ding each of his own battalions hastened to assume the purple. The Roman writers have fancifully given to these the name of the thirty tyrants; a more exact computation reduces their number to nineteen. Of these one or two only were men of ancient family and high lineage. Postumus and Victorinus, with his mother, Victoria, in Gaul, were perhaps the only ones among them who limited their ambition to a provincial sovereignty. One after another the chiefs who thus asserted their claims to empire in the East and the West, in Illyricum, in Isauria, and Africa, with names unworthy of being recorded, fell by the arms of one or another of the emperor's more loyal lieutenants, or of their own soldiers. Odenathus alone was summoned by Gallienus to his assistance, and honored with the title of Augustus. The Syrian prince and his gallant queen, Zenobia, were the most distinguished characters of that obscure but turbulent epoch.

A.D. 268.

The slaughter of Gallienus followed in due course. When at last he took up arms, and rushed from the city to the frontiers of Italy to encounter the pretender Aureolus, he soon fell, by chance or more probably through treachery, in a tumult within his own camp. In his last moments he performed the only good deed of his career, in nominating for his successor a man of courage and ability, though of mean birth and foreign extraction. With Claudius, who obtained by one signal victory the surname of Gothicus, commences a brief and fitful revival of the military glories of the commonwealth. The contests of so many chiefs of the armies with one another had brought military ability to the front. If the aspirants to power had themselves rapidly perished, they had no doubt thrust forward the best of their lieutenants, and exercised the bravest of their legions. The emperor, at the head of his chosen forces, was further disembarrassed of the presence of vain and useless magnates of the city; for, among other caprices, Gallienus had enacted that henceforth the senators should take no part in military affairs. It seems that the residents in Rome were not indisposed to accept this degrading restriction. Life in Rome was from this time busied with no more vigorous pursuits than the studies of ideas and opinions, and the war of words, which was still agitated with unabated restlessness. The New Platonists, on the one hand, the Christian sects on the other, supplied the lettered class with congenial mental occupation, and the defence as well as the government of the empire. was left entirely to provincials and even strangers. The thirty tyrants were for the most part of foreign extraction, and they had maintained themselves by the arms of Franks, Goths, Quadi, or Alemanni, whom they subsidized each in his own behoof.

Claudius had routed the Goths in the great battle of Naissus in

CHAP. LXIX.

AURELIAN.

571

sor.

A.D. 270.

Mæsia, and was preparing to advance into Asia to check the Persians, and at the same time to reduce to subjection Odenathus and Zenobia. But he, too, was cut off prematurely, not by the sword or dagger, but by a natural death, while marshalling his forces at Sirmium on the Danube, the birthplace of the gallant captain Aurelian, whom he nominated for his succesThis man, the son of an Illyrian peasant, proved himself one of the ablest chiefs of the Roman legions. He defeated the Goths on the Danube, but at the same time he recognized the necessity of finally withdrawing the outposts of the empire altogether from the northern bank of that river. Aurelian had no scruple in the employment of barbarians. With his legions now largely reinforced he hastened to the East, and encountered no unworthy rival in Zenobia, queen of Palmyra, whose husband had lately deceased. Zenobia is illustrious both for her political capacity and also for her devotion to the teaching of the philosopher Longinus, whom she employed as her minister. She resisted the Roman emperor in the field, but was finally overcome and carried off to Rome to be exhibited in a triumph. Tetricus, who had made head against the legitimate emperor in Gaul, was paraded through the streets at the same time; but Aurelian was placable as well as brave, and allowed both his rivals to enjoy their lives in a private station. At the same time he was rigid and even cruel in maintaining the discipline of his armies, and he was preparing to carry out a virulent persecution of the Christians, when he fell by assassination in his tent. The soldiers whom he was leading against the Persians resented and avenged his loss. They paid a high tribute of respect to his memory by awaiting for six months the election of his successor by the Senate. One substantial monument of his short reign remains in the existing walls of Rome, which, though more than once rebuilt since his time, still stand for the most part on the lines he traced for them, when the recent invasion of the Alemanni, who penetrated into the heart of Italy, induced the government to provide for the security of the capital. The walls of Servius had been outgrown in all directions for several centuries, and in fact had almost disappeared under the soil, from which some fragments only have been painfully uncovered in recent times. The walls of Aurelian include a space of three or four times the area of the Servian, and have a circuit of twelve or thirteen miles, nor is it probable that the suburbs ever extended far beyond them. The establishment of the 'City of Aurelian" (Orleans) on the foundations of the ancient Genabum, was another of this emperor's works which deserves a passing notice. He had combated rival emperors within the province of Gaul, and had vigorously repressed the encroachments of

66

A.D. 275.

It was with a view

the Franks and Alemanni on the frontier. both to internal and external defence that he placed this fortress in its commanding position in the centre of the province, where it has retained its importance, together with the name of its founder, to the present day.

A.D. 276.

The army was for the moment tired of appointing emperors who seemed destined to be so soon lost to it. It allowed the Senate to choose Aurelian's next successor, and the Senate chose with patriotic intentions a man of probity as well as of ancient Roman family, who bore the name and regarded himself as a kinsman of the illustrious historian Cornelius Tacitus. But the new chief of the state was over seventy years of age, and was physically unequal to the fatigues of war which he felt it his duty to encounter. He conducted an expedition against the Scythian Alani, but succumbed in the course of a few months. Again the army undertook to create an emperor, and made an excellent choice in Aurelius Probus, the bravest and most successful officer of the late wars against the Germans. The Senate loyally accepted the appointment, while Florianus, the brother of Tacitus, who had assumed the purple without authority either from the one power or the other, relinquished the contest he had provoked by a voluntary death. Probus, like Aurelian, was a native of Sirmium. He proved himself worthy of military rule, the only rule now possible, by his skill, his bravery, and his hardy virtues. During a short but active reign of six years he defeated the Germans on the Rhine and Danube, and constructed or repaired the rampart which connected those frontier streams over a course of two hundred miles. He first overthrew the Goths, and then, passing from the West to the East, led his forces against the Persians. From this enemy he extorted an honorable peace; and having put down some competitors for power among his own officers, employed his legions in draining marshes and planting vineyards. Probus, it is said, restored to the countries beyond the Alps, to Pannonia and Mæsia, in Spain, Gaul, and Britain, the liberty of cultivating the vine, which Domitian, in the interest of Italian monopolists, had taken from them. But the discipline which this veteran enforced, and the wholesome labors he exacted, alike disgusted his licentious warriors, and Probus, who never quitted his camp for the pleasures of the capital, lost his life in a mutiny.

The prize of empire fell next to Gaul. The captain upon whom the legions fixed for a successor to the favorite whom they had so wantonly sacrificed was Carus, a native of Norbonne. The senators accepted their choice without remonstrance, and were flattered, perhaps, by the claim he made to be at least by descent a Roman. Carus was no unworthy successor to Probus, whose military virtues

CARUS, CARINUS, AND DIOCLETIAN.

573

CHAP. LXIX. he emulated. Like him he paid no attention to Rome, and the nobles of the city had discovered that if they lost in dignity by the absence of the emperor, they gained at least in ease and security. They were gratified, perhaps, by the high repute of Numerianus, one of their new ruler's sons, in oratory, or rather in declamation, in which, indeed, the schools of southern Gaul had attained a high proficiency. Carus left his elder son Carinus in charge of the western provinces, but he was not insensible to the violent and brutal temper of the young Cæsar, and would willingly have kept him under his own control, could he have spared him from his command, while intent himself upon an expedition against the Persians. Carus is reported to have been the first of the emperors who penetrated in person beyond the city of Ctesiphon on the Tigris; but the Fates were supposed to have decreed that no Roman general should transgress that limit with impunity. The conquering chief was suddenly carried off, either by natural disease, by a stroke of lightning, or by the dagger of his lieutenant Aper, who undoubtedly aimed at the succession. Numerian, who was in attendance upon his father, promptly led the legions homeward; but he, too, was quickly cut off, and his death, also, might be attributed to treachery. Meanwhile, another chief of the legions, a Dalmatian of the name of Diocles, a name which he had changed to Diocletianus, as more consonant to Roman dignity, was on the watch for his own advancement. This competitor had risen from the lowest ranks by the sheer force of his talents. He had been early assured by a prophetic druidess that he was destined for the empire, a prize which could no longer seem beyond the reach of any fortunate officer, or even private soldier, and further that he should attain to it by the slaughter of a boar. For many years did Diocletian addict himself to the chase in the forests of Gaul and Mæsia, nor did he suffer himself to despair of success, however futile the result of his many triumphs over the beasts of the forest. But when at last an opportunity offered of avenging his own chief by the murder of the pretender Aper, he thrust his sword exultingly into the bosom of "the boar" his rival, and called boldly upon the legions and the Senate to sanction his assumption of the purple. The army of the East adhered stanchly to him. Carinus, at the head of the forces of the West, advanced with courage to the encounter, and displayed high military talents in more than one victorious engagement. But the star of Diocletian was in the ascendant, and when beaten in battle he was unexpectedly delivered from his adversary by the dagger of an assassin, whose wife Carinus was said to have debauched. Diocletian lived to justify his fortune, and to exhibit not only great talent in the field, but a more just appre

A.D. 284.

ciation of the needs of the commonwealth than any of his predecessors for many generations. The hour and the man had both arrived for a great revolution in the Roman polity.

CHAPTER LXX.

The epoch of Diocletian.-The empire reconstituted on the basis of an Oriental monarchy.-The division of the empire with Maximianus, and subdivision with Galerius and Constantius Chlorus.-The two Augusti and two Cæsars connected together by family alliances.-The empire victorious in every quarter.-Diocletian resigns his power and retires to á private station (A.D. 305).—Maximian is induced to follow his example.-Interior disturbances during this reign.--The insurrection of the Bagaudæ in Gaul.-Wretched state of the population. --Oppressive taxation.-Persecution of the Christians.-Diocletian joins in it with reluctance.-Constantius stands aloof from it.-Failure of the persecution. (A.D. 284-305.)

A.D. 284.

THE accession of Diocletian to power marks a new epoch in the history of the Roman empire. From this time 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 government becomes avowedly a monarchical autocracy, and the officers by whom it is administered are simply the nominees of the despot on the throne. The empire of Rome is henceforth an Oriental sovereignty. Aurelian had already introduced the use of the Oriental diadem. The nobility of the empire derive their positions from the favor of the sovereign; the commons of the empire, who have long lost their political power, cease to enjoy even the name of citizens. The provinces are still administered under the imperial prefects by the magistrates and the assemblies of any earlier date, but the functions of both the one and the other are confined more strictly than ever to matters of police and finance. Hitherto, indeed, the Senate, however intrinsically weak, had found opportunities for putting forth its claims to authority. Though but rarely allowed to exercise its cherished prerogative of election to the supreme power, it was still popularly regarded as the legitimate centre of administration, the fountain of law and social order. There was at least no constituted authority to oppose it. The chosen of the legions had been for some time past the commander of an army, rather than the sovereign of the state. He had seldom quitted the camp, rarely or never presented himself in the capital. Content with the provision for his own pride and power extorted from the provinces