CHAP. LXXII. ROME AND CONSTANTINOPLE.

591

or Treves; Constantinople became the mistress of the world, and succeeded to Rome's proudest title in the popular designation of "The City."

The reign of Constantine lasted to the year 337, untroubled by civil dissensions, and prosperous in the conduct of affairs on every frontier of the empire. The historians commemorate the settlement of the finances on a new basis, which rendered them more elastic, and gave perhaps considerable relief to the reviving industry of the general population. The interior, at least, of the provinces remained undisturbed by war. Letters revived; humanity extended her conquests. The character, indeed, of this emperor, equally unfortunate in the interested panegyrics of the Christians and the unscrupulous detraction of the Pagans, must ever remain a problem for psychologists, to be attempted only by those who have had experience of the mental struggles of an age of transition in spiritual belief. On his death-bed, and not till then, did the first Christian emperor solicit the gift of Christian baptism, and this he sought, no doubt, rather as a passport for the next world than as a means of grace in this. But even the Pagans would not wholly surrender him, nor did his successors, though Christians themselves, refuse to allow him the honors of the Pagan apotheosis.

CHAPTER LXXII.

Constantinople becomes the real capital of the empire.-Contrast between the moral influence of the old and the new city.-Constantinople the centre of law and of military government.-Division of the empire between the three sons of Constantine the Great.-Fall of Constantine and Constans; Constantius becomes sole emperor.-View of Paganism and of Christianity at Rome.-Visit of Constantius. He requires the Pope Liberius to condemn Athanasius.-On his refusal he thrusts Felix into the Roman see.-Resentment and violence of the Christians, and cession of Felix.-Council of Ariminum.-Death of Constantius. (A.D. 337-361.)

THE foundation of Constantinople removed the centre of empire to the East. The imperial ruler took up his residence in the new capital, where the machinery of imperial administration followed him. Many noble and opulent families migrated from the Tiber to the Bosporus, and together with them a large portion of the horde of tradesmen and artificers who cater for the wants of wealth and fashion. Rome speedily became to her new rival as Moscow to St. Petersburg, as Turin recently to Florence, and again to modern Rome. The people of the East were not un

familiar with the process of creating capitals. Both Antioch and Alexandria were cities which had sprung, as it were, in one day into imperial residences, while Tyre and Ephesus and Smyrna had been the ripe growth of centuries. When Constantine's edict appeared that a new Rome should rise upon the site of the provincial colony of Byzantium, multitudes of every rank and order were ready to anticipate his commands, and flock of their own accord to the spot on which the sun of imperial favor might be expected to shine most brightly.

But the transfer of the seat of empire to the East was effected by something more than the capricious edict of the sovereign. The progress of civilization had been long tending in this direction, and could no longer be restrained. It was only by doing moral violence to the sentiments of mankind in general that the government of the civilized world had been so long retained at a spot so remote from the centre of ideas as Rome ever had been and still continued to be. The population of the Eastern provinces far exceeded that of the Western in mere numbers. In general activity of mind and intellectual culture their superiority was even more marked. The East was still the home of Hellenic ideas, which penetrated the various zones of cultivation beyond it, and reached Rome and Italy among the last and most distant. From the East, and primarily from Greece, had come the modifications of the Roman law, which had expanded the local institutions of a Latin city into a system of universal jurisprudence; from the East, and notably from Athens, had flowed the various ethical speculations which had modified the rude and narrow traditions of Sabine and Etruscan life; the philosophy of Greece, itself a combination of many Eastern theories, had been presented to the Romans by Varro, Cicero, and Seneca; the theosophies of the East had penetrated chiefly through Alexandria into Italy, but had hardly succeeded in making any impression upon the minds of the wearied Italians. Lastly, Christianity had been introduced to the capital of the empire from the East, and recommended, first, by the favor in which for a brief period the ideas of Palestine had been held there, but more strongly and more permanently by the influence of the Greek residents in the city, who had preached it through the medium of the Greek language, and the ministrations for the most part of a Greek priesthood. Through the first three centuries the bishops of Rome seem to have been mostly of Hellenic extraction; the writers of the Church were Greeks, Africans, and Gauls, some of whom wrote indeed in Latin, but none perhaps were of Roman or even Italian origin. The intellectual move ments of mankind throughout the course of our history had been almost wholly Greek or Oriental.

CHAP. LXXII. THE THREE SONS OF CONSTANTINE.

593

Against the force of this movement, thus extraneous to herself, Rome had maintained her hold upon the imagination of her people by the military power which she wielded from her central position. The city of the Cæsars had been for ages the centre of gravity of her military system. If the frontier of the Euphrates or the Cataracts of the Nile had been actually more remote than the Rhine, or even the Wall of Hadrian, the greater part of her Eastern provinces were more tranquil and more easily governed than those of the West, and her external enemies in the East had been less formidable than those in the opposite quarter. But the rise of the Sassanian monarchy of Persia had increased her perils in that direction; still more the repeated incursions of the Goths across the lower Danube had demanded her constant vigilance, and filled her with unceasing alarm. The position of Constantinople, secure in her command of the sea and of the resources of three continents, constituted a well-placed bulwark against both the Goths and the Persians. The new capital was enabled to maintain itself equally against assailants from all quarters. Though standing almost in sight of the eminences of the Hamus or Balkan, which the Goths and Scythians have so often scaled, it has never been forced by either. The Goths, indeed, as we shall presently see, were deterred even from making an attempt upon it, and it served to divert the streams of their invasion from itself to Italy and Rome. Constantinople, in fact, secured herself, in the urgency of the crisis now impending, by the sacrifice of her eldest sister.

When, indeed, Rome ceased to be the undisputed capital of the whole empire, her fall was deep and rapid. She ceased to be mistress even of the West, and sank, politically at least, into the rank of a mere provincial city. The division of the realm among the three sons of Constantine on the death of their father left her with no resident emperor. Constantine had celebrated, in the year 336, the thirtieth year of his power, a term of rule which had far exceeded that of any Roman sovereign since the era of Augustus. He was leading his forces against the Persian Sapor in the year following, but was cut off by death at Nicomedia, having appointed the division of his possessions among his three sons, Constantine, Constans, and Constantius. The army not only ratified this disposition of the empire, but sealed it by the murder of every other descendant of Chlorus who could interfere with the succession, with the exception only of Gallus and Julianus, the youthful sons of a younger brother of the great Constantine. Of the three copartners, Constantine, the eldest of the brothers, governed the great western provinces, and probably seated himself at Treves, or some other of the Gaulish cities. Constans, the youngest, occupied

A.D. 340.

A.D. 350.

Italy, Illyricum, and Africa; but he seems to have established himself in one of the strongholds of the Pannonian legions, and never to have visited Italy at all. Constantius was intrusted with the larger and more important portion of the empire. His capital was Constantinople, and his first business was to prosecute the war for the defence of the East against the impending invasion of the Persians. This contest was, indeed, carried on throughout the whole reign of Constantius, a period of more than forty years, with partial and alternate success, and the forces of the Eastern emperor were no doubt materially crippled by it. The other brothers were soon involved in a bloody quarrel one with another. Constantine seems to have been the first to provoke it by demanding from Constans the cession of Italy. The contest was quickly decided in a battle at Aquileia, in which Constantine perished. Constans became master of the entire West, and seems to have taken up his residence in Gaul, where he led a life of indolence and dissipation, till he was surprised by a mutiny of his soldiers and despatched by their leader Magnentius. Thereupon the victorious upstart assumed the purple, and was acknowledged by the Western provinces; but the legions in Illyricum refused to acknowledge him, and declared that they would have none but an officer of their own, named Vetranio, for their emperor. Constantius, who was now ambitious of re-uniting the whole of his father's empire under the last survivor of his offspring, had to play the part of Severus before him, and amuse one of his rivals while he destroyed the other. But Severus had found himself in the centre of the empire between the positions of Albinus and Niger; Constantius, on the contrary, was engaged in the Persian war at its farthest extremity. It was at Edessa that he first heard of the double revolt which he had to encounter, and his enemies had every opportunity of conferring and joining together against him. Though not endowed with the great qualities of his illustrious predecessor, he was both pertinacious and active, as well as a consummate master of craft. A fortunate turn of military affairs relieved him from immediate apprehension from Persia; he marched his troops across Asia Minor, and through his capital, nor did he pause until he confronted Vetranio on the high-road to Sirmium. He had persistently refused to negotiate terms with Magnentius. With his other rival, an aged veteran of very simple character, he condescended to confer; but on feeling the pulse of the soldiers of both camps he was emboldened to declare that the sceptre must not depart from the house of the great Constantine, and Vetranio himself as well as his soldiers was touched by a feeling of remorseful loyalty. He descended from his throne and threw himself at the feet of the

CHAP. LXXII.

GALLUS PUT TO DEATH.

595

legitimate emperor, who spared and pardoned him. This reconciliation was followed by a decisive battle with Magnentius. The slaughter of the day of Mursa in Pannonia was reputed one of the bloodiest in all Roman history. The usurper was utterly routed. He fled to Aquileia, and from this refuge chastised a revolt in Rome by a cruel proscription. Driven from thence, he made his escape into Gaul, but was there again attacked, and finally destroyed. Constantius became undisputed ruler of the united empire. Yet he did not perhaps deem himself secure till he had got rid of his cousin Gallus, whom he had appointed to high command in the East, and in whom he might still apprehend a rival. Gallus seems, indeed, to have conciliated the favor of no party in the empire, and when he justly provoked the anger of Constantius by the murder of one of the emperor's officers, the revolt which he attempted met with no support. He was quickly put to death. One more scion of the Flavian house yet remained.

A.D. 353.

A.D. 354.

The period of thirty years had now elapsed since Constantine quit Rome. A generation of Romans had sprung up who had never seen an emperor, nor had witnessed a repetition of the military pageants with which their fathers had been so familiar. The Roman Senate, indeed, had met from day to day in undiminished numbers, but it had not exercised itself upon affairs of state. Its consuls had been annually appointed, as usual, by the direct nomination of the emperor; they gave their names to the year, as in the ancient times, but their office was merely honorary. No prætor or governor of the provinces had gone forth from the imperial city on their ever-recurring missions; for the administration of the empire had been put on a new footing, every officer receiving his appointment direct from the court at Constantinople or Treves or Milan. Nevertheless Rome had become more and more the resort of the wealthiest and the idlest of the ancient aristocracy. It was still the most eminent centre of luxury and display; it still gave shelter and support to letters and science, and was the storehouse of long-accumulated treasures of art, in which the noblest products of Greek and Oriental taste had been collected by centuries of rapine and also of more honorable acquisition. While the armies of the empire were marching to and fro along the highways on all sides of the ancient city, but never glancing upon her, and while all the operations of the imperial government were set in motion at a distance around her, Rome herself enjoyed unruffled calm. From the time of Diocletian she had no cause to apprehend the affront of a foreign attack. Once only had her peace been broken by the approach of an armed force in a moment of civil discord, and at the battle of the Milvian Bridge that danger