatened to destroy one of the rich and prosperous divisions of the empire, and to cut the Roman dominion into two dissevered halves. Decius, in these circumstances, represented a “move to the right.”

His programme was one of general reform. He revived the office of censor, allowed (or rather ordered) the senate to elect a censor whom it would accept, and projected a general overhaul of the whole machinery of taxation and administration. It was high time. What he would have accomplished remains unknown to us, for after achieving the celebrity of being the first Roman emperor who ever had to bolt before the barbarian, he won the yet greater fame of being the first whoever lost his life in battle against them. He was slain in battle against the Goths, and his body was never found. His successor, Gallus, was a nominee of the senate; and it is hardly surprising, though it may be grieving, to find that Gallus negotiated a peace which left the Goths all their loot and prisoners, fed them while the negotiations were proceeding, and paid them an annual tribute afterwards. As the terms were not observed on the Gothic side, even such a peace as this was useless. The disgusted governor of Pannonia thereupon assumed responsibility and the purple. He threw the Goths out of the Danubian provinces, and shared the tribute money among his own stout fellows. After slaying Gallus in a battle at Spoleto, he was overthrown by Valerian, the censor whom the senate had consented to trust. Valerian established a record exceeding even that of Decius. This elect of the senate was the first Roman emperor, and the only Roman emperor, whoever fell alive into the hands of foreign foes. He was (as we shall presently see) captured by the gratified Persians in the year a.d. 260.

The reign of Valerian was the lowest gulf into which Roman repute ever descended.

In spite of his misfortunes, Valerian was far from being a fool or an idler. Had he died before he became emperor, his fame would be secure as a man of brilliant parts and worldly success. His son Gallienus, whom he associated with himself as co-emperor, was an even more brilliant man, with something of the peculiar quality of Francois I: a soldier, a rake, a cynic, a poet, an orator, a gardener, a cook, an antiquarian, and a man capable of receiving pleasure from conversations with the philosopher Plotinus—which is a good deal more than most of us can boast of. The father and the son were of parts as good as any two such men who ever sat upon the imperial throne.

But the disaster that was overtaking Rome was no respecter of brilliant parts. Valerian’s reign was not three years old before the Goths overran Dacia north of the Danube, and that famous conquest of Trajan vanished from its place on the map of the Roman empire. A year later, the Franks launched their attack upon the Rhine frontier. Gallienus took the Rhine command, having under him an assistant of remarkable ability, one Postumus. The same year the Alamanni, the successors of Marbod’s Suevi, carried the attack eastward along the upper Danube, and the Persians came up to Antioch. The Persians retired, to come again; but the Frankish raiders had a wilder and stranger history. Unable to get home through the lines that Postumus had drawn along the Rhine, they pressed on south, living by the strong hand on one of the richest and loveliest countries in the world. Coming to Spain, they fought and caroused their way from the Pyrenees to Ceuta, and then got ships, and continued the good work in Africa. Incidentally, they destroyed the Spanish tin trade, with the result that the Cornish tin mines were reopened, to the great increase of British prosperity. They had twelve years of it; but the glorious epic has not come down to us, for none of them survived to bring it home. Among the world’s best buccaneering stories this tale of the first Franks takes a high place.

Amid the wild anarchy that was now the Roman empire, Valerian and Gallienus set out with amazing courage to restore order and civilization. Two men can seldom have confronted a more hopeless task. Valerian started for the east to deal with the Persian menace, while Gallienus made his headquarters on the upper Danube, whence he could superintend the whole range of the northern frontier. This scheme of defence was wrecked when Postumus decided to take the charge of the western provinces into his own hands. Postumus set up as emperor at Treves, and for years to come ruled Britain, Gaul and Spain. At the same time one Ingenuus set up independently upon the lower Danube —and the realm of Gallienus was unexpectedly shortened to Italy, Africa, and Greece. One result was that Britain, Gaul and Spain were secured. Postumus was a capital ruler, and looked well after them.

The cheerful cynicism of Gallienus was no doubt a help to him when the world was crumbling about his ears. Although the positions of Postumus and Ingenuus were highly irregular, they did hold their ground; but the first effect was to divert the whole stream of invasion upon Gallienus. The Alamanni threw their force upon him. With his Italian army he made his “retreat from Mons” over the Alps and down into Italy, fighting as he went. He retreated almost to the gates of Rome before his chance came, and he turned, advanced, fought his battle of the Marne near Milan, and drove the invad­ers back across the Danube. He maintained an optimistic outlook even when the news came that his father was a prisoner in the hands of the Persians. His optimism was adversely commented upon in some quarters.

Who can blame these critics? The disasters which had already happened were child’s play to all that was to come. The angel of judgment poured out the vial of his wrath with exhaustive completeness. The loss of the west, the revolt of Illyria, and the devastation of northern Italy were followed by general disorder in Sicily and something resembling civil war in Alexandria, besides rebellion in Asia Minor. Posterity would have forgiven Gallienus if he had jumped into the Tiber. It has found it harder to forgive him because when things were at their worst he merely sent for another drink and went on fighting. The Persians, having captured Vale­rian, advanced as far as Caesarea, and only retired be­cause they found the country uninteresting. But the greatest event of all was the great raid of the Goths.

The defence of the Rhine frontier by Postumus had not been more efficient than the defence of the Danube by Ingenuus; but while the action of Postumus had no effects beyond his own province, that of Ingenuus set going a surprising chain of events. Fended off from the Danube, the Goths turned their attention further east, and occupied the Tauric Chersonese—the land which nowadays is the Crimea. Ships and pilots were available, and so, probably, was reliable information upon the subject of geography. After sacking the rich Asiatic city of Trapezus, the Goths made a test of the straits that led into the Mediterranean.

A highly successful expedition induced them to return in the following year with strong forces. Though defeated by the local troops in a sea-fight, the Goths made their way through the straits and nearly took Thessalonica. Gallienus gave hasty orders for the instant repair throughout Greece of the ancient fortifications which for several centuries had been mouldering happily away into obsolescence. Before very much could be done, the Goths spread themselves throughout the peninsula. They were surprised at Athens by some enterprising Greeks. Claudius, afterwards the emperor, headed off and captured several parties who were at­tempting to return home across the Danube. Gallienus himself arrived with troops. Having collected as much as they could carry of everything that struck their fancy, the Goths sailed back again through the straits, and arrived at their starting point.

There was now hardly any corner of the Roman dominions, no matter how remote or how protected from the blasts of ordinary adversity, which had not felt the fire and sword of savage foes. The raid of the Goths into Greece put the final touch to the horrible picture. Countries as peaceful and as unaccustomed to violence as our own modern homes had been swept by the Franks, the Alamanni, the Goths and the Persians, or by civil dissension hardly less ferocious. The end of the world seemed to be at hand. Terrifying prodigies warned men of the evil yet to come. Famine stalked abroad, and with famine, starvation, and with starvation pestilence. The material injury done was catastrophic; but perhaps still worse was the damage done to the spiritual fabric of credit and confidence upon which industry is ultimately built. Money collapsed as we have seen the German mark and the Russian rouble collapse. Almost at a stroke, with terrifying suddenness and unexpectedness, the civilized world was plunged to the lips in the barbarism it had well-nigh forgotten.

Such was the reign of Gallienus. If that cheerful cynic had no other virtue, he had at least the gift of boundless hope. When matters were at their worst, he acted as though all were well. He abated no jot or tittle of right from the imperial sovereignty. When, after fighting and intriguing for fifteen years, the greatest optimist in history fell to the missile of an unknown hand outside Milan, he named, before he died, a successor—M. Aurelius Claudius.

Whatsoever secret history may conceivably have lain behind the nomination of Claudius, it was a turning point in the tide of events. He was not a brilliant man; it is doubtful if he was even clever. He had few personal gifts, but he had that peculiar thing, the kingly mind. He had just that elusive and indefinable combination of qualities which will make men act in unison.

Gallienus, the son of a nominee of the senate, had been gradually forced by the pressure of events into an anti-senatorial policy. He had made the defence of the empire and the preservation of its unity the aim of his life. In doing so, he adopted the policy of the army. Under his government the old opposition between army and senate had taken the form of a complete exclusion of the old senatorial class from military employment. He had changed the army into a guild far more exclusive than it ever had been before. These were some of the reasons for that quite peculiar hatred of Gallienus which the senatorial party always showed. The disasters of his reign were scarcely his fault. Something much more than the enterprise and ability of a single man was needed to defend the empire from external invasion and inward disruption. New organization and new plans were necessary, suited to the new era; and it would take more than one man’s life to elaborate these. Money was wanted; and this was where the shoe pinched the worst. The accession of Claudius allowed the senate to surrender with a good grace. It expressed its delight in his manly virtues and solid worth.

The brief reign of Claudius was singularly crowded with events for a man so stolid and prudent. He was just in time to meet and defeat the great coalition of northern nations which broke upon the Roman frontier in the year of his accession. He beat the Alamanni and their allies near Lake Garda. Proceeding into Illyria, he swept the Goths out of the peninsula. He died of the plague which was ravaging the starving and ruined empire. But before he died he nominated a successor, L. Domitius Aurelianus, whom the army obediently proceeded to elect and to force (if neces­sary) upon the empire. The senate had backed a rival, a brother of Claudius, but hastened to submit.

Aurelian was a peasant by birth, and a particularly tough specimen of the Illyrian breed. Claudius had reigned only two years; Aurelian reigned only four and three-quarters—but every week was full of important events. In that brief time Aurelian suppressed the Alamanni, imposed order on the northern frontiers, recovered the east, put down the troubles in Egypt, received the surrender of Gaul, and restored the empire outwardly to its normal state. He was a hard man with no feelings save those dictated by expedience: a disci­plinarian whose word was law. He might have lived many years if he had not frightened a dishonest secretary. He was assassinated near Byzantium, in the year a.d. 275.

It was almost at once recognized that the murder of Aurelian was a mistake—even an irregularity. The murderers apologized, and explained that they had been misled. The result was that the army had no candidate ready. An interregnum of some six months followed, while army and senate watched one another.

Aurelian had been highly obnoxious to the senate, who had been at daggers drawn with him for a good part of his reign. He was too obviously the candidate of the army. Yet things were not now as they had been. Faced now by the polite request of the army to select an acceptable successor, the senate could not make up its mind. It contained, apparently, no one passionately desirous of power. Not a single senator, burning with prophetic zeal, pressed forward to serve his country. This was strange. The military habit of murdering one’s predecessor was at any rate testimony to a keen interest in politics. At length the senate elected M. Claudius Tacitus, a venerable old gentleman of seventy-five. Six months of campaigning in Asia Minor were enough for Tacitus. He died of worry and hard work at Tyana. His brother Florianus somewhat irregularly appointed himself his successor. The senate seemed to have nothing very decided to say upon the subject, but the unfortunate army sent a wild appeal to Probus, a popular officer, who at once answered the call. He arrived to find that the grateful army had done away with Florianus, and now proceeded to clap the crown upon his own head.

Probus, like Aurelian, was an Illyrian and a realist. He had no particular desire to be emperor. Life had already given him all the substantial rewards she can shower upon a brilliant career; and the imperial sovranty only meant more work and responsibility, without more pleasure. But he accepted the dignity thus thrust upon him. His policy was to respect the authority and tradition of the senate; and the senate was delighted with a man who was ready to do all the work and leave it all the credit.

The reign and the death of Probus were very similar to those of Aurelian. Like Aurelian, he spent his days in incessant activity in every part of the empire. Like Aurelian, he was successful in all that he began. His most important contribution to the future lay outside war and administration. Long after his death he continued to rule the Roman world in the persons of men whose feet he had first set upon the road to success. He was that greatest of men—a judge of other men. We shall soon meet with their names—Carus, Diocletian, Maximian, Constantius and Galerius. These were the amazing General Staff which Probus picked.

And he died like Aurelian. He was too strict a disciplinarian, and he was slain in a sudden mutiny. The mutineers regretted their act as soon as it was done.

And now a new and remarkable figure enters the arena; a dry, grim, shabby, bald-headed old wolf of a man, who notified the senate, with indifference, that he had been elected emperor, and it could do what it liked about it. With a few murmurs, it proceeded to do nothing. Carus reveals in his actions that new ideas were growing in the minds of the more intelligent officers. The days were over when, for lack of a policy, the army was ready to give the senate its chance. Carus created his two sons "Caesars,” and gave the eldest, Carinus, the government of the western provinces of the empire. The younger, Numerian, accompanied his father to the east. Carus apparently intended—for the plan was never carried out—to create a Caesar for the west and a Caesar for the east, over whom the Augustus should exercise a final authority. Had he lived, he might have tackled the whole thorny question of the succession—and much else. The need was crying.

The reign of Carus, though successful, was short. He died during his eastern campaign, and was at once succeeded by the two Caesars, Carinus and Numerian. Exactly what arrangement they would or could have made between them with regard to the empire cannot now be guessed, for stronger hands pushed them aside.

On the march home from Persia, rumours began to circulate through the Roman army. At last the truth came to light. Numerian was dead, and Arrius Aper, the Praetorian prefect, had for some time been issuing fictitious orders in his name. Aper was swiftly brought to justice. He was charged before an assembly of the army with the murder of Numerian, and was cut down before he had made his defence.

His accuser and slayer was Diocletian.

 

CHAPTER II

DIOCLETIAN

 

But who was Diocletian? That he was an accident, or that he was totally unconnected with all that went before, it is hard to believe. His entry upon the stage has all the air of being the entry of the star player. After this and that forerunner has busied himself in keeping warm the Roman imperial throne, and has spoken a short part that seems to have been learned by rote—suddenly enters this man, with stern authentic words; and with a shock we realize that here at length is the master.

Master of what? ... It is not easy to say. He had some power which was not his obvious and official power. He was commander of the imperial Household Guards—the Domestici. This post did not give him officially the contact with and control over the imperial service which the Praetorian prefect possessed. Arrius Aper had counted upon his rank to give him the reversion of the imperial throne. All went for nothing? Though he was of a lower grade and a lower office, Diocletian had an influence over men which made his path easy. He may have been the head of some Mithraistic order. He was tired of seeing his delegates strut their little hour. He took openly the control which he had for long past exercised in secret. The world was not long in realizing the difference.

Before Diocletian could regard himself as settled in power he had to remove the surviving son of Carus. Young Carinus had no intention of submitting meekly. All the material advantages of numbers and resources were in his hands. After a winter of negotiations, plans and intrigues, the two rivals met in Illyria, where the river Morawa falls into the Danube. Carinus all but won the battle. The army of Diocletian was already beaten when Carinus was stabbed by one of his own officers: by which deed the course of history was changed.

The battle of Margus extinguished the last trace of opposition to Diocletian. His first actions were significant. He proscribed no one. The officers of Carinus were welcomed. It may have been the gentle benevolence of the new emperor which inspired this mood; but it may no less have been the approval of a master satisfied with the service he has received.

With the accession of Diocletian the Roman world emerged from the night of disaster and disorder. He represented a definite policy of reform and reconstruction, which he put into force by the imperial authority. The economic power had done nothing. The political power accordingly took the reins. A subtle transformation was already passing over it. In the person of Diocletian it was renewing a dazzling youth.

There was appropriateness in this; for Diocletian had a personality which in some of its qualities recalled with strange distinctness the first, the great Augustus— far though in others it might diverge from that classic pattern. His parents had been slaves in the household of a prosperous Roman senator named Anulinus; and his father rose to be a freedman and the family secretary. The future emperor himself had no haughtier name than that which he derived from the town in Illyricum where his mother was born—Doclia. Young Docles, as he grew in ambition, became Diodes, and at last Diocletianus.

As might be inferred from the occupation of his father, Diocletian was, if not precisely of scholarly temperament, at any rate distinguished by some of those more subtle intellectual qualities which are unpopular with rough and robust men. Discussion and persuasion were his methods. He disliked violence and usually avoided responsibility for its use. He possessed naturally that polish of manner and decorum of conduct which some men need to assume as a mask that is always slipping off. He had many of the instincts of the shop-walker. It was his mission in life to conduct his customers with ceremony and in the most suitable ways to the departments they needed.

The work of Diocletian was cut out for him. He was thirty-eight years old, at the height of his vital energy; by his portraits a plain, small-featured man with a close­cropped head and a mild expression. We meet with the type often enough in daily life—usually fair, and usually well-fleshed, and rather pale of complexion. His first action, that spring, after the battle of Margus, was to clean up on the Danube, where he found himself. In virtue of his campaign against raiding tribes­men from over the river he assumed the imposing title of Germanicus Maximus. Thus early he rubbed one fact well into the consciousness of the Roman world—that it now had an exceedingly great and mighty emperor, and the sooner it realized that fact, the better.

This attitude on Diocletian’s part was for the benefit of the man in the street. He was not, in private life, quite so exceedingly great and mighty as he induced the latter to believe. He had not been in office six months before he began to develop the theme which was to be his most remarkable contribution to the theory of imperial monarchy. By giving his friend Maximian the status of Caesar, he took the first step towards transforming the monarchy into a board of emperors.

There had been Caesars before, ever since the days of Lucius Aelius, and it was not at first sight evident that the new dignity would be more than that which Aelius had held. But a year after the battle of Margus the difference began to grow visible. Not only was Maximian an amazingly different man—a fierce, active, virile fellow of irrepressible energy and abounding hope—but he was now created Augustus, and was taken into full and equal association as a partner emperor. They called themselves “Jovius” and “Herculius.” Diocletian was “Jovius” and Maximian was “Herculius.” Above all the other features of this step shone its surprising mingling of humility and confidence. Diocletian was quite sure that no man single-handed could govern the empire. He had the faith and the self-assurance, in the teeth of history, to share his throne with another man. ... If he had no other title to fame, he deserves immortality for that.

Before this book, is finished, the reader will freely and honourably acquit Maximian of any of the more narrow-minded virtues. Never at any time did he qualify for wings. But he played the game with Diocletian as honestly and as squarely as if he had not been the in­tolerant, ambitious man he was. Not only could Diocletian share a throne, but—a much more wonderful Maximian thing to do—he could even hypnotize his partner into playing fair.

His object in making this arrangement was to secure for himself some amount of peace and leisure in which to think out plans and policies, while Maximian shouldered the burden of activity upon the frontiers.

Reduced to its briefest terms, the problem before him was that of defending the empire at a cost within the ability of the empire to bear. Neither then nor since has any one seriously suggested that the task could have been avoided. If it were impossible to make the defence adequate at a reasonable cost, then nothing was left but to retire from the contest and to surrender all hope of maintaining civilization against the barbarian. The whole trend of the tale so far seemed to indicate that there was no reason for doubt. Civilization, as such, is richer than barbarism, and has infinitely greater resources. It has nothing to fear from a struggle. At least, it has nothing to fear from its foes. It may have something to fear from itself, and the folly and ignorance of its supporters. But Diocletian could take up the work secure in one certitude: it was a work which could be carried to practical success, if men at large so desired.

His solution was a mobile central reserve or striking force. Little by little the legions of Augustus had degenerated into territorial regiments recruited from the provinces which they garrisoned. They had become, therefore, very local in their interests and composition. Being chiefly recruited from the small land-owners and lease-holders of the frontier regions, they were growing to be limited by the peasant’s social outlook as well as by his local interests. They lacked some of that coherence and unity which, through their common membership of Italian urban communities, the legions of the late republic had possessed. Any advantage in the provincial patriotism of the legions in Diocletian’s day was counterbalanced by the fact that to concentrate large forces against invasion meant stripping one frontier to supply another; and the time had come when, with Persians on the Syrian border, Goths on the Danube, Franks and Alamanni on the Rhine and revolt in Mauretania, this was no longer possible. All the frontiers must be held; and a mobile reserve, to strike where needed, was the cheapest and most effective expedient. Such a reserve could, furthermore, be given just that unity, common training, common outlook, common opinion, which the old Augustan army had possessed. It would be an imperial army free from local interests or class prejudices—the freer, the better. Like the emperor himself, it would think of the good of the whole; it would watch the main trend, the large lines.

The Imperial Reserve Force of Diocletian involved something like doubling the army; and this in turn meant effective steps for finding the money. The reaction of this idea of the Imperial Reserve upon the imperial office itself was peculiar and noteworthy. A fresh circle of men, inspired by new ideas, began to surround the emperor. It was no longer quite so necessary for him to canvass the good will of the old provincial legions. Something of the seclusion which began to mark his person, the difficulty of gaining access to him, the awful majesty of his presence, arose from the very practical need of guarding him from angry men who did not like the new system. A great deal too many of Diocletian’s predecessors—Probus and Aurelian among them—had been victims of the assassin’s blade. The only way to preserve him from illegitimate pressure—or even to give him freedom of judgment unhampered by undue persuasion and argument—was to insulate him from the public at large. It is probable that Diocletian himself was conscious that his judgment might suffer if disturbed by undue persuasion. He knew the art himself. Hence were built up the first courses of that wall of etiquette and ceremonial which ultimately came to surround the sacred person of Augustus. The first Augustus, sitting in his comfortable old clothes in his study at the top of the house, might—had he known—have pitied the gorgeous array of his successor. But then his own taxation had been light.

The new imperial idea had another consequence. Diocletian seems to have felt that even the city of Rome itself unduly localized the spiritual Rome, the world-state, the sacred empire. As an Illyrian, not, perhaps, educated quite up to the standards which would have satisfied Cicero, or even Quintillian, he had no very great interest in Rome. Like Athens, Rome was a memento of past glories rather than an embodiment of present powers. He never lived in the city of Caesar and Augustus. When Maximian shared power with him, Diocletian took the eastern provinces under his own particular care, and settled at Nicomedia. Maximian, whose principal task was to watch the Rhine frontier, made Milan his headquarters. The distinction between Italy and the provinces was abolished, and with it the privileged position of Rome. From these measures of Diocletian we may date the day when Rome finally ceased to be a conquering Italian city ruling an empire which she had won. She became now one city among the many which constituted the world state. Her career as a city-state was definitely ended. Rome submitted to the discipline which for five hundred years past she had imposed, for their good, on the people of the Mediterranean.

The need of very high war taxation made it necessary in fact to impose upon the empire a discipline such as it had never before endured. Diocletian proceeded to tighten the bonds of civil obedience. The old imperial organization which had plunged into the turmoil of the reign of Gallienus emerged, under Diocletian’s hand, strangely changed in pattern and colouring.

The secret of the transformation lay in the fact that the old urban commercial life which, since the days of the Greek and Phoenician adventurers, had been the heart and soul of civilization, was dying. With the denarius down to a small fraction of its value, and prices soaring, and gold vanished from circulation, it had become almost impossible to collect taxes in money— and quite impossible to collect the larger proportion change of them in that form. The disappearance of the great financial corporations, and all that was involved in the collapse of commerce, made it impracticable to defer taxation by means of a loan. One form or another of loan, giving the taxpayer respite until he had found his feet, might have changed the course of history; but no power any longer existed capable of lending the money or the credit.

With such a problem to solve, Diocletian’s first step was the natural one of abolishing all privilege and all unnecessary exceptions. The whole empire had to fare alike. Saving a few cases indicated by particular expedience or ancient sentiment, he reorganized the empire with uniform system. There were no longer imperial and senatorial provinces. All were imperial. These were now grouped together in larger units called Dioceses, each governed by a vicar. The dioceses in turn were grouped into four great divisions, according to the natural geographical indications by which the empire fell into the Britanno-Gallic group, the Italo-African, the Illyrian, and the Asiatic. Four such groups seemed to imply four emperors. And this was very nearly Diocletian’s plan. The four great divisions were further grouped in two pairs, each under an Augustus. Each of the two Augusti then chose, and formally adopted, a successor and lieutenant, called a Caesar, who in due time should step into his shoes. A Roman of the old time, who had seen the Roman dominion struggle into existence in a hundred different ways, would have opened his eyes very wide at this symmetry and uniformity. Most natural objects, from alga: to empires, have a somewhat irregular growth. Only now and then in human history do the occasion and the man so come together that these great symmetrical schemes are possible. The instinct of most men is to fear that such system as this is a Birkenhead Drill— the grace and discipline amid which a state goes down with all on board.

Whether it were to be so in this case, time would try.

The system of grouping which Diocletian thus imposed upon the empire he duplicated from top to bottom. Every given area was at once an area of military command and an area of civil government. The military and civil authorities had, officially at least, little or no connection with one another, and their relationship was principally through the central government. The task of the military hierarchy was to defend the empire. The task of the civil hierarchy was to administer the law and assess and collect the taxes. Some such distinction between the military and the civil sides of life had been growing steadily for generations. Diocletian ratified and rationalized it.

He fulfilled more than one purpose by so doing. He governed the empire through men who had qualified themselves for the task; not by wealthy amateurs whose claims to omniscience were demonstrated at the public cost. And he built firm and effective barriers against military revolt. The men and the money would never again, as long as his system endured, be wielded by the same hands. Those two powers, whose conjunction had been so formidable, could now, in separation, be controlled by a small group of men who possessed the legal authority.

This symmetrical system was not, however, merely ornamental. It had a practical objective—it was an oiled and effective engine for collecting and dealing with taxes which were paid in kind. The old system had been impossible for such a task. The nature of these taxes and the mode of assessment employed illustrate several facts about Diocletian and his age. Perhaps he had come to the front just for the very reason that he actually was close in touch by birth and tradition with the country life, and understood to the full that natural agricultural economy which was now the standard economy. His friends and his allies likewise were most of them peasant-bred men. We distinctly see that we are in a country era. The city and the market and the banker’s office are fading; barn and rickyard and store­house are becoming all in all.

Diocletian invented or applied several remarkable expedients for the purpose of running an empire upon peasant economy. It is perhaps more probable that he applied ideas which he had learnt from some other source, than that he invented them. This source was most likely the east—those countries which once, long ago, had been part of the Persian empire, and which today we know as Turkey, Syria and Egypt. His own interests had always been eastern, as we can see from his choice of the eastern provinces for his own government, and his selection of an Asiatic town—Nicomedia—as his seat. Asia had long been a peasant country. Even though it had been urbanized by the Greeks, it tended to slip back into a world of fields and vineyards and spaces and silence and seasonal activities. The power and influence of the Persian had receded before the town-dwelling commercial Greek; but if it were a ques­tion of organizing an empire of peasants, the Persian had much to say, and long practical experience to go upon.

Diocletian took one year’s food for a soldier as his unit: the grain, wine, meat, oil and salt necessary to his keep for twelve months. This was called an annona. An officer, according to his rank, was paid several annonae. The materials were collected from the tax-payer and distributed to the soldier in the due proportion. As the requirements of the army were not every year the same, the emperor every year fixed the total amount that would have to be raised. This proceeding was called an Indiction.

A complete survey of the empire, revised every five years, formed the basis on which these taxes were assessed. Not the acreage but the productive value of the land was the thing taxed. The peasant was thus not obliged to obtain money for his produce in a competitive market, in order to be able to pay his tax. He paid with what he grew. This was a producer’s paradise. It is a comment upon the innate wickedness of the human heart that even so the producer did not seem to want to pay any taxes.

Every five years, however, the army received a bonus in cash. The money for this was found by the senatorial and commercial classes, and it was characteristic of the age that the necessity for paying cash was felt as a particular hardship. The taxpayer made more noise about these money taxes than about all the taxes in kind.

Some time after Diocletian’s reign, every fifteen years became counted a cycle of indictions, and years were dated by their position in the cycle. And even today, many centuries later, we need only to look into our almanack to discover that the year in which these lines are penned is the thirteenth of its indiction—so much a thing of our own modern era is the work of Diocletian.

Tradition has been strangely capricious and unreasonable in identifying the friends and the enemies of mankind. It is certain that among those who rank with the bitter taskmasters of humanity the name of Diocletian stands fairly high. And yet few men can have spent less upon that mere personal luxury which is so offensive to those who have to foot the bill. He kept no harem. He was a respectably married man with a family undistinguished by any scandals. He did not drink—though Maximian did. All the money that was ground out by this wondrous mill of organization was spent upon the defence, the policing and the general government of the empire. The taxpayer certainly received value for his payments. Not in the times of Diocletian did the Goths foray into the heart of the empire, and, from among the ruins of Athens, make philosophical disquisitions upon the disadvantages of civilization. Men might plough and reap in peace while G. Aurelius Valerius Diocletianus watched the course of the state.

It was certainly Persian custom which Diocletian introduced into the Roman world; though that ancient and famous race of soldiers, sportsmen and poets might claim that what is Persian could hardly be called either soft or unmanly. The cold and proud Augustus might wear his old clothes. The slave-born Diocletian felt the need of facing a hard world in silk and diamonds. He wore the diadem—a band of white silk embroidered with pearls. Caesar had died, not for wearing it, but for giving cause for a suspicion that he wished to wear it. Augustus had been the first among equals in the company of the wealthy and cultivated men who were his agents. He had joked with them, and had submitted to considerable freedom of speech in his turn. But the herculean ploughmen and bull-dozers who, wondrous with tabs and medals, entered the presence of Diocletian, were constrained to kneel and do obeisance to the majesty of the divine sovran. The court of the new Augustus had been only a somewhat magnified version of any educated Roman’s household. The court of Diocletian was disciplined like an army headquarters, with its etiquette and its regulations and its discipline, and its meticulous adherence to red tape. To get through the crowd and reach the presence of the emperor, a man needed uncommonly secure knowledge and prompt address. No one could do it without a preliminary initiation into the details of procedure. The seclusion which guarded Diocletian was no affair of chance.

We should do Diocletian an injustice if we took too seriously the imperial window-dressing which he designed to overawe the senate and impress the man in the street. Even if he did borrow a little from the Persian, it was with no oriental motives. He was a Roman and a realist; his motives were psychological. The old shirt-sleeved monarchy of Rome had had serious disadvantages. It had been too casual; and all that Augustus and his successors could do had failed to get rid of the atmosphere of the improvised and the adventurous. The “Log Cabin to White House” principle needs revision when it leads to congestion of the traffic at Washington.

Diocletian merely proposed a little selection of the candidates, and a little decorum in approaching the person of Augustus. It was a misfortune that his prescription proved rather too complicated to be workable. We may guess that the etiquette which ultimately came to surround the sacred person was not always intended for the benefit of the latter. But nevertheless some change was necessary. The reigns of Valerian and Gallienus had proved that. More respect was wanted; and Diocletian depended upon one great law of human nature—to wit, that decorum and discipline often enough create the respect which they seem to involve.

The absolute nature of this new monarchy is often exaggerated—at any rate, by implication. In actual practice the emperor was very little, if at all, more absolute than formerly he had been. The quality of despotic authority was more in ceremonial and in words than in facts. Diocletian had enforced obedience and even reverence for the dignity of the head of the state; but he had not established any new power either of legislation or of administration. The senate continued to sit, and to perform its customary services of discussion and advice. If it failed in this respect, the reason is to be found more in the absence of the emperors from Rome, and their absorption in special work, than in any change of custom. In after years, two or three reigns later, we begin to see that the position of the senate had not greatly suffered. The change was rather in its members. Senators were no longer exclusively of the old type, men of the city and the exchange, but more and more men of the great provincial estates, semi-feudal landlords, ex­soldiers and ex-ministers, who were of the imperial party. The old classical senator, with his elaborate pagan culture, was indeed not extinct; but the new booted and baronial genus was growing in numbers.

Diocletian increased rather than diminished the checks upon imperial autocracy. His consistorium, a council which resembled the Privy Council of an English king, or a Cabinet Council, was a much more effective organization than the old consilium from which it sprang. It was called a "consistorium” because the members stood in the presence of the sacred emperor instead of sitting; but this was the end of its servile and dependent characteristics. In its operation it was a genuine council. Neither the emperor nor his chief ministers acted with arbitrary despotism. The consistorium determined most of the important questions on grounds of public policy, and advised the emperor. Not even the Antonines had been more constitutional in their practice than this.

From all these signs and symptoms we may deduce that the task of administering the Roman dominion was a growing task, and the machinery was also growing in extent and complexity. Diocletian perhaps began more than he completed. He started ideas rather than gave them their finished and final form. He started ideas of systematic and scientific government which were a good deal in advance of his age—if that be any crime. Not all of them managed to maintain their ground. But taking them all together, he made probably the greatest contribution any single man ever made to the science of practical government. His inventions, for many a century to come, enabled other and often smaller men to grapple with tasks that might otherwise have been too great for their powers.

While this new organization of the empire was in course of conception and execution, Maximian took in hand the immediate business which needed a man of action. He left for Gaul a few weeks after he had been invested with the full imperial authority of Augustus. He was needed; and he was the right man for the task. In more recent times he might have enjoyed a successful career as a Cape Horn skipper. Wheresoever orders needed to be given in a loud and peremptory voice, and obedience promptly enforced, Maximian was at home.

Gaul was in a serious state. The Alamanni and the Burgundi had broken the frontier lines, and the whole country was in chaos. Maximian arrived at Mainz and at once began organizing a better condition of affairs. We have already noticed that famous breakthrough of the Franks thirty years before, in the reign of Gallienus; when, unable to get home again, the raiders wandered on through Gaul, through Spain, and over the sea to Africa. Their deeds had the first result of destroying the productivity and the trade of the Spanish mines, which for centuries had represented the largest mining interests in the empire. In consequence it became profitable to re-open the British tin mines, and while the empire was plunged to the lips in economic dis­aster, Britain entered upon a flourishing period of prosperity.

Most things have their compensations and their counterchecks. The increasing wealth of Britain at­tracted attention among the inhabitants of the Low Countries. The Frisians and their neighbours were developing the sailing-ship to the point at which, by construction and size and sailing power, it could make the North Sea passages more easily and cheaply than ever before. They were, and always had been, keen traders. To divert some of the produce of the re-opened British mines to Frisian markets was no doubt a very profitable speculation, in no way damaged by the possibility of diverting a mixed assortment of other articles at the same time. From the year 275 onwards, therefore, a series of piratical descents on the British coast began. We know them as the “Saxon Raids,” and no doubt they were mostly conducted by seamen of Saxon tribes; but they were in all probability inspired and financed from Frisia. They had been proceeding for eleven years when Maximian took up his command in Gaul.

As bad as the Alamanni and the Saxons were the plundering bands which were wandering over the face of the country. The Gaul to which Maximian came was in something of the same state as France after the Hundred Years’ War. Ruined men, despairing of any good from work or from conventional means of subsistence, went about in parties pillaging and wresting a living from their fellows. By degrees the disorder spread over Gaul, and a large part of the population took up a somewhat indefinite revolutionary attitude, and contemplated, but did not exactly obey, a ramshackle revolutionary organization that was more a dramatic gesture than a purposed intention.

Maximian promptly cleared the Rhineland of invaders, and chased back into Germany any that were slow in their movements. Revolution, the hardest thing in the world to repress when it is real, is the easiest when unreal. A few hangings and floggings had an electrical effect upon the Bagaudx. They melted like snow. Maximian stamped out disorder and saw that the social and political machinery was set going again. His vigorous hand soon cleared away the jungle of confusion which fifty years of civil war and German invasion had left. He could not undo what had been done; but at any rate he could rough-hew the work of the future for more delicate hands to shape. He had hardly completed these urgent tasks when the British problem assumed a much more serious form, and gave rise to events which will profoundly influence the story told in this book.

With the revolt of Carausius, Britain enters upon the stage of world-politics, and begins first to play a part in determining the future of civilization.

Carausius was what we should call a Belgian by birth—a Menapian from that land between the Lys and the North Sea in which Bruges and Ostend and Dunkirk now stand. Like many another Roman soldier he was a self-made man. He had risen by his own ability as a seaman to the command of the Roman squadron which had its headquarters at Boulogne. His task was to hunt Saxon raiders; a task not altogether unlike that which, some sixteen centuries later, Q boats and mystery ships undertook from the same ports. Carausius was not untouched by the spirit of his age and country. The reports made to Maximian were highly peculiar. Carausius, they said, had a habit of allowing the Saxons to leave harbour unmolested. On their homeward voyage, heavy-laden, he intercepted them. The prizes were then divided amongst Carausius and his crews, who were prospering on the stolen cargoes of Saxon pirates. Maximian found that the prosperity at any rate was a proved fact; and with some impetuosity he signed a warrant for the arrest and execution of Carausius.

A little reflection might have counselled a gentler approach. Carausius was, after all, the man in possession, and he was a popular commander. As soon as he knew that the warrant was issued, he transferred his headquarters across the Channel, and invited the British to support him.

Whether the charges against Carausius were true, we have no means of judging. They may have been the slanders of interested rivals; or they may have had just enough truth to make them true in the letter without being true in the spirit. What a hot-head like Maximian thought is not evidence. He was the sort of man who would hang Carausius first and investigate the charges against him afterwards. Since he failed to hang Carausius first, he does not seem to have felt it necessary to investigate the charges at all. The army in Britain displayed a similar spirit. It took a roseate view of the worth of a man who shared his profits without grudging, and it did not trouble to consider pedantic arguments concerning the ethics of the case. Carausius notified the emperors that he too, by solemn election, was imperator, Augustus, and divine.

The loss of Britain was a serious matter. The British contribution to the imperial revenue was alone enough to give the country importance, while its strategic significance gave it meaning deeper yet. Worse even than this was the fact that the whole tin trade was now diverted to the Frisian markets. Maximian had a fresh fleet ready by the following April. That it was badly defeated we may be fairly sure from the profound silence of the authorities. The position of Carausius was henceforth assured. He not only held Britain, but retained Boulogne as a continental bridgehead, through which he could, at will, pour troops into Gaul.

In these circumstances it was necessary to parley. The position of Maximian on the Rhine was quite sufficiently precarious as it was, without having British legions landed in his rear. Diocletian accepted Carausius (not, we may be sure, very willingly) as a third Augustus, and the schism was patched up.

The British emperor showed good will and patriotic good sense, as well as a singularly acute perception of the situation in which he found himself. He remained a Roman emperor testifying to the unity of the empire, and claiming no more independent sovranty than Maximian claimed. As long as he was left alone, he did very little to which Diocletian could object. But he took good care to make himself a very dangerous person to meddle with.

The policy of Carausius was to keep Britain an integral part of the empire, while at the same time basing his power on a close friendship with the Franks. The latter were ready to court the alliance of a man who could make a great difference to their position. Many entered his service, and were trained in Roman methods of war. From Carausius they may have learnt something much more important than this—to wit, the strategical significance of Britain, and its relation to the Rhine frontier. He showed them that Britain could be held against invasion, and that it could turn the Roman frontier by means of its command of the short sea­passage. It was no common man who could perceive and utilize these truths.

If they had not before been visible to Diocletian and Maximian, they became so now. It was necessary to bring Britain back into closer relations with the empire, and so to secure the island that by no means whatsoever could it be used as an instrument for loosening Roman control over the Rhineland. The man who was chosen to undertake this task was M. Flavius Constantius. Five years after the rise of Carausius, Diocletian was ready. He was prepared to complete his plans for the pacification and reorganization of the empire.

 

 

CHAPTER III

CONSTANTIUS, CONSTANTINE AND THE BEAST

 

The identity of Constantius is bound up with the last of the great changes for which the name of Diocletian is famous. By the co-optation of two sub-emperors, or Caesars, who joined the imperial board as the adopted sons and intended successors of the two Augusti, the number of the directorate was brought up to four. Carausius, as an intruder, did not count. The Caesars were not intended to possess legislative or financial power; they had no consistorium, and exercised no control over the civil service. They were junior or appren­tice emperors, learning their profession as they went along; and perhaps one of the chief purposes they were intended to fulfil was that of military lieutenants to the senior emperors. Their future prospects were not intended to be hazy or problematical. Diocletian drew up a truly original scheme for the new imperial board. When the Augusti died or retired, they were to give place to the Caesars, whose vacated posts were to be filled by fresh co-optations. This automatic promotion was an integral part of the conception of the quadruple directorate. At the end of ten years the situation was to be reviewed and, if necessary, revised.

The two men first chosen to fill the new posts were M. Flavius Valerius Constantius and G. Galerius Valerius Maximianus. Constantius, who became Caesar to old Maximian Herculius, had for some time been Praetorian prefect to the latter. Of Galerius, who became Caesar to Diocletian, we shall shortly hear more. The adopted sons, divorcing their wives, obediently married the daughters of their new fathers. By this proceeding they all became, in theory, a united and happy family. The wife whom Constantius thus divorced was Helena. Their son Constantine was twenty years old.

The marriage of Constantius with Helena presented difficulties and obscurities to the historians who first recorded his life; and they have not grown clearer with the passage of time. We may dismiss as due to the malice of partisan enmity the allegation that she was his mistress. The enthusiastic assertion of the British that she was the daughter of King Coel of Colchester may be put down to the contrary cause of partisan admiration. It is usual to accept the account given by an anonymous—but nearly contemporary—writer, that Constantine was born at Naissus, the great city on the high road from Byzantium to the Danube.

Later Greek tradition said that the son of Helena was born at Drepanum near Nicomedia, where Constantius stayed at her father’s inn during an official journey to Persia. The Greek accounts concur that Helena was a person of obscure birth, though the exact weight we allow to the idea that she was the daughter of an inn­keeper depends upon our view of inns—especially of Roman inns. Constantius himself would in all probability have failed to achieve distinction as a fashionable hairdresser. He shared with his friends and colleagues certain peculiarities of the Illyrian peasant—a powerful, stout-built, rough and red-faced man, with a shaggy white beard in his advanced age, fierce and fatherly. His virtues were not especially ornamental—but they wore well.

Constantius, as we shall see, was by the universal testi­mony of all who knew him a man of kindly and good- humoured ways; by the testimony of his own actions he was cool, keen and steady rather than clever—the kind of man who succeeds in governmental service. Some of the striking differences between him and his son may have been due to Helena. Constantine was tall and handsome, with an impetus and rapidity such as his father never showed; he knew how to wear clothes, and he liked wearing them—and he was cleverer and per­haps a good deal less shrewd than old Constantius. And in all this, possibly, we have a vague outline of the handsome chambermaid at the inn, upon whom red-faced Constantius smiled.

The divorce of Helena was not allowed to work out to the detriment of her son. Jovius, at some uncertain date, but probably about this time, took Constantine into his own immediate household. The biographer who wrote the life of Constantine compares him with Moses at the court of Pharaoh; from which we may conclude that he was conscious of the important nature of the experience he gained, but did not feel very much at home. Precisely where lay the incompatibility we are not told. There was always a peculiar sympathy between father and son, and a likeness in their general views, which suggests that Constantine spent his early years in close companionship with his father, and that he now perceived with unusual clearness the divergence between the principles in which he had himself been brought up, and those prevalent at Nicomedia. If so, he was wise enough to hold his tongue.

Jovius evidently liked to have the young man with him. The feeling which had impelled him to make those marriage alliances between the colleagues now made him happy to know that he had the company of his friends’ children. It made everything safer and more satisfactory. In the meantime he had the training of the young man whose education by him and whose relation to Constantius would in due time constitute a powerful double qualification for the Caesarship. He would have given Maxentius, the son of old Herculius, similar privileges—but Maxentius was more wayward and restless. The service of Constantine was unbroken by any coldness with the emperor. It lasted some twelve years; and perhaps the excellencies and the faults which Constantine showed in later years illuminate the character of the imperial household in which he served that long apprenticeship.

Constantius had been created Caesar in March. The sphere of activity destined for him was composed of Britain and Gaul, while Italy, Africa and Spain remained in the hands of Maximian. Constantius took over the work of dealing with the situation on the Rhine and the North Sea.

His first step was to capture Carausius’ bridge-head at Boulogne. Great preparations to this end must have been made before he took over the command. During the summer he invested the town and blockaded the port by throwing a mole across the entrance to the harbour. Apparently Carausius was taken: by surprise, for he allowed the chief part of his fleet to be shut into the harbour, and the fall of the town, after a determined resistance, involved the capture of the original source of the British emperor’s power.

The fall of Boulogne was promptly followed by an advance across the Scheldt northwards against the Franks. It was now impossible for Carausius to take any steps to their aid. He could only look on while Constantius occupied the Frankish and Frisian lands between the Meuse and the Rhine mouth, the ancient Germania Inferior which had been the scene of the exploits of Drusus, but had slipped out of Roman control during the Anarchy. How important a part the Franks and Frisians had played in the events of the last few years, how insignificant a part the Saxons, can be seen in the change brought about by these measures. The British tin had now no market. The piratic raids had stopped with the accession of Carausius and the establishment of a Frisian monopoly in the British trade. Now raids and monopoly both alike came to an end, and the British merchants might amuse themselves, if they could afford to do so, by accumulating stocks for the future benefit of the Gallic middlemen.

Constantius spent the next few years in reorganizing the province as the new Germania Secunda which now begins to appear in the provincial lists. Meanwhile, he began the building of a fleet. His work could be made permanent only by the reconquest of Britain. The hardest part was yet to come.

The effects of Constantius’ work were nowhere better appreciated than in Britain. Almost the first visible result was the fall of Carausius. The mining rights of the empire were imperial crown property, and since the power of Carausius had been built up on the profits of the tin trade, its present paralysis meant practically his bankruptcy. He was assassinated by a conspiracy at whose head was his minister Allectus, and the latter stepped into his shoes.

What was in the meantime happening elsewhere had a very real effect upon the course of events in Britain. While Constantius was engaged in Gaul, Diocletian himself prepared to take an active part in the east. He left Nicomedia in March, 195. The trouble he had to deal with was of precisely the same kind that had confronted Constantius in Gaul. In the one case it had been the changes in the tin trade: in the other it was the decline and almost total extinction of the Indian trade. The connection between the two lay in the fact that tin was one of the few cargoes which India would accept in exchange for goods. Neither gold nor tin was available: and Alexandria and the Egyptian towns, as well as the African towns all the way along to Spain, were in a ferment of the kind, irrepressible and irrational, which follows economic disaster. People had all the strength that is given by honest indignation, and all the misplaced energy that is created by entire ignorance of how to remedy the trouble. Two very insignificant persons, Achilleus and Julian, were elected at Alexandria and Carthage respectively. They had neither any real power of maintaining themselves nor any policy to guide them if they had. Nothing useful could be done with them except repress them.

Diocletian invested Alexandria in July. The vast city, the greatest and most populous in the world, justified its repute for fierceness and turbulence. For more than eight months it held out against Jovius and all the might of the empire. He cut off the water, and finally took Alexandria by storm. Busiris and Coptos were also subjected to severe punitive measures. The latter town was the chief market for Indian trade. One of the actions of Diocletian which has become famous illustrates the trouble that was eating at the heart of Egypt. He collected all the alchemical books treating of the transmutation of metals, and burnt them. Egypt was starved for gold and, not being able to acquire it in the normal way, had been conducting experiments in its manufacture.

Alexandria fell in early spring. Leaving Maximian to deal with the situation at Carthage and in western Africa, Diocletian, towards April, moved up to Antioch.

Maximian spent three years in Africa, where he was successful in suppressing Julian, repelling the invasion of the desert tribes, and settling the country. The success of Diocletian was slower to come. He had brought Galerius down from the Danube to take command against the Persians. Able though he was, Galerius suffered from a constitutional disinclination to adapt himself to circumstances. He was trapped by the Persian horse-archers, exactly as Crassus had been, and his army was cut up with heavy loss. What followed was famous. Diocletian had no use for unsuccessful subordinates. When he went to meet the returning army, he signalized his displeasure by allowing the choleric Galerius to walk before his carriage for more than a mile on foot. Galerius obeyed; but perhaps he did not forget.

Such measures were effective in persuading Galerius that obstacles should be surmounted, not defied. His second Persian campaign did far more justice to the military abilities which had lifted him to success. Advancing through Armenia, he was intercepted and brought to issue by the full force of the Persian king. Galerius stampeded the Persian horse by night; and the defeat which in consequence overwhelmed the Persian army induced the King of Kings to negotiate. Diocletian, all benign, arrived at Nisibis to admire the victory of Galerius and to control his temper.

His presence was very necessary. Galerius showed a tendency to unjustifiable optimism which needed the guiding influence of a steadier mind. The Persian king was a skilful and vigorous statesman, who managed to spin out the negotiations until he had a new army behind him. He then flatly refused the most important of the demands Diocletian pressed upon him. He would not consent to accept Nisibis as the staple town for the Mesopotamian trade. He no doubt held the winning cards since in the decline of Egyptian prosperity, he controlled all the Indian land routes and therefore the whole of the remaining trade with India. The modera­tion which Diocletian was compelled to exercise, the emperor used to extract a spectacular success to cover his real failure. The Persian king was willing to concede territory rather than trading rights. Diocletian ob­tained the concession of five provinces. Such was the total upshot of the Persian campaign.

Constantine was with Diocletian during these events, and may have known much more about them than he ever told his biographer. It is easy to believe that he did not rise in the affections of Galerius; for while the latter was failing against the Persians and incurring the rebuke of Jovius, Constantius had been not only much more successful in re-opening the old trade channels of the west, but had effected the most spectacular coup of the age—the recovery of Britain.

If three years had elapsed since the occupation of Lower Germany, the interval had perhaps been designed for more purposes than the building of a fleet. It had allowed the treasury of Allectus to fall gradually lower, its replenishment to become gradually more unlikely, and his confidence to ebb in its company. From subsequent events, moreover, it seems likely that Allectus had to reduce his effective forces, from lack of means to pay them. His difficulty was that he did not know where Constantius intended to strike. To provide against all possible events, he stationed himself with a mobile striking force at London, whence he could move rapidly in any direction by military road. His fleet lay in the neighbourhood of the Isle of Wight—no doubt at Portus Magnus. Constantius commanded the Roman fleet at Boulogne.

The blow came from the Seine mouth. The prefect Asclepiodotus, setting sail with what proved to be the main Roman expedition, managed in thick weather to slip the British fleet, which was on the watch for him. He landed at one of the westerly road-heads—but at which one is not certainly known. As soon as he had the news, Allectus marched rapidly to find the enemy. So rapid was his march that he arrived exhausted and with depleted forces and was completely overthrown. His death laid Britain at the feet of Constantius. When the Caesar crossed from Boulogne, not a hand was raised in resistance. Agricultural Britain was indifferent to the fate of a rebellion which had been the private specu­lation of a few men interested in her mining industry.

By the recovery of Britain, Constantius was placed in effective possession of the whole of the territory over which he had been given legal authority. He pacified and reorganized all the Roman north-west, from the wall of Hadrian to the Alps. The traces of his work still survive. So deeply did he impress the imagination of the peoples he ruled that he became almost as famous a name as his son; “l’empereur Constant” was a tradition in the Middle Ages when the name of Galerius had perished, or had joined those of Judas and Nero. A rough and genial humanity was the charm that worked the trick. He had the wisdom which does not waste upon men the sentiment they do not want, but gives them that thing which above all others they do want—liberty to think their own thoughts and work in their own ways.

The reorganization which was begun by Constantius gave Britain nearly seventy years of renewed prosperity. To his period, and perhaps to his policy, if not to his actual execution, belongs the fortification of the "Saxon Shore,” from Brancaster in Norfolk to Portchester in Hampshire. This was the coast chiefly exposed to the Saxon raids. The new fortifications were no mere field works or stone-faced earthen banks, but were solid stone building, with walls ten to fourteen feet thick, bastioned for defence by mechanical artillery. Many of them can be seen to this day. Pevensey Castle, the citadel of old Roman Anderida, built to protect the iron mines, is almost complete. The western half of Richborough still stands on the edge of the low cliff that once was washed by the waters of Pegwell Bay, looking over towards Thanet.

These works were part of the general policy of reorganization and refortification which Diocletian and his colleagues put into execution along all the frontiers of the empire. The restoration of the Rhine frontier was the particular work of Constantius. After he had finished, it remained fast for many years. The Alamanni made two efforts to break the lines that were gradually excluding them from their old Tom Tiddler’s ground in Gaul. He beat them at Langres and at Windisch near Basle, and followed it up by a punitive expedition across the Rhine. The policy of the emperors, while it closed the frontier to armed enemies, accepted many peaceful immigrants, and they made a practice of set­tling their prisoners of war on vacant lands, especially in Gaul, where they became producers and potential sources of revenue.

That such a policy had become possible and profitable was due to more causes than one. The slave dealers who had followed the armies of Caesar to buy up the prisoners of war were no longer in business. Their customers had dwindled in numbers and decreased in wealth; and the amount of capital they could invest in slaves was now small. Agriculture in western and central Europe had for long been growing more and more a skilled labour which needed long training and close personal application. There was no room in it for an unlimited number of unskilled persons. And then, in recent years there had been considerable contraction in the amount of or­dinary produce raised for urban markets. From all these causes, it was a much better business proposition to settle prisoners of war upon land where they could support themselves. No one was going to do it for them. Settled, therefore, they were. Not all of them succeeded. Some of them, after trying and failing, once more came under the official notice of the government, with results embarrassing sometimes for one party and sometimes for the other.

Exactly how far the land and agricultural population of the empire in general, and of Gaul in particular, had suffered from the half century of anarchy, it is hard to say. It is probably safe to assume that with the restoration of the frontier and the reorganization of the provinces, the population of Gaul rapidly recovered its numbers. The new colonists are not likely to have obtained the longest-cultivated or most valuable land. Their agricultural knowledge perhaps stopped at the simpler forms of arable and stock farming. There is no reason to suppose that Gaul would have lain derelict without them. The truth is most likely that room was made for them by extension of cultivation. Certainly men like Constantius did not settle within the empire dangerous enemies whose presence was likely to be a menace to their neighbours.

Successful as the Board of Emperors had been in restoring government and the reign of law, in reorganizing the military frontiers and even the agricultural prosperity of the empire, it could not show quite such good results in the way of restored trade and credit. The very success of the government in basing its transactions upon a peasant economy and in giving prosperity to agriculture, tended to draw from the world a dull acquiescence in the existing situation. Money was still behaving in a fantastic manner. It was 2,1/4 per cent of its nominal value; that is to say, prices were about forty times what they had normally been. Jovius and Herculius, with all their virtues, were not the right men to tackle such a problem. Delicate persuasion from Jovius, and the most peremptory orders from Herculius, might be equally useless. It needed some gift which neither of them possessed.

Diocletian tried the methods which had been successful with agriculture. Finding that in spite of good harvests prices still rose, he issued for his own provinces a schedule of maximum prices and wages. His expedient may have had its use in preventing the unfair exploitation of his soldiers; and possibly this may have been the whole purpose it was intended to fulfil. The schedule lasted a few years and was forgotten. That it had no permanent effect upon the level of prices we may be quite sure. He also reformed the currency, and issued a true gold coinage. This may in the long run have been more successful in stabilizing prices; but even so, his triumphs in the sphere of finance were not brilliant.

Nineteen years had passed since the death of Numerian, when the reform and reorganization of the empire, the strengthening of her frontiers and the defeat of her enemies, were symbolized and signalized by the formal Triumph of Diocletian and Maximian. Along the route which Scipio and Caesar and Augustus and Aurelian had ridden, Diocletian and Maximian, the son of the clerk and the son of the peasant, now rode; and no one knew that it was to be for the last time.

The list of conquests for which they triumphed is curious and formidable. It makes no mention of the African Wars, but enumerates British, German, Sarmatian, Armenian, Caspian, Adiabenic, Median and Persian victories. Diocletian and his colleagues had needed practically to reconquer the empire which they had reorganized. They had faced a Britain far better armed and governed than the half-barbarous Britain which Claudius invaded; a Germany much more formidable than the old Germany which Drusus knew; a Persia stronger and more united than the Parthian power which had destroyed Crassus at Carrhae and defied many Roman armies. Their successes had been no mean or meagre victories. Even the Alexandria which Diocletian stormed, but for which he would not triumph, was a greater city than the one in which Caesar met Cleopatra. Most of all, their reorganization was a won­der to contemplate. No man before them had smoothed out the irregularities and varieties of the provinces, and subjected them to one uniform system.

Their work was to last; but it was to last under conditions so strange and unexpected that they themselves could not have foreseen them. Constantine, we need not doubt, rode in the procession—the last Roman Triumph. He, too, could not have foreseen the part he was to play in subjecting the empire to those new conditions—a revolution which would change its nature and transform its spirit.

Neither Constantius nor Galerius took part in the Triumph. The next winter, however, Galerius spent some time with Diocletian at Nicomedia.

His very presence at Nicomedia was a mystery which the subsequent centuries have done nothing to elucidate. On what errand he had the right to be there at all, why he should have chosen that time, and why he should have chosen a particular subject for discussion, no historian recorded. We shall be better prepared to form an opinion of our own upon these subjects if we first glance at Galerius himself, the man.

The Christian writer, Lactantius, attributes a great deal of the character of Galerius to his trans-Danubian origin. His forbears came from the lands which in later centuries produced Haynau and Suvaroff; and he shows us the original model from which those milder and more civilized copies were made. A stalwart man he was, of immense height and girth. His portraits show that slight, indefinable touch of the Mongol which hovers so elusively about some eastern Europeans—a parchment in his skin, a lankness and blackness in his hair, an expression in his mouth. He certainly had the Mongol touch in his temper. To some sorts of feeling he was entirely obtuse. He ruled by terrorism. Lactantius can hardly write his name. To him he is “The Beast”: a bully, a brute, a tyrant whom his servants feared and his soldiers hated. This is a portrait by an enemy: but the course of events seems to prove it tolerably true to life.

Why had he come to Nicomedia? And what was he discussing with Jovius? There were men near the person of Jovius who were prepared to pass the word quietly to their friends outside the gates. He had come to talk about the Christian religion.

The Christians were quite ready to believe that Galerius was inspired by a pure and disinterested hatred of their philosophy. But was he? He never showed any other sign of interest in any sort of philosophy. We shall be exercising prudence if in all that follows we bear in mind the existence of Constantius, and the prospect that when Jovius and Herculius resigned, he would be their most powerful and popular successor. The Beast might need to go round about very circumspectly to prevent this consummation; but he prepared to do so, and he began by talking about the Christian religion.

It was not very difficult for him to find a series of entirely impersonal and impartial arguments; and those which he could not think of himself, cunning brains among his counsellors could supply.

So far, the issues involved in the work of reorganiza­tion had been simple. They had involved non-controversial questions such as the repulse of invasions and the repression of disorder, the institution of new methods of local government, and new systems of collecting the revenue. If there were any need for argument, it was argument over facts. There had been no controversy over principles, or ideas. This was where Galerius started his new hare. He came to Nicomedia to tell Jovius that their work was not yet finished. Not all the foes of order and good government had been suppressed. He instanced, of course, the Christian Church.

It is interesting to reflect that there was a time when the Christian Church could be instanced as a foe of law and order, and an enemy of good government and social safety. From all that we can now make out, Jovius was not convinced, and did not welcome these views with enthusiasm. Even the Christian apologists, while denouncing him and predicting for him a warm and unpleasant future fate, admitted that he was dragged unwillingly into evil ways by the violence of the Beast.

But the arguments of Galerius, up to a point, were incontrovertible. There was no disputing the power of a party within the state which had no legal rights and no legal responsibility. In theory—or at any rate in principle—the Church had not even the right to exist. It was an illegal body, whose creed had only to be stated in order to demonstrate its unlawful nature. It acted as a corporation, though it was no corporation. It owned money and other chattels: it exercised power and influence: it was an alien and intrusive body, an imperium in imperio, counteracting the legal influence of properly constituted authorities, drawing away the obedience of citizens to a code of conduct and a scheme of ideas not endorsed by the government—imposing a law in supersession of the constitutionally valid law of the sovran state. It was a seditious body. It was a conspiracy, a treason and a revolution.

Jovius in vain expressed his conviction that the best plan was to let well alone, and to avoid unnecessary interference. He himself was surrounded by men of the Christian faith, and had little to complain of. But the case against the Church involved at least one argument which Diocletian could not avoid or abate. He had made the Divine Monarch the corner-stone of his new and reorganized empire. The Church was the one power in the world which very particularly, and on principle, declined to recognize the divinity of the monarch. She had never recognized it, but had from the very first made a point of denying it. Hence the Church was the one power which stood out against the whole scheme which Diocletian had brought to the verge of success. And the Church was a very powerful organization, with ramifications which spread throughout the empire. Outside the army it was by far the strongest single force in the Roman world.

Hunted from pillar to post by the tireless conversation of the Beast, the reluctant Diocletian was induced to refer the whole question to a Consistorium. The Beast had already taken steps to secure the necessary votes; he had no difficulty in getting his own way, and Diocletian was committed, against his better judgment, to the task of suppressing a force of whose origin and nature he had but an imperfect idea.

The resistance of Diocletian had the effect of directing the persecution along lines that were perhaps not all that Galerius wanted. The Beast wanted something that would stampede public opinion, confuse all the issues, and throw all reputations into the melting pot. He very nearly got it. Jovius, however, ensured that the procedure should be regular and legal, and should be aimed at cutting off the supply of recruits to the church rather than at extinguishing its present membership. His share in the arrangements was far more dan­gerous to the existence of the Church than all the sound and fury of Galerius.

On the twenty-third of February, a.d. 303, the church at Nicomedia was seized and demolished, and the Scriptures cast into the fire. It was the festival of the Terminalia, that ancient holyday when the peasants beat the bounds, and celebrated, with immemorial ritual, the division of the fields. By a strange irony this festival was selected for the beginning of a contest which ended the supremacy of the pagan religions.

The next day, the Christian faith was “proclaimed.” The edict was posted publicly at Nicomedia, in the presence of both emperors. It was instantly torn down by a Christian whom we know as Saint George, and who became in later ages the patron saint of England. What followed was a struggle of which we need not expect the events to be described by the sufferers with calm scientific impartiality. This much may be said for the government—or at any rate, for Diocletian—that no one seems to have been ill-treated who was willing to obey the law. Probably thousands—perhaps the vast majority—of Christians shrank from the contest and gave in: and these were unharmed. But proportionately bitter and savage was the wrestle which began between the government and the men who formed the heart and core of the church. The man George was roasted to death without any satisfactory apology being extracted from him.

Even though the Beast had failed to obtain all he wanted, he was successful at this point in hurling Jovius himself into the maëlstrom. Within a fortnight, fire twice broke out in the palace of Nicomedia. On the second occasion Diocletian’s own bed-chamber was involved. The chamberlains were examined; they were Christians, and by the new law they were liable to the torture. No incriminating admission could be got from them. Neither the lash nor the fire succeeded in forcing any confession. The bishop of Nicomedia—Athenius—was arrested, with numerous members of his church. Nothing could be discovered. Some were beheaded, some burnt; the prisons were crowded with suspects: and Galerius left in a hurry, swearing that his life was not safe from the Christians. But the Christians were convinced that he had fled from Nicomedia in order to escape investigation. He, and not the Christians, had caused the fires; and he had involved Jovius personally in deeds which, though done by process of law, were little likely to be forgotten or forgiven by a powerful party of his subjects.

The contest spread. Just before Easter, the edict of prohibition was issued in Syria; by June it had been published throughout the dominions of Maximian, and Constantius had an opportunity of perusing the document the fruits of which his son had just seen at Nicomedia. It was closely followed by a second edict, ordering the arrest of all Christian priests. The prisons were soon crowded. Espionage, arrest, torture and terrorism were the order of the day. Much of it was outwardly successful; but the timidity of hundreds of ordinary people was counteracted by the sensational martyrdoms of a few.

The spotlight was crowded with eager candidates for fame. Those men, consumed with zeal, who preferred with passion to face and suffer death rather than to abate one jot or tittle of their faith; those who saw the possibility of saving in one way the souls they had en­dangered in another; the difficult men who found even martyrdom easier than work; all these were prepared to suffer—and not by any means in silence. The death of the saints proceeded to the accompaniment of a torrent of protest, and a flood of impassioned rhetoric.

The reason why Christianity could command so many men and women who were willing to die for it is simple. It was much the most interesting feature of the day. It was indeed one of the few serious subjects on which it was possible to talk with perfect freedom and at unlimited length. Generally speaking, men will gravitate towards those things and ideas which give them excitement. In the Roman world, the average sensual man crowded the racing-ring and the theatre because there were the thrills to be got which his modern equivalent gets on the race-course or at the Pictures. That Roman world looked with growing apathy upon the cut and dried doings of its official pagan religions, with their formal gaiety, their standardized emotions, their bright unmeaningness. They did not even distribute gifts. Christianity offered a very different and far more interesting programme—real and violent emotions, flaming passion, hideous danger; actual racks and thumbscrews; genuine martyrs being burned at the stake. A religion which can offer these sensational attractions is sure of a large public. We may add to these that it distributed loaves and fishes freely, when there were any to give; and even when there were not, it promised righteous judgment and eternal life.

This year—a.d. 303—was the Vicennalia, the twentieth year of Diocletian’s reign. It was celebrated with great festivities at Rome. It afforded Jovius and Herculius an opportunity of meeting to discuss the subject of the church. Maximian was warmly in favour of the policy of Galerius. What Diocletian thought of his motives we cannot be sure; but it is fairly sure that he induced Maximian to swear an oath that he would resign his imperial rank at any time when Diocletian did so.

Among the subjects which they discussed may have been the attitude of Constantius, who had begun that peculiar policy of silence and pro-Christianity which he maintained to the end. The sympathies of Galerius were well known. He cultivated the old idols of the Roman populares—those heavenly twins, the Peasant and the Proletarian. Nothing would be more natural than for a rival to seek support among the classes touched by commercial traditions and Christian ideas: and this is exactly what Constantius did. The bishops recognized him as a friend, though they could not quote any definite words he had ever uttered to prove it.

Christianity had expanded and grown powerful in the towns of the Roman empire. It was a religion which, finding its first opportunity in the free communication and busy traffic of Mediterranean commerce, had gathered power in those centres where ideas circulated most freely, and where the enquiring spirit of the Greek mind most exercised its influence. Christianity had never hitherto been a peasant religion, although there were in it influences derived from the peasant life of nearer Asia which some day might enable it to appeal to an agricultural population. At this stage it drew most of its supporters from a world which manufactured and traded, and knew the use of money and the laws of finance.

That proverbial tendency of birds of a feather to flock together must not be forgotten. Seen from one point of view, the laws and commandments of Chris­tianity were only the laws of civilized social life, somewhat sublimated in an elaborately thought-out theology, and given a sanction in the will of an eternal and benevolent God. No statesman who saw them in this light would feel any enthusiasm for victimizing the holders of such ideas.

In accordance with an ancient tradition of humanity, the celebration of the Vicennalia saw all the prison doors thrown open wide. Murderers and thieves went free to cheer for Diocletian and Maximian. Bishops, priests, and others imprisoned for the deeper crime of Christianity, were interviewed before they were allowed to go. In their case, freedom was conditional. They must first sacrifice to the Lord and God Caesar Augustus. Governors had been notified that if a little suitable persuasion would induce the Christians to fulfil this requirement, it might be used. This was the “Third Edict.”

Throughout the summer, therefore, the battle raged. The prisons rapidly emptied of the weaker brethren; while the men who were prepared to endure to the end once more faced every form of bribery and terrorism that might induce them to sacrifice. The prison author­ities were not always particular. Sometimes humanity on the part of the magistrates, and sometimes orders from the Treasury, which was worried over the expense incurred, led to regrettable scenes in which Christians, violently protesting, were hauled into court, were declared to have satisfied the law, and were ejected (not always with perfect gentleness) by the police and military. The real die-hards returned, in a considerably battered state, to their dungeons, there to pray fervently until the next time came. And while these men held out, the government had not won.

Thirteen days before he was due to leave Rome, Diocletian, driven by some devil, abruptly left the city and began his journey home. Before he reached Ravenna he had developed a chill: and although his household carried him by slow and easy stages, he was, by the time he arrived at Nicomedia, a sick man. The Christians did not fail to underline the fact that with the beginning of the persecution, the luck of Diocletian had stopped. With the Third Edict, it crashed.

He was not seen again until, on the first of March, 304, he emerged from his retirement, weak and wasted, a man who had been touched by the finger of God, and whose active life was over.

Diocletian had always dated his reign from the day of the death of Carus in the year 283. Ten years later, he had co-opted the Caesars. The twentieth anniversary had passed, and he had not further reviewed his position. September 17, 304, was the twentieth anniversary of his election at Chalcedon. That day came; but still he had not reconsidered his position and showed no sign of doing so. Since the beginning of his illness an event had happened which made Diocletian less eager to loosen his hold on office. This event was the publication of Fourth Edict, at some time in March while he was still no more than convalescent. By this edict, the policy of Diocletian was reversed, and Christianity was suppressed under the penalty of death. Maximian was the person directly responsible for its promulgation.

Diocletian had now to face the fact that slowly but surely Galerius was obtaining a free hand and practical supremacy. The attempt to restrain him had failed. Jovius began to discern the cataract ahead.

Galerius arrived at Nicomedia. He had already extracted from Maximian a renewed promise to resign when Diocletian did so; and now he faced the latter. After a long and fruitless discussion, the veiled threat of force compelled Diocletian, a sick man, and now polit­ically isolated, to give way. The appearance of Galerius at Nicomedia was, indeed, a coup d’état. Not merely did he compel Diocletian to abdicate, but he gained for his own nominees the imperial positions that fell vacant.

His triumph was complete. Constantius, the person most nearly concerned, was far away, and was curiously silent.

The resignation of Diocletian and Maximian involved the promotion of Constantius and Galerius to the rank of Augusti. The plan had been that Maxentius, the son of Maximian, and Constantine, the son of Constantius, should in due time become the new Caesars. Galerius insisted that Maxentius was a man he could not work with: and to Constantine he simply objected. He wanted men who could be relied upon to carry out his policy. In response to the surprised enquiry of Jovius, he named the men he wanted: one of his officers, Severus, and his nephew, Maximin Daia. He adhered to these names in the face of protest; and to them Diocletian, solemnly washing his hands of all responsibility, consented.

Diocletian indeed had no choice: but he knew by now that his famous scheme for a Board of Emperors had not avoided the dangers of a disputed succession. The main problem still remained to be faced.

To the Christian church, the decision was a sentence of death.

They did not wait for September 17. On the first day of May, 305, Diocletian abdicated. The ceremony was formal and public. At a solemn assembly of the army outside Nicomedia, Diocletian gave his last public address.

He referred to his own ill-health, and to his need for rest. He resigned the empire into hands better able to grapple with the labours it involved. To his audience, the identity of the new Augusti and Caesars was a matter of course. Everyone knew beforehand the names he was about to read out. When, therefore, he proceeded to nominate Severus and Maximin Daia as the new Caesars, the assembly at first was merely puzzled. Some supposed that Constantine—who was actually standing at Diocletian’s elbow—must have received the new name of “Maximin” on his appointment. When Galerius pushed Constantine aside and presented to the Assembly a person who was to most of them an entire stranger, the surprise grew still deeper. No voice was raised in objection. Discussion was not part of the order of the day. But that fact was more dangerous to Galerius than to Constantine, for it is imprudent to surprise a large body of men who have no opportunity of answering back.

Having invested Maximin with his own imperial robe, Diocletian descended from the platform, simple Diocles again, and drove through the streets of Nicomedia on his way to Salona in his native Dalmatia. Men are often restored to health by the air in which they grew up; and Jovius was to spend many years yet in peaceful retirement.

At the same time Maximian, in Milan, having executed a similar act of resignation, retired to his villa in Lucania, leaving the new Caesar Severus in charge.

So the position stood, but not for long.

 

CHAPTER IV

THE START FROM YORK

 

Throughout the proceedings at Nicomedia, Constantius had remained silent. He could not, at the moment, effectively challenge the actions of Galerius; and the serious question indeed remained whether he himself, under any circumstances, would ever be able to do so. His own health was giving way. Galerius counted on this. For the moment the Beast occupied an absolutely triumphant position. Old Constantius would die before very long. Constantine was at the Court of Nicomedia, impotent for harm. As soon as Constantius died, Galerius would step into an unquestionable supremacy such as no emperor before him had ever held. The stakes were vast, and Galerius all but had his hand upon them. Could any power prevent him from success?

The first step was to disentangle Constantine. The tearful letters which Constantius began to address to Nicomedia, imploring that he might be allowed the comfort of his beloved child’s presence at his death-bed, the Beast treated with cheery contempt. Nothing was less likely than that he would allow Constantine to escape alive. Even as it was, great caution was necessary. One of those mishaps which sometimes occur to inconvenient persons might at any moment chance to Constantine. There are said to have been “accidents” in the hunting field. The future history of Europe hung upon a hair at Nicomedia in the days just after the resignation of Diocletian.

Since no open breach had happened between the two Augusti, Galerius could not give a point-blank refusal to repeated requests. It was necessary at least to return an outward and verbal consent to the departure of Constantine. Galerius gave it late in the evening, accompanying it with the necessary authority to set out. He then went to bed and proceeded to sleep over the question. Constantine would not start without reporting himself. The emperor could then, upon some ex­cuse, either revoke the permission or send word ahead along the route. He would not need to be too explicit. He had not yet made up his mind which of these courses to follow.

The next morning he was still undecided. After purposely remaining in his room until noon, he ultimately sent for Constantine.

What Galerius had decided to say to Constantine will never be known, for his officers explained that Constantine had walked straight out the previous evening, with the authority given him, and was now some fifteen hours ahead on the postal roads. The fury of Galerius was far from being unjustified. To his instant orders for pursuit, the reply was brought back that the roads had been cleared of post-horses. The Beast almost wept with rage. He had reason to do so before the tale was ended.

Most men, probably, with Galerius behind them, went fast. Constantine emerges into history as, like Dick Turpin, the hero of a famous ride to York, which began beyond the Bosphorus, crossed the Straits, threaded the mountains past Naissus to the Danube, made its way through descending Alpine passes, and finished over the great plains of Champagne and the territory of Picardy. They say he hamstrung the post-horses behind him at each relay, as he rode; and no doubt it was necessary to stop at nothing to get away safe from Nicomedia. But the chase must have been growing remote before he passed Hadrianople, and his ride through Naissus was through a home country. As soon as he was past the Illyrian frontier, he was in lands where his father’s writ ran without fail, and he could slacken his pace. Sixteen hundred and odd miles is no trifle for the most hardened rider; and the going had been varied. He rode into Boulogne just as his father was preparing to cross the Channel to Britain, and according to all the traditions, Constantius welcomed his handsome travel-stained son with emotion and joy.

The first point had been scored by Constantius. His hostage was safe out of the hands of the Beast, and secure among loyal and devoted men. Events might now march.

Constantius and Constantine had about a year together. While we cannot fix the date on which Constantine joined his father, we may reasonably conjecture that it was a month or two after the resignation of Diocletian. The months of June or July would fit the visit of Constantius to Britain. He was now growing old; and the east winds in Britain usually last into early June, and are not idly to be challenged by elderly men. The date cannot be much later, for his expedition took him into Caledonia, for which the middle months of summer are indicated. In autumn, apparently, he settled at that Caer Ebrauc which Roman pronunciation lengthened into Eburacum, and English clipped into York. There he tarried the winter through.

The vale of York today probably does not differ much, in its main aspects, from the land Constantius knew. It was so obviously adapted for an agricultural people, that from the earliest time it was cultivated from the Humber, if not up to the Tees, at any rate as far as the neighbourhood of Catterick. A man who rides down it, whether on horseback as then, or on a railway train today, can see its whole breadth, bounded between York the Hambleton Hills on the east, and on the west the fells which rise slowly to culminate in that gigantic knot at Hawes, whence so many rivers take their rise. This great vale of York, watered by the Ouse and the Derwent, has always been the dominating fact of the political geography of Middle Britain. In later times it was Edwin’s Saxon kingdom of Deira, Olaf Kuaran’s Danish kingdom of York, and Duke Richard’s English duchy, whence a new dynasty of kings arose; but in these early times it was the tribal land of the Brigantes, who occupied all the country, from the North Sea to the Irish Sea, up to the Wall. Brigantes was the caste name of the governing kindred. As for the people themselves, they were in all likelihood identical in type with those who now dwell there.

Isurium (Aidborough) was the original centre of the Brigantes. Some fifteen miles southeast the Romans built their own fortress; and there, under the protection of its walls, arose Eburacum. As far as advantages went, it might have continued to be the centre of government and administration as long as Britain endured. In agricultural wealth it was inferior to no other part of Britain. It touched, northward and westward, the lead-mines of Wolsingham Moor and of Swaledale, and the coal-mines of the Tyne Valley. On the south, it faced that estuary of the Humber into which fell not only Derwent and Ouse, and tributary Swale and Ure, but also Wharfe and Aire and Don and Trent, draining a good half of the richest central portion of Britain, and bearing its water-borne commerce. Hence Eburacum commanded the eastern water-gate of Britain, and the routes north, and south and west. It received by sea the German trade from the Rhine Valley, as against the Gallic connections of London and the south. When the first Roman governors built the northern road system, all the roads were laid in such a way that the city became the point of support for every other point in middle Britain. Military highways linked it with the frontier fortress of Carlisle on the Caledonian border, and that of Chester on the Cymric border, where rose- red Luguvallium looked over the Solway flats, and crimson Deva watched the hills of Mold. This was the strategic triangle which held middle Britain.

If we are to judge by the extent of the old Roman cemetery, the city of Eburacum must have been large. The fortified wall—of which one multangular tower and traces of the artillery platforms still survive—enclosed only the buildings of the military fortress, small in area compared with suburbs which spread across the river and along the main roads. The walls of mediaeval Chester were built exactly on the walls of Roman Deva, and of nearly the same though a softer and therefore a cheaper stone. But the walls of mediaeval York enclosed a very much greater area than those of Roman Eburacum. The southern and eastern walls of the Roman city were allowed to disappear, while the north and west walls were maintained and extended into the circuit of the mediaeval city. It is very pos­sible that the larger size of mediaeval York merely meant that the old Roman wall was extended to embrace the unfortified Roman suburbs. If traces of those suburbs have vanished, we may remember that even the buildings within the Roman wall, most of them very substantial, have disappeared, and that a thousand years of re-digging foundations and re-building houses in a prosperous city is not likely to leave much intact. If we think of the mediaeval wall of York as the limit of the Roman suburbs, we shall at least see why the cemeteries begin just outside those limits. Such was the Roman custom, at Rome as well as at York.

Eburacum was a colonia—that is to say, a self-governing city with the kind of city-government which originally had been arranged for colonies of Roman citizens. In the days of Constantius the word had become a technical term with a wider meaning. It still denoted a city corporation of Roman citizens—but they were very seldom men born in the city of Rome, or even descendants of such men. They were men of any and every part of Europe, citizens of the Roman empire; and whether a Roman citizen had been born in Britain or Syria or Morocco was politically of rather less importance than whether an American citizen of today was born in Maine or Montana. One place was as good as another, as far as that went.

The city corporation was organized on the model of the old Roman city-government. It consisted of two orders—on the one hand, those inhabitants who possessed a certain property qualification; on the other hand, the “plebs,” the peasants, artisans, tradesmen and members of authorized societies. Unskilled and low-skilled occupations were chiefly followed by slaves, who did not count. The higher or senatorial order, the decurions or curial class ("aidermen” as we might call them), were eligible for municipal office. Their qualification was not enormously or invidiously high. In the days of Constantius, seventeen acres of land, or a capital of less than eight hundred pounds (four thousand dollars American) were probably enough to place the proud candidate among the more distinguished section of humanity. He would not, it is true, be able to move in quite the same circles as the senatorial landlords in Italy or Spain whose yearly income topped the fifty or the hundred thousand; but the making of great fortunes demands time, and they had been at it longer in Spain and Italy. It gave them, at least, the status which enabled them to deal with one another on equal terms; and we need not doubt that the first call upon the profitable business which passed through the colonia was shared among the decurions, the duumvirs who were their chairmen, and the honorati who had passed through office.

 

Heavy liabilities adjusted the balance. The magistrates of a Roman city produced from their own private pockets the financial resources by which most of the city services were supplied. Their fellow-citizens did not expect them to study an undignified economy. As long as Roman civilization endured, public opinion smiled upon those local patriots whose pride in their city led them, whether in or out of office, to dip into their own purses for the benefit of others. When those rich men died out, the self-governing Roman city died out too.

Although the decurions of Eburacum—and for that matter, those of other British cities—probably left us accounts of their names, lives and work, in the hope that we might remember them with applause, nevertheless no record has survived. We know, however, a little about at least one of the local dignitaries of York. He was Marcus Verecundus Diogenes; not (presumably) a landowner, not a senator, not a Briton at all, but a Gaul from the middle Loire, who probably was one of the York representatives of the Gallic silvering and gilding industry. He bore the dignity of a Sevir Augustalis—a fraternity which kept alive the memory of the first and most famous Augustus, and ranked next in status to the decurions. Eburacum as a commercial centre might not class with Alexandria or Antioch, but its trade was nevertheless sufficient to attract men from other parts of the empire, and to give them, if not great fortunes, yet a reasonable prosperity and competence. The exquisite glass, which can still be seen in the York­shire Museum, with its wonderful colours and lovely shapes, came from southern Gaul, where the industry succeeded direct to that Carthaginian glass-making which derived from Tyre and Sidon. It also, no doubt, had its agents and representatives in Eburacum. The same is true of the pottery. The yellow-brown, highly glazed ware which is found in abundance was as good a quality of its kind as Britain was to know for many a century to come. Most artists would prefer it for colour and shape and texture to modern mould-made china. It came from Gaul, and needed its salesmen and depot managers in Eburacum.

How numerous and important were the foreign influences in Eburacum we can see from other evidence than this. One of the Gallic commercial agents, probably, was responsible for the altar to the Deo Arciacon that has puzzled archaeologists. The exact identity of that divinity, who was doubtless of distinguished consideration in his own locality, has never been established. Some have thought that he presided over the destinies of Artiaca, which nowadays is Arcis sur Aube in the region of the upper Seine: and that is no great way from Langres, where Constantius settled the Alamanni. But there were worships in Eburacum more recondite and strange than that of simple clod-hopping Arciacon from Arcis. There was a temple of Egyptian Serapis near the railway station. Not far away some one, when digging, turned up a little gold plaque, curiously inscribed with Gnostic letters, profoundly cabalistic and esoteric—no doubt concealing from the vulgar, under mysterious veils, some of those elementary moral truths which the vulgar never trouble about until hidden from them. Whosoever this Gnostic may have been, he was no simple or rustic person, and he came from much further afield than Arcis sur Aube.

A chapel of Mithras certainly existed at York. We might have expected as much from the military character of the city. The Asiatic cult of Mithras was probably more strongly represented in the army than any other. Where it differed from such formal, official cults as that of Augustus, which M. Verecundus Diogenes no doubt ably represented, was that Mithraism formed a thoroughly live and systematically organized religion, with a genuine fraternity and a symbolism all its own. It was a club and a benefit-society and a church with moral uplift and inspiring ideals. It probably appealed to soldiers more than the mother-worship of Serapis. The youth with the Phrygian cap, the Bull­slayer, is still familiar to us on the monuments and tomb-stones. His churches were called “Caves” in remembrance of the story of his life; and the blood-bath, the “Taurobolium,” which consummated the initiation into his mysteries, was a ceremony not suitable for old ladies or people with weak hearts. The stout aspirant, however, rose from it (in theory, at least) renovated, purified, and a perfected man.

The horrors—or at any rate the terrors—of the blood­bath of Mithraism must not give us exaggerated ideas concerning the character of those who dwelt in Roman York. They were in most respects as decorous, as evangelistic, even as sentimental, as any who dwell in York today. That a portrait of the reigning monarch decorated their living rooms we may assume without question. Possibly M. Verecundus Diogenes or one of his colleagues imported such articles in bulk. Nothing of the domestic architecture of Eburacum has survived. What the Pict and the Gael left, the wear and tear of centuries has destroyed by slower but even more effective means. York, like other British towns, was probably distinguished from the corresponding towns of the Continent by less density of building. That fondness for possessing a garden which is so marked a characteristic in the modern Briton seems already to have made its appearance. We possess one fairly complete example of a Roman town in Britain—Calleva Atrebatum. By the kind offices of its Irish visitors (though probably much against the will of its proprietors) it was left permanently uninhabited, and its ground plan survives for our inspection. It was what we nowadays call a Garden City; and although York was no doubt a busier centre, and less model in its arrangements, the same tendency probably marked it. For the most part its streets were lined with houses of the villa type, rather than with solid blocks of building.

What the villa type was, in Britain, can be judged by the remains of the country houses which are scattered plentifully over the land. Roman Britain had a style of building peculiarly its own—modified and adapted to suit its climate—charming, airy, red-tiled and rambling, built in wood and brick, more like certain kinds of modern American building than anything which followed it upon the same ground. They had mosaic floors, baths, and central heating by means of hot-air flues. Probably they had the plastered and painted walls which Roman houses usually possessed. A good deal of the charm of those old villas was due to their spread-eagle open building, which the pax Romana rendered possible. It was followed by over a thousand years of dark, cramped and fortified building from which the old spirit had utterly fled.

One thing taken with another, the York of that era probably needed to make very little apology to succeeding ages. Only within very recent years has European civilization regained the standard of material life which Eburacum could have shown in the days of Constantius: the planning, the building, the style—meant for the intercourse of merchants, officials and citizens—the central heating, the baths, the shops, the public buildings, the roads; the perhaps too conventional, too respectable citizens, with too much vague humanitarianism and tender ineffectualness. Some earlier Dempsey or Hackenschmidt from the north­western frontier may have stood, ponderously looking on, while the funeral procession passed, and may have seen in situ those stones which now we inspect in the Museum, with their singularly touching and domestic inscriptions, which tell us, among other things, that human affection, human loss, human pain were then, as they are now, things equally urgent and puzzling, and that in Roman Eburacum the questions were asked which still trouble humanity. The world—at York, as much as elsewhere—was eagerly awaiting an answer.

If we need to see what manner of man dwelt in the civil side of York in those days, let us cast our eyes upon that noble memorial stone of Julia Velva—whether Mrs. or Miss the inscription does not tell us. There, upon a couch of honour, lies Julia—a little battered, but perhaps, at the age of fifty, she was not so young as she had been. At the head of the couch sits the donor of the memorial, her heir, Aurelius Mercurialis. No rough Bohemian, no shaggy-trousered fellow from the frontier, this. Regard his carefully tutored whisker, his correct, well-tended beard, his perfect grooming. His toga is minutely shown—no doubt at his personal direction, and by his attendance at the stone-yard to superintend—folded in the demure knot which was the style of the really well-dressed man in the York of his age. A thoroughly civilized, conventional, elegant, sophisticated fellow, fully moralized; by his looks, he diligently read in his Marcus Aurelius, and understood that external events should be indifferent to the true philosopher—or at all events, that the true philosopher should try to be indifferent to them. He would have received us with courtesy, inwardly in silence noting that our toga was not correctly disposed.

Such were the men who were carried on the overhead charges of the fields of York and the Rhineland commerce. No doubt Aurelius Mercurialis himself, far from being an idler, attended to the business of estates which, originally Julia’s, became in time his own. He, too, was probably, like Julia, British in blood, descended from the Brigantian tribesmen who from time immemorial had possessed the land of Britannia Superior.

He may have been an honoratus in his time, classing with the past Lord Mayors of York: we do not know. He may have been duumvir, presiding over the senate of Eburacum as Camillus or Cicero presided over that of Rome. He was almost quite certainly decurio. Whether he was, or not, we may, when we try to imagine what these words meant, safely think of Aurelius Mercurialis with his precise grooming and his fashionable toga. Prosperity, safety, education and social order are the forces that breed such men. They are fine flowers grown in glass-houses. They were rendered possible, and fenced from adversity, by the legions. In Gaul, in Spain, and especially in Illyria, the contemporaries of Aurelius were suffering from depressed trade and the collapse of the currency. Aurelius himself was up to the present more fortunate. What was the look and guise of that other half of the Roman world—the military?

We need not look away from York itself to find some record of the military men who passed through it and dwelt in it. Among the sculptured stones in the Museum is one that is famous, not for any particular detail it gives, but for the illumination it throws upon the human quality and character of the age: the "Sleep­ing Soldier.” In some of its features it forms a link with those ancient religions of Asia Minor which trace back to the Hittite empire. It is a figure of the mourning Attis, with Hittite hat, curled over to become a Phrygian cap; but the rough-handed, big-hearted man who hewed the figure out knew, probably, very little of Attis, and nothing at all of Phrygia or the Hittites, and accordingly he has transmogrified the conventional figure into an unmistakable Roman soldier, with tunic, and cloak, and fur hood, resting his elbow upon his shield and his chin upon his hand, as many a Roman soldier, then and later, stood and gazed from the towers of Eburacum over the vale of York. There he stands, fixed in stone for ever—a man of whom we can see the like amongst us plentifully to this day: a large, somewhat full-fleshed man, with a straight neutral nose, lips a little full, and a mild ox-eye. His modern descendants have most commonly a pink complexion and a tendency to chubbiness. An amenable, equable, good-tempered man, not very sensitive, and inclined to an amiable materialism; physically powerful but somewhat lethargic when left to his own resources; very easily disciplined; a sociable, clubbable man, with nothing particular to tell us. He is a frequent species on modern golf-links, where his play is good and his con­versation indifferent. To encounter a whole legion of such men, stripped and prepared for battle, with its officers placed and its commander looking on, would be a work for which no one would feel any needless enthu­siasm. But the effectiveness of such men is wholly social; taken one by one, as individuals, their power is gone.

Eburacum, almost from its first foundation (and at this date it was perhaps not very much more than a century old) had been the headquarters of the IXth legion and afterwards of the Vlth (Victrix.) These, recruiting themselves gradually more and more from the British population, as Roman citizenship and Roman education extended themselves among the inhabitants of the island, had become, we may fairly believe, in the time of Constantius, predominantly British. To a great extent, the same process had been at work all along the frontiers of the empire. But the new army, the Striking Force “in sacro comitatu,” had no such local affiliations. It was a picked force, composed of men of all countries, chosen solely for their military excellence, and (since they might have to fight anywhere) for their adaptability to all climates. Not only so, but non­Roman auxiliaries—"foederati” they would have been called a century later—were present with Constantius in Britain: Chrocho and his Alamanni. These last had felt the weight of Constantius’ hand, and knew what it was. Their relation to him was a special one. As mercenary soldiers serving under a definite contract, they had a more personal tie with the old emperor. As foreigners, they had no prejudices or convictions in matters of domestic Roman politics. The man they admired and respected was the man who handed out their monthly pay.

It is not likely that the influences which were at work during that winter in York were sudden; it is not likely that they were slight. Still less were they entirely the creation of Constantius and his friends. One or two little pronouncements of policy from Constantius may have set the ball rolling. He was known to be a believer in low taxation and in religious toleration. The reaction of these beliefs no doubt brought to him the passive support and the positive encouragement of many men. Along the coasts of Britain and Gaul there was still an active trade, which would benefit from his views of taxation. Spain, though she did not come under his jurisdiction, was for the same reason likely to entertain feelings of sympathy. Constantius, as the man who had restored the British trade to the Gallic routes, was popular with the traders and customers of inland Gaul. They liked his principles and his methods.

With this trading community, Christianity was deeply intertwined. Christianity had first spread through the facilities for intercourse created by the commercial system of the empire. It was so far a religion of commercial civilization rather than of country life, and it was connected with all that scheme of law, and internationalism and universality which were peculiar characteristics of the commercial civilization. It had arisen in the deeply commercialized and industrialized east. The comparatively low stage of economic development which marked Britain was reflected in the slight degree to which Britain was touched by the persecution. The real struggle was being waged in the east, while in Britain mere tolerance was for the time being a policy sufficiently active to fulfil all purposes.

Britain could boast of only one important martyr—Alban: though two citizens of Chester and “many more of both sexes” are named among the more obscure sufferers. Scanty as these details are, they seem to indicate that the British persecution was not connected with York. Even the historians who recount with careful detail the abominable deeds of the pagans agree in attributing a humane and tolerant spirit to Constantius. We may infer that he softened and suppressed, wheresoever his authority penetrated, the too zealous action of individual magistrates. But the death of Alban had one feature of even greater significance. The military executioner refused to carry out the sentence, and preferred to die for the crime of military mutiny. Upon the man who actually performed the execution, some peculiar fate descended. Whether or not it is accurately recorded by the Christian propagandists, we may probably deduce with accuracy that the execution of Christians was not popular in the army, and that those who took part in it were regarded with disapproval.

Constantius himself might have found some difficulty in distinguishing cause and effect in this matter. The views of the army and the views of its chief may have had a certain amount of mutual interaction not always possible to measure with exactitude. A ruler, feeling along the line of least resistance in order to detect the trend of public opinion, is liable to increase that trend; though he only increases that which already was there. All the circumstances combined to press Constantius along a certain line of policy, by which he gained first the sympathy and then the active support of all the parties and classes under his government. He can hardly have been unconscious either of the appeal of the policy he had to offer, or of the gradual turning of opinion and expectation towards himself. Personal ambition does not seem much to have moved him. He was playing his game very steadily and patiently, without the possibility of taking his winnings; and with that impersonal patience he played it out to the end.

Constantine had arrived none too soon. The legend that he only reached his father to find the old man on his death-bed is probably based on some misunderstood remark of his own, that when he reached Boulogne, Constantius was already dying. The year which they spent together was a time during which many momentous designs were planned. Constantius possessed the carefully built up influence, the long-won confidence of men; he had the ideas, the tradition, the plans for the future. Constantine possessed the youth, the physical power and moral energy. The old man had forged the weapon; the young man was able to use it: and during their conversations that year Constantius must have inducted his son into its arrangements and purposes, its system and operation. A year is not too long a time in which to introduce a comparative stranger to matters so delicate.

What was schemed, probably in detail, at York that year was the conquest of an empire, the refounding of its policies, and the institution of new principles which should last a thousand years. Galerius could sit and gnaw his thumb-nail if he liked. He could not reach them at York in Britain: he could not find out their plans or purposes, where, behind that silver ditch of the Channel, they sat among their soldiers—with, perhaps, Aurelius Mercurialis brushing his whiskers in the background.

As often happens to men who have divested themselves of personal ambition, Constantius was singularly favoured by luck. Nothing any longer mattered to him, and as if that fact were a powerful spell all things worked together for good to him. When he died at York,1 on July 25, a.d. 306, after a reign of thirteen years, he had reigned just long enough to give his son an assured position and a prosperous realm. He died just on the verge of great changes with which he was not fitted to deal. Constantine stepped into his shoes just when the necessities arose which he was particularly competent to deal with. All things considered, Constantius could have asked little better of fate than the life and death fate gave him.

Constantine was not the only watcher by the bedside. Constantius had a family by his marriage with Maximian’s step-daughter; and the old patriarch was just the man to entertain a sincere and even a sentimental affection for the three daughters and three sons of Theodora. Their names—Constantia, Anastasia, Eutropia, Delmatius, Julius Constantius and Hannibalianus—are prophetic and significant. They indicate that a new type—perhaps a new race—had appeared upon the scene. Such names were to succeed those of Fabius, Marius, Lucullus and Crassus as those of the rulers of the Roman dominion.

Their bearers may have been more, but not very much more, than children. The eldest can scarcely have been older than eighteen or twenty years of age. Constantine was a man of thirty-two. He took them under his protection, and this family of young half-brothers and sisters had very little to complain of with respect to the treatment they received from him. We must bear their existence in mind. They were to count, later on.

The burial place of Constantius is unknown; his epitaph, however, survives. Infinitely greater, as a memorial, than any tomb, was the man he had provided to take up his task and follow in his footsteps. Before the death of Constantius all the necessary measures had been so carefully taken that only the last and crowning step was required. Would the army accept Constantine as Augustus? . . . While the suffrages of that fierce incalculable electorate were being canvassed, he remained invisible, and apparently unconscious of what was happening. His seclusion was a prudent provision not against failure but against success.

He had no alternative. To sink back into a private station was impossible. The temper and policy of Galerius produced efforts which we, at this distance of time, can see to be absolutely necessary and inevitable, although to their astonished owner no doubt they seemed to have no such necessity. They compelled Constantine to fight for his own safety, to grasp at the sanctuary of the imperial crown, and to make a bid for the support of all the powers hostile to Galerius. It was the presentation to Constantine of this dilemma which forced him to act as he acted, and to think as he thought. It was not so much that the world was destined to be cast in the mould of Constantine, as that it was forced to take the shape in reverse of Galerius. All this is typical of a certain sort of irony which runs deep in human life.

Constantine made no overt appeal. If he were to succeed, the memory that once he had asked for the empire would be damaging to the kind of dignity with which he intended to surround the imperial throne. He must already, before his election, have foreseen at least the main lines of his later policy, for his conduct at York is only explicable on these grounds.

In the short precedent period, while he and his father were together in Britain, hints of strange and revolutionary change had flitted across the face of the world. Tides of opinion and of passion were mounting to their maximum; ideas were silently passing away, and others were arising. At York, Constantine was in a position to study the shifts and trends of public feeling, and he must have been aware of the multiplicity and complexity of the forces which were urging him and beckoning him. If he shrank from taking time by the fore­lock, others were awaiting the opportunity. He himself, the man Constantine, was a straw in the wind, an index to the direction of the storms and cyclonic systems of human feeling which he did not make and hardly could alter, but only registered. The army no doubt knew that if it made certain choices it could rely upon the backing of powerful civilian interests. The problem resolved itself therefore into the question, what the army really wanted.

It had two points of view. As the largest professional organization of its day, it needed to be satisfied of the financial benefits likely to accrue to its members. As the greatest political organization in the Roman world, it needed to be convinced that the policies of Britain and Gaul deserved to be backed against the remainder of the empire. Both these points were satisfied. Constantine was accepted as the leader best qualified to express those policies.

So it began, as beginnings so often do: somewhat hastily, somewhat obscurely, a little before anyone was quite ready, some time before anyone was in a position to note down the events: everyone full of assumed confidence and private trepidation, all resolved to push for all they were worth, but not knowing what the morrow would bring. Not everyone realized the full extent of all that was being done. It is quite obvious that Constantine had begun with an epoch-making precedent. He did not admit that he had been elected—that is, given his dignity and rank from its original  owners, the Roman people. His theory was that he was appointed by God, nominated by his father, the senior Augustus, and accepted by the Roman people (that is to say, by the army) which witnessed the act of God. But this in all probability was a good deal over the heads of the majority of the troops.

The first practical step was to secure the whole dominion that had belonged to Constantius. This involved a southern front. Between July and October (when the great series of events began which we shall shortly need to note) the whole north-western Striking Force, with all available auxiliaries and supply organization complete, was transferred from Britain to the Rhone mouth and the Alpine frontiers of Gaul. No small or ragged army set out from York. Never again, probably, until August, 1914, did such an army leave the shores of Britain. The reconcentration was probably effected before the summer was over. After the equinox, weather in the Channel is no longer reliable.

Any Briton who stood, that summer, by the Pharos of Dover, where the light then burned which has been extinct these many centuries now, could have seen, day after day and week after week, the passage of that army on its way to make history: the movement of the de­tachments down the military highways, through London and Canterbury—men from Gloucester and Chester and Carlisle as well as from York; men from special camps, picturesque German auxiliaries, Rhineland cavalry, Asiatic bowmen whose bows no European of those days could bend—a panorama of Roman might and world-dominion. All these, as they came, were taken over by Roman embarkation officers, and ferried across the level shimmering straits to Boulogne, whence they started on their long march south-east.

Probably it was not altogether unlike more modern troop movements, with its delays, congestions and confusions; men sitting on their packs by the roadside, wondering why some more favoured legion went by; columns halted and diverted to make room for high­bred trotting post-horses which whirled along spider­wheeled cars carrying the armed messengers with the mail for distant lands—possibly for Nicomedia where Galerius Augustus sat, waiting for news.

Constantine wrote to Galerius, informing him of the death of Constantius, and of the approval of his own candidature by the army in Britain. He sent his portrait, showing himself duly crowned; and while he expressed his regret that he had not been able to consult the wishes of Galerius beforehand, he pointed out his own reasonable claims to succeed his father.

The Beast glowered and growled. He did not see the reasonableness, and at first was for ordering the portrait and its bearer to be put on the fire together. This, however, was only his way of expressing annoyance, and after he had heard the views of his advisers, he accepted the facts of the case. He was strictly within the recognized conventions when he promoted Severus in order of seniority to the dignity of Augustus, rendered vacant by the death of Constantius, and when he caused Constantine to enter upon the lowest rung as Caesar.

At the moment, Galerius was not prepared to make any move. For a power based upon south-eastern Europe to invade and subdue north-western Europe is a proposition which needs long and careful thought. Galerius accordingly proceeded to think over it very long and very carefully, and he had not finished his thinking when events abruptly wrenched the decision altogether out of his hands.

It was upon the October of the year 306 a.d. that events converged as upon a crucial date. The military considerations, though highly important, were only a small part of all that needed to be taken into account by the guiding spirits. The Roman world was drifting rapidly into a situation in which critical decisions would need to be taken. Such policies in war, in government, in trade, in religion, in the general views and spiritual orientation of men as were then adopted, would settle the fate of Europe one way or another for ever.

Typically enough, just at this moment the candle of history goes out. At the moment of crisis we are left groping in a twilight in which nothing is perfectly clear. We can judge the actors only by their actions; and in some cases we can suspect their actions only by noting where they are when the lights go up again. One thing is certain. Men did not drift fatuously into that crisis. As the darkness comes down there were whis­perings, conferences, alliances unknown to us, communications we cannot trace, help passed, betrayals arranged, and all the many provisions which mankind is best pleased to settle in obscurity. It was brief, but it wasa twilight of  the gods: it was the death of what we know as classical civilization.

If the spirit of the great emperor ever revisits York, and passes again over the spots he knew in life, perhaps he re-enacts his departure on the journey the issue of which was to be so incalculable and so momentous. All is changed: but not to his eye. He issues from a ghostly headquarters near the south porch of the cathedral. Perhaps beside that very porch he mounts his horse and rides down the Stonegate, the old South Street. Terry’s restaurant, fronting the old south-western gate of the citadel, he leaves on his right; he rides through the Guildhall, where the broad highway lies fair before him, and over a stone-built bridge whose masonry has long ago mouldered to dust. At Trinity Street he emerges into the modern Micklegate; at Micklegate Bar he leaves the suburbs of Eburacum behind him, and in Blossom Street, where the omnibuses thunder and the electric street-cars whirl by with a roar and a spark of blue flame, he sets his face for the long wearying journey by the straight road to Tadcaster and the South.