The Empresses of Rome

The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Empresses of Rome, by Joseph McCabe
CRISPINA
BUST IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM
THE EMPRESSES OF ROME
BY JOSEPH McCABE AUTHOR OF “THE DECAY OF THE CHURCH OF ROME”
WITH TWENTY-FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS
NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 1911
The period embraced by this work extends to the fall of the Western Empire, or to the middle of the fifth century. It was felt that a more extensive range would involve either an inconveniently large work or an inadequate treatment. While, therefore, the Empresses of the East have been included down to the fall of Rome, it seemed that the collapse of the Empire in Rome and the West indicated a quite natural term for the present study. The restriction has enabled the author to tell all that is known of the Empresses of Rome within that period, to enlarge the interest of the study by framing the Imperial characters in occasional sketches of their surroundings, and to weave the threads of biography into a continuous story.
The story of Imperial Rome has been told frequently and impressively in our literature, and few chapters in the long chronicle of man’s deeds and failures have a more dramatic quality. Seven centuries before our era opens, when the greater part of Europe is still hidden under virgin forests or repellent swamps, and the decaying civilizations of the East cast, as they die, their seed upon the soil of Greece, we see, in the grey mist of the legendary period, a meagre people settling on one of the seven hills by the Tiber. As it grows its enemies are driven back, and it spreads confidently over the neighbouring hills and down the connecting valleys. It gradually extends its rule over other Italian peoples, bracing its arm and improving its art in the long struggle. It grows conscious of its larger power, and sends its legions eastward, over the blue sea, to gather the wealth and culture of Egypt, Assyria, Persia, and Greece; and westward and northward, over the white Alps, to sow the seed in Germany, Gaul, Britain, and Spain. A hundred years before the opening of the present era the tiny settlement on the Palatine has become the mistress of the world. Its eagles cross the waters of the Danube and the Rhine, and glitter in the sun of Asia and Africa. But, with the wealth of the dying East, it has inherited the germs of a deadly malady. Rome, the heart of the giant frame, loses its vigour. The strong bronze limbs look pale and thin; the clear cold brain is overcast with the fumes of wine and heated with the thrills of sense; and Rome passes, decrepit and dishonoured, from the stage on which it has played so useful and fateful a part.