A.D.West.A.D.East.
364.Valentinian.364.Valens.
367.Gratian.
375.Valentinian II.379.Theodosius.
395.Honorius.395.Arcadius.

Authors.

Donatus, Eutropius, St. Athanasius, Ausonius, Claudian, Arnobius, (303,) Lactantius, (306,) Eusebius, (315,) Arius, (316,) Gregory Nazianzen, (320-389,) Basil the Great, Bishop Of Cesarea, (330-379,) Ambrose, (340-397,) Augustine (353-429,) Theodoret, (386-457,) Martin, Bishop of Tours.

[THE FOURTH CENTURY.]

THE REMOVAL TO CONSTANTINOPLE — ESTABLISHMENT OF CHRISTIANITY — APOSTASY OF JULIAN — SETTLEMENT OF THE GOTHS.

As the memory of the old liberties of Rome died out, a nearer approach was made to the ostentatious despotisms of the East. Aurelian, in 270, was the first emperor who encircled his head with a diadem; and Diocletian, in 284, formed his court on the model of the most gorgeous royalties of Asia. On admission into his presence, the Roman Senator, formerly the equal of the ruler, prostrated himself at his feet. Titles of the most unmanly adulation were lavished on the fortunate slave or herdsman who had risen to supreme power. He was clothed in robes of purple and violet, and loaded with an incalculable wealth of jewels and gold. It was from deep policy that Diocletian introduced this system. Ceremony imposes on the vulgar, and makes intimacy impossible. Etiquette is the refuge of failing power, and compensates by external show for inherent weakness, as stiffness and formality are the refuge of dulness and mediocrity in private life. There was now, therefore, seated on the throne, which was shaken by every commotion, a personage assuming more majestic rank, and affecting far loftier state and dignity, than Augustus had ventured on while the strength of the old Republic gave irresistible force to the new empire, or than the Antonines had dreamt of when the prosperity of Rome was apparently at its height. But there was still some feeling, if not of self-respect, at least of resistance to pretension, in the populace and Senators of the capital. Diocletian visited Rome but once. He was attacked in lampoons, and ridiculed in satirical songs. His colleague established his residence in the military post of Milan. We are not, therefore, to feel surprised that an Orientalized authority sought its natural seat in the land of ancient despotisms, and that many of the emperors had cast longing eyes on the beautiful towns of Asia Minor, and even on the far-off cities of Mesopotamia, as more congenial localities for their barbaric splendours. By a sort of compromise between his European origin and Asiatic tastes, the emperor Constantine, after many struggles with his competitors, having attained the sole authority, transferred the seat of empire from Rome to a city he had built on the extreme limits of Europe, and only divided from Asia by a narrow sea. All succeeding ages have agreed in extolling the situation of this city, called, after its founder, Constantinople, as the finest that could have been chosen. All ages, from the day of its erection till the hour in which we live, have agreed that it is fitted, in the hands of a great and enterprising power, to be the metropolis and arbiter of the world; and Constantinople is, therefore, condemned to the melancholy fate of being the useless and unappreciated capital of a horde of irreclaimable barbarians. To this magnificent city Constantine removed the throne in 329, and for nearly a thousand years after that, while Rome was sacked in innumerable invasions, and all the capitals of Europe were successively occupied by contending armies, Constantinople, safe in her two narrow outlets, and rich in her command of the two continents, continued unconquered, and even unassailed.

Rome was stripped, that Constantinople might be filled. All the wealth of Italy was carried across the Ægean. The Roman Senator was invited to remove with his establishment. He found, on arriving at his new home, that by a complimentary attention of the emperor, a fac-simile of his Roman palace had been prepared for him on the Propontis. The seven hills of the new capital responded to the seven hills of the old. There were villas for retirement along the smiling shores of the Dardanelles or of the Bosphorus, as fine in climate, and perhaps equal in romantic beauty, to Baiæ or Brundusium. There was a capital, as noble a piece of architecture as the one they had left, but without the sanctity of its thousand years of existence, or the glory of its unnumbered triumphs. One omission was the subject of remark and lamentation. The temples were nowhere to be seen. The images of the gods were left at Rome in the solitude of their deserted shrines, for Constantine had determined that Constantinople should, from its very foundation, be the residence of a Christian people. Churches were built, and a priesthood appointed. Yet, with the policy which characterized the Church at that time, he made as little change as possible in the external forms. There is still extant a transfer of certain properties from the old establishment to the new. There are contributions of wax for the candles, of frankincense and myrrh for the censers, and vestures for the officiating priests as before. Only the object of worship is changed, and the images of the heathen gods and heroes are replaced with statues of the apostles and martyrs.

It is difficult to gather a true idea of this first of the Christian emperors from the historians of after-times. The accounts of him by contemporary writers are equally conflicting. The favourers of the old superstition describe him as a monster of perfidy and cruelty. The Church, raised to supremacy by his favour, sees nothing in him but the greatest of men—the seer of visions, the visible favourite of the Almighty, and the predestined overthrower of the powers of evil. The easy credulity of an emancipated people believed whatever the flattery of the courtiers invented. His mother Helena made a journey to Jerusalem, and was rewarded for the pious pilgrimage by the discovery of the True Cross. Chapels and altars were raised upon all the places famous in Christian story; relics were collected from all quarters, and we are early led to fear that the simplicity of the gospel is endangered by its approach to the throne, and that Constantine’s object was rather to raise and strengthen a hierarchy of ecclesiastical supporters than to give full scope to the doctrine of truth. But not the less wonderful, not the less by the divine appointment, was this unhoped-for triumph of Christianity, that its advancement formed part of the ambitious scheme of a worldly and unprincipled conqueror. Rather it may be taken as one among the thousand proofs with which history presents us, that the greatest blessings to mankind are produced irrespective of the character or qualities of the apparent author. A warrior is raised in the desert when required to be let loose upon a worn-out society as the scourge of God; a blood-stained soldier is placed on the throne of the world when the time has come for the earthly predominance of the gospel. But neither is Attila to be blamed nor Constantine to be praised.

It was the spirit of his system of government to form every society on a strictly monarchical model. There was everywhere introduced a clearly-defined subordination of ranks and dignities. Diocletian, we saw, surrounded the throne with a state and ceremony which kept the imperial person sacred from the common gaze. Constantine perfected his work by establishing a titled nobility, who were to stand between the throne and the people, giving dignity to the one, and impressing fresh awe upon the other. In all previous ages it had been the office that gave importance to the man. To be a member of the Senate was a mark of distinction; a long descent from a great historic name was looked on with respect; and the heroic deeds of the thousand years of Roman struggle had founded an aristocracy which owed its high position either to personal actions or hereditary claims. But now that the emperors had so long concentrated in themselves all the great offices of the State—now that the bad rulers of the first century had degraded the Senate by filling it with their creatures, the good rulers of the second century had made it merely the recorder of their decrees, and the anarchy of the third century had changed or obliterated its functions altogether—there was no way left to the ambitious Roman to distinguish himself except by the favour of the emperor. The throne became, as it has since continued in all strictly monarchical countries, the fountain of honour. It was not the people who could name a man to the consulship or appoint him to the command of an army. It was not even in the power of the emperor to find offices of dignity for all whom he wished to advance. So a method was discovered by which vanity or friendship could be gratified, and employment be reserved for the deserving at the same time. Instead of endangering an expedition against the Parthians by intrusting it to a rich and powerful courtier who desired to have the rank of general, the emperor simply named him Nobilissimus, or Patricius, or Illustris, and the gratified favourite, the “most noble,” the “patrician,” or the “illustrious,” took place with the highest officers of the State. A certain title gave him equal rank with the Senator, the judge, or the consul. The diversity of these honorary distinctions became very great. There were the clarissimi—the perfectissimi—and the egregii—bearing the same relative dignity in the court-guide of the fourth century, as the dukes, marquises, earls, and viscounts of the peerage-books of the present day. But so much did all distinction flow from proximity to the throne, that all these high-sounding names owed their value to the fact of their being bestowed on the associates of the sovereign. The word Count, which is still the title borne by foreign nobles, comes from the Latin word which means “companion.” There was a Comes, or Companion, of the Sacred Couch, or lord chamberlain—the Companion of the Imperial Service, or lord high steward—a Companion of the Imperial Stables, or lord high constable; through all these dignitaries, step above step, the glorious ascent extended, till it ended in the Companion of Private Affairs, or confidential secretary. At the head of all, sacred and unapproachable, stood the embodied Power of the Roman world, who, as he had given titles to all the magnates of his court, heaped also a great many on himself. His principal appellation, however, was not as in our degenerate days “Majesty,” whether “Most Catholic,” “Most Christian,” or “Most Orthodox,” but consisted in the rather ambitious attribute—eternity. “Your Eternity” was the phrase addressed to some miserable individual whose reign was ended in a month. It was proposed by this division of the Roman aristocracy to furnish the empire with a body for show and a body for use; the latter consisting of the real generals of the armies and administrators of the provinces. And with this view the two were kept distinct; but military discipline suffered by this partition. The generals became discontented when they saw wealth and dignities heaped upon the titular nobles of the court; and to prevent the danger arising from ill will among the legions on the frontier, the emperor withdrew the best of his soldiers from the posts where they kept the barbarians in check, and entirely destroyed their military spirit by separating them into small bodies and stationing them in towns. This exposed the empire to the foreign foes who still menaced it from the other side of the boundary, and gave fresh settlements in the heart of the country to the thousands of barbarian youth who had taken service with the eagles. In every legion there was a considerable proportion of this foreign element: in every district of the empire, therefore, there were now settled the advanced guards of the unavoidable invasion. Men with barbaric names, which the Romans could not pronounce, walked about Roman towns dressed in Roman uniforms and clothed with Roman titles. There were consulars and patricians in Ravenna and Naples, whose fathers had danced the war-dance of defiance when beginning their march from the Vistula and the Carpathian range.