Plate XCIII. MAUSOLEUM OF PLACIDIA, RAVENNA
Naturally these advances in the direction of more and stronger government proved no alleviation of the woes which sprang from too much supervision. The most visible sign of decay was the decline of population which began to lay the central parts of the Empire desolate, and this sprang not only from economic burdens, but from racial decline. Money became so debased and worthless that the world actually went back to the system of barter.
Constantine signalised Diocletian’s plan of dividing the responsibility of government by founding a new capital at Byzantium. His motives were probably mixed. In the first place he would be free of the awkward republican traditions which still kept reasserting themselves, and in the second place Constantinople was a more central and a much more defensible situation. But, more than all, in this new Rome he could break away from the old religion. Constantine’s plan for restoring the tired and afflicted world was the adoption of Christianity. The Decree of Milan (313) made Christianity the official religion, though not the only religion, of the Empire. It was already the religion of the court—ever since Constantine had seen his famous vision of the Angel descending from Heaven with the sign of the Cross and uttering the words ἐν τούτω νίκα—“Hoc signo vinces.” Still half-pagan, the emperor had made the Cross his mascot, and in the strength of it had defeated his rival at the Milvian Bridge just outside Rome.[92] Constantine himself was by no means a saint; in murdering kinsmen he was, in fact, among the worst of the emperors, but unwittingly he saved the world by his conversion. Meanwhile the extravagance with which he adorned his new city afflicted the whole Empire with the burdens of fresh taxations.
The scheme of a divided Empire failed. After Theodosius (395) the division became permanent. The Eastern throne remained secure for another thousand years, protected by the admirable strategic position of Constantinople. The contempt with which it has hitherto been treated by historians is now beginning to break down, and it is seen that the Byzantine Empire not only stood as the bulwark for the West against the East but preserved for us the inestimable treasures of Greek intellect. The Roman tradition, now inextricably mingled with the Greek, lingered on there unchanged, even to the very chariot-races which still threw society into a ferment. To this day the inhabitants of Greece and Roumania distinguish themselves from their oriental neighbours by the proud title of “Romans.”
But in the West a series of phantoms succeeded one another upon the throne. The floodgates of the Rhine and Danube frontiers broke down completely and the new nations streamed into their heritage. Then it was found how truly Constantine’s policy had saved the world. Though the Goths took and plundered Rome (410), they came in not as pagan destroyers, but as Christian immigrants, and it was Gothic generals and Gothic armies who saved Europe from destruction. About 447 the Mongolian Huns under their terrible Attila came riding into western Europe from the steppes of Russia. They crossed the Rhine half a million strong, destroying and burning as they came. The Roman emperor’s sister Honoria proposed marriage to Attila, and the proud barbarian offered her a place in his harem if she would bring half the Western Empire as her dowry. The Roman general Aetius with a half-barbarian army in alliance with the Visigoths checked them at “The Battle of Chalons” and the peril drifted away. Aetius who had saved Rome was stabbed by his ungrateful emperor.
The Vandals had already overrun Spain and streamed across to Africa, whence they issued forth to make a second sack of Rome. Britain had been deserted rather by the choice of its army than by command of any emperor, and left a prey to the pagans of the north in 406. Italy itself was wholly in the hands of the barbarians, who lived on terms of apparent
Plate XCIV. THE BARBERINI IVORY