Three of these were Asiatic. The first, specially called the East, took in all the possessions of Rome beyond Mount Tauros, together with Isauria, Kilikia, and the island of Cyprus. Its eastern boundaries naturally fluctuated according as Rome or Persia prevailed on the Euphrates and the Tigris, fluctuations of which we shall have again to speak more specially. ♦Egypt,♦ The diocese of Egypt, besides Egypt in the elder sense, took in, under the name of Libya, the old Greek land of the Kyrenaic Pentapolis. ♦Asia.♦ The diocese of Asia, a reminder of the elder province of that name and of the kingdom of Pergamos out of which it grew, took in the Asiatic coasts of the Ægæan, together with Pamphylia, Lykia, and the Ægæan Islands. The diocese of Pontos, preserving the name of the kingdom of Mithridates, took in the lands on the Euxine, with the fluctuating Armenian possessions of Rome.
♦Diocese of Thrace.♦
Besides these Asiatic lands, the Eastern Prefecture contained one European diocese, that of Thrace, which took in the lands stretching from the Propontis to the Lower Danube. The names of two of its provinces are remarkable. Rome now boasts of a province of Scythia. But, among the varied uses of that name, it has now shrunk up to mean the land immediately south of the mouths of the Danube. ♦Province of Europa.♦ The other name is Europa, a name which, as a Roman province, means the district immediately round the New Rome. Constantine had now fixed his capital on the site of the old Byzantion, the site from which the city on the Bosporos might seem to bear rule over two worlds. With whatever motive, the name of Europe was specially given to that corner of the Western continent where it comes nearest to the Eastern. Nor was the name ill-chosen for the district round the city which was so long to be the bulwark of Europe against invading Asia. ♦Great cities of the Eastern Prefecture.♦ And, besides the New Rome, this Prefecture, as containing those parts of the Empire which had belonged to the great Macedonian kingdoms, contained an unusual proportion of the great cities of the world. Besides a crowd of less famous places, it took in the two great Eastern seats of Grecian culture, the most renowned Alexandria and the most renowned Antioch, themselves only the chief among many others cities bearing the same names. All these, it should be remarked, were comparatively recent creations, bearing the names of individual men. That cities thus artificially called into being should have kept the position which still belonged to the great Macedonian capitals is one of the most speaking signs of the effect which the dominion of Alexander and his successors had on the history of the world.
♦Prefecture of Illyricum.♦
The nomenclature of the second Prefecture marks how utterly Greece, as a country and nation, had died out of all reckoning. The Prefecture of the Eastern Illyricum answered roughly to European Greece and its immediate neighbours. It took in the lands stretching from the Danube to the southern point of Peloponnêsos. Greece, as part of the Roman Empire, was included under the name of the barbarian land through which Rome was first brought into contact with Greek affairs. She was further included under the name of the half-barbarian neighbour who had become Greek through the process of conquering Greece. In the system of Prefectures, Greece formed part of Macedonia, and Macedonia formed part of Illyricum. So low had Greece, as a land, fallen at the very moment when her tongue was making the greatest of all its conquests, when a Greek city was raised to the rank of another Rome. ♦Dioceses of Macedonia and Dacia.♦ The Illyrian Prefecture contained the two dioceses of Macedonia and Dacia. This last name, it will be remembered, had, since the days of Aurelian, withdrawn to the south of the Danube. The Macedonian diocese contained six provinces, among which, besides the familiar and venerable names of Macedonia and Epeiros, we find the names, still more venerable and familiar, of Thessaly and Crete. And one yet greater name lives on with them. Hellas and Græcia have alike vanished from the map; but the most abiding name in Grecian history, the theme of Homer and the theme of Polybios, has not perished. ♦Province of Achaia.♦ Among all changes, Achaia is there still.
♦Prefecture of Italy.♦
In the new system Italy and Rome herself were in no way privileged over the rest of the Empire. The Italian Prefecture took in Italy itself and the lands which might be looked on as necessary for the defence and maintenance of Italy. It took in the defensive conquests of the early Empire on the Upper Danube, and it took in the granary of Italy, Africa. Its three dioceses were Italy, Illyricum, and Africa. Here Illyricum strangely gave its name both to a distinct Prefecture and to one diocese of the Prefecture of Italy. ♦Dioceses of Italy,♦ The Italian diocese contained seventeen provinces. The Gaulish name has now wholly vanished from the lands south of the Alps. The lands between the older and the newer boundaries of Italy are now divided into Liguria and Venetia—the former name being used in a widely extended sense—and the new names of Æmilia and Flaminia, provinces named after the great Roman roads, as the roads themselves were named after Roman magistrates. But the new Italy has spread beyond the Alps, and reaches to the Danube. Two Rætian provinces form part of it. Three other provinces are formed by the three great islands, Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica. ♦Illyricum,♦ The diocese of the Western Illyricum took in Pannonia, Dalmatia, and Noricum. ♦Africa.♦ The third diocese, that of Africa, took in the old Africa, Numidia, and western Mauritania. ♦Greatness of Carthage.♦ The union of these lands with Italy may seem less strange when we remember that the colony of the first Cæsar, the restored Carthage, was the greatest of Latin-speaking cities after Rome herself.
♦Prefecture of Gaul.♦
The fourth Prefecture took in the Roman dominions in Western Europe, the great Latin-speaking provinces beyond the Alps. ♦Diocese of Spain; its African territory.♦ Among the seven provinces of Spain are reckoned, not only the Balearic islands, a natural appendage to the Spanish peninsula, but a small part of the African continent, the province of Tingitana, stretching from the now Italian Africa to the Ocean. This was according to the general law by which, in almost all periods of history, either the masters of Spain have borne rule in Africa or the masters of Africa have borne rule in Spain. ♦Diocese of Gaul;♦ The diocese of Gaul, with its seventeen provinces, keeps, at least in name, the boundaries of the old Transalpine land. It still numbers the two Germanies west of the Rhine among its provinces. ♦of Britain.♦ The five provinces of the diocese of Britain took in, at the moment when the Empire was beginning to fall asunder, a greater territory than Rome had held in the island in the days of her greatest power. ♦Province of Valentia. A.D. 367.♦ The exploits of the elder Theodosius, who drove back the Pict by land and the Saxon by sea, for a moment added to the Empire a province beyond the wall of Antoninus, which, in honour of the reigning Emperors Valentinian and Valens, received the name of Valentia.