3. A third realm was composed of Italy and Africa, where Maximian was invested with the sovereignty.
4. Diocletian took for himself the whole of Greece, Egypt, and Asia.
The Roman empire was thus divided into four kingdoms, which were in some respects independent; yet, as Diocletian had created them, and appointed their sovereigns, they were all in a degree under his energetic sway, and bound to support each other against the common foe. But Rome seemed to have filled up the measure of its iniquity. No human sagacity could avert its doom. For ages she had been gathering “wrath against the day of wrath.”
Soon the savage Britons rose in arms. German tribes, clad in skins and swinging gory clubs, blackened the banks of the Danube and the Rhine. The wild hordes of Africa, from the Nile to Mount Atlas, were in arms. Moorish nations, issuing from unknown fastnesses, crossed the Straits of Gibraltar, and swept like the sirocco of the desert over the Spanish peninsula; then, gathering upon the cliffs of the Pyrenees, they descended in an avalanche of destruction upon the plains ofFrance. The Persian hordes, emerging from the steppes of Tartary in countless bands, were roused to new efforts to chastise Rome, their old hereditary enemy. Thus the shouts of war reverberated over the whole of the then known world. All its fields were crimsoned with blood.
There were four royal capitals. Rome was abandoned as the metropolitan centre. Diocletian was still the ruling spirit over all those kingdoms which his sagacity had formed. He chose for his own capital Nicomedia, on the Asiatic coast of the Sea of Marmora. Though he spent his life in the camp, he endeavored to invest his capital with splendor which should outvie all the ancient glories of Rome.
Diocletian was a shrewd man. Being aware how much the masses were influenced by outward show, he robed himself in garments of satin and gold. He wore a diadem of most exquisite pearls. Even his shoes were studded with glittering gems. All who approached him were compelled to prostrate themselves, and address him with the titles of deity. Gradually this extraordinary man became supreme emperor. The other three kings were crowded into the position of merely governors of subordinate provinces.
Diocletian resolved to uphold paganism, and consecrated all the energies of his vigorous mind to the extirpation of Christianity. We need not enter into the details of this persecution, its scourgings and its bloody enormities: such details are harrowing to the soul. We have already given examples sufficient to show what persecution was under the Roman emperors. The heroism with which many young persons of both sexes braved death, from love to Christ, is ennobling to humanity.
A decree was passed ordering every soldier in the army to join in idolatrous worship. The penalty for refusal was a terrible scourging, and to be driven from the ranks. There were many Christian soldiers in the army. With wonderful fortitude they met their fate.
Diocletian issued a decree that every church should be burned, that every copy of the Scriptures should be consignedto the flames, and that every Christian, of whatever rank, sex, or age, should be tortured, and thus compelled to renounce Christianity. No pen can describe the horrors of this persecution, the dismay with which it crushed all Christian hearts, or the fortitude with which the disciples of Jesus bore the scourgings, fire, and death.
We might fill pages with narratives of individual cases of suffering and of heroism. How little do we in this nineteenth century appreciate the blessing of being permitted to worship God according to the dictates of our consciences, with none to molest or make afraid!