[268-367 A.D.]
But the greatest evil of all, at least in the West, was the civil war. Nineteen tyrants, usurpers, rose against the ruler; amongst whom, however, two, Odenathus and his wife Zenobia, victoriously defended the empire against the Persians. For fifteen years the West languished under tyrants, of whom the first, Postumus, was certainly more powerful than the rightful emperor.
There was no longer any talk of repulsing the foreign foe; the fact that a great number of Germans were in both armies fighting for and against each other was only a diminution of the danger. Further districts of Gaul were being constantly annexed and won back from the barbarians, and a small host of Franks pressed fighting into Spain, and after twelve years lost itself in Africa. Not only the beginning of the end, but the end itself seemed to have set in, when Rome was again saved and raised almost to its former glory by a series of brave and great emperors. But the true saviour of the empire was Diocletian (285-305), the wisest if not the bravest of these. By his state reforms he built up the empire on a new foundation, suitable to the needs of his time. His predecessors had rendered harmless the most dangerous foes of the empire, the Goths—Claudius by his glorious victory at Naissus, and Aurelian by the cession of the large province of Dacia.
A Barbarian
The new Probus, however, had so completely vanquished the peoples of the West with their allies, Vandals, Burgundiones, and Lygii, that he was able to announce to the senate: “The whole of Germania, as far as it reaches, is subdued. Nine kings of different peoples lie at your feet.” In the next two years, however, the conquered people uprose once more, and the old state of affairs seemed to be returning, when Diocletian in the year 285 brought permanent succour.
The division of the imperial government among those brave and able men whom he appointed “cæsars” checked the German peril. His successor and the completer of his work, Constantine the Great, brought (at all events to the eastern portion of the empire) fresh life and more than a thousand years’ duration, by establishing his own place of residence at Constantinople. But once again, under the reign of Constantius, weak son of a great father, the lust of war and plunder was awakened in the barbarians of the West by the rise of a new tyrant in Gaul, and the civil war resulting therefrom. Already the Rhenish strongholds, amongst them Colonia Agrippina (Cologne), were in their hands when a new preserver, the youthful Julian, came upon the scene.
He, like Cæsar, knew how to fight and conquer. The Salian Franks, who had usurped the country between the Schelde and the Maas, Toxandria, were taken as subjects; the Ripuarians, even the Saxon Chauci, were forced to a submissive peace, and the Alamanni compelled, after four campaigns, to the condition of tributaries.
[367-476 A.D.]
Valentinian I continued Julian’s work with an iron hand and will. During this interlude of more than a century in the migration of the tribes the victory of Christendom was effected in Rome, and also its entry amongst the Germanic peoples in the form of Arianism, The Germans received a fresh impetus by the incursions of the Huns, which extended from the Crimean wall to the Loire. The western Goths, who were already in a state of transition from barbarism to civilisation, fled before these Mongols to the Romans. Tricked by imperial officers, wronged and deceived, they seized upon the sword; the decisive battle at Hadrianopolis, in which the emperor Valens fell, made them lords of the European provinces of the Eastern Empire. The joint empire was once more saved by Theodosius, the last of the great emperors, who contrived to appease the Goths. But when in 395 the last and permanent division of the empire took place under Arcadius and Honorius, the two weak sons of Theodosius, who were still in their boyhood, the danger to western Rome flared up again, even more terrible than before.