The Eighteen Christian Centuries

 
“Vital spark of heavenly flame!
Quit, oh, quit this mortal frame!
Trembling, hoping, lingering, flying,
Oh, the pain, the bliss of dying!
Cease, fond nature, cease thy strife,
And let me languish into life!
 
 
“Hark! they whisper! angels say,
Sister spirit, come away!
What is this absorbs me quite,
Steals my senses, shuts my sight,
Drowns my spirits, draws my breath?
Tell me, my soul, can this be death?
 
 
“The world recedes; it disappears!
Heaven opens on my eyes! my ears
With sounds seraphic ring:
Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly!
O Grave! where is thy victory?
O Death! where is thy sting?”
 

His wish was at last achieved. He died aged sixty-two, having reigned twenty-one years. In travelling and building his whole time was spent. Temples, theatres, bridges—wherever he went, these evidences of his wisdom or magnificence remained. He persecuted the Christians, but found persecution a useless proceeding against a sect who gloried in martyrdom, and whose martyrdoms were only followed by new conversions. He tried what an opposite course of conduct would do, and is said to have intended to erect a temple to Jesus Christ. “Take care what you do,” said one of his counsellors: “if you permit an altar to the God of the Christians, those of the other gods will be deserted.”

|A.D. 138.|

But now came to supreme authority the good and wise Antoninus Pius, who was as blameless in his private conduct as in his public acts. His fame extended farther than the Roman arms had ever reached. Distant kings, in lands of which the names were scarcely known in the Forum, took him as arbiter of their differences. The decision of the great man in Rome gave peace on the banks of the Indus. The barbarians themselves on the outskirts of his dominions were restrained by respect for a character so pure and power so wisely used. An occasional revolt in Britain was quelled by his lieutenants—an occasional conspiracy against his authority was caused by the discontent which turbulent spirits feel when restrained by law. The conspiracies were repressed, and on one occasion two of the ringleaders were put to death. The Senate was for making further inquiry into the plot. “Let us stop here,” said the emperor. “I do not wish to find out how many people I have displeased.” Some stories are told of him, which show how little he affected the state of a despotic ruler. A pedantic philosopher at Smyrna, of the name of Polemo, returned from a journey at a late hour, and found the proconsul of Rome lodged in his house. This proconsul was Antonine, who at that time had been appointed to the office by Adrian. Instead of being honoured by such a guest, the philosopher stormed and raged, and made so much noise, that in the middle of the night the sleepless proconsul left the house and found quarters elsewhere. When years passed on, and Antonine was on the throne, Polemo had the audacity to present himself as an old acquaintance. “Ha! I remember him,” said the emperor: “let him have a room in the palace, but don’t let him leave it night or day.” The imprisonment was not long, for we find the same Polemo hero of another anecdote during this visit to Rome. He hissed a performer in the theatre, and stamped and screeched, and made such a disturbance that the unfortunate actor had to leave the stage. He complained of Polemo to the emperor. “Polemo!” exclaimed Antonine; “he forced you off the stage in the middle of the day, but he drove me from his house in the middle of the night, and yet I never appealed.” It would be pleasant if we could learn that Polemo did not get off so easily. But the twenty-two years of this reign of mildness and probity were brought to a close, and Marcus Aurelius succeeded in 161.

|A.D. 161|

Marcus Aurelius did no dishonour to the discernment of his friend and adoptive father Antoninus Pius. Studying philosophy and practising self-command, he emulated and surpassed the virtues of the self-denying leaders of his sect, and only broke through the rule he imposed on himself of clemency and mildness, when he found philosophy in danger of being counted a vain deceit, and the active duties of human brotherhood preferred to the theoretic rhapsodies on the same subject with which his works were filled. Times began to change. Men were dissatisfied with the unsubstantial dream of Platonist and Stoic. There were symptoms of an approaching alteration in human affairs, which perplexed the thoughtful and gave promise of impunity to the bad. Perhaps a man who, clothed in the imperial purple, bestowed so much study on the intellectual niceties of the Sophists, and endeavoured to keep his mind in a fit state for abstract speculation by scourging and starving his body, was not so fitted for the approaching crisis as a rougher and less contemplative nature would have been. Britain was in commotion, there were tumults on the Rhine, and in Armenia the Parthians cut the Roman legions to pieces. And scarcely were those troubles settled and punished, when a worse calamity befell the Roman empire. Its inviolability became a boast of the past. The fearful passions for conquest and rapine of the border-barbarians were roused. Barbaric cohorts encamped on the fields of Italy, and the hosts of wild men from the forests of the North pillaged the heaped-up treasures of the garden of the world. The emperor flew to the scene of danger, but the fatal word had been said. Italy was accessible from the Alps and from the sea; and, though a bloody defeat at Aquileia flung back the invaders, disordered and dispirited, over the mountains they had descended with such hopes, the struggle was but begun. The barbarians felt their power, and the old institutions of Rome were insufficient to resist future attacks. But to the aid of the old Roman institutions a new institution came, an institution which was destined to repel the barbarians by overcoming barbarism itself, and save the dignity of Rome by giving it the protection of the Cross. But at present—that is, during the reign of the philosophic Marcus Aurelius—a persecution raged against the Christians which seemed to render hopeless all chance of their success. The mild laws of Trajan and Adrian, and the favourable decrees of Antoninus Pius, were set aside by the contemptuous enmity of this explorer of the mysterious heights of virtue, which occasionally carried him out of sight of the lower but more important duties of life. An unsocial tribe the Christians were, who rigorously shut their eyes to the beauties of abstract perfection, and preferred the plain orders of the gospel to the most ambitious periods of the emperor. But the persecution of a sect so small and so obscure as the Christian was at that time, is scarcely perceptible as a diminution of the sum of human happiness secured to the world by the gentleness and equity which regulated all his actions. Here is an example of the way in which he treated rebels against his authority. An insurrection broke out in Syria and the East, headed by a pretended descendant of the patriot Cassius, who had conspired against Julius Cæsar. The emperor hurried to meet him—some say to resign the empire into his hands, to prevent the effusion of blood; but the usurper died in an obscure commotion, and nothing was left but to take vengeance on his adherents. This is the letter the conqueror wrote to the Senate:—“I beseech you, conscript Fathers! not to punish the guilty with too much rigour. Let no Senator be put to death. Let the banished return to their country. I wish I could give back their lives to those who have died in this quarrel. Revenge is unworthy of an emperor. You will pardon, therefore, the children of Cassius, his son-in-law, and his wife. Pardon, did I say? Ah! what crime have they committed? Let them live in safety, let them retain all that Cassius possessed. Let them live in whatever place they choose, to be a monument of your clemency and mine.”

In such hands as these the fortune of mankind was safe. A pity that the father’s feelings got the better of his judgment in the choice of his successor. It is the one blot on his otherwise perfect disinterestedness. In dying, with such a monster as Commodus ready to leap into his seat, he must have felt how inexpressibly valuable his life would be to the Roman people. He perhaps saw the danger to which he exposed the world; for he committed his son to the care of his wisest counsellors, and begged him to continue the same course of government he had pursued. Perhaps he was tired of life, perhaps he sought refuge in his self-denying philosophy from the prospect he saw before him of a state of perpetual struggle and eventual overthrow. When the Tribune came for the last time to ask the watchword of the day, “Go to the rising sun,” he said; “for me, I am just going to set.”

And here the history of the Second Century should close. It is painful to go back again to the hideous scenes of anarchy and crime from which we have been delivered so long. What must the sage counsellors, the chosen companions and equals in age of the Antonines, have thought when all at once the face of affairs, which they must have believed eternal, was changed?—when the noblest and wisest in the land were again thrown heedlessly into the arena without trial?—when spies watched every meal, and the ferocious murderer on the throne seemed to gloat over the struggles of his victims? Yet, if they had reflected on the inevitable course of events, they must have seen that a government depending on the character of one man could never be relied on. Where, indeed, could any element of security be found? The very ground-work of society was overthrown. There was no independent body erect amid the general prostration at the footstool of the emperor. Local self-government had ceased except in name. All the towns which hitherto had been subordinate to Rome, but endowed at the same time with privileges which were worth defending, had been absorbed into the great whirlpool of imperial centralization, and were admitted to the rights of Roman citizenship,—now of little value, since it embraced every quarter of the empire. Jupiter and Juno, and the herd of effete gods and goddesses, if they had ever held any practical influence over the minds of men, had long sunk into contempt, except in so far as their rich establishments were defended by persons interested in their maintenance, and the processions and gaudy display of a foul and meretricious worship were pleasing to the depraved taste of the mob. But the religious principle, as a motive of action, or as a point of combination, was at an end. Augurs were still appointed, and laughed at the uselessness of their office; oracles were still uttered, and ridiculed as the offspring of ignorance and imposture; conflicting deities fought for pre-eminence, or compromised their differences by an amalgamation of their altars, and perhaps a division of their estates. It was against this state of society the early Fathers directed their warnings and denunciations. The world did certainly lie in darkness, and it was indispensable to warn the followers of Christ not to be conformed to the fashion of that fleeting time. Some, to escape the contagion of this miserable condition, when men were without hope, and without even the wretched consolation which a belief in a false god would have given them, fled to the wilds and caves. Hermits escaped equally the perils of sin and the hostility of the heathen. Believers were exhorted to flee from contamination, and some took the words in their literal meaning. But not all. Many remained, and fought the good fight in the front of the battle, as became the soldiers of the cross. In the midst of the anarchy and degradation which characterized the last years of the century, a society was surely and steadily advancing towards its full development, bound by rules in the midst of the helplessness of external law, and combined by strong faith, in a world of utter unbelief—an empire within an empire—soon to be the only specimen left either of government or mutual obligation, and finally to absorb into its fresh and still-spreading organization the withered and impotent authority which had at first seen in it its enemy and destroyer, and found it at last its refuge and support. Yet at this very time the empire had never appeared so strong. By a stroke of policy, which the event proved to be injudicious, Marcus Aurelius, in the hope of diminishing the number of his enemies, had converted many thousands of the barbarians into his subjects. They had settlements assigned them within the charmed ring. What they had not been able to obtain by the sword was now assured to them by treaty. But the unity of the Roman empire by this means was destroyed. Men were admitted within the citadel who had no reverence implanted in them from their earliest years for the majesty of the Roman name. They saw the riches contained in the stronghold, and were only anxious to open the gates to their countrymen who were still outside the walls.

But before we enter on the downward course, and since we are now arrived at the period of the greatest apparent force and extent of the Roman empire, let us see what it consisted of, and what was the real amount of its power.

Viewed in comparison with some of the monarchies of the present day, neither its extent of territory, nor amount of population, nor number of soldiers, is very surprising. The Queen of England reigns over more subjects, and commands far mightier fleets and armies, than any of the Roman emperors. The empire of Russia is more extensive, and yet the historians of a few generations ago are lost in admiration of the power of Rome. The whole military force of the empire amounted to four hundred and fifty thousand men. The total number of vessels did not exceed a thousand. But see what were the advantages Rome possessed in the compactness of its territory and the unity of its government. The great Mediterranean Sea, peopled and cultivated on both its shores, was but a peaceful lake, on which the Roman galley had no enemy to fear, and the merchant-ship dreaded nothing but the winds and waves. There were no fortresses to be garrisoned on what are now the boundaries of jealous or hostile kingdoms. If the great circuit of the Roman State could be protected from barbarian inroads, the internal defence of all that vast enclosure could be left to the civil power. If the Black Sea and the Sea of Azoff could be kept clear of piratical adventurers, the broad highway of the Mediterranean was safe. A squadron near Gibraltar, a squadron at the Dardanelles, and the tribes which might possibly venture in from the ocean—the tribes which, slipping down from the Don or the Dnieper, might thread their way through the Hellespont and emerge into the Egean—were caught at their first appearance; and when the wisdom of the Romans had guarded the mouths of the Danube from the descent, in canoe or coracle, of the wild settlers on its upper banks, the peace and commerce of the whole empire were secured. With modern Europe the case is very different. There are boundaries to be guarded which occupy more soldiers than the territories are worth. Lines are arbitrarily fixed across the centre of a plain, or along the summit of a mountain, which it is a case of war to pass. Belgium defends her flats with a hundred thousand men, and the marshes of Holland are secured by sixty thousand Dutch. The State of Dessau in Germany, threatens its neighbours with fifteen hundred soldiers, while Reuss guards its dignity and independence with three hundred infantry and fifty horse. But the Great Powers, as they are called, take away from the peaceable and remunerative employments of trade or agriculture an amount of labour which would be an incalculable increase to the riches and happiness of the world. The aggregate soldiery of Europe is upwards of five millions of men,—just eleven times the largest calculation of the Roman legions. The ships of Europe—to the smaller of which the greatest galleys of the ancient world would scarcely serve as tenders—amount to 2113. The number of guns they carry, against which there is nothing we can take as a measure of value in ancient warfare, but which are now the greatest and surest criterions of military power, amounts to 45,367. But this does not give so clear a view of the alteration in relative power as is yielded by an inspection of some of the separate items. Gaul, included within the Rhine, was kept in order by six or seven legions. The French empire has on foot an army of six hundred and fifty thousand men, and a fleet of four hundred sail. Britain, which was garrisoned by thirty thousand men, had, in 1855, an army at home and abroad of six hundred and sixty thousand men, and a fleet of five hundred and ninety-one ships of war, with an armament of seventeen thousand guns. The disjointed States which now constitute the Empire of Austria, and which occupied eight legions in their defence, are now in possession of an army of six hundred thousand men; and Prussia, whose array exceeds half a million of soldiers, was unheard of except in the discussions of geographers.¹

|A.D. 181.|

With the death of the excellent Marcus Aurelius the golden age came to a close. Commodus sat on the throne, and renewed the wildest atrocities of the previous century. Nero was not more cruel—Domitian was not so reckless of human life. He fought in the arena against weakly-armed adversaries, and slew them without remorse. He polluted the whole city with blood, and made money by selling permissions to murder. Thirteen years exhausted the patience of the world, and a justifiable assassination put an end to his life. There was an old man of the name of Pertinax, originally a nickname derived from his obstinate or pertinacious disposition, who now made his appearance on the throne and perished in three months. It chanced that a certain rich man of the name of Didius was giving a supper the night of the murder to some friends. The dishes were rich, and the wine delicious. Inspired by the good cheer, the guests said, “Why don’t you buy the empire? The soldiers have proclaimed that they will give it to the highest bidder.” Didius knew the amount of his treasure, and was ambitious: he got up from table and hurried to the Prætorian camp. On the way he met the mutilated body of the murdered Pertinax, dragged through the streets with savage exultation. Nothing daunted, he arrived at the soldiers’ tents. Another had been before him—Sulpician, the father-in-law and friend of the late emperor. A bribe had been offered to each soldier, so large that they were about to conclude the bargain; but Didius bade many sesterces more. The greedy soldiery looked from one to the other, and shouted with delight, as each new advance was made. |A.D. 193.|At last Sulpician was silent, and Didius had purchased the Roman world at the price of upwards of £200 to each soldier of the Prætorian guard. He entered the palace in state, and concluded the supper, which had been interrupted at his own house, on the viands prepared for Pertinax. But the excitement of the auction-room was too pleasant to be left to the troops in Rome. Offers were made to the legions in all the provinces, and Didius was threatened on every side. Even the distant garrisons of Britain named a candidate for the throne; and Claudius Albinus assumed the imperial purple, and crossed over into Gaul. More irritated still, the army in Syria elected its general, Pescennius Niger, emperor, and he prepared to dispute the prize; but quietly, steadily, with stern face and unrelenting heart, advancing from province to province, keeping his forces in strict subjection, and laying claim to supreme authority by the mere strength of his indomitable will, came forward Septimius Severus, and both the pretenders saw that their fate was sealed. Illyria and Gaul recognised his title at once. Albinus was happy to accept from him the subordinate title of Cæsar, and to rule as his lieutenant. Didius, whose bargain turned out rather ill, besought him to be content with half the empire. Severus slew the messengers who brought this proposition, and advanced in grim silence. The Senate assembled, and, by way of a pleasant reception for the Illyrian chief, requested Didius to prepare for death. The executioners found him clinging to life with unmanly tenacity, and killed him when he had reigned but seventy days. One other competitor remained, the general of the Syrian army—the closest friend of Severus, but now separated from him by the great temptation of an empire in dispute. This was Niger, from whom an obstinate resistance was expected, as he was equally famous for his courage and his skill. But fortune was on the side of Severus. Niger was conquered after a short struggle, and his head presented to the victor. Was Albinus still to live, and approach so near the throne as to have the rank of Cæsar? Assassins were employed to murder him, but he escaped their assault. The treachery of Severus brought many supporters to his rival. The Roman armies were ranged in hostile camps. Severus again was fortunate, and Albinus, dashing towards him to engage in combat, was slain before his eyes. He watched his dying agonies for some time, and then forced his horse to trample on the corpse. A man of harsh, implacable nature—not so much cruel as impenetrable to human feelings, and perhaps forming a just estimate of the favourable effect upon his fortunes of a disposition so calm, and yet so relentless. The Prætorians found they had appointed their master, and put the sword into his hand. He used it without remorse. He terrified the boldest with his imperturbable stillness; he summoned the seditious soldiery to wait on him at his camp. They were to come without arms, without their military dress, almost like suppliants, certainly not like the ferocious libertines they had been when they had sold the empire at the highest price. “Whoever of you wishes to live,” said Severus, frowning coldly, “will depart from this, and never come within thirty leagues of Rome. Take their horses,” he added to the other troops who had surrounded the Prætorians, “take their accoutrements, and chase them out of my sight.” Did the Senate receive a milder treatment? On sending them the head of Albinus, he had written to the Conscript Fathers alarming them with the most dreadful threats. And now the time of execution had come. He made them an oration in praise of the proscriptions of Marius and Sylla, and forced them to deify the tyrant Commodus, who had hated them all his life. He then gave a signal to his train, and the streets ran with blood. All who had borne high office, all who were of distinguished birth, all who were famous for their wealth or popular with the citizens, were put to death. He crossed over to England and repressed a sedition there. His son Caracalla accompanied him, and commenced his career of warlike ardour and frightful ferocity, which can only be explained on the ground of his being mad. He tried even to murder his father, in open day, in the sight of the soldiers. He was stealing upon the old man, when a cry from the legion made him turn round. His inflexible eye fell upon Caracalla—the sword dropped from his unfilial hand—and dreadful anticipations of vengeance filled the assembly. The son was pardoned, but his accomplices, whether truly or falsely accused, perished by cruel deaths. At last the emperor felt his end approach. He summoned his sons Caracalla and Geta into his presence, recommended them to live in unity, and ended by the advice which has become the standing maxim of military despots, “Be generous to the soldiers, and trample on all beside.”

With this hideous incarnation of unpitying firmness on the throne—hopeless of the future, and with dangers accumulating on every side, the Second Century came to an end, leaving the amazing contrast between its miserable close and the long period of its prosperity by which it will be remembered in all succeeding time.