Military Anarchy.—After the reigns of the Antonines the civil wars commenced. There were in the empire, beside the prætorian guard in Rome, several great armies on the Rhine, on the Danube, in the East, and in England. Each aimed to make its general emperor. Ordinarily the rivals fought it out until there was but one left; this one then governed for a few years, after which he was assassinated,[168] or if, by chance, he could transmit his power to his son, the soldiers revolted against the son and the war recommenced. The following, for example, is what occurred in 193. The prætorians had massacred the emperor Pertinax, and the army conceived the notion of putting up the empire at auction; two purchasers presented themselves, Sulpicius offering each soldier $1,000 and Didius more than $1,200. The prætorians brought the latter to the Senate and had him named emperor; later, when he did not pay them, they murdered him. At the same time the great armies of Britain, Illyricum, and Syria proclaimed each its own general as emperor and the three rivals marched on Rome. The Illyrian legions arrived first, and their general Septimius Severus was named emperor by the Senate. Then commenced two sanguinary wars, the one against the legions of Syria, and the other against the legions of Britain. At the end of two years the emperor was victorious. It is he who states his policy as follows, "My son, content the soldiers and you may despise the rest." For a century there was no other form of government than the will of the soldiers. They killed the emperors who displeased them and replaced them by their favorites.
Strange emperors, therefore, occupied the throne: Elagabalus, a Syrian priest, who garbed himself as a woman and had his mother assemble a senate of women; Maximin, a soldier of fortune, a rough and bloodthirsty giant, who ate, it was said, thirty pounds of food and drank twenty-one quarts of wine a day. Once there were twenty emperors at the same time, each in a corner of the empire (260-278). These have been called the Thirty Tyrants.
The Cult of Mithra.—This century of wars is also a century of superstitions. The deities of the Orient, Isis, Osiris, the Great Mother, have their devotees everywhere. But, more than all the others, Mithra, a Persian god, becomes the universal god of the empire. Mithra is no other than the sun. The monuments in his honor that are found in all parts of the empire represent him slaughtering a bull, with this inscription: "To the unconquerable sun, to the god Mithra." His cult is complicated, sometimes similar to the Christian worship; there are a baptism, sacred feasts, an anointing, penances, and chapels. To be admitted to this one must pass through an initiatory ceremony, through fasting and certain fearful tests.
At the end of the third century the religion of Mithra was the official religion of the empire. The Invincible God was the god of the emperors; he had his chapels everywhere in the form of grottoes with altars and bas-reliefs; in Rome, even, he had a magnificent temple erected by the emperor Aurelian.
The Taurobolia.—One of the most urgent needs of this time was reconciliation with the deity; and so ceremonies of purification were invented.
The most striking of these was the Taurobolia. The devotee, clad in a white robe with ornaments of gold, takes his place in the bottom of a ditch which is covered by a platform pierced with holes. A bull is led over this platform, the priest kills him and his blood runs through the holes of the platform upon the garments, the face, and the hair of the worshipper. It was believed that this "baptism of blood" purified one of all sins. He who had received it was born to a new life; he came forth from the ditch hideous to look upon, but happy and envied.
Confusion of Religions.—In the century that preceded the victory of Christianity, all religions fell into confusion. The sun was adored at once under many names (Sol, Helios, Baal, Elagabal, and Mithra). All the cults imitated one another and sometimes copied Christian forms. Even the life of Christ was copied. The Asiatic philosopher, Apollonius of Tyana, who lived in the first century (3-96), became in legend a kind of prophet, son of a god, who went about surrounded by his disciples, expelling demons, curing sicknesses, raising the dead. He had come, it was said, to reform the doctrine of Pythagoras and Plato. In the third century an empress had the life of Apollonius of Tyana written, to be, as it were, a Pythagorean gospel opposed to the gospel of Christ. The most remarkable example of this confusion in religion was given by Alexander Severus, a devout emperor, mild and conscientious: he had in his palace a chapel where he adored the benefactors of humanity—Abraham, Orpheus, Jesus, and Apollonius of Tyana.
THE GOVERNMENT OF THE LATER EMPIRE
Reforms of Diocletian and Constantine.—After a century of civil wars emperors were found who were able to stop the anarchy. They were men of the people, rude and active, soldiers of fortune rising from one grade to another to become generals-in-chief, and then emperors. Almost all arose in the semi-barbarous provinces of the Danube and of Illyria; some in their infancy had been shepherds or peasants. They had the simple manners of the old Roman generals. When the envoys of the king of Persia asked to see the emperor Probus, they found a bald old man clad in a linen cassock, lying on the ground, who ate peas and bacon. It was the story of Curius Dentatus repeated after five centuries.
Severe with their soldiers, these emperors reëstablished discipline in the army, and then order in the empire. But a change had become necessary. A single man was no longer adequate to the government and defence of this immense territory; and so from this time each emperor took from among his relatives or his friends two or three collaborators, each charged with a part of the empire. Usually their title was that of Cæsar, but sometimes there were two equal emperors, and both had the title of Augustus. When the emperor died, one of the Cæsars succeeded him; it was no longer possible for the army to create emperors. The provinces were too great, and Diocletian divided them. The prætorians of Rome being dangerous, Diocletian replaced them with two legions. The Occident was in ruins and depopulated and hence the Orient had become the important part of the empire; Diocletian, therefore, abandoned Rome and established his capital at Nicomedia in Asia Minor.[169] Constantine did more and founded a new Rome in the East—Constantinople.