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The Historians' History of the World 06 [The Early Roman Empire]
- Автор: Gutenberg
- Год: 1905
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: История
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During this time the last noble ladies of the older society, such as the elderly daughter of Marcus Aurelius, honoured by all men and put to death by Caracalla, lived in obscurity, looking on at an orgy which formed so strange a contrast to the memories of their youth.
The provinces, and those of the East more particularly, which were far more active and enlightened than those of the West, gained a decided ascendency. Elagabalus was certainly a madman, but nevertheless his chimerical idea of a central monotheistic religion, established in Rome and absorbing all others, shows that the narrow circle of Antonine conceptions had been to a great extent broken through. Mamæa and Alexander Severus were to go further; whilst the jurisconsults continued to transcribe their old and ferocious maxims against liberty of conscience with the calmness of habit, the Syrian emperor and his mother studied Christianity, and manifested sympathy with it. Not content with granting security to the Christians, Alexander, with touching eclecticism, introduced the name of Jesus among his household gods. Peace seemed made, not, as under Constantine, by the abasement of one party, but by a generous reconciliation. In all this there was certainly a daring attempt at reform, inferior in rationality to that of the Antonines, but more likely to succeed because it was much more popular and took the provinces and the East more into account.
In such a democratic work, people with no ancestors, such as these Africans and Syrians, had more chance of success than rigid men of irreproachable bearing, like the aristocratic emperors. But the innate viciousness of the imperial system revealed itself for the tenth time. Alexander Severus was assassinated by the soldiers on the 19th of March, 235. It was clear that the army would tolerate none but tyrants. The empire had fallen successively from the Roman aristocracy to provincial officers, now it passed to subordinate officers and military assassins. Whereas, until the time of Commodus, the murdered emperors are intolerable monsters, it is now the good emperor, the man who desires to restore some kind of discipline and represses the crimes of the army, who is inevitably marked for death.j Still, it cannot be denied that there was need of strong, able commanders on the eve of the barbarian invasions. With all his virtues, Alexander was a weakling, unfit to rule at such a time. With his death the military revolution entered upon a third stage. It became more than ever necessary to strengthen the imperial office, because, it having been decided that the emperor should be a soldier, the choice of the soldiers, rival claimants of the office were threatening, by their civil strife, to break up the Roman world into a multitude of warring states.a
FOOTNOTES
[41] Herodiand tells us of a list of those destined to be put to death taken by a child, and read by Marcia, as in the case of Domitian. But he is a very inaccurate writer, and Dione, who was a senator and in Rome at the time, could hardly have been ignorant of the circumstance if it were true.
[42] [During this reign the disciplined legions under able commanders still protected the frontiers. Most of the empire was peaceful and prosperous. The government still carried on great public works and benevolently succoured the afflicted. The Christians were tolerated, and those of the sect who were in prison were released. The great official machine was little disturbed by the caprices of the emperor.]
[43] Severus, not content with expressing his veneration and respect for the memory of M. Aurelius, had the folly to pretend to be his son. “What most amazed us,” says Dion,e “was his saying that he was the son of Marcus and brother of Commodus.”
[44] [Tarantus was a nickname given to Caracalla after his death. It was the name of a gladiator of ignoble aspect.]
[45] The Life of Alexander, by Lampridius, in the Augustan History,f is, as Gibbon observes, “the mere idea of a perfect prince, an awkward imitation of the Cyropædia.” [The best rulers had to bear the charge of avarice.]
[46] [The substitution of the Syro-Phœnician sun-god by Elagabalus naturally recalls the monotheistic reformation of Amenhotep IV (Khun-aten) in Egypt more than sixteen centuries before. In Amenhotep’s day, Syrian influence predominated at the Egyptian court, as it did at Rome in the beginning of the third century A.D. That the culminating result of this should have been so much the same in both cases is a matter that seems to call for at least passing notice.]
CHAPTER XL. CONFUSION WORSE CONFOUNDED: THE SECOND HALF OF THE THIRD CENTURY OF EMPIRE (235-285 A.D.)
“Now begins the inferno of half a century (235-284), in which all philosophy, all civil order, all delicacy founders; with power put up to auction, the soldiery masters of everything; with sometimes ten tyrants at once; with the barbarian entering through all the breaches of a shattered world; with Athens destroying her ancient monuments, to girdle herself with ill-built walls as a protection against the Goths. If anything can show the intrinsic necessity of the Roman Empire, it is the fact that it was not wholly put out of joint by this anarchy and retained breath enough to revive under the vigorous action of Diocletian, and to endure for two centuries more. In every class the decadence is terrible. In fifty years the art of sculpture is forgotten. Latin literature comes to an end. It is as if a vampire brooded over society, drinking its life-blood.”—Renan.
Bad matters become worse in the period we are now entering. Old evils remain, and new ones are added. The rule of the soldiers is absolute, and as before, money affords the only channel to the suffrage of these rulers of the empire. As before, there is an incessant scramble after the honours and emoluments of the imperial office; as before, successful and unsuccessful aspirants alike place themselves on the sure road to an early death, so soon as they attempt to grasp the purple.
In the half century we are now entering, some seventeen emperors who may be styled legitimate holders of the title, pass in rapid succession before the view; and with only one or two doubtful exceptions they all meet a tragic end. Some reign for a few weeks or months, some for a few years; some are young, some are old; but neither the tender years of a Gordian nor the senility of a Tacitus can give protection from the imperial fate.
All this indeed is but a repetition of what we have seen in the half century just gone. There is no sudden transition, no marked revolution. And yet the time upon which we are entering has in other respects a character that is peculiarly its own. It marks a condition towards which the empire has been steadily tending; a condition that is the logical, the necessary outcome of the antecedent conditions we have studied. The essence of this new condition is found in the de-romanisation of the empire. From now on the rulers of Rome, with rare exceptions, are no longer Romans in the old sense of the word. Caracalla, to be sure, gave Roman citizenship to all free men in the empire, which list, it may be noted, included vast numbers of persons who had once been slaves. But the sweep of the imperial stylus, while it may make the Gaul and the Goth, the Dalmatian and the Dacian, the Syrian and the Arab, each and all Romans in the official sense, is impotent to change the racial traits of this heterogeneous company. The man from the provinces, who has never been within a thousand miles of Rome, may count himself a Roman citizen, may even glory in the name, but beyond peradventure his closest interests lie with his own kith and kin, with his own race, as against those others of his fellow-citizens who live in far-distant lands, and have habits, customs, and languages different from his own.