Part 2 — Chapter III. (These four articles abrogated by the four articles following them, 118-122.) Article 118. The Federal Constitution may at any time be amended. (continued 31)

Marius.

From these great victories, Marius went back to Rome, doubly and terribly clothed with power, by the devotion of a reckless army and the hero-worship of an unthinking mob. The state was at his mercy. A strong man in his place might have crushed the class-factions and accomplished the settlement which Cæsar made after half a century more of turbulence and shame. But Marius was ignorant, he was weak, and he became a mere blood-stained figure in the ruinous anarchy of his time.

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Optimates and Populares.

The social and political state of the capital had grown rapidly worse. A middle-class in Roman society had practically disappeared. The two contending parties or factions, which had taken new names—"optimates" and "populares"—were now divided almost solely by the line which separates rich from poor. "If we said that 'optimates' signified the men who bribed and abused office under the banner of the Senate and its connections, and that 'populares' meant men who bribed and abused office with the interests of the people outside the Senatorial pale upon their lips, we might do injustice to many good men on both sides, but should hardly be slandering the parties" (Beesly). There was a desperate conflict between the two in the year 100, B. C. and the Senate once more recovered its power for a brief term of years.

The Social War.

The enfranchisement of the so-called "allies"—the Latin and other subjects of Rome who were not citizens—was the burning question of the time. The attempt of Caius Gracchus to extend rights of citizenship to them had been renewed again and again, without success, and each failure had increased the bitter discontent of the Italian people. In 90 B. C. they drew together in a formidable confederation and rose in revolt. In the face of this great danger Rome sobered herself to action with old time wisdom and vigor. She yielded her full citizenship to all Italian freemen who had not taken arms, and then offered it to those who would lay their arms down. At the same time, she fought the insurrection with every army she could put into the field, and in two years it was at an end. Marius and his old lieutenant, Sulla, had been the principal commanders in this "Social War," as it was named, and Sulla had distinguished himself most. The latter had now an army at his back and was a power in the state, and between the two military champions there arose a rivalry which produced the first of the Roman Civil Wars.

Marius and Sulla.

A troublesome war in the East had been forced upon the Romans by aggressions of Mithridates, King of Pontus. Both Marius and Sulla aspired to the command. Sulla obtained election to the consulship in 88 B. C. and was named for the coveted place. But Marius succeeded in getting the appointment annulled by a popular assembly and himself chosen instead for the Eastern command. Sulla, personally imperilled by popular tumults, fled to his legions, put himself at their head, and marched back to Rome—the first among her generals to turn her arms against herself. There was no effective resistance; Marius fled; both Senate and people were submissive to the dictates of the consul who had become master of the city. He "made the tribes decree their own political extinction, resuscitating the comitia centuriata; he reorganized the Senate by adding three hundred to its members and vindicating the right to sanction legislation; conducted the consular elections, exacting from L. Cornelius Cinna, the newly elected consul, a solemn oath that he would observe the new regulations, and securing the election of Cn. Octavius in his own interest, and then, like 'a countryman who had just shaken the lice off his coat,' to use his own figure, he turned to do his great work in the East."

(Horton).

Sulla went to Greece, which was in revolt and in alliance with Mithridates, and conducted there a brilliant, ruthless campaign for three years (B. C. 87-84), until he had restored Roman authority in the peninsula, and forced the King of Pontus to surrender all his conquests in Asia Minor. Until this task was finished, he gave no heed to what his enemies did at Rome; though the struggle there between "Sullans" and "Marians" had gone fiercely and bloodily on, and his own partisans had been beaten in the fight. The consul Octavius, who was in Bulla's interest, had first driven the consul Cinna out of the city, after slaying 10,000 of his faction. Cinna's cause was taken up by the new Italian citizens; he was joined by the exiled Marius, and these two returned together, with an army which the Senate and the party of Sulla were unable to resist. Marius came back with a burning heart and with savage intentions of revenge. A horrible massacre of his opponents ensued, which went on unchecked for five days, and was continued more deliberately for several months, until Marius died, at the beginning of the year 86 B. C. Then Cinna ruled absolutely at Rome for three years, supported in the main by the newly-made citizens; while the provinces generally remained under the control of the party of the optimates. In 83 B. C. Sulla, having finished with carefulness his work in the East, came back into Italy, with 40,000 veterans to attend his steps. He had been outlawed and deprived of his command, by the faction governing at the capital; but its decrees had no effect and troubled him little. Cinna had been killed by his own troops, even before Bulla's landing at Brundisium. Several important leaders and soldiers on the Marian side, such as Pompeius, then a young general, and Crassus, the millionaire, went over to Sulla's camp. One of the consuls of the year saw his troops follow their example, in a body; the other consul was beaten and driven into Capua. Sulla wintered in Campania, and the next spring he pressed forward to Rome, fighting a decisive battle with Marius the younger on the way, and took possession of the city; but not in time to prevent a massacre of senators by the resentful mob.

Sulla's Dictatorship.

Before that year closed, the whole of Italy had been subdued, the final battle being fought with the Marians and Italians at the Colline Gate, and Sulla again possessed power supreme. He placed it beyond dispute by a deliberate extermination of his opponents, more merciless than the Marian massacre had been. They were proscribed by name, in placarded lists, and rewards paid to those who killed them; while their property was confiscated, and became the source of vast fortunes to Sulla's supporters, and of lands for distribution to his veterans.

When this terror had paralyzed all resistance to his rule, the Dictator (for he had taken that title) undertook a complete reconstruction of the constitution, aiming at a permanent restoration of senatorial ascendancy and a curbing of the powers which the people, in their assemblies, and the magistrates who especially represented them, had gained during the preceding century. He remodelled, moreover, the judicial system, and some of his reforms were undoubtedly good, though they did not prove enduring. When he had fashioned the state to his liking, this extraordinary usurper quietly abdicated his dictatorial office (B. C. 80) and retired to private life, undisturbed until his death (B. C. 78).

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After Sulla.

The system he had established did not save Rome from renewed distractions and disorder after Sulla died. There was no longer a practical question between Senate and people—between the few and the many in government. The question now, since the legionaries held their swords prepared to be flung into the scale, was what one should again gather the powers of government into his hands, as Sulla had done.

The Great Game and the Players.

The history of the next thirty years—the last generation of republican Rome—is a sad and sinister but thrilling chronicle of the strifes and intrigues, the machinations and corruptions, of a stupendous and wicked game in politics that was played, against one another and against the Republic, by a few daring, unscrupulous players, with the empire of the civilized world for the stake between them. There were more than a few who aspired; there were only three players who entered really as principals into the game. These were Pompeius, called "the Great," since he extinguished the Marian faction in Sicily and in Spain; Crassus, whose wealth gave him power, and who acquired some military pretensions besides, by taking the field against a formidable insurrection of slaves (B. C. 73-71); and Julius Cæsar, a young patrician, but nephew of Marius by marriage, who assiduously strengthened that connection with the party of the people, and who began, very soon after Sulla's death, to draw attention to himself as a rising power in the politics of the day. There were two other men, Cicero and the younger Cato, who bore a nobler and greater because less selfish part in the contest of that fateful time. Both were blind to the impossibility of restoring the old order of things, with a dominant Senate, a free but well guided populace, and a simply ordered social state; but their blindness was heroic and high-souled.

Pompeius in the East.

Of the three strong rivals for the vacant dictatorial chair which waited to be filled, Pompeius held by far the greater advantages. His fame as a soldier was already won; he had been a favorite of Fortune from the beginning of his career; everything had succeeded with him; everything was expected for him and expected from him. Even while the issues of the great struggle were pending, a wonderful opportunity for increasing his renown was opened to him. The disorders of the civil war had licensed a swarm of pirates, who fairly possessed the eastern Mediterranean and had nearly extirpated the maritime trade. Pompeius was sent against them (B. C. 67), with a commission that gave him almost unlimited powers, and within ninety days he had driven them from the sea. Then, before he had returned from this exploit, he was invested with supreme command in the entire East, where another troublesome war with Mithridates was going on. He harvested there all the laurels which belonged by better right to his predecessor, Lucullus, finding the power of Mithridates already broken down. From Pontus he passed into Armenia, and thence into Syria, easily subjugating both, and extinguishing the monarchy of the Seleucids. The Jews resisted him and he humbled them by the siege and conquest of their sacred city. Egypt was now the only Mediterranean state left outside the all-absorbing dominion of Rome; and even Egypt, by bequest of its late king, belonged to the Republic, though not yet claimed.

The First Triumvirate.

Pompeius came back to Rome in the spring of 61 B. C. so glorified by his successes that he might have seemed to be irresistible, whatever he should undertake. But, either through an honest patriotism or an overweening confidence, he had disbanded his army when he reached Italy, and he had committed himself to no party. He stood alone and aloof, with a great prestige, great ambitions, and no ability to use the one or realize the other. Before another year passed, he was glad to accept offers of a helping hand in politics from Cæsar, who had climbed the ladder of office rapidly within four or five years, spending vast sums of borrowed money to amuse the people with games, and distinguishing himself as a democratic champion. Cæsar, the far seeing calculator, discerned the enormous advantages that he might gain for himself by massing together the prestige of Pompeius, the wealth of Crassus and his own invincible genius, which was sure to be the master element in the combination. He brought the coalition about through a bargain which created what is known in history as the First Triumvirate, or supremacy of three.

Cæsar in Gaul.

Under the terms of the bargain, Cæsar was chosen consul for 59 B. C., and at the end of his term was given the governorship of Cisalpine and Transalpine Gaul, with command of three legions there, for five years. His grand aim was a military command—the leadership of an army—the prestige of a successful soldier. No sooner had he secured the command than fortune gave him opportunities for its use in the most striking way and with the most impressive results. The Celtic tribes of Gaul, north of the two small provinces which the Romans had already acquired on the Mediterranean coast, gave him pretexts or provocations (it mattered little to Cæsar which) for war with them, and in a series of remarkable campaigns, which all soldiers since have admired, he pushed the frontiers of the dominion of Rome to the ocean and the Rhine, and threatened the nations of Germany on the farther banks of that stream. "The conquest of Gaul by Cæsar," says Mr. Freeman, "is one of the most important events in the history of the world. It is in some sort the beginning of modern history, as it brought the old world of southern Europe, of which Rome was the head, into contact with the lands and nations which were to play the greatest part in later times—with Gaul, Germany, and Britain." From Gaul Cæsar crossed the channel to Britain in 55 B. C. and again in the following year, exacting tribute from the Celtic natives, but attempting no lodgment in the island.

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Meantime, while pursuing a career of conquest which excited the Roman world, Cæsar never lost touch with the capital and its seething politics. Each winter he repaired to Lucca, the point in his province which was nearest to Rome, and conferred there with his friends, who flocked to the rendezvous. He secured an extension of his term, to enable him to complete his plans, and year by year he grew more independent of the support of his colleagues in the triumvirate, while they weakened one another by their jealousies, and the Roman state was more hopelessly distracted by factious strife.

End of the Triumvirate.

The year after Cæsar's second invasion of Britain, Crassus, who had obtained the government of Syria, perished in a disastrous war with the Parthians, and the triumvirate was at an end. Disorder in Rome increased and Pompeius lacked energy or boldness to deal with it, though he seemed to be the one man present who might do so. He was made sole consul in 52 B. C.; he might have seized the dictatorship, with approval of many, but he waited for it to be offered to him, and the offer never came. He drew at last into close alliance with the party of the Optimates, and left the Populares to be won entirely to Cæsar's side.

Civil War.

Matters came to a crisis in 50 B. C., when the Senate passed an order removing Cæsar from his command and discharging his soldiers who had served their term. He came to Ravenna with a single legion and concerted measures with his friends. The issue involved is supposed to have been one of life or death to him, as well as of triumph or failure in his ambitions; for his enemies were malignant. His friends demanded that he be made consul, for his protection, before laying down his arms. The Senate answered by proclaiming him a public enemy if he failed to disband his troops with no delay. It was a declaration of war, and Cæsar accepted it. He marched his single legion across the Rubicon, which was the boundary of his province, and advanced towards Rome.

Pompeius, with the forces he had gathered, retreated southward, and consuls, senators and nobles generally streamed after him. Cæsar followed them—turning aside from the city—and his force gathered numbers as he advanced. The Pompeians continued their flight and abandoned Italy, withdrawing to Epirus, planning to gather there the forces of the East and return with them. Cæsar now took possession of Rome and secured the islands of Sicily and Sardinia, from which it drew its supply of food. This done, he proceeded without delay to Spain, where seven legions strongly devoted to Pompeius were stationed. He overcame them in a single campaign, enlisted most of the veterans in his own service, and acquired a store of treasure. Before the year ended he was again in Rome, where the citizens had proclaimed him dictator. He held the dictatorship for eleven days, only, to legalize an election which made him consul, with a pliant associate. He reorganized the government, complete in all its branches, including a senate, partly composed of former members of the body who had remained or returned. Then (B. C. 48.—January) he took up the pursuit of Pompeius and the Optimates. Crossing to Epirus, after some months of changeful fortune, he fought and won the decisive battle of Pharsalia. Pompeius, flying to Egypt, was murdered there. Cæsar, following, with a small force, was placed in great peril by a rising at Alexandria, but held his ground until assistance came. He then garrisoned Egypt with Roman troops and made the princess Cleopatra, who had captivated him by her charms, joint occupant of the throne with her younger brother. During his absence, affairs at Rome were again disturbed, and he was once more appointed dictator, as well as tribune for life. His presence restored order at once, and he was soon in readiness to attack the party of his enemies who had taken refuge in Africa. The battle of Thapsus, followed by the suicide of Cato and the surrender of Utica, practically finished the contest, though one more campaign was fought in Spain the following year.

Cæsar Supreme.

Cæsar was now master of the dominions of Rome, and as entirely a monarch as anyone of his imperial successors, who took his name, with the power which he caused it to symbolize, and called themselves "Cæsars," and "Imperators," as though the two titles were equivalent. "Imperator" was the title under which he chose to exercise his sovereignty. Other Roman generals had been Imperators before, but he was the first to be named Imperator for life, and the word (changed in our tongue to Emperor) took a meaning from that day more regal than Rex or King. That Cæsar, the Imperator, first of all Emperors, ever coveted the crown and title of an older-fashioned royalty, is not an easy thing to believe.

Having settled his authority firmly, he gave his attention to the organization of the Empire (still Republic in name) and to the reforming of the evils which afflicted it. That he did this work with consummate judgment and success is the opinion of all who study his time. He gratified no resentments, executed no revenges, proscribed no enemies. All who submitted to his rule were safe; and it seems to be clear that the people in general were glad to be rescued by his rule from the old oligarchical and anarchical state. But some of Cæsar's own partisans were dissatisfied with the autocracy which they helped to create, or with the slenderness of their own parts in it. They conspired with surviving leaders of the Optimates, and Cæsar was assassinated by them, in the Senate chamber, on the 15th of March, B. C. 44.

Professor Mommsen has expressed the estimate of Cæsar which many thoughtful historians have formed, in the following strong words: "In the character of Cæsar the great contrasts of existence meet and balance each other. He was of the mightiest creative power, and yet of the most penetrating judgment; of the highest energy of will and the highest capacity of execution; filled with republican ideals, and at the same time born to be king. He was 'the entire perfect man'; and he was this because he was the entire and perfect Roman." This may be nearly true if we ignore the moral side of Cæsar's character. He was of too large a nature to do evil things unnecessarily, and so he shines even morally in comparison with many of his kind; but he had no scruples.

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After the Murder of Cæsar.

The murderers of Cæsar were not accepted by the people as the patriots and "liberators" which they claimed to be, and they were soon in flight from the city. Marcus Antonius, who had been Cæsar's associate in the consulship, now naturally and skilfully assumed the direction of affairs, and aspired to gather the reins of imperial power into his own hands. But rivals were ready to dispute with him the great prize of ambition. Among them, it is probable that Antony gave little heed at first to the young man, Caius Octavius, or Octavianus, who was Cæsar's nephew, adopted son and heir; for Octavius was less than nineteen years old, he was absent in Apollonia, and he was little known. But the young Cæsar, coming boldly though quietly to Rome, began to push his hereditary claims with a patient craftiness and dexterity that were marvellous in one so young.

The Second Triumvirate.

The contestants soon resorted to arms. The result of their first indecisive encounter was a compromise and the formation of a triumvirate, like that of Cæsar, Pompeius and Crassus. This second triumvirate was made up of Antonius, Octavius, and Lepidus, lately master of the horse in Cæsar's army. Unlike the earlier coalition, it was vengeful and bloody-minded. Its first act was a proscription, in the terrible manner of Sulla, which filled Rome and Italy with murders, and with terror and mourning. Cicero, the patriot and great orator, was among the victims cut down.

After this general slaughter of their enemies at home, Antonius and Octavius proceeded against Brutus and Cassius, two of the assassins of Cæsar, who had gathered a large force in Greece. They defeated them at Philippi, and both "liberators" perished by their own hands. The triumvirs now divided the empire between them, Antonius ruling the East, Octavius the West, and Lepidus taking Africa—that is, the Carthaginian province, which included neither Egypt nor Numidia. Unhappily for Antonius, the queen of Egypt was among his vassals, and she ensnared him. He gave himself up to voluptuous dalliance with Cleopatra at Alexandria, while the cool intriguer, Octavius, at Rome, worked unceasingly to solidify and increase his power. After six years had passed, the young Cæsar was ready to put Lepidus out of his way, which he did mercifully, by sending him into exile. After five years more, he launched his legions and his war galleys against Antonius, with the full sanction of the Roman senate and people. The sea-fight at Actium (B. C. 31) gave Octavius the whole empire, and both Antonius and Cleopatra committed suicide after flying to Egypt. The kingdom of the Ptolemies was now extinguished and became a Roman province in due form.

Octavius (Augustus) Supreme.

Octavius was now more securely absolute as the ruler of Rome and its great empire than Sulla or Julius Cæsar had been, and he maintained that sovereignty without challenge for forty-five years, until his death. He received from the Senate the honorary title of "Augustus," by which he is most commonly known. For official titles, he took none but those which had belonged to the institutions of the Republic, and were familiarly known. He was Imperator, as his uncle had been. He was Princeps, or head of the Senate; he was Censor; he was Tribune; he was Supreme Pontiff. All the great offices of the Republic he kept alive, and ingeniously constructed his sovereignty by uniting their powers in himself.

Organization of the Empire.

The historical position of Augustus, as the real founder of the Roman Empire, is unique in its grandeur; and yet History has dealt contemptuously, for the most part, with his name. His character has been looked upon, to use the language of De Quincey, as "positively repulsive, in the very highest degree." "A cool head," wrote Gibbon of him, "an unfeeling heart, and a cowardly disposition, prompted him, at the age of nineteen, to assume the mask of hypocrisy, which he never afterwards laid aside." And again: "His virtues, and even his vices, were artificial; and according to the various dictates of his interest, he was at first the enemy, and at last the father, of the Roman world." Yet, how can we deny surpassing high qualities of some description to a man who set the shattered Roman Republic, with all its democratic bases broken up, on a new—an imperial—foundation, so gently that it suffered no further shock, and so solidly that it endured, in whole or in part, for a millennium and a half?

In the reign of Augustus the Empire was consolidated and organized; it was not much extended. The frontiers were carried to the Danube, throughout, and the subjugation of Spain was made complete. Augustus generally discouraged wars of conquest. His ambitious stepsons, Drusus and Tiberius, persuaded him into several expeditions beyond the Rhine, against the restless German nations, which perpetually menaced the borders of Gaul; but these gained no permanent footing in the Teutonic territory. They led, on the contrary, to a fearful disaster (A. D. 9), near the close of the reign of Augustus, when three legions, under Varus, were destroyed in the Teutoburg Forest by a great combination of the tribes, planned and conducted by a young chieftain named Hermann, or Arminius, who is the national hero of Germany to this day.

The policy of Drusus in strongly fortifying the northern frontier against the Germans left marks which are conspicuously visible at the present day. From the fifty fortresses which he is said to have built along the line sprang many important modern cities,—Basel, Strasburg, Worms, Mainz, Bingen, Coblenz, Bonn, Cologne, and Leyden, among the number. From similar forts on the Danubian frontier rose Vienna, Regensburg and Passau.

Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero.

Augustus died A. D. 11, and was succeeded in his honors, his offices, and his powers, by his step-son, Tiberius Claudius Nero, whom he had adopted. Tiberius, during most of his reign, was a vigorous ruler, but a detestable man, unless his subjects belied him, which some historians suspect. Another attempt at the conquest of Germany was made by his nephew Germanicus, son of Drusus; but the jealousy of the emperor checked it, and Germanicus died soon after, believing that he had been poisoned. A son of Germanicus, Caius, better known by his nick-name of Caligula, succeeded to the throne on the death of Tiberius (A. D. 37), and was the first of many emperors to be crazed and made beast-like, in lust, cruelty and senselessness, by the awful, unbounded power which passed into their hands. {1005} The Empire bore his madness for three years, and then he was murdered by his own guards. The Senate had thoughts now of restoring the commonwealth, and debated the question for a day; but the soldiers of the prætorian guard took it out of their hands, and decided it, by proclaiming Tiberius Claudius (A. D. 41), a brother of Germanicus, and uncle of the emperor just slain. Claudius was weak of body and mind, but not vicious, and his reign was distinctly one of improvement and advance in the Empire. He began the conquest of Britain, which the Romans had neglected since Cæsar's time, and he opened the Senate to the provincials of Gaul. He had two wives of infamous character, and the later one of these, Agrippina, brought him a son, not his own, whom he adopted, and who succeeded him (A.D. 54). This was Nero, of foul memory, who was madman and monster in as sinister a combination as history can show. During the reign of Nero, the spread of Christianity, which had been silently making its way from Judæa into all parts of the Empire, began to attract the attention of men in public place, and the first persecution of its disciples took place (A. D. 64). A great fire occurred in Rome, which the hated emperor was believed to have caused; but he found it convenient to accuse the Christians of the deed, and large numbers of them were put to death in horrible ways.

Vespasian and his Sons.

Nero was tolerated for fourteen years, until the soldiers in the provinces rose against him, and he committed suicide (A. D. 68) to escape a worse death. Then followed a year of civil war between rival emperors—Galba, Otho, Vitellius, and Vespasian—proclaimed by different bodies of soldiers in various parts of the Empire. The struggle ended in favor of Vespasian, a rude, strong soldier, who purged the government, disciplined the army, and brought society back toward simpler and more decent ways. The great revolt of the Jews (A. D. 66-70) had broken out before he received the purple, and he was commanding in Judæa when Nero fell. The siege, capture and destruction of Jerusalem was accomplished by his son Titus. A more formidable revolt in the West (A. D. 69) was begun the Batavians, a German tribe which occupied part of the Netherland territory, near the mouth of the Rhine. They were joined by neighboring Gauls and by disaffected Roman legionaries, and they received help from their German kindred on the northern side of the Rhine. The revolt, led by a chieftain named Civilis, who had served in the Roman army, was overcome with extreme difficulty.

Vespasian was more than worthily succeeded (A. D. 79) by his elder son, Titus, whose subjects so admired his many virtues that he was called "the delight of the human race." His short reign, however, was one of calamities: fire at Rome, a great pestilence, and the frightful eruption of Vesuvius which destroyed Herculaneum and Pompeii. After Titus came his younger brother Domitian (A. D. 81), who proved to be another creature of the monstrous species that appeared so often in the series of Roman emperors. The conquest of southern Britain (modern England) was completed in his reign by an able soldier, Agricola, who fought the Caledonians of the North, but was recalled before subduing them. Domitian was murdered by his own servants (A. D. 96), after a reign of fifteen years.

Nerva, Trajan and Hadrian.

Rome and the Empire were happy at last in the choice that was made of a sovereign to succeed the hateful son of Vespasian. Not the soldiery, but the Senate, made the choice, and it fell on one of their number, Cocceius Nerva, who was already an aged man. He wore the purple but sixteen months, and his single great distinction in Roman history is, that he introduced to the imperial succession a line of the noblest men who ever sat in the seat of the Cæsars. The first of these was the soldier Trajan, whom Nerva adopted and associated with himself in authority. When Nerva died (A. D. 97), his son by adoption ascended the throne with no opposition. The new Emperor was simple and plain in his habits and manners of life; he was honest and open in all his dealings with men; he was void of suspicion, and of malice and jealousy no less. He gave careful attention to the business of state and was wise in his administration of affairs, improving roads, encouraging trade, helping agriculture, and developing the resources of the Empire in very prudent and practical ways. But he was a soldier, fond of war, and he unwisely reopened the career of conquest which had been almost closed for the Empire since Pompeius came back from the East. A threatening kingdom having risen among the Dacians, in the country north of the lower Danube—the Transylvania and Roumania of the present day—he attacked and crushed it, in a series of vigorous campaigns (A. D. 101-106), and annexed the whole territory to the dominion of Rome. He then garrisoned and colonized the country, and Romanized it so completely that it keeps the Roman name, and its language to this day is of the Latin stock, though Goths, Huns, Bulgarians and Slavs have swept it in successive invasions, and held it among their conquests for centuries at a time. In the East, he ravaged the territory of the Parthian king, entered his capital and added Mesopotamia, Armenia, and Arabia Petræa to the list of Roman provinces. But he died (A. D. 117) little satisfied with the results of his eastern campaigns.

His successor abandoned them, and none have doubted that he did well; because the Empire was weakened by the new frontier in Asia which Trajan gave it to defend. His Dacian conquests were kept, but all beyond the Euphrates in the East were given up. The successor who did this was Hadrian, a kinsman, whom the Emperor adopted in his last hours. Until near the close of his life, Hadrian ranked among the best of the emperors. Rome saw little of him, and resented his incessant travels through every part of his great realm. His manifest preference for Athens, where he lingered longest, and which flourished anew under his patronage, was still more displeasing to the ancient capital. For the Emperor was a man of cultivation, fond of literature, philosophy and art, though busy with the cares of State. In his later years he was afflicted with a disease which poisoned his nature by its torments, filled his mind with dark suspicions, and made him fitfully tyrannical and cruel. The event most notable in his generally peaceful and prosperous reign was the renewed and final revolt of the Jews, under Barchochebas, which resulted in their total expulsion from Jerusalem, and its conversion into a heathen city, with a Roman name.

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The Antonines.

Hadrian had adopted before his death (A. D. 138) a man of blameless character, Titus Aurelius Antoninus, who received from his subjects, when he became Emperor, the appellation "Pius," to signify the dutiful reverence and kindliness of his disposition. He justified the name of Antoninus Pius, by which he is historically known, and his reign, though disturbed by some troubles on the distant borders of the Empire, was happy for his subjects in nearly all respects. "No great deeds are told of him, save this, perhaps the greatest, that he secured the love and happiness of those he ruled" (Capes).

Like so many of the emperors, Antoninus had no son of his own; but even before he came to the throne, and at the request of Hadrian, he had adopted a young lad who won the heart of the late Emperor while still a child. The family name of this son by adoption was Verus, and he was of Spanish descent; the name which he took, in his new relationship, was Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. It is unquestionably the most illustrious name in the whole imperial line, from Augustus to the last Constantine, and made so, not so much by deeds as by character. He gave the world the solitary example of a philosopher upon the throne. There have been a few—a very few—surpassingly good men in kingly places; but there has never been another whose soul was lifted to so serene a height above the sovereignty of his station. Unlimited power tempted no form of selfishness in him; he saw nothing in his imperial exaltation but the duties which it imposed. His mind was meditative, and inclined him to the studious life; but he compelled himself to be a man of vigor and activity in affairs. He disliked war; but he spent years of his life in camp on the frontiers; because it fell to his lot to encounter the first great onset of the barbarian nations of the north, which never ceased from that time to beat against the barriers of the Empire until they had broken them down. His struggle was on the line of the Danube, with the tribes of the Marcomanni, the Quadi, the Vandals, and others of less formidable power. He held them back, but the resources of the Empire were overstrained and weakened lastingly by the effort. For the first time, too, there were colonies of barbarians brought into the Empire, from beyond its lines, to be settled for the supply of soldiers to the armies of Rome: It was a dangerous sign of Roman decay and a fatal policy to begin. The decline of the great world-power was, in truth, already well advanced, and the century of good emperors which ended when Marcus Aurelius died (A. D. 180), only retarded, and did not arrest, the progress of mortal maladies in the state.

From Commodus to Caracalla.

The best of emperors was followed on the throne by a son, Commodus, who went mad, like Nero and Caligula, with the drunkenness of power, and who was killed (A. D. 192) by his own servants, after a reign of twelve years. The soldiers of the prætorian guard now took upon themselves the making of emperors, and placed two upon the throne—first, Pertinax, an aged senator, whom they murdered the next year, and then Didius Julianus, likewise a senator, to whom, as the highest bidder, they sold the purple. Again, as after Nero's death, the armies on the frontiers put forward, each, a rival claimant, and there was war between the competitors. The victor who became sovereign was Septimius Severus (A. D. 194-211), who had been in command on the Danube. He was an able soldier, and waged war with success against the Parthians in the East, and with the Caledonians in Britain, which latter he could not subdue. Of his two sons, the elder, nicknamed Caracalla (A. D. 211-217), killed his brother with his own hands, and tortured the Roman world with his brutalities for six years, when he fell under the stroke of an assassin. The reign of this foul beast brought one striking change to the Empire. An imperial edict wiped away the last distinction between Romans and Provincials, giving citizenship to every free inhabitant of the Empire. "Rome from this date became constitutionally an empire, and ceased to be merely a municipality. The city had become the world, or, viewed from the other side, the world had become 'the City'" (Merivale).

Anarchy and Decay.

The period of sixty-seven years from the murder of Caracalla to the accession of Diocletian—when a great constitutional change occurred—demands little space in a sketch like this. The weakening of the Empire by causes inherent in its social and political structure,—the chief among which were the deadly influence of its system of slavery and the paralyzing effects of its autocracy,—went on at an increasing rate, while disorder grew nearly to the pitch of anarchy, complete. There were twenty-two emperors in the term, which scarcely exceeded that of two generations of men. Nineteen of these were taken from the throne by violent deaths, through mutiny or murder, while one fell in battle, and another was held captive in Persia till he died. Only five among these twenty-two ephemeral lords of the world,—namely Alexander Severus, Decius (who was a vigorous soldier and ruler, but who persecuted the Christians with exceptional cruelty), Claudius, Aurelian, and Probus,—can be credited with any personal weight or worth in the history of the time; and they held power too briefly to make any notable mark.

The distractions of the time were made worse by a great number of local "tyrants," as they were called—military adventurers who rose in different parts of the Empire and established themselves for a time in authority over some district, large or small. In the reign of Gallienus (A. D. 260-268) there were nineteen of these petty "imperators," and they were spoken of as the "thirty tyrants." The more important of the "provincial empires" thus created were those of Postumus, in Gaul, and of Odenatus of Palmyra. The latter, under Zenobia; queen and successor of Odenatus, became a really imposing monarchy, until it was overthrown by Aurelian, A. D. 273.

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The Teutonic Nations.

The Germanic nations beyond the Rhine and the Danube had, by this time, improved their organization, and many of the tribes formerly separated and independent were now gathered into powerful confederations. The most formidable of these leagues in the West was that which acquired the common name of the Franks, or Freemen, and which was made up of the peoples occupying territory along the course of the Lower Rhine. Another of nearly equal power, dominating the German side of the Upper Rhine and the headwaters of the Danube, is believed to have absorbed the tribes which had been known in the previous century as Boii, Marcomanni, Quadi, and others. The general name it received was that of the Alemanni. The Alemanni were in intimate association with the Suevi, and little is known of the distinction that existed between the two. They had now begun to make incursions across the Rhine, but were driven back in 238. Farther to the East, on the Lower Danube, a still more dangerous horde was now threatening the flanks of the Empire in its European domain. These were Goths, a people akin, without doubt, to the Swedes, Norsemen and Danes; but whence and when they made their way to the neighborhood of the Black Sea is a question in dispute. It was in the reign of Caracalla that the Romans became first aware of their presence in the country since known as the Ukraine. A few years later, when Alexander Severus was on the throne, they began to make incursions into Dacia. During the reign of Philip the Arabian (A. D. 244-249) they passed through Dacia, crossed the Danube, and invaded Mœsia (modern Bulgaria). In their next invasion (A. D. 251) they passed the Balkans, defeated the Romans in two terrible battles, the last of which cost the reigning Emperor, Decius, his life, and destroyed the city of Philippopolis, with 100,000 of its people. But when, a few years later, they attempted to take possession of even Thrace and Macedonia, they were crushingly defeated by the Emperor Claudius, whose successor Aurelian made peace by surrendering to them the whole province of Dacia (A. D. 270), where they settled, giving the Empire no disturbance for nearly a hundred years. Before this occurred, the Goths, having acquired the little kingdom of Bosporus (the modern Crimea) had begun to launch a piratical navy, which plundered the coast cities of Asia Minor and Greece, including Athens itself.

On the Asiatic side of the Empire a new power, a revived and regenerated Persian monarchy, had risen out of the ruins of the Parthian kingdom, which it overthrew, and had begun without delay to contest the rule of Rome in the East.

Diocletian.

Briefly described, this was the state and situation of the Roman Empire when Diocletian, an able Illyrian soldier, came to the throne (A. D. 284). His accession marks a new epoch. "From this time," says Dean Merivale, "the old names of the Republic, the consuls, the tribunes, and the Senate itself, cease, even if still existing, to have any political significance." "The empire of Rome is henceforth an Oriental sovereignty." But the changes which Diocletian made in the organization and administration of the Empire, if they did weigh it down with a yet more crushing autocracy and contribute to its exhaustion in the end, did also, for the time, stop the wasting of its last energies, and gather them in hand for potent use. It can hardly be doubted that he lengthened the term of its career.

Finding that one man in the exercise of supreme sovereignty, as absolute as he wished to make it, could not give sufficient care to every part of the vast realm, he first associated one Maximian with himself, on equal terms, as Emperor, or Augustus, and six years later (A. D. 292) he selected two others from among his generals and invested them with a subordinate sovereignty, giving them the title of "Cæsars." The arrangement appears to have worked satisfactorily while Diocletian remained at the head of his imperial college. But in 305 he wearied of the splendid burden that he bore, and abdicated the throne, unwillingly followed by his associate, Maximian. The two Cæsars, Constantius and Galerius, were then advanced to the imperial rank, and two new Cæsars were named.

Jealousies, quarrels, and civil war were soon rending the Empire again. The details are unimportant.

Constantine and Christianity.

After nine years of struggle, two competitors emerged (A. D. 314) alone, and divided the Empire between them. They were Constantine, son of Constantius, the Cæsar, and one Licinius. After nine years more, Licinius had disappeared, defeated and put to death, and Constantine (A. D. 323) shared the sovereignty of Rome with none. In its final stages, the contest had become, practically, a trial of strength between expiring Paganism in the Roman world and militant Christianity, now grown to great strength. The shrewd adventurer Constantine saw the political importance to which the Christian Church had risen, and identified himself with it by a "conversion" which has glorified his name most undeservedly. If to be a Christian with sincerity is to be a good man, then Constantine was none; for his life was full of evil deeds, after he professed the religion of Christ, even more than before. "He poured out the best and noblest blood in torrents, more especially of those nearly connected with himself. … In a palace which he had made a desert, the murderer of his father-in-law, his brothers-in-law, his sister, his wife, his son, and his nephew, must have felt the stings of remorse, if hypocritical priests and courtier bishops had not lulled his conscience to rest" (Sismondi).

But the so-called "conversion" of Constantine was an event of vast import in history. It changed immensely, and with suddenness, the position, the state, the influence, and very considerably the character and spirit of the Christian Church. The hierarchy of the Church became, almost at once, the greatest power in the Empire, next to the Emperor himself, and its political associations, which were dangerous from the beginning, soon proved nearly fatal to its spiritual integrity. "Both the purity and the freedom of the Church were in danger of being lost. State and Church were beginning an amalgamation fraught with peril. The State was becoming a kind of Church, and the Church a kind of State. The Emperor preached and summoned councils, called himself, though half in jest, a 'bishop,' and the bishops had become State officials, who, like the high dignitaries of the Empire, travelled by the imperial courier-service, and frequented the ante-chambers of the palaces in Constantinople." "The Emperor determined what doctrines were to prevail in the Church, and banished Arius to-day and Athanasius to-morrow." "The Church was surfeited with property and privileges. The Emperor, a poor financier, impoverished the Empire to enrich" it (Uhlhorn). That Christianity had shared the gain of the Christian Church from these great changes, is very questionable.

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By another event of his reign, Constantine marked it in history with lasting effect. He rebuilt with magnificence the Greek city of Byzantium on the Bosphorus, transferred to it his imperial residence, and raised it to a nominal equality with Rome, but to official find practical superiority, as the capital of the Empire. The old Rome dwindled in rank and prestige from that day; the new Rome—the city of Constantine, or Constantinople—rose to the supreme place in the eyes and the imaginations of men.

Julian and the Pagan Revival.

That Constantine added the abilities of a statesman to the unscrupulous cleverness of an adventurer is not to be disputed; but he failed to give proof of this when he divided the Empire between his three sons at his death (A. D. 337). The inevitable civil wars ensued, until, after sixteen years, one survivor gathered the whole realm under his scepter again. He (Constantius), who debased and disgraced the Church more than his father had done, was succeeded (A. D. 361) by his cousin, Julian, an honest, thoughtful, strong man, who, not unnaturally, preferred the old pagan Greek philosophy to the kind of Christianity which he had seen flourishing at the Byzantine court. He publicly restored the worship of the ancient gods of Greece and Rome; he excluded Christians from the schools, and bestowed his favor on those who scorned the Church; but he entered on no violent persecution. His reign was brief, lasting only two years. He perished in a hapless expedition against the Persians, by whom the Empire was now almost incessantly harassed.

Valentinian and Valens.

His successor, Jovian, whom the army elected, died in seven months; but Valentinian, another soldier, raised by his comrades to the throne, reigned vigorously for eleven years. He associated his brother, Valens, with him in the sovereignty, assigning the latter to the East, while he took the administration of the West.

Until the death of Valentinian, in 375, the northern frontiers of the Empire, along the Rhine and the Danube, were well defended. Julian had commanded in Gaul, with Paris for his capital, six years before he became Emperor, and had organized its defence most effectively. Valentinian maintained the line with success against the Alemanni; while his lieutenant, Theodosius, delivered Roman Britain from the ruinous attacks of the Scots and Picts of its northern region. On the Danube, there continued to be peace with the Goths, who held back all other barbarians from that northeastern border.

The Goths in the Empire.

But the death of Valentinian was the beginning of fatal calamities. His brother, Valens, had none of his capability or his vigor, and was unequal to such a crisis as now occurred. The terrible nation of the Huns had entered Europe from the Asiatic steppes, and the Western Goths, or Visigoths, fled before them. These fugitives begged to be permitted to cross the Danube and settle on vacant lands in Mœsia and Thrace. Valens consented, and the whole Visigothic nation, 200,000 warriors, with their women and children, passed the river (A. D. 376). It is possible that they might, by fair treatment, have been converted into loyal citizens, and useful defenders of the land. But the corrupt officials of the court took advantage of their dependent state, and wrung extortionate prices from them for disgusting food, until they rose in desperation and wasted Thrace with fire and sword. Fresh bodies of Ostrogoths (Eastern Goths) and other barbarians came over to join them (A. D. 378); the Roman armies were beaten in two great battles, and Valens, the Emperor, was slain. The victorious Goths swept on to the very walls of Constantinople, which they could not surmount, and the whole open country, from the Black Sea to the Adriatic, was ravaged by them at will.

Theodosius.

In the meantime, the western division of the Empire had passed, on the death of Valentinian, under the nominal rule of his two young sons, Gratian, aged sixteen, and Valentinian II., aged four. Gratian had made an attempt to bring help to his uncle Valens; but the latter fought his fatal battle while the boy emperor was on the way, and the latter, upon hearing of it, turned back. Then Gratian performed his one great act. He sought a colleague, and called to the throne the most promising young soldier of the day. This was Theodosius, whose father, Count Theodosius, the deliverer of Britain, had been put to death by Valens, on some jealous accusation, only three years before. The new Emperor took the East for his realm, having Gratian and Valentinian II. for colleagues in the West. He speedily checked the ravages of the Goths and restored the confidence of the Roman soldiers. Then he brought diplomacy to bear upon the dangerous situation, and succeeded in arranging a peace with the Gothic chieftains, which enlisted them in the imperial service with forty thousand of their men. But they retained their distinctive organization, under their own chiefs, and were called "fœderati," or allies. This concession of a semi-independence to so great a body of armed barbarians in the heart of the Empire was a fatal mistake, as was proved before many years.

For the time being it secured peace, and gave Theodosius opportunity to attend to other things. The controversies of the Church were among the subjects of his consideration, and by taking the side of the Athanasians, whom his predecessor had persecuted, he gave a final victory to Trinitarianism, in the Roman world. His reign was signalized, moreover, by the formal, official abolition of paganism at Rome.

The weak but amiable Gratian, reigning at Paris, lost his throne and his life, in 383, as the consequence of a revolt which began in Britain and spread to Gaul. The successful rebel and usurper, Maximus, seemed so strong that Theodosius made terms with him, and acknowledged his sovereignty for a number of years. But, not content with a dominion which embraced Britain, Gaul and Spain, Maximus sought, after a time, to add Italy, where the youth, Valentinian II., was still enthroned (at Milan, not Rome), under the tutelage of his mother. Valentinian fled to Theodosius; the Eastern Emperor adopted his cause, and restored him to his throne, defeating the usurper and putting him to death (A. D. 388). Four years later Valentinian II. died; another usurper arose, and again Theodosius (A. D. 394) recovered the throne.

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Final Division of the Empire.

Theodosius was now alone in the sovereignty. The Empire was once more, and for the last time, in its full extent, united under a single lord. It remained so for but a few months. At the beginning of the year 395, Theodosius died, and his two weak sons, Arcadius and Honorius, divided the perishing Empire between them, only to augment, in its more venerable seat, the distress of the impending fall.

Arcadius, at the age of eighteen, took the government of the East; Hononus, a child of eleven, gave his name to the administration of the West. Each emperor was under the guardianship of a minister chosen by Theodosius before he died. Rufinus, who held authority at Constantinople, was worthless in all ways; Stilicho, who held the reins at Milan, was a Vandal by birth, a soldier and a statesman of vigorous powers.

Decay of the Western Empire.

The West seemed more fortunate than the East, in this division; yet the evil days now fast coming near fell crushingly on the older Rome, while the New Rome lived through them, and endured for a thousand years. No doubt the Empire had weakened more on its elder side; had suffered more exhaustion of vital powers. It had little organic vitality now left in it. If no swarms of barbaric invaders had been waiting and watching at its doors, and pressing upon it from every point with increasing fierceness, it seems probable that it would have gone to pieces ere long through mere decay. And if, on the other hand, it could have kept the vigorous life of its best republican days, it might have defied Teuton and Slav forever. But all the diseases, political and social, which the Republic engendered in itself, had been steadily consuming the state, with their virulence even increased, since it took on the imperial constitution. All that imperialism did was to gather waning energies in hand, and make the most of them for external use. It stopped no decay. The industrial palsy, induced by an ever-widening system of slave-labor, continued to spread. Production decreased; the sum of wealth shrunk in the hands of each succeeding generation; and yet the great fortunes and great estates grew bigger from age to age. The gulf between rich and poor opened deeper and wider, and the bridges once built across it by middle-class thrift were fallen down. The burden of imperial government had become an unendurable weight; the provincial municipalities, which had once been healthy centers of a local political life, were strangled by the nets of taxation flung over them. Men sought refuge even in death from the magistracies which made them responsible to the imperial treasury for revenues which they could not collect. Population dwindled, year by year. Recruiting from the body of citizens for the common needs of the army became more impossible. The state was fully dependent, at last, on barbaric mercenaries of one tribe for its defence against barbaric invaders of another; and it was no longer able, as of old, to impress its savage servitors with awe of its majesty and its name.

Stilicho and Alaric.

Stilicho, for a time, stoutly breasted the rising flood of disaster. He checked the Picts and Scots of Northern Britain, and the Alemanni and their allies on the frontiers of Gaul. But now there arose again the more dreadful barbarian host which had footing in the Empire itself, and which Theodosius had taken into pay. The Visigoths elected a king (A. D. 395), and were persuaded with ease to carve a kingdom for him out of the domain which seemed waiting to be snatched from one or both of the feeble monarchs, who sat in mockery of state at Constantinople and Milan. Alaric, the new Gothic king, moved first against the capital on the Bosphorus; but Rufinus persuaded him to pass on into Greece, where he went pillaging and destroying for a year. Stilicho, the one manly defender of the Empire, came over from Italy with an army to oppose him; but he was stopped on the eve of battle by orders from the Eastern Court, which sent him back, as an officious meddler. This act of mischief and malice was the last that Rufinus could do. He was murdered, soon afterwards, and Arcadius, being free from his influence, then called upon Stilicho for help. The latter came once more to deliver Greece, and did so with success. But Alaric, though expelled from the peninsula, was neither crushed nor disarmed, and the Eastern Court had still to make terms with him. It did so for the moment by conferring on him the government of that part of Illyricum which the Servia and Bosnia of the present day coincide with, very nearly. He rested there in peace for four years, and then (A. D. 400) he called his people to arms again, and led the whole nation, men, women and children, into Italy. The Emperor, Honorius, fled from Milan to Ravenna, which, being a safe shelter behind marshes and streams, became the seat of the court for years thereafter. Stilicho, stripping Britain and Gaul of troops, gathered forces with which, at Eastertide in the year 402, and again in the following year, he defeated the Goths, and forced them to retreat.

He had scarcely rested from these exertions, when the valiant Stilicho was called upon to confront a more savage leader, Radagaisus by name, who came from beyond the lines (A. D. 405), with a vast swarm of mixed warriors from many tribes pouring after him across the Alps. Again Stilicho, by superior skill, worsted the invaders, entrapping them in the mountains near Fiesole (modern Florence), and starving them there till they yielded themselves to slavery and their chieftain to death.

This was the last great service to the dying Roman state which Stilicho was permitted to do. Undermined by the jealousies of the cowardly court at Ravenna, he seems to have lost suddenly the power by which he held himself so high. He was accused of treasonable designs and was seized and instantly executed, by the Emperor's command.

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Alaric and his Goths in Rome.

Stilicho dead, there was no one in Italy for Alaric to fear, and he promptly returned across the Alps, with the nation of the Visigoths behind him. There was no resistance to his march, and he advanced straight upon Rome. He did not assail the walls, but sat down before the gates (A. D. 408), until the starving citizens paid him a great ransom in silver and gold and precious spices and silken robes. With this booty he retired for the winter into Tuscany, where his army was swelled by thousands of fugitive barbarian slaves, and by reinforcements of Goths and Huns. From his camp he opened negotiations with Honorius, demanding the government of Dalmatia, Venetia and Noricum, with certain subsidies of money and corn. The contemptible court, skulking at Ravenna, could neither make war nor make concessions, and it soon exhausted the patience of the barbarian by its puerilities. He marched again to Rome (A. D. 409), seized the port of Ostia, with its supplies of grain, and forced the helpless capital to join him in proclaiming a rival emperor. The prefect of the city, one Attalus, accepted the purple at his hands, and played the puppet for a few months in imperial robes. But the scheme proved unprofitable, Attalus was deposed, and negotiations were reopened with Honorius. Their only result was a fresh provocation which sent Alaric once more against Rome, and this time with wrath and vengeance in his heart. Then the great, august capital of the world was entered, through treachery or by surprise, on the night of the 24th of August, 410, and suffered all that the lust, the ferocity and the greed of a barbarous army let loose could inflict on an unresisting city. It was her first experience of that supreme catastrophe of war, since Brennus and the Gauls came in; but it was not to be the last.

From the sack of Rome, Alaric moved southward, intending to conquer Sicily; but a sudden illness brought his career to an end.

The Barbarians Swarming in.

The Empire was now like a dying quarry, pulled down by fierce hunting packs and torn on every side. The Goths were at its throat; the tribes of Germany—Sueves, Vandals, Burgundians, Alans—had leaped the Rhine (A. D. 406) and swarmed upon its flanks, throughout Gaul and Spain. The inrush began after Stilicho, to defend Italy against Alaric and Radagaisus, had stripped the frontiers of troops. Sueves, Vandals, and Alans passed slowly through the provinces, devouring their wealth and making havoc of their civilization as they went. After three years, they had reached and surmounted the Pyrenees, and were spreading the same destruction through Spain.

The confederated tribes of the Franks had already been admitted as allies into northwestern Gaul, and were settled there in peace. At first, they stood faithful to the Roman alliance, and valiantly resisted the new invasion; but its numbers overpowered them, and their fidelity gave way when they saw the pillage of the doomed provinces going on. They presently joined the barbarous mob, and with an energy which secured the lion's share of plunder and domain.

The Burgundians did not follow the Vandals and Sueves to the southwest, but took possession of the left bank of the middle Rhine, whence they gradually spread into western Switzerland and Savoy, and down the valleys of the Rhone and Saone, establishing in time an important kingdom, to which they gave their name.

No help from Ravenna or Rome came to the perishing provincials of Gaul in the extremity of their distress; but a pretender arose in Britain, who assumed the imperial title and promised deliverance. He crossed over to Gaul in 407 and was welcomed with eagerness, both there and in Spain, to which he advanced. He gained some success, partly by enlisting and partly by resisting the invaders; but his career was brief. Other pretenders appeared in various provinces, of the West; but the anarchy of the time was too great for any authority, legitimate or revolutionary, to establish itself.

The Visigoths in Gaul.

And, now, into the tempting country of the afflicted Gauls, already crowded with rapacious freebooters, the Visigoths made their way. Their new king, Ataulph, or Adolphus, who succeeded Alaric, passed into Gaul, but not commissioned, as sometimes stated, to restore the imperial sovereignty there. He moved with his nation, as Alaric had moved, and Italy, by his departure, was relieved; but Narbonne, Toulouse, Bordeaux, and the Aquitainian country at large, was soon subject to his command (A. D. 412-419). He passed the Pyrenees and entered Spain, where an assassin took his life. His successor, Wallia, drove the Sueves into the mountains and the Vandals into the South; but did not take possession of the country until a later time. The Visigoths, returning to Aquitaine, found there, at last, the kingdom which Alaric set out from the Danube to seek, and they were established in it with the Roman Emperor's consent. It was known as the kingdom of Gothia, or Septimania, but is more commonly called, from its capital, the kingdom of Toulouse.

The Eastern Empire.

Affairs in the Eastern Empire had never arrived at so desperate a state as in the West. With the departure of Alaric, it had been relieved from its most dangerous immediate foe. There had been tumults, disorders, assassinations, court conspiracies, fierce religious strifes, and every evidence of a government with no settled authority and no title to respect; but yet the Empire stood and was not yet seriously shaken. In 408 Arcadius died. His death was no loss, though he left an infant son to take his place; for he also left a daughter, Pulcheria, who proved to be a woman of rare virtue and talents, and who reigned in her brother's name.

Aetius and the Huns.

The imbecile Honorius, with whose name the failing sovereignty of Rome had been so disastrously linked for eight and twenty rears, died in 423. An infant nephew was his heir, and Placidia, the mother, ruled at Ravenna for a fourth of a century, in the name of her child. Her reign was far stronger than her wretched brother's had been, because she gave loyal support to a valiant and able man, who stood at her side. Aetius, her minister, did all, perhaps, that man could do to hold some parts of Gaul, and to play barbarian against barbarian—Hun against Goth and Frank—in skilful diplomacy and courageous war. But nothing that he won was any lasting gain. In his youth, Aetius had been a hostage in the camps of both the Goths and the Huns, and had made acquaintances among the chieftains of both which served his policy many times. {1011} He had employed the terrible Huns in the early years of his ministry, and perhaps they had learned too much of the weakness of the Roman State. These most fearful of all the barbarian peoples then surging in Europe had been settled, for some years, in the region since called Hungary, under Attila, their most formidable king. He terrorized all the surrounding lands and exercised a lordship from the Caspian to the Baltic and the Rhine. The imperial court at the East stooped to pay him annual tribute for abstaining from the invasion of its domain. But in 450, when the regent Pulcheria became Empress of the East, by her brother's death, and married a brave old soldier, Marcian, in order to give him the governing power, a new tone was heard in the voice from Constantinople which answered Attila's demands.

Defeat of Attila.

The Hun then appears to have seen that the sinking Empire of the West offered a more certain victim to his terrors and his arms, and he turned them to that side. First forming an alliance with the Vandals (who had crossed from Spain to Africa in 429, had ravaged and subdued the Roman provinces, and had established a kingdom on the Carthaginian ground, with a naval power in the Carthaginian Sea), Attila led his huge army into suffering Gaul. There were Ostrogoths, and warriors from many German tribes, as well as Huns, in the terrific host; for Attila's arm stretched far, and his subjects were forced to follow when he led. His coming into Gaul affrighted Romans and barbarians alike, and united them in a common defense. Aetius formed an alliance with Theodoric, the Visigothic king, and their forces were joined by Burgundians and Franks. They met Attila near Chalons, and there, on a day in June, A. D. 451, upon the Catalaunian fields, was fought a battle that is always counted among the few which gave shape to all subsequent history. The Huns were beaten back, and Europe was saved from the hopeless night that must have followed a Tartar conquest in that age.

Attila threatening Rome.

Attila retreated to Germany, foiled but not daunted. The next year (A. D. 452) he invaded Italy and laid siege to Aquileia, an important city which stood in his path. It resisted for three months and was then utterly destroyed. The few inhabitants who escaped, with fugitives from neighboring ports, found a refuge in some islands of the Adriatic coast, and formed there a sheltered settlement which grew into the great city and republican state of Venice. Aetius made strenuous exertions to gather forces for another battle with the Huns; but the resources of the Empire had sunk very low. While he labored to collect troops, the effect of a pacific embassy was despairingly tried, and it went forth to the camp of Attila, led by the venerable bishop of Rome—the first powerful Pope—Leo I., called the Great. The impression which Leo made on the Hunnish king, by his venerable presence, and by the persuasiveness of his words, appears to have been extraordinary. At all events, Attila consented to postpone his designs on Rome; though he demanded and received promise of an annual tribute. The next winter he died, and Rome was troubled by him no more.

Rome Sacked by the Vandals.

But another enemy came, who rivalled Attila in ruthlessness, and who gave a name to barbarity which it has kept to this day. The Vandal king, Genseric, who now swept the Mediterranean with a piratical fleet, made his appearance in the Tiber (A. D. 455) and found the Roman capital powerless to resist his attack. The venerable Pope Leo again interceded for the city, and obtained a promise that captives should not be tortured nor buildings burned,—which was the utmost stretch of mercy that the Vandal could afford. Once more, then, was Rome given up, for fourteen days and nights, to pillage and the horrors of barbaric debauch. "Whatever had survived the former sack,—whatever the luxury of the Roman Patriciate, during the intervening forty-five years, had accumulated in reparation of their loss,—the treasures of the imperial palace, the gold and silver vessels employed in the churches, the statues of pagan divinities and men of Roman renown, the gilded roof of the temple of Capitolian Jove, the plate and ornaments of private individuals, were leisurely conveyed to the Vandal fleet and shipped off to Africa" (Sheppard).

The Vandal invasion had been preceded, in the same year, by a palace revolution which brought the dynasty of Theodosius to an end. Placidia was dead, and her unworthy son, Valentinian III., provoked assassination by dishonoring the wife of a wealthy senator, Maximus, who mounted to his place. Maximus was slain by a mob at Rome, just before the Vandals entered the city. The Empire was now without a head, and the throne without an heir. In former times, the Senate or the army would have filled the vacant imperial seat; now, it was a barbarian monarch, Theodoric, the Visigothic king, who made choice of a successor to the Cæsars. He named a Gallic noble, Avitus by name, who had won his esteem, and the nomination was confirmed by Marcian, Emperor of the East.

Ricimer and Majorian.

But the influence of Theodoric in Roman affairs was soon rivalled by that of Count Ricimer, another Goth, or Sueve, who held high command in the imperial army, and who resented the elevation of Avitus. The latter was deposed, after reigning a single year; and Majorian, a soldier of really noble and heroic character, was promoted to the throne. He was too great and too sincere a man to be Ricimer's tool, and the same hand which raised him threw him down, after he had reigned four years (A. D. 457-461). He was in the midst of a powerful undertaking against the Vandals when he perished. Majorian was the last Emperor in the Western line who deserves to be named.

The last Emperors in the West.

Ricimer ruled Italy, with the rigor of a despot, under the modest title of Patrician, until 472. His death was soon followed by the rise of another general of the barbarian troops, Orestes, to like autocracy, and he, in turn, gave way to a third, Odoacer, who slew him and took his place. The creatures, half a dozen in number, who put on and put off the purple robe, at the command of these adventurers, who played with the majesty of Rome, need no further mention. {1012} The last of them was Romulus Augustulus, son of Orestes, who escaped his father's fate by formally resigning the throne. He was the last Roman Emperor in the West, until Charlemagne revived the title, three centuries and a quarter later. "The succession of the Western Emperors came to an end, and the way in which it came to an end marks the way in which the names and titles of Rome were kept on, while all power was passing into the hands of the barbarians. The Roman Senate voted that one Emperor was enough, and that the Eastern Emperor, Zeno, should reign over the whole Empire. But at the same time Zeno was made to entrust the government of Italy, with the title of Patrician, to Odoacer. … Thus the Roman Empire went on at Constantinople, or New Rome, while Italy and the Old Rome itself passed into the power of the Barbarians. Still the Roman laws and names went on, and we may be sure that any man in Italy would have been much surprised if he had been told that the Roman Empire had come to an end" (Freeman).

Odoacer.

The government of Odoacer, who ruled with the authority of a king, though pretending to kingship only in his own nation, was firm and strong. Italy was better protected from its lawless neighbors than it had been for nearly a century before. But nothing could arrest the decay of its population—the blight that had fallen upon its prosperity. Nor could that turbulent age afford any term of peace that would be long enough for even the beginning of the cure of such maladies and such wounds as had brought Italy low. For fourteen years Odoacer ruled; and then he was overthrown by a new kingdom-seeking barbarian, who came, like Alaric, out of the Gothic swarm.

Theodoric the Ostrogoth.

The Ostrogoths had now escaped, since Attila died, from the yoke of the Huns, and were prepared, under an able and ambitious young king, Theodoric, who had been reared as a hostage at Constantinople, to imitate the career of their cousins, the Visigoths. Having troubled the Eastern Court until it stood in fear of him, Theodoric asked for a commission to overthrow Odoacer, in Italy, and received it from the Emperor's hand. Thus empowered by one still recognized as lawful lord on both sides of the Adriatic, Theodoric crossed the Julian Alps (A. D. 489) with the families of his nation and their household goods. Three battles made him master of the peninsula and decided the fate of his rival. Odoacer held out in Ravenna for two years and a half, and surrendered on a promise of equal sovereignty with the Ostrogothic king. But Theodoric did not scruple to kill him with his own sword, at the first opportunity which came. In that act, the native savagery in him broke loose; but through most of his life he kept his passions decently tamed, and acted the barbarian less frequently than the civilized statesman and king. He gave Italy peace, security, and substantial justice for thirty years. With little war, he extended his sovereignty over Illyrium, Pannonia, Noricum, Rhætia and Provence, in south-eastern Gaul. If the extensive kingdom which he formed—with more enlightenment than any other among those who divided the heritage of Rome—could have endured, the parts of Europe which it covered might have fared better in after times than they did. "Italy might have been spared six hundred years of gloom and degradation." But powerful influences were against it from the first, and they were influences which proceeded mischievously from the Christian Church. Had the Goths been pagans, the Church might have turned a kindly face to them, and wooed them to conversion as she wooed the Franks. But they were Christians, of a heretic stamp, and the orthodox Christianity of Rome held them in deadly loathing. While still beyond the Danube, they had received the faith from an Arian apostle, at the time of the great conflict of Athanasius against Arius, and were stubborn in the rejection of Trinitarian dogma. Hence the Church in the West was never reconciled to the monarchy of Theodoric in Italy, nor to that of the Visigoths at Toulouse; and its hostility was the ultimate cause of the failure of both.

The Empire in the East.

To understand the events which immediately caused the fall of the Ostrogothic power, we must turn back for a moment to the Empire in the East. Marcian, whom Pulcheria, the wise daughter of Arcadius, made Emperor by marrying him, died in 457, and Aspar, the barbarian who commanded the mercenaries, selected his successor. He chose his own steward, one Leo, who proved to have more independence than his patron expected, and who succeeded in destroying the latter. After Leo I. came (474) his infant grandson; Leo II., whose father, an Isaurian chieftain, took his place when he died, within the year. The Isaurian assumed a Greek name, Zeno, and occupied the throne—with one interval of flight and exile for twenty months—during seven years. When he died, his widow gave her hand in marriage to an excellent officer of the palace, Anastasius by name, and he was sovereign of the Empire for twenty-seven years.

The reign of Justinian.

After Anastasius, came Justin I., born a peasant in Dacia (modern Roumania), but advanced as a soldier to the command of the imperial guards, and thence to the throne. He had already adopted and educated his nephew, Justinian, and before dying, in 527, he invested him with sovereignty as a colleague. The reign of Justinian was the most remarkable in the whole history of the Empire in the East. Without breadth of understanding, or notable talents of any kind: without courage; without the least nobility of character; without even the virtue of fidelity to his ministers and friends,—this remarkable monarch contrived to be splendidly served by an extraordinary generation of great soldiers, great jurists, great statesmen, who gave a brilliance to his reign that was never rivalled while the Byzantine seat of Empire stood. It owes, in modern esteem, its greatest fame to the noble collection of Roman laws which was made, in the Pandects and the Code, under the direction of the wise and learned Tribonian. Transiently it was glorified by conquests that bore a likeness to the march of the resistless legions of ancient Rome; and the laurelled names of Belisarius and Narses claimed a place on the columns of victory with the names of Cæsar and Pompeius. {1013} But the splendors of the reign were much more than offset by miseries and calamities of the darkest kind. "The reign of Justinian, from its length, its glory and its disasters, may be compared to the reign of Louis XIV., which exceeded it in length, and equalled it in glory and disaster. … He extended the limits of his empire; but he was unable to defend the territory he had received from his predecessors. Everyone of the thirty-eight years of his reign was marked by an invasion of the barbarians; and it has been said that, reckoning those who fell by the sword, who perished from want, or were led into captivity, each invasion cost 200,000 subjects to the empire. Calamities which human prudence is unable to resist seemed to combine against the Romans, as if to compel them to expiate their ancient glory. … So that the very period which gave birth to so many monuments of greatness, may be looked back upon with horror, as that of the widest desolation and the most terrific mortality" (Sismondi). The first and longest of the wars of Justinian was the Persian war, which he inherited from his predecessors, and which scarcely ceased while the Persian monarchy endured. It was in these Asiatic campaigns that Belisarius began his career. But his first great achievement was the overthrow and extinction of the Vandal power in Africa, and the restoration of Roman authority (the empire of the new Rome) in the old Carthaginian province (A. D. 533-534). He accomplished this with a force of but 10,000 foot and 5,000 horse, and was hastily recalled by his jealous lord on the instant of his success.

Conquests of Belisarius in Italy.

But the ambition of Justinian was whetted by this marvellous conquest, and he promptly projected an expedition against the kingdom of the Eastern Goths. The death of Theodoric had occurred in 526. His successor was a child of ten years, his grandson, whose mother exercised the regency. Amalsuentha, the queen-regent, was a woman of highly cultivated mind, and she offended her subjects by too marked a Romanization of her ideas. Her son died in his eighteenth year, and she associated with herself on the throne the next heir to it, a worthless nephew of Theodoric, who was able, in a few weeks, to strip all her power from her and consign her to a distant prison, where she was soon put to death (A. D. 535). She had previously opened negotiations with Justinian for the restoration of his supremacy in Italy, and the ambitious Emperor assumed with eagerness a right to avenge her deposition and death. The fate of Amalsuentha was his excuse, the discontent of Roman orthodoxy with the rule of the heretic Goths was his encouragement, to send an army into Italy with Belisarius at its head. First taking possession of Sicily, Belisarius landed in Italy in 536, took Naples and advanced on Rome. An able soldier, Vitiges, had been raised to the Gothic throne, and he evacuated Rome in December; but he returned the following March and laid siege to the ancient capital, which Belisarius had occupied with a moderate force. It was defended against him for an entire year, and the strength of the Gothic nation was consumed on the outer side of the walls, while the inhabitants within were wasted by famine and disease. The Goths invoked the aid of the Franks in Gaul, and those fierce warriors, crossing the Alps (A. D. 538), assailed both Goths and Greeks, with indiscriminate hostility, destroyed Milan and Genoa, and mostly perished of hunger themselves before they retreated from the wasted Cisalpine country.

Released from Rome, Belisarius advanced in his turn against Ravenna, and took the Gothic capital, making Vitiges a prisoner (A. D. 539). His reward for these successes was a recall from command. The jealous Emperor could not afford his generals too much glory at a single winning. As a consequence of his folly, the Goths, under a new king, Totila, were allowed to recover so much ground in the next four years that, when, in 544, Belisarius was sent back, almost without an army, the work of conquest had to be done anew. Rome was still being held against Totila, who besieged it, and the great general went by sea to its relief. He forced the passage of the Tiber, but failed through the misconduct of the commander in the city to accomplish an entry, and once more the great capital was entered and yielded to angry Goths (A. D. 546). They spared the lives of the few people they found, and the chastity of the women; but they plundered without restraint.

Rome a Solitude for Forty Days.

Totila commanded the total destruction of the city; but his ruthless hand was stayed by the remonstrances of Belisarius. After demolishing a third of the walls, he withdrew towards the South, dragging the few inhabitants with him, and, during forty days, Rome is said to have been an unpeopled solitude. The scene which this offers to the imagination comes near to being the most impressive in history. At the end of that period it was entered by Belisarius, who hastily repaired the walls, collected his forces, and was prepared to defend himself when Totila came back by rapid marches from Apulia. The Goths made three assaults and were bloodily repulsed.

End of the Ostrogothic Kingdom.

But again Belisarius was recalled by a mean and jealous court, and again the Gothic cause was reanimated and restored. Rome was taken again from its feeble garrison (A. D. 549), and this time it was treated with respect. Most of Italy and Sicily, with Corsica and Sardinia, were subdued by Totila's arms, and that king, now successful, appealed to Justinian for peace. It was refused, and in 552 a vigorous prosecution of the war resumed, under a new commander—the remarkable eunuch Narses, who proved himself to be one of the great masters of war. Totila was defeated and slain in the first battle of the campaign; Rome was again beleaguered and taken; and the last blow needed to extinguish the Gothic kingdom in Italy was given the following year (A. D. 553), when Totila's successor, Teia, ended his life on another disastrous field of battle.

The Exarchate.

Italy was restored for the moment to the Empire, and was placed under the government of an imperial viceroy, called Exarch, which high office the valiant Narses was the first to fill. His successors, known in history as the Exarchs of Ravenna, resided in that capital for a long period, while the arm of their authority was steadily shortened by the conquests of new invaders, whose story is yet to be told.

{1014}

Events in the West.

Leaving Italy and Rome, once more in the imperial fold, but mere provinces now of a distant and alienated sovereignty, it is necessary to turn back to the West, and glance over the regions in which, when we looked at them last, the institutions of Roman government and society were being dissolved and broken up by flood upon flood of barbaric invasion from the Teutonic North.

Teutonic Conquest of Britain.

If we begin at the farthest West which the Roman dominion reached, we shall find that the island of Britain was abandoned, practically, by the imperial government earlier than the year 410, when Rome was sinking under the blows of Alaric. From that time the inhabitants were left to their own government and their own defense. To the inroads of the savage Caledonian Picts and Irish Scots, there were added, now, the coast ravages of a swarm of ruthless pirates, which the tribes of northwestern Europe had begun to launch upon the German or North Sea. The most cruel and terrible of these ocean freebooters were the Saxons, of the Elbe, and they gave their name for a time to the whole. Their destructive raids upon the coasts of Britain and Gaul had commenced more than a century before the Romans withdrew their legions, and that part of the British coast most exposed to their ravages was known as the Saxon Shore. For about thirty years after the Roman and Romanized inhabitants of Britain had been left to defend themselves, they held their ground with good courage, as appears; but the incessant attacks of the Picts wore out, at last, their confidence in themselves, and they were fatally led to seek help from their other enemies, who scourged them from the sea. Their invitation was given, not to the Saxons, but to a band of Jutes—warriors from that Danish peninsula in which they have left their name. The Jutes landed at Ebbsfleet, in the Isle of Thanet (A. D. 449 or 450), with two chiefs, Hengest and Horsa, at their head. They came as allies, and fought by the side of the Britons against the Picts with excellent success. Then came quarrels, and presently, in 455, the arms of Hengest and Horsa were turned against their employers. Ten years later the Jutes had secure possession of the part of Britain now called Kent, and Hengest was their king, Horsa having fallen in the war. This was the beginning of the transformation of Roman-Celtic Britain into the Teutonic England of later history. The success of the Jutes drew their cousins and piratical comrades, the Saxons and the Angles, to seek kingdoms in the same rich island. The Saxons came first, landing near Selsey, in 477, and taking gradual possession of a district which became known as the kingdom of the South Saxons, or Sussex. The next invasion was by Saxons under Cerdic, and Jutes, who joined to form the kingdom of the West Saxons, or Wessex, covering about the territory of modern Hampshire. So much of their conquest was complete by the year 519. At about the same time, other colonies were established and gave their names, as East Saxons and Middle Saxons, to the Essex and Middlesex of modern English geography. A third tribe from the German shore, the Angles, now came (A. D. 547) to take their part in the conquest of the island, and these laid their hands upon kingdoms in the East and North of England, so much larger than the modest Jute and Saxon realms in the south that their name fixed itself, at last, upon the whole country, when it lost the name of Britain. Northumberland, which stretched from the Humber to the Firth of Forth, Mercia, which covered at one time the whole middle region of England, and East Anglia, which became divided into the two English counties of Norfolk (North-folk) and Suffolk (South-folk), were the three great kingdoms of the Angles.

The Making of England.

Before the end of the sixth century, almost the whole of modern England, and part of Scotland, on its eastern side, as far to the north as Edinburgh, was in possession of the German invaders. They had not merely subdued the former possessors—Britons and Roman provincials (if Romans remained in the island after their domination ceased),—but, in the judgment of the best investigators of the subject, they had practically swept them from all the parts of the island in which their own settlements were established. That is to say, the prior population was either exterminated by the merciless swords of these Saxon and English pagans, or was driven into the mountains of Wales, into the peninsula of Cornwall and Devon, or into the Strathclyde corner of Scottish territory,—in all which regions the ancient British race has maintained itself to this day. Scarcely a vestige of its existence remains elsewhere in England,—neither in language, nor in local names, nor in institutions, nor in survivals of any other kind; which shows that the inhabitants were effaced by the conquest, as the inhabitants of Gaul, of Spain, and of Italy, for example, were not.

The new society and the new states which now arose on the soil of Britain, and began to shape themselves into the England of the future, were as purely Germanic as if they had grown up in the Jutish peninsula or on the Elbe. The institutions, political and social, of the immigrant nations, had been modified by changed circumstances, but they had incorporated almost nothing from the institutions which they found existing in their new home and which they supplanted. Broadly speaking, nothing Roman and nothing Celtic entered into them. They were constructed on German lines throughout.

The barbarism of the Saxons and their kin when they entered Britain was far more unmitigated than that of most of the Teutonic tribes which overwhelmed the continental provinces of Rome had been. The Goths had been influenced to some extent and for quite a period by Roman civilization, and had nominally accepted Christian precepts and beliefs, before they took arms against the Empire. The Franks had been allies of Rome and in contact with the refinements of Roman Gaul, for a century or two before they became masters in that province. Most of the other nations which transplanted themselves in the fifth century from beyond the Rhine to new homes in the provinces of Rome, had been living for generations on the borders of the Empire, or near; had acquired some acquaintance, at least, with the civilization which they did not share, and conceded to it a certain respect; while some of them had borne arms for the Emperor and taken his pay. But the Saxons, Angles and Jutes had thus far been remote from every influence or experience of the kind. {1015} They knew the Romans only as rich strangers to be plundered and foes to be fought. Christianity represented nothing to them but an insult to their gods. There seems to be little doubt, therefore, that the civilizing work which Rome had done in western Europe was obliterated nowhere else so ruthlessly and so wantonly as in Britain. Christianity, still sheltered and strong in Ireland, was wholly extinguished in England for a century and more, until the memorable mission of Augustine, sent by Pope Gregory the Great (A. D. 597), began the conversion of the savage islanders.

The Kingdom of the Franks.

In Gaul, meanwhile, and in southwestern Germany, the Franks had become the dominant power. They had moved tardily to the conquest, but when they moved it was with rapid strides. While they dwelt along the Lower Rhine, they were in two divisions: the Salian Franks, who occupied, first, the country near the mouth of the river, and then spread southwards, to the Somme, or beyond; and the Ripuarians, who lived farther up the Rhine, in the neighborhood of Cologne, advancing thence to the Moselle. In the later part of the fifth century a Roman Patrician, Syagrius, still exercised some kind of authority in northern Gaul; but in 486 he was defeated and overthrown by Chlodvig, or Clovis, the chief of the Salian Franks. Ten years later, Clovis, leading both the Salian and the Ripuarian Franks in an attack upon the German Alemanni, beyond the Upper Rhine, subdued that people completely, and took their country. Their name survived, and adhered to the whole people of Germany, whom the Franks and their successors the French have called Allemands to this day. After his conquest of the Alemanni, Clovis, who had married a Christian wife, accepted her faith and was baptized, with three thousand of his chief men. The professed conversion was as fortunate politically for him as it had been for Constantine. He adopted the Christianity which was that of the Roman Church—the Catholic Christianity of the Athanasian creed—and he stood forth at once as the champion of orthodoxy against the heretic Goths and Burgundians, whose religion had been poisoned by the condemned doctrines of Arius. The blessings, and the more substantial endeavors, of the Roman Church were, therefore, on his side, when he attacked the Burgundians and made them tributary, and when, a few years later, he expelled the Goths from Aquitaine and drove them into Spain (A.D. 500-508). Beginning, apparently, as one of several chiefs among the Salian Franks, he ended his career (510) as sole king of the whole Frank nation, and master of all Gaul except a Gothic corner of Provence, with a considerable dominion beyond the Rhine.

The Merovingian Kings.

But Clovis left his realm to four sons, who divided it into as many kingdoms, with capitals at Metz, Orleans, Paris, and Soissons. There was strife and war between them, until one of the brothers, Lothaire, united again the whole kingdom, which, meantime, had been enlarged by the conquest of Thuringia and Provence, and by the extinction of the tributary Burgundian kings. When he died, his sons rent the kingdom again, and warred with one another, and once more it was brought together. Says Hallam: "It is a weary and unprofitable task to follow these changes in detail, through scenes of tumult and bloodshed, in which the eye meets with no sunshine, nor can rest upon any interesting spot. It would be difficult, as Gibbon has justly observed, to find anywhere more vice or less virtue." But, as Dean Church has remarked, the Franks were maintained in their ascendancy by the favor of the clergy and the circumstances of their position, despite their divisions and the worthless and detestable character of their kings, after Clovis. "They occupied a land of great natural wealth, and great geographical advantages, which had been prepared for them by Latin culture; they inherited great cities which they had not built, and fields and vineyards which they had not planted; and they had the wisdom, not to destroy, but to use their conquest. They were able with singular ease and confidence to employ and trust the services, civil and military, of the Latin population. … The bond between the Franks and the native races was the clergy. … The forces of the whole nation were at the disposal of the ruling race; and under Frank chiefs, the Latins and Gauls learned once more to be warriors." This no doubt suggests a quite true explanation of the success of the Franks; but too much may easily be inferred from it. It will not be safe to conclude that the Franks were protectors of civilization in Gaul, and did not lay destroying hands upon it. We shall presently see that it sank to a very darkened state under their rule, though the eclipse may have been less complete than in some other of the barbarized provinces of Rome.