Plate XCII. MITHRAS AND BULL
In the second place, the barbarians were now grown to full stature. They were no longer quarrelsome tribes which could be turned against one another by adroit statecraft, but nations much less barbarous than of old, with some organisation and a purpose above that of mere plunder. No artificial ramparts could hold them. It is very doubtful whether even the legions of Rome at their best could have resisted these repeated assaults on all sides. The first great inroad across the Danube took place in the reign of M. Aurelius. It was crushed, as the column of that emperor depicts, and Sarmatia and Marcomannia were added as short-lived provinces. It is in the third century that we begin to hear of the greater barbarian nations, or groups of tribes, of the Alemanni and the Suevi, the Franks, the Saxons, the Goths, and the Vandals. Battle after battle was fought and triumph after triumph won against them, but they still pressed on. The weaker emperors essayed to buy them with gold, the wiser with land, the craftier set them to slay one another, but still they moved forward resistlessly, wave after wave, like the sea. This again was nobody’s fault. It may have been the movement of Tartar savages in the Far East which set the Wandering of the Nations in motion. Whatever it was, all eastern and northern Europe was seething with restless movement and the tide rolled on irresistibly against the bulwarks of civilisation. Triumphs as great and glorious as those of Scipio and Marius were gained by Roman armies even in the fourth century. But the enemy was ubiquitous, the task impossible.
It is, however, true that those bulwarks were weaker than they should have been, partly by reason of the internal disorganisation caused by perpetual struggles for the succession, and partly through certain visible errors in Roman statesmanship. For one thing, the spirit of peace and humanity which was ripening in the securer central parts of the Empire had probably impaired its instincts of defence. The modern world is trying just now to believe that you can retain the power of defence when you have given up all thoughts of aggression. It may be so. The Roman world failed in the attempt. Rome’s statesmen were now no longer soldiers, but lawyers and financiers. Even the prefects of the prætorian guard were lawyers. The army was a profession apart. Moreover, even the army had become so civilised that it had lost many of its martial qualities. Hadrian more than any other ruler is responsible for allowing the cannabæ or “booths” which had sprung up around the camps to grow into towns and even cities. The legions were now permanently established in their quarters, the soldiers married wives and occupied their leisure in business or husbandry. Hadrian it was, too, who in his large cosmopolitan spirit had introduced many and doubtless useful barbarian methods of fighting, so that the old Roman military traditions had fallen into desuetude. A legion was now no better than its auxiliaries. The auxiliaries were often barbarians and soon the legions themselves became completely barbarised. It was only a step further when barbarians were recruited in tribes to fight Rome’s battles under their own commanders.
Secondly, the whole Roman world was being slowly strangled with good intentions. The bureaucracy had grown so highly organised and efficient, so nicely ordered through its various grades of official life, that everybody walked in leading-strings to the music of official proclamations. Paternalism regulated everything with its watchful and benignant eye. The triumph of the system may be seen in the famous Edict of Prices issued by Diocletian in A.D. 301. Here we find scheduled a maximum price for every possible commodity of trade and a maximum wage for every kind of service. Death is the penalty for any trader who asks, or any purchaser who pays a higher price. No difference of locality or season is permitted. Trade is forbidden to fluctuate under penalty of death. This delightful scheme, which was engraved on stone in every market in Europe, was evidently the product of a highly efficient Board of Trade, which had sat late of nights over the study of statistics and political economy. Benevolent officials of this type swarmed all over the empire, spying and reporting on one another as well as on the general public.
The same system of blear-eyed officialism had found a still more ingenious method of throttling the society which it was endeavouring to nurse back into infancy. It was under Severus Alexander (about A.D. 230) that the various collegia or guilds were incorporated by charter, so that every industry whatever became a close corporation. This rendered the task of administration much simpler. It meant that every human occupation became hereditary. There was, for example, a guild of the coloni or tillers of the soil. The most benevolent of the emperors, Marcus Aurelius and the two Severi, had planted barbarians on Roman soil under condition of military service in lieu of rent. This service became hereditary also. Before long each piece of ground had to supply a recruit. The decuriones, moreover, or municipal senators, who had once been the honoured magistrates of their townships, also became a caste. As they were made responsible for the collection of property tax in their boroughs, and as wealth began to decline and taxation to increase, they were reduced to a condition of penury and misery. The exemption from taxation of whole classes of society, such as the soldiers and eventually the Christian clergy, added to their burdens. Then, since many of them attempted to evade the distresses entailed upon their rank by joining the army or even selling themselves into slavery, a decree was issued which made their office hereditary. It became a form of punishment to enrol an offender among these curiales. A decree of Constantine bound all the tillers of the soil in hereditary bondage for ever. In these ways Roman society fell into stagnation. Since the progress of the Manchurian Empire in China proceeded on very similar lines, it looks as if the benevolent despotism engendered by highly centralised government of very large areas was one of the methods by which Providence is accustomed to bring great empires low.
At the close of the third century Diocletian endeavoured to save the state by a bold revolution. He swept away the hollow pretence of republicanism and frankly surrounded the throne with every circumstance of majesty and ceremony. The free access which had generally been granted by the most despotic princes was replaced by an elaborate system of intermediaries. To meet the obvious needs of devolution in government, as well as to stop the incessant struggles for the succession, he invented an ingenious division of responsibility. Henceforth there were to be two Augusti, one taking the East and one the West. The Empire was not actually divided, for the joint writ of the two colleagues was to run all over it. Moreover each Augustus was to have a junior colleague, a “Cæsar,” acting as his lieutenant and prepared to step into his place. Ties of marriage were to unite all four into one close family alliance. There were now one hundred and sixteen provinces and Diocletian grouped them into thirteen “dioceses” each under a “vicar,” directly responsible to one of four “prætorian prefects,” who shared the administration of the whole. The troops were no longer subject to the provincial governors, but each army had a “Duke” (dux) of its own. Each frontier—and these were still further fortified—was under its own “Duke.” At the same time steps were taken to organise a central striking force—the comitatus of the emperors. The four Prefectures and thirteen Dioceses were as follows:
| Oriens— | Egypt | Illyricum— | Macedonia | Italia— | Italia |
| Oriens | Dacia | Illyricum (after Theodosius) | |||
| Pontus | Galliarum— | Gallia | Africa | ||
| Asia | Hispania | ||||
| Thracia | Britannia |
Italy, it will be observed, has now definitely declined into the status of a province among many, and Rome itself was not sufficiently near the frontier armies to be a convenient capital. Diocletian preferred to make his residence at Nicomedia. The senate, as a necessary consequence, receded into the background, and remained little more than a title of dignity. The emperor’s Consistory, a privy council composed of the heads of departments, took its place for practical purposes. The new hierarchy of officials rejoiced in barbaric titles which would have shocked the ears of a genuine Roman.