The first exception to this policy was the conquest of Britain; the second the conquests of Trajan. It was, however, revived by Hadrian; nearly the first measure of whose reign was the resignation of all that emperor’s eastern conquests.
The Roman empire, in the time of the Antonines, was about two thousand miles in breadth, from the wall of Antoninus and the northern limits of Dacia, to Mount Atlas and the tropic of Cancer. It extended, in length, more than three thousand miles, from the Western Ocean to the Euphrates; it was situated in the finest part of the temperate zone, between the twenty-fourth and fifty-sixth degrees of northern latitude; and it was supposed to contain above sixteen hundred thousand square miles, for the most part of fertile and well cultivated land.
Pius studied the defence of the empire rather than the enlargement of it—a line of policy, which rendered him more serviceable to the commonwealth than the greatest conqueror. Marcus and Lucius (Antonini) made the first division of the empire. At length it was put up to public sale and sold to the highest bidder. It was afterwards arrested in its ruin by Alexander Severus. The fortunes of the empire, after the progress of several successive tyrants, was again restored by the courage, conduct, and extraordinary virtues of Claudius the Second; to whom has been attributed, with every probability of truth, the courage of Trajan, the moderation of Augustus, and the piety of Antoninus.
Then followed Aurelian, Tacitus, and Probus; and Rome felt redeemed from the ruin that awaited her: but Constantine laid the inevitable groundwork of its destruction, by removing the imperial throne to Byzantium. Rome became an easy prey to her barbarian enemies; by whom she was several times sacked, pillaged, and partially burned. The most powerful of these enemies was Alaric:—the people he had to conquer and take advantage of, are thus described by Ammianus Marcellinus:—“Their long robes of silk purple float in the wind, and as they are agitated, by art or accident, they occasionally discover the under-garments, the rich tunics, embroidered with the figures of various animals. Followed by a train of fifty servants, and tearing up the pavement, they move along the street with the same impetuous speed, as if they had travelled with post-horses; and the example of the senators is boldly imitated by the matrons and ladies, whose covered-carriages are continually driving round the immense space of the city and suburbs. Whenever these persons of high distinction condescend to visit the public baths, they assume, on their entrance, a tone of loud and insolent command, and appropriate to their own use the conveniences which were designed for the Roman people. As soon as they have indulged themselves in the refreshments of the bath, they resume their rings, and the other ensigns of their dignity; select from their private wardrobe of the finest linen, such as might suffice for a dozen persons, the garments the most agreeable to their fancy, and maintain till their departure the same haughty demeanour, which, perhaps, might have been excused in the great Marcellus, after the conquest of Syracuse.
“Sometimes, indeed, these heroes undertake more arduous achievements; they visit their estates in Italy, and procure themselves, by the toil of servile hands, the amusements of the chase. If at any time, but more especially on a hot day, they have courage to sail in their painted galleys, from the Lucrine Lake to their elegant villas on the sea-coast of Puteoli and Cajeta, they compare their own expeditions to the marches of Cæsar and Alexander. Yet, should a fly presume to settle on the silken folds of their gilded umbrellas; should a sun-beam penetrate through some unregarded and imperceptible chink they deplore their intolerable hardships, and lament, in affected language, that they were not born in the land of the Cimmerians, the regions of eternal darkness.”
Such was the character of the nobles of Rome at the period in which their city was taken possession of by Alaric. As soon as the barbarian had got possession of the Roman port, he summoned the city to surrender at discretion; and his demands were enforced by the positive declaration, that a refusal, or even a delay, should be instantly followed by the destruction of the magazines, on which the life of the Roman people depended. The clamours of that people, and the terror of famine, subdued the pride of the senate. They listened without reluctance to the proposing of a new emperor on the throne of Honorius; and the suffrage of the Gothic conqueror bestowed the purple on Attalus, the præfect of the city. Attalus was created emperor by the Goths and Romans; he was, however, soon degraded by Alaric, and Rome subjected to a general sack. The conqueror no longer dissembled his appetite for plunder. The trembling senate, without any hopes of relief, prepared, by a desperate resistance, to delay the ruin of their country. But they were unable to guard against the secret conspiracy of their slaves and domestics. At the hour of midnight, the Salarian gate was opened, and the inhabitants were awakened by the tremendous sound of the Gothic trumpet. Eleven hundred and sixty-three years after the foundation of Rome, the imperial city, which had subdued and civilised so considerable a part of mankind, was delivered to the licentious fury of the tribes of Scythia and Germany. A cruel slaughter was made of the Romans; the streets of the city were filled with dead bodies, which, during the consternation, remained unburied. The despair of the inhabitants was sometimes converted into fury; and whenever the barbarians were provoked by opposition, they extended the promiscuous massacre to the feeble, the innocent, and the helpless. The private revenge of 40,000 slaves was exercised without pity or remorse; and the ignominious lashes, which they had formerly received, were washed away in the blood of the guilty, or obnoxious families. The matrons and virgins of Rome were exposed to injuries more dreadful, in the apprehension of chastity, than death itself.
When the portable riches had been seized, the palaces were rudely stripped of their splendid and costly furniture; the side-boards of massy plate, and the variegated wardrobes of silk and purple, were irregularly piled in the wagons, that always followed the march of a Gothic army. The most exquisite works of art were roughly handled, or wantonly destroyed; many a statue was melted for the sake of the precious materials; and many a vase, in the division of the spoil, was shivered into fragments by the stroke of the battle-axe. The sack lasted six days.
The edifices, too, of Rome received no small injury from the violence of the Goths; but those injuries appear to have been somewhat exaggerated. At their entrance they fired a multitude of houses; and the ruins of the palace of Sallust remained, in the age of Justinian, a stately monument of the Gothic conflagration. Procopius confines the fire to one peculiar quarter; but adds, that the Goths ravaged the whole city. Cassiodorus says, that many of the “wonders of Rome,” were burned; and Olympiodorus speaks of the infinite quantity of wealth, which Alaric carried away. We collect, also, how great the disaster was, when he tells us, that, on the retreat of the Goths, 14,000 returned in one day.
The injury done by Genseric (A. D. 455), is said to have been not so great as that, perpetrated by the Goths; yet most writers record that the Vandals and Moors emptied Rome of most of her wealth. They revenged the injuries of Carthage. The pillage lasted fourteen days and nights; and all that yet remained of public or private wealth, of sacred or profane treasure, were transported to the vessels of Genseric. Among the spoils, the splendid relics of two temples, or rather of two religions, exhibited the remarkable example of the vicissitude of human things. Since the abolition of Paganism, the capital had been violated and abandoned; yet the statues of the gods and heroes were still respected, and the curious roof of gilt bronze was reserved for the rapacious hands of Genseric. The holy instruments of the Jewish worship had been ostentatiously displayed to the Roman people, in the triumph of Titus. They were afterwards deposited in the temple of Peace; and, at the end of four hundred years, the spoils of Jerusalem were transferred to Carthage, by a barbarian who derived his origin from the shores of the Baltic. It was difficult either to escape or to satisfy the avarice of a conqueror, who possessed leisure to collect, and ships to transport, the wealth of the capital. The imperial ornaments of the palace, the magnificent furniture and wardrobe, the sideboards of massy plate, were accumulated with disorderly rapine; the gold and silver amounted to several thousand talents; yet even the brass and copper were laboriously removed. The empress was rudely stripped of her jewels, and, with her two daughters, the only surviving remains of the great Theodosius, was compelled, as a captive, to follow the haughty Vandal; who immediately hoisted sail, and returned, with a prosperous navigation, to the port of Carthage. Many thousand Romans of both sexes, chosen for some useful or agreeable qualifications, reluctantly embarked on board the fleet of Genseric; and their distress was aggravated by the unfeeling barbarian, who, in the division of the booty, separated the wives from their husbands, and the children from their parents.
The consequences of this Vandal invasion, to the public and private buildings, are thus regarded by the same authority (Gibbon):—“The spectator, who casts a mournful view over the ruins of ancient Rome, is tempted to accuse the memory of the Goths and Vandals, for the mischief which they had neither the leisure, nor power, nor perhaps the inclination, to perpetrate. The tempests of war might strike some lofty turrets to the ground; but the destruction which undermined the foundations of those massy fabrics, was prosecuted, slowly and silently, during a period of ten centuries. The decay of the city had gradually impaired the value of the public works. The circus and theatres might still excite, but they seldom gratified, the desires of the people; the temples, which had escaped the zeal of the Christians, were no longer inhabited, either by gods or men; the diminished crowds of the Romans were lost in the immense space of their baths and porticoes; and the stately libraries and halls of justice became useless to an indolent generation, whose repose was seldom disturbed, either by study or business. The monuments of consular or imperial greatness were no longer revered as the immortal glory of the capital; they were only esteemed as an inexhaustible mine of materials, cheaper and more convenient than the distant quarry. Specious petitions were addressed to the easy magistrates of Rome, which stated the want of bricks or stones for some necessary service; the fairest forms of architecture were rudely defaced for the sake of some paltry or pretended repairs; and the degenerate Romans, who converted the spoil to their own emolument, demolished, with sacrilegious hands, the labours of their ancestors.”