CHAP. LXVIII. REVIEW OF THE POLITICAL CRISIS.

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captain himself, nor was he a favorite with the soldiers even before he took upon himself the task which had now become necessary, of restoring discipline among them. He continued to make his residence among the military stations of the East; and set himself, not without caution and method, to reduce the emoluments of the legionaries. He began, indeed, with the new recruits only, but the veterans apprehended that he would proceed to apply the same rule to them also. Discontent was already rife among all classes, when a new pretender suddenly appeared under circumstances strangely different from any that had preceded him. But we have arrived at a point in the development of the Roman polity at which it will be well to pause and take a more general view of the situation.

CHAPTER LXVIII.

The empire of Augustus a compromise of the powers of the Senate, the people, and the army.-Conflict of these powers among themselves.-Under the Flavii and Antonines the Senate nominally retains its authority, but the army becomes really predominant. The provincials gradually admitted to citizenship.-Edicts of Hadrian and Caracalla.-Roman jurisprudence tends to place all the population under one law.-Philosophy teaches that all men are equal.-Eclectic spirit in religion.-Christianity excepted from general toleration.-The Pagan persecutions.-Elagabalus, priest of the Sun at Edessa, put forward as emperor.-Macrinus defeated and slain.-Elagabalus slain by the prætorians.-Reign of Alexander Severus. —His amiable and intelligent character.-He is killed in a mutiny, and succeeded by Maximin the Thracian. (A.D. 217-235.)

THE empire, as constituted by the policy of Augustus, was almost avowedly a compromise or balance of the several powers of the actual commonwealth. It introduced no new element of power, no new constitutional idea. The authority of the Senate was represented as controlled by the people on the one hand and by the army on the other. The emperor, as consul and prince of the Senate, as tribune of the people, and as imperator of the soldiers, himself constituted the executive of each branch of the government. The empire was the resultant, so to say, of these three co-ordinate forces, each of which still had, or was feigned to have, its own proper place and function in the organization of the state. Augustus held the balance with care and caution. He fully understood the importance of each of these constituent elements, and in no single act of his long reign did he seem to incline to any

son.

one of them more than to the others. The people continued to regard him as their champion, the Senate as its friend, the army as its leader. His long and steadfast career was a marvel of constitutional government. It established the theory of the constitutional Empire upon a durable foundation, which was loyally maintained by Tiberius and Claudius, and was not materially shaken by the caprices of Caligula and Nero, nor, though rudely tried, by the military usurpations of the civil wars. Again and again the empire was seized by the legions, the consent of the Senate was accepted, but rarely waited for, the acclamations of the people were boldly demanded, and sometimes partially purchased. The Flavian princes stooped to pay court both to the nobles and to the populace; they professed still to hold the balance of Augustus, but they really leaned upon the allegiance of the army, which had repeatedly sworn obedience to them in perThe people they held in less account. As for the mob of the city, it was enough to feed it and to amuse it. The old theory of the empire was partially warped, and the balance inclined more and more to the Senate and the army, to the army most of all. And so it continued to incline throughout the next century; the actual military tyranny of Trajan and the Antonines was most effectually disguised by the personal character of the rulers, and the consideration with which they still treated both the other elements of the state, while they suffered them to be denuded of all real power. But in the meanwhile a fourth estate was growing up and attaining weight and importance throughout the realm. Even from the time of Julius Cæsar, even from the time of Pompeius, the executive power of the state had been disposed to strengthen itself by the occasional introduction of new members into the body of the Roman citizens. Cæsar had thus enrolled large numbers of Gauls and other nations, as well as certain professional classes. Augustus had inclined rather to restrict than to enlarge the borders of the commonwealth. Claudius had leaned decidedly in the contrary direction, and from his time forward there had been a pretty constant progress in the development of Roman citizenship. This progress was due not so much to a liberal policy as to certain fixed exigencies. Though the new Roman citizen became exempt from some specific taxes and tribute, the loss was more than made up, at least for the moment, by the sum for which he was required to purchase his privileges. Accordingly the expedient of a large enfranchisement was repeatedly resorted to, and the measure was made, in fact, reproductive, by insisting that the child of a citizen who had intermarried with a subject should fall back into the lower status, and be induced to purchase back his father's franchise for himself. This extension of citizen

CHAP. LXVIII. CITIZENSHIP MADE UNIVERSAL.

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ship, though constantly in progress, did not really advance so fast as might at first sight be expected. But the provincials thus elevated in social position became no doubt a strong bulwark to the constitution under which they had obtained their advancement. They were for the most part devoid of the prejudices in favor of the old popular privileges which might still linger among the genuine descendants of the old Roman people. They were more accustomed to monarchical theories and usages. They looked to the empire and the legions as the forces which maintained them in their legal superiority to the almost servile herd of subjects around them. They were not indisposed in their turn to maintain the official organization of the empire in the provinces; they tolerated the insolence of the proconsuls and the exactions of the military prefects, and contributed largely to the repression of turbulent ambition among the chiefs of the native populations. Under Hadrian this class of enfranchised provincials was virtually extended to embrace nearly every member of the free population. It was reserved for Caracalla, with the advice of the band of able and prudent jurisconsults with whom his father had surrounded him, to issue the noble edict by which the citizenship of Rome was finally conferred upon all. 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."

This great social revolution had kept pace with the development of Roman jurisprudence. From an early period in the career of Roman conquest the governors of the provinces had been harassed by the conflict of law and usage as between the Roman and his subjects. The civil law of Rome had regarded the rights and duties of the citizen only, and its principles were wholly inapplicable to the great mass of the population abroad and even at home. Even within the city the prætor could not dispense justice between various classes except by the license which was allowed him of moderating its narrow and exclusive spirit. The labors of the jurisconsults were directed for many generations to bringing the old Roman law into some practical harmony with the systems of other civilized communities. It was under this actual and pressing necessity that the Romans developed that logical and methodical jurisprudence which has become the basis of the laws of almost all Europe in later times. At the foundation of this world-wide system lay the recognition, so repugnant to old Roman ideas, of the natural equality of all men. A declaration to this effect stands on the first page of the legislation of the Antonines. It proclaims that there is no essential difference between the Roman and the provincial; both are subject to the same laws

and both participate in the same privileges. Even slavery is a principle of expediency, rather than of nature. But in advancing to this point jurisprudence was mainly aided by the speculations of philosophy. The great lawyers of the empire were themselves philosophers, and applied to their special science the principles they had learned in the schools, especially in that of Zeno. The Stoic system, which strongly maintained the natural equality of man, had sprung up soon after the great conquests of Alexander. The principle itself was born of the sense of universal brotherhood, which that conqueror impressed upon the world by the fusion he made of Greeks and Persians, of Europe and Asia, of East and West. The Academics imbibed the principle from the Stoics, and both schools combined to disseminate it widely. The Romans learned it from the Greeks. It was luminously expounded by Cicero; it was proclaimed as an accepted dogma by Seneca. It was sanctioned by the authority of the philosophic emperors. Hadrian, Antoninus, and Aurelius impressed it in succession on the whole character of their administration.

The current ideas of religion were at work in the same direction with those of jurisprudence and philosophy. The Romans had early found it impossible to retain their own mythological notions in their purity. They had accepted the necessity of introducing into the city the rites of many strange divinities, especially those of their Hellenic subjects, but for the most part they had compromised with the national conscience by identifying the gods of Greece with the gods of Italy. They proceeded at a later period to soothe the susceptibilities of their ruder subjects by a similar artifice. They proclaimed to the worshippers of Taranis and Hesus that these Gaulish deities were in fact the same as Jupiter and Mars; and thus, when they found it necessary to proscribe the Druidical priesthood, they replaced it with a hierarchy of Flamens and Aruspices. The religion of the Jews had been recognized by the state; it was never wholly interdicted at Rome, though it fell into disrepute and odium after the great wars of Judea. Christianity, indeed, as the creed of a sect only, not of a nation, had not yet been admitted to the privileges of an authorized worship. It still lay beyond the pale of the law, and its votaries might at any time be subjected to persecution at the will of the emperor or the prefect. Nevertheless it continued to be generally tolerated. It was only under special provocation, or the influence of political alarm, that the believers were actually sought out for punishment, and the alternative of death or the performance of idolatrous sacrifices presented to them. After the pacification of the Northern frontier effected by Commodus, the empire enjoyed a period of general security, and apparently a revival of

CHAP. LXVIII. A SUN-PRIEST BECOMES EMPEROR.

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internal prosperity. Accordingly no inquisition was for many years made into the belief of the Christians. They continued to diffuse themselves throughout the realm, and were found among its highest classes. They claimed Marcia, the favorite of Commodus, as one of themselves, though the evidence for this equivocal honor is inconclusive. The Christian bishops, and especially the bishop of Rome itself, became almost a recognized power in the state. There can be no doubt that the manners and moral teaching of the Christians were beginning to exercise a potent and wholesome influence upon society in the chief centres of the empire. The religious sense of the intelligent classes embraced a broad and tolerant eclecticism; it rejected, indeed, equally all dogmas as matter of actual fact, but it was not the less prone to accept all dogma as the human interpretation of the divine ideal.

Under these circumstances Rome was found not unprepared for the strange phenomenon which now burst upon the world. The children of Mars and Quirinus were required to accept as their chief, their prince and their supreme pontiff, a stripling from Syria, a priest of the Sun, clothed in Oriental tiara and linen stole, and invested by the devotees of his cult and nation with a peculiar personal sanctity; and they did accept him. Julia Masa, the sister of the empress Julia, had retired to Antioch on the fall of her nephew Caracalla. This princess, herself a widow, had two daughters, Soemias and Mamæa, widows also. The daughters had each a son. The child of Soemias, who was the elder, bore the name of Bassianus; the other, some years his junior, was called Alexander. Bassianus was himself a mere youth; he was recommended to the public function of the priesthood of the Sun by the beauty of his face or figure, but we know not by what acts his mother succeeded in obtaining it for him. His temple was at Emesa; the legions there stationed, fatigued by the unwonted discipline of Macrinus, were dazzled by his appearance, seduced by his apparent likeness to their favorite Caracalla, and finally won by the pretence that he was actually his son. They proclaimed. him emperor, and he assumed at once the purple and the name or title of Antoninus. Macrinus, who was at the time at Antioch, was dismayed by the general enthusiasm of the soldiers, who joined the standard of his adversary by battalions and legions. His conduct was wavering and weak; when at last he went forth to the encounter his own troops had lost all confidence in him; yet such was the effeminacy of the armies of the East that the valor of the prætorians who surrounded his person had almost won the day, when he himself abandoned the field. He was overtaken in his flight, and put to death together with his son Diadumenianus,