CHAPTER II.

From the Establishment of Constantinople as Capital of the Roman Empire to the Accession of Justinian, A. D. 330-527

 

Sect. I

Constantine, in reforming the Government of the Roman Empire, placed the administration in direct hostility to the people.

 

The warlike frenzy of the Romans rendered the emperors, from commanders of the army, masters of the State. But the soldiers, as soon as they fully comprehended the extent of their power in conferring the imperial dignity, strove to make the emperors their agents in the management of the empire, of which they considered themselves the real proprietors. The army was consequently the branch of the government to which all the others were considered subordinate. The disorders committed, and the defeats experienced, by the troops, at last weakened their influence, and enabled the emperors to reduce the army into a mere instrument of the imperial authority. Two great measures of reform had been contemplated by several of the predecessors of Constantine. Severus had sought to put an end to the civil authority of the senate in the administration of the empire, and to efface the remains of the ancient political constitution. Diocletian had endeavoured to deprive the army of the power of choosing and of dethroning the sovereign; but until the reign of Constantine, the empire was entirely a military State, and the chief characteristic of the imperial dignity was the military command. Constantine first moulded the measures of reform of preceding emperors into a new system of government. He completed the political edifice on the foundations which Diocletian had laid, by remodelling the army, reconstituting the executive power, creating a new capital, and adopting a new religion. Unfortunately for the bulk of mankind, Constantine, when he commenced his plan of reform, was, from his situation, unconnected with the popular or national sympathies of any class of his subjects, and he considered this state of isolation to be the surest basis of the imperial power, and the best guarantee for the impartial administration of  justice. The emperors had long ceased to regard themselves as belonging to any particular country, and the imperial government was no longer influenced by any attachment to the feelings or institutions of ancient Rome. The glories of the republic were forgotten in the constant and laborious duty of administering and defending the empire. New maxims of policy had been formed, and, in cases where the earlier emperors would have felt as Romans, the wisest counsellors of Constantine would have calmly appealed to the dictates of general expediency. In the eyes of the later emperors, that which their subjects considered as national was only provincial; the history, language, and religion of Greece, Rome, Egypt, and Syria, were merely distinctive characteristics of these different portions of the empire. The emperor, the government, and the army, stood apart, completely separated from the hopes, fears, and interests of the body of the people. Constantine centralized every branch of the executive power in the person of the emperor, and, at the same time, framed a bureaucracy in the administration of each department of public business, in order to guard against the effects of the incapacity or folly of any future sovereign. No more perfect machine of government appears ever to have been established; and, had it combined some principle of reviviscence, to counteract the deteriorating influence of time, with some political combinations capable of enforcing responsibility without revolution, it might have proved perpetual. It is true that, according to the moral laws of the universe, a government ought to be so constituted as to conform to the principles of truth and justice; but, practically, it is sufficient for the internal security of a State that the government da not act in such a manner as to make the people believe that it is perversely unjust. No foreign enemy ever assailed the Roman Empire that could not have been repulsed with ease, had the government and the people formed a united body acting for the general interest. Constantine, unfortunately, organized the government of the Roman Empire as if it were the household of the emperor, and constituted the imperial officials as a caste separate from the people; thus placing it, from its very nature, in opposition to the mass of his subjects. In his desire to save the world from anarchy, he created that struggle between the administration and the governed which has ever since existed, either actively or passively, in every country which has inherited the monarchical principle and the laws of imperial Rome. The problem of combining efficient administration with constant responsibility seems, in these states, still unsolved.

A series of changes in the Roman government had been commenced before the time of Constantine; yet the extent and durability of his reforms, and the distinctness of purpose with which they were conceived, entitle him to rank as one of the greatest legislators of mankind. His defects during his declining years, when his mind and body no longer possessed the activity necessary to inspect and control every detail of a despotic administration which centred in the sovereign’s person, ought not to alter our judgment of his numerous wise laws and judicious reforms. Few legislators have effected greater revolutions than Constantine. He transferred the despotic power of the emperor as commander- in-chief of the army, to the emperor as political head of the government; thus rendering the military power subservient to the civil, in the whole range of the administration. He consolidated the dispensation of justice over the whole empire, by universal and systematic laws, which he deemed strong enough to form a bulwark for the people against oppression on the part of the government. Feeble as this theoretic bulwark of law was found to be on great emergencies, it must be owned that, in the ordinary course of public affairs, it was not ineffectual, and that it mainly contributed to prevent the decline of the Roman Empire from proceeding with that rapidity which has marked the decay of most other despotic monarchies. Constantine gave the empire a new capital; and he adopted a new religion, which, with unrivalled prudence, he rendered predominant under circumstances of great difficulty. His reforms have been supposed to have hastened the decline of the empire which they were intended to save; but the contrary was really the case. He found the empire on the eve of being broken up into a number of smaller states, in consequence of the measures which Diocletian had adopted in order to secure it against anarchy and civil wan He reunited its provinces by a succession of brilliant military achievements; and the object of his legislation appeared to be the maintenance of perfect uniformity in the civil administration by the strictest centralization in what he termed the divine hierarchy of the imperial government. But his conduct was at variance with his policy, for he divided the executive power among his three sons and two nephews; and the empire was only saved from dismemberment or civil war by the murder of the greatest part of his family. Perhaps the empire was really too extensive, and the dissimilarity of its provinces too great, for executive unity, considering the imperfect means of communication which then existed, in a society which neither admitted the principle of hereditary succession nor of primogeniture, in the transmission of the imperial dignity.

The permanent success of Constantine’s reforms depended on his financial arrangements supplying ample funds for all the demands of the administration. This fact indicates some similarity between the political condition of his government and the present state of most European monarchies, and may render a close study of the errors of his financial arrangements not without profit to modem statesmen. The sums required for the annual service of the imperial government were immense; and in order to levy as great an amount of revenue from his subjects as possible, Constantine revised the census of all the taxes, and carried their amount as high as he possibly could. Every measure was adopted to transfer the whole circulating medium of the empire annually into the coffers of the State. No economy or industry could enable his subjects to accumulate wealth; while any accident, a fire, an inundation, an earthquake, or a hostile incursion of the barbarians, might leave a whole province incapable of paying its taxes, and plunge it in hopeless debt and ruin.

In general the outward forms of taxation were very little altered by Constantine, but he rendered the whole fiscal system more regular and more stringent; and during no period was the maxim of the Roman government, that the cultivators of the soil were nothing but the instruments for feeding and clothing the imperial court and the army, more steadily kept in view. All privileges were abolished; the tribute, or land-tax, was levied on the estates of all Roman subjects; and in the concessions made to the church, measures were usually adopted to preserve the rights of the fisc. A partial exemption of the property of the clergy was conceded by Constantine, in order to confer on the Christian priesthood a rank equal to that of the ancient senators; but this was so contrary to the principles of his legislation that it was withdrawn in the reign of Constantius. A great change in the revision of the general register of taxation must have taken place in the year 312, throughout the whole Roman Empire; and as Constantine was not then sole emperor, it is evident that the financial policy of his reign, with which it appears to be closely connected, was the continuation of a system already completely organized. The absorbing interest of taxation to the subjects of the Roman Empire rendered the revision of the census from this time the ordinary method of chronological notation. Time was reckoned from the first year, or Indictio, of the new assessment, and when the cycle of fifteen years was completed, a new revision took place, and a new cycle was commenced; the people thus taking no heed of the lapse of time except by noting the years of similar taxation. Constantine, it is true, passed many laws to protect his subjects from the oppression of the tax-gatherers; but the number and nature of these laws afford the strongest proof that the officers of the court, and the administration, were vested with powers too extensive to be used with moderation, and that all the vigilance of the emperor was required to prevent their destroying the source of the public revenues by utterly ruining the tax-payers. Instead of reducing the numbers of the imperial household, and reforming the expenses of the court, in order to increase the fund available for the civil and military service of the State, Constantine added to the burden of an establishment which already included a large and useless population, by indulging in the most lavish ornament and sumptuous ceremonial. It is evident that he regarded the well-paid offices of his court as baits to allure and attach the civil and military leaders to his service. His measures were successful; and from this time rebellions became less frequent, for the majority of public officials considered it more advantageous to intrigue for advancement than to risk their lives and fortunes in civil war. Nothing reveals more fully the state of barbarism and ignorance to which the Roman world had fallen; the sovereign sought to secure the admiration of his people by outward show; he held them incapable of judging of his conduct, which was guided by the emergencies of his position. The people, no longer connected with the government, and knowing only what passed in their own province, were terrified by the magnificence and wealth which the court displayed; and, hopeless of any change for the better, they regarded the emperor as an instrument of divine power.

The reforms of Constantine required additional revenues. Two new taxes were imposed, which were regarded as the greatest grievances of his reign, and frequently selected for invective, as characteristic of his internal policy. These taxes were termed the Senatorial tax, and the Chrysargyron. The first alienated the aristocracy, and the second excited the complaints of every class of society, for it was a tax levied in the severest manner on every species of receipts. All the existing constitutions, ordinary and extraordinary, and all the monopolies and restrictions affecting the sale of grain, were retained. The exactions of prior governments were rigorously enforced. The presents and gifts which had usually been made to former sovereigns were exacted by Constantine as a matter of right, and regarded as ordinary sources of revenue.

The subjection of Greece to the Roman municipal system forms an epoch in Hellenic history of great social importance; but it was effected so silently that the facts and dates which mark the progress of this political revolution cannot be traced with accuracy. The law of Caracalla, which conferred the rights of citizenship on all the provincials, annihilated the distinctive privileges of the Roman colonies, the old municipia, and the Greek free cities. A new municipal organization, more conformable to a central despotism, was gradually introduced over the whole empire, by which the national ideas and character of the Greeks were ultimately much modified. The legislation of Constantine stamped the municipal institutions of the empire with the fiscal character, which they retained as long as the empire existed; and his laws inform the historian that the influence of the city republic of ancient Hellas had already ceased. Popular opinion had disappeared from Greek society as completely as political liberty from Greece. The change which transformed the ancient language into its Romaic representative had commenced, and a modern Greek nation was consolidating its existence; disciplined to despotism, and boasting that it was composed of Romans and not of Greeks. The inhabitants of Athens and Sparta, the Achaians, Aetolians, Dorians, and Ionians, lost their distinctive characteristics, and were blended into one dull mass of uniformity as citizens of the fiscal municipalities of the empire, and as Romaic Greeks.

It is only necessary in this work to describe the general type of the municipal organization which existed in the provinces of the Roman Empire after the time of Constantine, without entering on the many doubtful questions that arise in examining the subject in detail. The proprietors of land in the Roman provinces generally dwelt in towns and cities. Every town had an agricultural district which formed its territory, and the landed proprietors who possessed twenty-five jugera constituted the body from which the municipal magistrates were selected and by which they were in some cases elected. The whole administrative authority was vested in an oligarchical senate called the Curia, consisting probably of one hundred of the wealthiest landed proprietors in the city or township. This body elected the municipal officers, and filled up vacancies in its own body. It was therefore independent of the proprietors from among whom it was taken, and whose interests it ought to have represented. The curia — not the body of landed proprietors — formed therefore the real Roman municipality, and it was used by the imperial government as an instrument of fiscal extortion, and a means of preventing a concentrated opposition against the central administration in the collection of taxes. The curia was intrusted with the collection of the land-tax, and its members were rendered responsible for the amount. As they were the wealthiest men of the place, their guarantee for the regular payment of the public revenue was of so much importance, that no curial was allowed to change his condition or quit the place of his residence. Even for a temporary absence from Greece it was necessary for a curial to obtain a permission from the proconsul.

The other free inhabitants of the municipal district, who were not liable to the land-tax, but only paid the capitation — merchants, tradesmen, artists, and labourers — formed a separate and inferior class, and were called tributaries, as distinguished from proprietors. They had no connection with the curia, but were formed into corporations and trade-guilds.

As the wealth and population of the Roman Empire declined, the operation of the municipal system became more oppressive. The chief attention of the imperial governors in the provinces was directed to preventing any diminution in the revenue, and the Roman legislation attempted to enforce the payment of the ancient amount of land-tax and capitation from a declining and impoverished population. Laws were enacted to fix every class of society in its condition with regard to the revenue. The son of a member of the curia was bound to take his father’s place; the son of a landed proprietor could neither become a tradesman nor a soldier, unless he had a brother who could replace his father as a payer of the land-tax. The son of an artisan was bound to follow his father's profession, that the amount of the capitation might not be diminished. Every corporation or guild had the power of compelling the children of its members to complete its numbers. Fiscal conservatism became the spirit of Roman legislation. To prevent the land beyond the limits of a municipality from falling out of cultivation, by the free inhabitants of the rural districts quitting their lands in order to better their condition in the towns, the laws gradually attached them to the soil, and converted them into agricultural serfs.

In this state of society the emperors were well aware that the people were generally discontented, and to prevent rebellion both the tributaries and the landed proprietors were carefully disarmed. The military class was separated from the landed proprietors by an inseparable barrier. No landed proprietor could become a soldier, and no soldier could become a member of a curia. When the free population of the empire was so much diminished that it became difficult to find recruits, the son of a soldier was bound to follow the profession of arms, but the Roman armies were generally recruited from among the barbarians who lived beyond the bounds of the empire.

In order to defend the tax-payers against the exactions of the imperial governors, fiscal agents and military officers, it became necessary that every municipality should have an official protector, whose duty it was to watch the conduct of the civil and judicial authorities and of the fiscal officers. He was called a defensor, and was elected by the free citizens of the township, both tributaries and proprietors. No municipal senator or curial could hold the office of defensor, as it might be his duty to appeal to the emperor against the exactions of the curia, as well as against the oppressive conduct of a provincial governor or judge.

Such was the municipal organization which supplanted the city communities of ancient Greece, and extinguished the spirit of Hellenic life. The free action, both of the physical and intellectual powers, of the Greeks was fettered by these new social bonds. We can read many curious details relating to the system in the Theodosian code, and in the legislation of Justinian; and we can trace its effects in the ruin of the Western Empire, and in the torpidity of society in the Eastern.

Municipalities henceforward began to be regarded as a burden rather than a privilege. Their magistrates formed an aristocratic class in accordance with the whole fabric of the Roman constitution. These magistrates had willingly borne all the burdens imposed on them by the State as long as they could throw the heaviest portion of the load on the people over whom they presided. But the people at last became too poor to lighten the burden of the rich, and the government found it necessary to force every wealthy citizen to enter the curia, and make good any deficiency in the taxes of the district from his own private revenues. As the Roman Empire declined, the members of one curia after another sank to the same level of general poverty. It required little more than a century from the reign of Constantine to effect the ruin of the western provinces; but the social condition of the eastern, and the natural energy of the Greek character, saved them from the same fate.

The principle adopted by the Roman government in all its relations with the people and with the municipalities, was in every contested case to assume that the citizens were endeavouring to evade burdens which they were well able to bear. This feeling sowed the seeds of hatred to the imperial administration in the hearts of its subjects, who, seeing that they were excluded from every hope of justice in fiscal questions, became often eager to welcome the barbarians.

In Greece the old system of local governments was not entirely eradicated, though it was modified on the imperial model; but every fiscal burden was rigorously enforced by the imperial government, whenever it tended to relieve the treasury from any expense. At the same time, all those privileges which had once alleviated the pressure of the revenue law, in particular districts, were abolished. The destruction of the great oligarchs, who had rendered themselves proprietors of whole provinces in the earlier days of the Roman domination, was effected. A number of small properties were created at the same time that a moral improvement took place in Greek society by the influence of Christianity. The higher classes became less corrupt, and the lower more industrious. This change enabled the eastern provinces to bear their fiscal burdens with mare ease than the western.

The military organization of the Roman armies was greatly changed by Constantine; and the change is remarkable, as the barbarians were adopting the very principles of tactics which the emperors found it necessary to abandon. The system of the Roman armies, in ancient times, was devised to make them efficient on the field of battle. As the Romans were always invaders, they knew well that they could at last force their enemies to decide their differences in a pitched battle. The frontiers of the empire required a very different method for their defence. The chief duty of the army was to occupy an extended line against an active enemy, far inferior in the field. The necessity of effecting rapid movements of the troops, in bodies varying continually in number, became a primary object in the new tactics. Constantine remodelled the legions, by reducing the number of men to fifteen hundred; and he separated the cavalry entirely from the infantry, and placed them under a different command. He increased the number of the light troops, instituted new divisions in the forces, and made considerable modifications in the armour and weapons of the Romans. This change in the army was in some degree rendered necessary by the difficulty which the government experienced, in raising a sufficient number of men of the class and strength necessary to fill the ranks of the legions, according to the old system. It became necessary to choose between diminishing the number of the troops, or admitting an inferior class of soldiers into the army. Motives of economy, and the fear of the seditious spirit of the legions, also dictated several changes in the constitution of the forces. From this time the Roman armies were composed of inferior materials, and the northern nations began to prepare themselves for meeting them in the field of battle.

The opposition which always existed between the fiscal interest of the Roman government and of the provincials, rendered any intimate connection or community of feeling between the soldiers and the people a thing to be cautiously guarded against by the emperor. The interests of the army required to be kept carefully separated from those of the citizens; and when Constantine, from motives of economy, withdrew a large number of the troops from the camps on the frontiers, and placed them in garrison in the towns, their discipline was relaxed, and their license overlooked, in order to prevent them from acquiring the feelings of citizens. As the barbarians were beyond the influence of any provincial or political sympathies, and were sure to be regarded as enemies by every class in the empire, they became the chosen troops of the emperors. These favourites soon discovered their own importance, and behaved with as great insolence as the praetorian bands had ever displayed.

The necessity of preventing the possibility of a falling off in the revenue, was, in the eyes of the imperial court, of as much consequence as the maintenance of the efficiency of the army. Proprietors of land, and citizens of wealth, were not allowed to enrol themselves as soldiers, lest they should escape from paying their taxes; and only those plebeians and peasants who were not liable to the land-tax were taken as recruits. When Rome conquered the Greeks the armies of the republic consisted of Romans, and the conquered provinces supplied the republic with tribute to maintain these armies; but when the rights of citizenship were extended to the provincials, it became the duty of the poor to serve in person, and of the rich to supply the revenues of the State. The effect of this was, that the Roman forces were often recruited with slaves, in spite of the laws frequently passed to prohibit this abuse; and, not long after the time of Constantine, slaves were often admitted to enter the army on receiving their freedom. The subjects of the emperors had therefore little to attach them to their government, which was supported by mercenary troops composed of barbarians and slaves, but in all the provinces the inhabitants could do nothing to defend their rights, for they were carefully disarmed.

 

Sect. II

The condition of the Greeks was not improved by Constantine’s reforms.

 

The general system of Constantine’s government was by no means favourable to the advancement of the Greeks as a nation. His new division of the empire into four prefectures neutralized, by administrative arrangements, any influence that the Greeks might have acquired from the prevalence of their language in the countries on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean. The four prefectures of the empire were the Orient, Illyricum, Italy, and Gaul, and a praetorian prefect directed the civil administration of each of these great divisions of the empire. The prefectures were divided into governments, and these governments were again subdivided into provinces. The prefecture of the Orient embraced five governments: the first was called by the name of the prefecture, the Orient; the others were Egypt, Asia, Pontus, and Thrace, In all these, the Greeks formed only a section of the population, and their influence was controlled by the adverse prejudices and interests of the natives. The prefecture of Illyricum consisted of three governments, Achaia, Macedonia, and Dacia. Achaia retained the honour of being governed by a proconsul. This distinction was only shared with the government called Asia, for there were now only two proconsular provinces; but Achaia was poor, and it was not of sufficient extent and importance to be subdivided. It embraced the Peloponnesus and the continent south of Thessaly and Epirus, occupying nearly the limits of the present kingdom of Greece. Macedonia included six provinces, — two Macedonias, Crete, Thessaly, Old Epirus, and New Epirus. In these two governments of Achaia and Macedonia, the population was almost entirely Greek. In Dacia or the provinces between the Danube and Mount Haemus, the Adriatic and the Black Sea, the civilized portion of the inhabitants was more imbued with the language and prejudices of Rome than of Greece. The proconsular government of Asia was separated from the praetorian prefectures, and placed under the immediate authority of the emperor. It included two provinces, the Hellespont and the islands between Greece and Asia Minor. Its native population was entirely Greek.

The Greek population had been losing ground in the east since the reign of Hadrian. Pescennius Niger had shown that national feelings might be roused against the oppression of Rome, without adopting Hellenic prejudices. The establishment of the kingdom of Palmyra by Odenathus, and the conquest of Syria and Egypt, gave a severe blow to the influence of the Greeks in these countries. Zenobia, it is true, cultivated Greek literature, but she spoke Syriac and Coptic with equal fluency; and when her power was overthrown, she appears to have regretted that the advice of Longinus and her other Greek councillors had induced her to adopt ambitious projects unconnected with the immediate interests of her native subjects, and she abandoned them to the vengeance of the Romans. Her armies were composed of Syrians and Saracens; and in the civil ad- ministration, the natives of each province claimed an equal rank with the Greeks. The cause of the Greek population, especially in Syria and Egypt, became from this time more closely connected with the declining power of Rome; and even as early as the reign of Aurelian, the antagonism of the native population displayed itself in an Egyptian rebellion which was an effort to throw off Greek domination as well as to escape from the yoke of Rome. The rebellion of Firmus is almost neglected in the history of the numerous rival emperors who were subdued by Aurelian; but the very fact that he was styled by his conqueror a robber, and not a rival, shows that his cause made him a more deadly enemy than the usurpers who were merely military chiefs.

These signs of nationality could not be overlooked by Constantine, and he rendered the political organization of the empire more efficient than it had formerly been to crush the smallest manifestations of national feeling among any body of its subjects. On the other hand, nothing was done by Constantine with the direct view of improving the condition of the Greeks. Two of his laws have been much praised for their humanity; but they really afford the strongest proofs of the miserable condition to which the inhumanity of the government had reduced the people; and though these laws, doubtless, granted some relief to Greece, they originated in views of general policy. By the one, the collectors of the revenue were prohibited, under pain of death, from seizing the slaves, cattle, and instruments of agriculture of the farmer, for the payment of taxes; and, by the other, all forced labour at public works was ordered to be suspended during seed-time and harvest. Agriculture derived some advantage from the tranquillity which Greece enjoyed during the widespread civil wars that preceded the reigns of Diocletian and Constantine. But as far as the imperial government was concerned, commerce still suffered from the old spirit of neglect, and was circumscribed by monopoly. The officers of the palace, and even the Christian clergy, were allowed to carry merchandise from one province to another, free from the duties which fell heavily on the regular trader. It was not until the reign of Valentinian III that the clergy were finally prohibited from engaging in commerce. The emperor was himself both a merchant and manufacturer; and his commercial operations contributed materially to impoverish his subjects, and to diminish the internal trade of his dominions. The imperial household formed a numerous population, separated from the other subjects of the empire; and the imperial officers endeavoured to maintain this host, and the immense military establishment, with the smallest possible outlay of public money. The public posts furnished the means of transporting merchandise free of expense, and the officers charged with its conveyance availed themselves of this opportunity to enrich themselves, by importing whatever they could sell with profit. Imperial manufactories supplied those goods which could be produced in the empire; and private manufacturers would seldom venture to furnish the same articles, lest their trade should interfere with the secret sources of profit of some powerful officer. These facts sufficiently explain the rapid decline in the trade, manufactures, and general wealth of the population of the Roman Empire which followed the transference of the capital to Constantinople. Yet, while commerce was thus ruined, the humble and honest occupation of the shopkeeper was treated as a dishonourable profession, and his condition was rendered doubly contemptible. He was made the serf of the corporation in which he was inscribed, and his industry was fettered by restrictions which compelled him to remain in poverty. The merchant was not allowed to travel with more than a limited sum of money, under pain of exile. This singular law must have been adopted, partly to secure the monopolies of the importing merchants, and partly to serve some interest of the officers of government, without any reference to the general good of the empire.

Though the change of the capital from Rome to Constantinople produced many modifications in the government, its influence on the Greek population was much less than one might have expected. The new city was an exact copy of old Rome. Its institutions, manners, interests, and language, were Roman; and it inherited all the isolation of the old capital, and stood in direct opposition to the Greeks, and all the provincials. It was inhabited by senators from Rome. Wealthy individuals from the provinces were likewise compelled to keep up houses at Constantinople, pensions were conferred upon them, and a right to a certain amount of provisions from the public stores was annexed to these dwellings. The tribute of grain from Egypt was appropriated to supply Constantinople with bread; the wheat of Africa was left for the consumption of Rome. Eighty thousand loaves were distributed daily to the inhabitants of the new capital. The claim to a share in this distribution, though granted as a reward for merit, in some cases was rendered hereditary, but at the same time made alienable by the receiver, and was always strictly attached to the possession of property in the city. This distribution consequently differed in its nature from the distributions bestowed at Rome on poor citizens who had no other means of livelihood. We here discover the tie which bound the new capital to the cause of the emperors, and an explanation of the toleration shown by the emperors to the factions of the circus and the disorders of the populace. The emperor and the inhabitants of the capital felt that they had a common interest in supporting the despotic power by which the provinces were drained of money to supply the luxurious expenditure of the court, and to furnish provisions and amusements for the people; and, consequently, the tumults of the populace never induced the emperors to weaken the influence of the capital; nor did the tyranny of the emperors ever induce the citizens of the capital to demand the systematic circumscription of the imperial authority.

Even the change of religion produced very little improvement in the imperial government. The old evils of Roman tyranny were perpetrated under a more regular and legal despotism and a purer religion, but they were not less generally oppressive. The government grew daily weaker as the people grew poorer; the population rapidly diminished, and the framework of society became gradually disorganized. The regularity of the details of the administration rendered it more burdensome; the obedience enforced in the army had only been obtained by the deterioration of its discipline. The barrier which the empire opposed to the ravages of the barbarians became, consequently, weaker under each succeeding emperor.

 

Sect. III

Changes produced in the Social Condition of the Greeks by the Alliance of Christianity with their National Manners.

 

The decline of Roman influence, and of the power of the Roman government, afforded the Greeks some favourable conjunctures for improving their condition. Christianity connected itself with the social organization of the people, without directly attempting to change their political condition; and by awakening sentiments of philanthropy which created a new social impulse, it soon produced a marked improvement in the social as well as in the moral and religious position of the Greeks. Though Christianity failed to arrest the decline of the Roman Empire, it reinvigorated the popular mind, and reorganized the people, by giving them a powerful and permanent object on which to concentrate their attention, and an invariable guide for their conduct in every relation of life. As it was long confined chiefly to the middle and lower classes of society, it was compelled, in every different province of the empire, to assume the language and usages of the locality, and thus it combined individual attachments with universal power. But it must be observed that a great change took place in the feelings and conduct of the Christians from the period that Constantine formed a political alliance with the church, and constituted the clergy into a corporate body. The great benefits which the inhabitants of the Roman Empire had previously derived from the connection of their bishops and presbyters with local national feelings, was then neutralized. The church became a political institution, dependent, like every other department of the public administration, on the emperor’s authority; and henceforward, whenever the ministers and teachers of the Christian religion became closely connected with national feelings, they were accused of heresy.

Paganism had undergone a great change about the time of the establishment of the Roman Empire. A belief in the resurrection of the body began to spread, both among the Romans and the Greeks; and it is to the prevalence of this belief that the great success of the worship of Serapis, and the general adoption of the practice of burying the dead instead of burning it on a funeral pile, are to be attributed. The decline of paganism had proceeded far before Christianity was preached to the Greeks. The ignorance of the people on the one hand, and the speculations of the philosophers on the other, had already almost succeeded in destroying all reverence for the ancient gods of Greece, which rested more oil mythological and historical recollections, and on associations derived from and connected with art, than on moral principles or mental conviction. The paganism of the Greeks was a worship identified with particular tribes, and with precise localities; and the want of this local and material union had been constantly felt by the Greeks of Asia and Alexandria, and had tended much to introduce those modifications by which the Alexandrine philosophers attempted to unite Hellenic superstitions with their metaphysical views. Many Greeks and Romans had learned just ideas of religion from the Jews. They had acquired true notions of the divine nature, and of the duties which God requires of man. While, on the other hand, a religion which could deify Commodus and some of the worst emperors, must have fallen into contempt with all reflecting men; and even those who believed in its claims to superhuman authority must have regarded it with some aversion, as having formed an unjust alliance with their tyrants. It is not, therefore, surprising that a disbelief in the gods of the empire was general among the people throughout the East. But it is impossible for man to exist in society without some religious feeling. The worship of the gods was therefore immediately replaced by a number of superstitious practices, borrowed from foreign nations, or by the revival of the traditions of a ruder period, relating to an inferior class of spirits.

The wealth of the temples in Greece, and the large funds appropriated to public feasts and religious ceremonies, kept up an appearance of devotion; but a considerable portion of these funds began to be enjoyed as the private fortunes of the hereditary priests, or was diverted, by the corporations charged with their administration, to other purposes than the service of the temples, without these changes exciting any complaints. The progressive decline of the ancient religion is marked by the numerous laws which the emperors enacted against secret divination, and the rites of magicians, diviners, and astrologers. Though these modes of prying into futurity had always been regarded by the Romans and the Greeks as impious, and hostile to the religion of the State, and been strictly forbidden by public laws, they continued to gain ground under the empire. The contempt of the people for the ancient religion as early as the time of Trajan was shown by their general indifference to the rites of sacrifice, and to the ceremonials of their festivals. While the great struggle with Christianity was openly carried on, this was peculiarly remarkable. The emperor Julian often complains, in his works, of this indifference, and gives rather a ludicrous instance of its extent in an anecdote which happened to himself. As emperor and Pontifex Maximus, he repaired to the temple of Apollo at Daphne, near Antioch, on the day of the great feast. He declares that he expected to see the temple filled with sacrifices, but he found not even a cake, nor a grain of incense; and the god would have been without an offering had the priest himself not brought a goose, the only victim which Apollo received on the day of his festival. Julian proves, by this anecdote, that all the population of Antioch was Christian, otherwise curiosity would have induced a few to visit the temple.

The laws of the moral world prevent any great reformation in society from being effected, without the production of some positive evil. The best feelings of humanity are often awakened in support of very questionable institutions; and all opinions hallowed by the lapse of time become so endeared by old recollections, that the most self-evident truths are frequently overlooked, and the greatest benefits to the mass of mankind are peremptorily rejected, when their first announcement attacks an existing prejudice. No principles of political wisdom, and no regulations of human prudence, could therefore have averted the many evils which attended the change of religion in the Roman Empire, even though that change was from fable to truth, from paganism to Christianity.

The steady progress which Christianity made against paganism, and the deep impression it produced on the middle classes of society, and on the votaries of philosophy, are certainly wonderful, when the weight of prejudice, the wealth of the temples, the pride of the schoolmen, and the influence of college endowments, are taken into consideration. Throughout the East, the educated Greeks, from the peculiar disposition of their minds, were easily led to grant an attentive hearing to the promulgators of new doctrines and systems. Even at Athens, Paul was listened to with great respect by many of the philosophers; and after his public oration to the Athenians at the Areopagus, some said, “We will hear thee again of this matter”. A belief that the principle of unity, both in politics and religion, must, from its simplicity and truth, lead to perfection, was an error of the human mind extremely prevalent at the time that Christianity was first preached. That one according spirit might be traced in the universe, and that there was one God, the Father of all, was a very prevalent doctrine. This tendency towards despotism in politics, and deism in religion, is a feature of the human mind which continually reappears in certain conditions of society and corruptions of civilization. At the same time a very general dissatisfaction was felt at these conclusions; and the desire of establishing the principle of man’s responsibility, and his connection with another state of existence, seemed hardly compatible with the unity of the divine essence adored by the philosophers. Deism was indeed the prevailing opinion in religion, yet it was generally felt that it did not supply the void created by the absence of belief in the power of the ancient pagan divinities, who had been supposed to pervade all nature, to be ever present on the earth or in the air, that they might watch the actions of men with sympathies almost human. The influence of deism was cold and inanimate, while an affectation of superior wisdom almost invariably induced the philosophers to introduce some maxim into their tenets adverse to the plain common-sense of mankind, which abhors paradox. The people felt that the moral corruption of which the pagan Juvenal, in his intense indignation, has given us so many vivid descriptions, must eventually destroy all social order. A reformation was anxiously desired, but no power existed capable of undertaking the work. At this crisis Christianity presented itself, and offered men the precise picture of the attributes of God of which they were in search; it imposed on them obligations of which they acknowledged the necessity, and it required from them a faith, of which they gradually recognised the power.

Under these circumstances, Christianity could not fail of making numerous converts. It boldly announced the full bearing of truths, of which the Greek philosophers had only afforded a dim glimpse; and it distinctly contradicted many of the favourite dreams of the national but falling faith of Greece. It required either to be rejected or adopted. Among the Greeks, therefore, Christianity met everywhere with a curious and attentive audience. The feelings of the public mind were dormant; Christianity opened the sources of eloquence, and revived the influence of popular opinion. From the moment a people, in the state of intellectual civilization in which the Greeks were, could listen to the preachers, it was certain they would adopt the religion. They might alter, modify, or corrupt it, but it was impossible that they should reject it. The existence of an assembly, in which the dearest interests of all human beings were expounded and discussed in the language of truth, and with the most earnest expressions of persuasion, must have lent an irresistible charm to the investigation of the new doctrine among a people possessing the institutions and feelings of the Greeks. Sincerity, truth, and a desire to persuade others, will soon create eloquence where numbers are gathered together. Christianity revived oratory, and with oratory it awakened many of the national characteristics which had slept for ages. The discussions of Christianity gave also new vigour to the communal and municipal institutions, as it improved the intellectual qualities of the people.

The injurious effect of the demoralization of society prevalent throughout the world on the position of the females, must have been seriously felt by every Grecian mother. The educated females in Greece, therefore, naturally welcomed the pure morality of the Gospel with the warmest feelings of gratitude and enthusiasm; and to their exertions the rapid conversion of the middle orders must in some degree be attributed. Female influence must not be overlooked, if we would form a just estimate of the change produced in society by the conversion of the Greeks to Christianity.

The effect of Christianity extended to political society, by the manner in which it enforced the observance of the moral duties on every rank of men without distinction, and the way in which it called in the aid of public opinion to enforce that self-respect which a sense of responsibility is sure to nourish. This political influence of Christianity soon displayed itself among the Greeks. They had always been deeply imbued with a feeling of equality, and their condition, after their conquest by the Romans, had impressed on them the necessity of a moral code, to which superiors and inferiors, rulers and subjects, were equally amenable. The very circumstances, however, which gave Christianity peculiar attractions for the Greeks, excited a feeling of suspicion among the Roman official authorities. Considering, indeed, the manner in which the Christians formed themselves into separate congregations in all the cities and towns of the East, the constituted form which they gave to their own society, entirely independent of the civil authority in the State, the high moral character and the popular talents of many of their leaders, it is not wonderful that the Roman emperors should have conceived some alarm at the increase of the new sect, and deemed it necessary to exterminate it by persecution. Until the government of the empire was prepared to adopt the tenets of Christianity, and identify itself with the Christian population, it was not unnatural that the Christians should be regarded as a separate, and consequently inimical class; for it must be confessed that the bonds of their political society were too powerful to allow any government to remain at ease. Let us, for a moment, form a picture of the events which must have been of daily occurrence in the cities of Greece. A Christian merchant arriving at Argos or Sparta would soon excite attention in the agora and the lesche. His opinions would be examined and controverted. Eloquence and knowledge were by no means rare gifts among the traders of Greece, from the time of Solon the oil-merchant. The discussions which had been commenced in the markets would penetrate into the municipal councils. Cities which enjoyed local privileges and which like Athens and Sparta called themselves free cities would be roused to an unwonted energy, and the Roman governors might well be astonished and feel alarmed.

It was, undoubtedly, the power of the Christians as a political body which excited several of the persecutions against them; and the accusation to which they were subjected, of being the enemies of the human race, was caused by their enforcing general principles of humanity at variance with the despotic maxims of the Roman government. The emperor Decius, the first great persecutor of Christianity, is reported to have declared that he would rather divide his throne with another emperor than have it shared by the bishop of Rome. When the cry of popular hatred was once excited, accusations of promiscuous profligacy, and of devouring human sacrifices, were the calumnious additions, in accordance with the credulity of the age. The first act of legal toleration which the Christians met with from the Roman government was conceded to their power as a political party by Maxentius. They were persecuted and tolerated by Maximin, according to what he conceived to be the dictates of his interest for the time. Constantine, who had long acted as the leader of their political party, at last seated Christianity on the throne, and, by his prudence, the world for many years enjoyed the happiness of religious toleration.

From the moment Christianity was adopted by the Hellenic race, it was so identified with the habits of the people as to become essentially incorporated with the subsequent history of the nation. The earliest corporations of Greek Christians were united in distinct bodies by civil as well as by religious ties. The members of each congregation assembled not only for divine worship, but also when any subject of general interest required their opinion or decision; and the everyday business of the community was intrusted to their spiritual teachers, and to the most influential individuals in the society. It is impossible to determine exactly the limits of the authority of the clergy and the elders in the various Christian communities during the first century. As there was usually a perfect concord on every subject, precise regulations, either to settle the bounds of clerical authority, or the form of administering the business of the society, could not be considered necessary. It cannot, indeed, be supposed that one uniform course of proceeding was adopted for the internal government of all the Christian communities throughout the world. Such a thing would have been too much at variance with the habits of the Greeks and the nature of the Roman Empire. Circumstances must have rendered the government of the Christian churches, in some parts of the East, strictly monarchical; while, in the municipalities of Greece, it would certainly appear more for the spiritual interests of religion, that even the doctrines of the society should be discussed according to the forms used in transacting the public business of these little autonomous cities. Such differences would excite no attention among the cotemporary members of the respective churches, for both would be regarded as equally conformable to the spirit of Christianity. Precise laws and regulations usually originate in the necessity of preventing definite evils, so that principles of action operate as guides to conduct, and exert a practical influence on the lives of thousands, for years before they become embodied in public enactments.

The most distant communities of Christian Greeks in the East were connected by the closest bonds of union, not only for spiritual purposes, but also on account of the mutual protection and assistance which they were called upon to afford one another in the days of persecution. The progress of Christianity among the Greeks was so rapid, that they soon surpassed in numbers, wealth, and influence any other body separated by peculiar usages from the mass of the population of the Roman Empire. The Greek language became the ordinary medium of communication on ecclesiastical affairs in the East; and the Christian communities of Greeks were gradually melted into one nation, having a common legislation and a common civil administration in many things, as well as a common religion. Their ecclesiastical government thus acquired a moral force which rendered it superior to the local authorities, and which at last rivalled the influence of the political administration of the empire. The Greek Church had grown up to be almost equal in power to the Roman state before Constantine determined to unite the two in strict alliance.

The Christian hierarchy received a regular organization as early as the second century. Christianity then formed a confederation of communities in the heart of the empire, which the imperial government very naturally regarded with jealousy, for the principles of Christianity were a direct negation of, if not a decided opposition to, many of the most cherished maxims of the Roman State. Deputies from the different congregations in Greece met together at stated intervals and places, and formed provincial synods, which replaced the Achaean, Phocic, Boeotic, and Amphictyonic assemblies of former days. How these assemblies were composed, what part the people took in the election of the clerical deputies, and what rights the laity possessed in the provincial councils, are points which have been much disputed, and do not seem to be very accurately determined. The people, the lay elders, and the clergy or spiritual teachers, were the component parts of each separate community in the earliest periods. The numbers of the Christians soon required that several congregations should be formed in a single city; these congregations sought to maintain a constant communication in order to secure perfect unanimity. Deputies were appointed to meet for this purpose; and the most distinguished and ablest member of the clergy naturally became the president of this assembly. He was the bishop, and soon became charged with the conduct of public business during the intervals between the meetings of the deputies. The superior education and character of the bishops placed the direction of the greater part of the civil affairs of the community in their hands; ecclesiastical business was their peculiar province by right; they possessed the fullest confidence of their flocks; and, as no fear was then entertained that the power intrusted to these disinterested and pious men could ever be abused, their authority was never called in question. The charity of the Christians was a virtue which separated them in a striking manner from the rest of society, bound them closely together, and increased their social influence by creating a strong feeling in their favour. The emperor Julian complains that it rendered them independent of the emperor’s power, for they were never forced to solicit the imperial bounty. And he owns that they not only maintained all the poor of their own community, but also gave liberally to poor pagans.

When Christianity became the religion of the emperor, the political organization and influence of the Christian communities could not fail to arrest the attention of the Roman authorities. The provincial synods replaced, in the popular mind, the older national institutions; and, in a short time, the power of the Patriarchs of Antioch and Alexandria excited the jealousy of the emperors themselves. The monarchical ideas of the eastern Greeks vested extensive authority in the hands of their bishops and patriarchs; and their power excited more alarm in the Roman government than the municipal forms of conducting ecclesiastical business which were adopted by the natives of Greece, in accordance with the civil constitutions of the Greek cities and states. This fact is evident from an examination of the list of the martyrs who perished in the persecutions of the third century, when political alarm, rather than religious zeal, moved the government to acts of cruelty. While numbers were murdered in Antioch, Alexandria, Caesarea, Smyrna, and Thessalonica, very few were sacrificed at Corinth, Athens, Patrae, and Nicopolis.

The power which Christianity had acquired, evidently exercised some influence in determining Constantine to transfer his capital into that part of his dominions where so numerous and powerful a body of his subjects were attached to his person and his cause. Both Constantine and the Christians had their own grounds of hostility to Rome and the Romans. The senate and the Roman nobility remained firmly attached to paganism, which was converted into the bond of union of the conservative party in the western portion of the empire, and thus the Greeks were enabled to secure a predominancy in the Christian church. The imperial prejudices of Constantine appear to have concealed from him this fact; and he seems never to have perceived that the cause of the Christian church and the Greek nation were already closely interwoven, unless his inclination to Arianism, in his latter days, is to be attributed to a wish to suppress the national spirit, which began to display itself in the Eastern Church. The policy of circumscribing the power of orthodoxy, as too closely connected with national feelings, was more openly followed by Constantius.

A knowledge of the numbers of the Christians in the Roman empire at the time of the first general council of the Christian church at Nice, is of great importance towards affording a just estimation of many historical facts. If the conjecture be correct, that the Christians, at the time of Constantine’s conversion, hardly amounted to a twelfth, and perhaps did not exceed a twentieth part of the population of the empire, this would certainly afford the strongest proof of the admirable civil organization by which they were united. But this can hardly be considered possible, when applied to the eastern provinces of the empire, and is certainly incorrect with regard to the Greek cities. It seems established by the rescript of Maximin, and by the testimony of the martyr Lucianus — supported as these are by a mass of collateral evidence — that the Christians formed, throughout the East, the majority of the middle classes of Greek society. Still history affords few facts which supply a fair criterion to estimate the numbers or strength of either the Christian or pagan population generally throughout the empire. The imperial authority, supported by the army, which was equally destitute of religion and nationality, was powerful enough to oppress or persecute either party, according to the personal disposition of the emperor. There were Christians who endeavoured to excite Constantius to persecute the pagans, and to seize the wealth which their temples contained. Constantine had found himself strong enough to carry off the gold and silver statues and ornaments from many temples; but, as this was done with the sanction and assistance of the Christian population where it occurred, it seems probable that it only happened in those places where the whole community, or at least the corporation possessing the legal control over the temporal concerns of these, had embraced Christianity. An arbitrary exercise of the emperor’s authority as Pontifex Maximus, for the purpose of plundering the temples he was bound to protect, cannot be suspected; it would be too strongly at variance with the systematic toleration of Constantine’s reign.

The pagan Julian was strongly incited to persecute the Christians by the more fanatical of the pagans; nor did he himself ever appear to doubt that his power was sufficient to have commenced a persecution; and, consequently, he takes credit to himself, in his writings, for the principles of toleration which he adopted. The attempt of Julian to re-establish paganism was, however, a very unstatesmanlike proceeding, and exhibited the strongest proof that the rapidly decreasing numbers of the pagans proclaimed the approaching dissolution of the old religion. Julian was an enthusiast; and he was so far carried away by his ardour as to desire the restoration of ceremonies and usages long consigned to oblivion, and ridiculous in the eyes of his pagan contemporaries. In the East he accelerated the ruin of the cause which he espoused. His own acquaintance with paganism had been gained chiefly from books, and from the lessons of philosophers; for he had long been compelled to conform to Christianity, and to acquire his knowledge of paganism only by stealth. When he acted the Pontifex Maximus, according to the written instructions of the old ceremonial, he was looked upon as the pedantic reviver of an antiquated ceremony. The religion, too, which he had studied, was that of the ancient Greeks, — a system of belief which had irrevocably passed away. With the conservative pagan party of Rome he never formed any alliance. The fancy of Julian to restore Hellenism, and to call himself a Greek, was therefore regarded by all parties in the empire as an imperial folly. Nothing but princely ignorance of the state of opinion in his age could have induced Julian to endeavour to awaken the national feelings of the Greeks in favour of paganism, in order to oppose them to Christianity, for their nationality was already engaged in the Christian cause. This mistaken notion of the emperor was seen by the Romans, and made a strong impression on the historians of Julian’s reign. They have all condemned his superstition; for such, in their eyes, his fanatic imitation of antiquated Hellenic usages appeared to be.

We must not overlook the important fact that the Christian religion was long viewed with general aversion, from being regarded by all classes as a dangerous as well as secret political association. The best informed heathens appear to have believed that hostility to the established order of society, odium humani generis, as this was called by the Romans, was a characteristic of the new religion. The Roman aristocracy and populace, with all those who identified themselves with Roman prejudices, adopted the opinion that Christianity was one of the causes of the decline of the Roman empire. Rome was a military state, Christianity was a religion of peace. The opposition of their principles was felt by the Christians themselves, who seem to have considered that the success of Christianity implied the fall of the empire; and as the duration of the empire and the existence of civilized society appeared inseparable, they inferred that the end of the world was near at hand. Nor is this surprising. The invasion of the barbarians threatened society with ruin; no political regeneracy seemed practicable by means of any internal reforms; the empire of Christ was surely approaching, and that empire was not of this world.

But these opinions and reasonings were not so prevalent in the East as in the West, for the Greeks especially were not under the influence of the same political feelings as the Romans. They were farther removed from the scenes of war, and they suffered less from the invasions of the barbarians. They were occupied with the daily business of life, and their attention was not so frequently diverted to the crimes of the emperors and the misfortunes of the State. They felt no sympathy, and little regret, when they perceived that the power of Rome was on the decline, for they deemed it probable that they should prove gainers by the change.

One feature of Christian society which excited general disapprobation about the time of the accession of Julian, was the great number of men who became monks and hermits. These enemies of social life proclaimed that it was better to prepare for heaven in seclusion, than to perform man’s active duties, and to defend the cause of civilization against the barbarians. Millions of Christians who did not imitate their example openly approved of their conduct; so that it is not wonderful that all who were not Christians regarded Christianity with aversion, as a political institution hostile to the existing government of the Roman Empire. The corruptions of Christianity, and the dissensions of the Christians, had also caused a reaction against the religion towards the latter part of the reign of Constantius II. Julian profited by this feeling, but he had not the talent to render it subservient to his views. The circumstance which rendered Christianity most hateful to him, as an emperor and a philosopher, was the liberty of private judgment assumed as one of the rights of man by monks and theologians. To combat Christianity with any chance of success, Julian must have connected the theoretic paganism of the schools with moral principles and strong faith. To succeed in such a task, he must have preached a new religion, and assumed the character of a prophet. He was unequal to the enterprise, for he was destitute of the popular sympathies, firm convictions, fiery enthusiasm, and profound genius of Mahomet.

 

Sect. IV

The Orthodox Church became identified with the Greek Nation

 

When Constantine embraced Christianity, he allowed paganism to remain the established religion of the State, and left the pagans in the possession of all their privileges. The principle of toleration was received as a political maxim of the Roman government; and it continued, with little interruption, to be so, until the reign of Theodosius the Great, who undertook to abolish paganism by legislative enactments. The Christian emperors continued, until the reign of Gratian, to bear the title of Pontifex Maximus, and to act as the political head of the pagan religion. This political supremacy of the emperor over the pagan priesthood was applied also to the Christian church; and, in the reign of Constantine, the imperial power over the external and civil affairs of the church was fully admitted by the whole Christian clergy. The respect which Constantine showed to the ministers of Christianity, never induced him to overlook this supremacy. Even in the general council of Nice, the assembled clergy would not transact any business until the emperor had taken his seat, and authorized them to proceed. All Constantine’s grants to the church were regarded as marks of imperial favour; and he considered himself entitled to resume them, and transfer them to the Arians. During the Arian reigns of Constantius and Valens, the power of the State over the church was still more manifest.

From the death of Constantine until the accession of Theodosius the Great, a period of thirty years elapsed, during which Christianity, though the religion of the emperors and of a numerous body of their subjects, was not the religion of the State. In the western provinces, paganism was still predominant; and even in the eastern provinces, which had embraced Christianity, the Christian party was weakened by rival sects. The Arians and orthodox regarded one another with as much hostility as they did the pagans. During this period, the orthodox clergy were placed in a state of probation, which powerfully contributed towards connecting their interests and feelings with those of the Greek population. Constantine had determined to organize the Christian church precisely in the same manner as the civil government. The object of this arrangement was to render the church completely subservient to the imperial administration, and to break, as much as possible, its connection with the people. For this purpose, the higher ecclesiastical charges were rendered independent of public opinion. The wealth and temporal power which the clergy suddenly attained by the favour of Constantine, soon produced the usual effects of sudden riches and irresponsible authority in corrupting the minds of men. The disputes relating to the Arian heresy were embittered by the eagerness of the clergy to possess the richest episcopal sees, and their conflicts became so scandalous, that they were rendered a subject of popular satire in places of public amusement. The favour shown by the Arian emperors to their own party, proved ultimately beneficial to the orthodox clergy. The Roman empire was still nominally pagan, the Roman emperors were avowedly Arian, and the Greeks felt little disposed to sympathize with the traditional superstitions of their conquerors, or the personal opinions of their masters. During this period, therefore, they listened with redoubled attention to the doctrines of the orthodox clergy, and from this time the Greek nation and the Orthodox Church became closely identified.

The orthodox teachers of the Gospel, driven from the ecclesiastical preferments which depended on court favour, and deserted by the ambitious and worldly-minded clergy, cultivated those virtues, and pursued that line of conduct, which had endeared the earlier preachers of Christianity to their flocks. The old popular organization of the church was preserved, and more completely amalgamated with the social institutions of the Greek nation. The people took part in the election of their spiritual pastors, and influenced the choice of their bishops. The national as well as the religious sentiments of the Greeks were called into action, and provincial synods were held for the purpose of defending the orthodox priesthood against the imperial and Arian administration. The majority of the orthodox congregations were Greek, and Greek was the language of the orthodox clergy. Latin was the language of the court and of the heretics. Many circumstances, therefore, combined to consolidate the connection formed at this time between the Orthodox Church and the Greek population throughout the eastern provinces of the empire; while some of these circumstances tended more particularly to connect the clergy with the educated Greeks, and to lay the foundation of the Orthodox Church becoming a national institution.

In ancient Hellas and the Peloponnesus, paganism was still far from being extinct, or, at least, as was not unfrequently the case, the people, without caring much about the ancient religion, persisted in celebrating the rites and festivals consecrated by antiquity. Valentinian and Valens renewed the laws which had been often passed against various pagan rites; and both these emperors encouraged the persecution of those who were accused of this imaginary crime. It must be observed, however, that these accusations were generally directed against wealthy individuals; and, on the whole, they appear to have been dictated by the old imperial maxim of filling the treasury by confiscations in order to avoid the dangers likely to arise from the imposition of new taxes. In Greece the ordinary ceremonies of paganism often bore a close resemblance to the prohibited rites; and the new laws could not have been enforced without causing a general persecution of paganism, which does not appear to have been the object of the emperors. The proconsul of Greece, himself a pagan, solicited the emperor Valens to exempt his province from the operation of the law; and so tolerant was the Roman administration to districts which were too poor to offer a rich harvest for the fisc, that Greece was allowed to continue to celebrate its pagan festivals.

Until this period, the temples had generally preserved that portion of their property and revenues which was administered by private individuals, or drawn from sources unconnected with the public treasury. The rapid destruction of the temples, which took place after the reign of Valens, must have been caused, in a great measure, by the conversion of those intrusted with their care to Christianity. When the hereditary priests seized the revenues of the heathen god as a private estate, they would rejoice in seeing the temple fall rapidly to ruin, if they did not dare to destroy it openly. Towards the end of his reign the Emperor Gratian laid aside the title of Pontifex Maximus, and removed the altar of Victory from the senate-house of Rome. These acts were equivalent to a declaration that paganism was no longer the acknowledged religion of the senate and the Roman people. It was Theodosius the Great, however, who finally established Christianity as the religion of the empire; and in the East he succeeded completely in uniting the Orthodox Church with the imperial administration; but in the West, the power and prejudices of the Roman aristocracy prevented his measures from attaining full success.

Theodosius, in rendering orthodox Christianity the established religion of the empire, increased the administrative and judicial authority of the bishops; and the Greeks, being in possession of a predominant influence in the Orthodox Church, were thus raised to the highest social position which subjects were capable of attaining. The Greek bishop, who preserved his national language and customs, was now the equal of the governor of a province, who assumed the name and language of a Roman. The court, as well as the civil administration of Theodosius the Great, continued Roman; and the Latin clergy, aided by the great power and high character of St. Ambrose, prevented the Greek clergy from appropriating to themselves an undue share of ecclesiastical authority and preferment in the West. The power conferred on the clergy, supported as it was by the popular origin of the priesthood, by the feelings of brotherhood which pervaded the Greek Church, and by the strong attachment of their flocks, was generally employed to serve and protect the people, and often succeeded in tempering the despotism of the imperial authority. The clergy began to form a part of the State. A popular bishop could hardly be removed from his diocese, without the government’s incurring as much danger as it formerly encountered in separating a successful general from his army. The difficulties which the emperor Constantine met with, in removing St. Athanasius from the See of Alexandria, and the necessity he was under of obtaining his condemnation in a general council, show that the church, even at that early period, already possessed the power of defending its members: and that a new power had arisen which imposed legal restraints on the arbitrary will of the emperor. Still, it must not be supposed that bishops had yet acquired the privilege of being tried only by their peers. The emperor was considered the supreme judge in ecclesiastical as well as in civil matters, and the council of Sardica was satisfied with petitioning for liberty of conscience, and freedom from the oppression of the civil magistrate.

Though the good effects of Christianity on the moral and political condition of the ancient world have never been called in question, historians have, nevertheless, more than once reproached the Christian religion with accelerating the decline of the Roman empire. A careful comparison of the progress of society in the eastern and western provinces must lead to a different conclusion. It appears certain that the Latin provinces were ruined by the strong conservative attachment of the aristocracy of Rome to the forgotten forms and forsaken superstitions of paganism after they had lost all practical influence on the minds of the people; while there can be very little doubt that the eastern provinces were saved by the unity with which all ranks embraced Christianity. In the Western Empire, the people, the Roman aristocracy, and the imperial administration, formed three separate sections of society, unconnected either by religious opinion or national feelings; and each was ready to enter into alliances with armed bands of foreigners in the empire, in order to serve their respective interests, or gratify their prejudices or passions. The consequence of this state of things was, that Rome and the Western Empire, in spite of their wealth and population, were easily conquered by comparatively feeble enemies; while Constantinople, with all its original weakness, beat back both the Goths and the Huns, in the plenitude of their power, in consequence of the union which Christianity inspired. Rome fell because the senate and the Roman people clung too long to ancient institutions, forsaken by the great body of the population; while Greece escaped destruction because she modified her political and religious institutions in conformity with the opinions of her inhabitants, and with the policy of her government. The popular element in the social organization of the Greek people, by its alliance with Christianity, infused into society the energy which saved the Eastern Empire; the disunion of the pagans and Christians, and the disorder in the administration flowing from this disunion, ruined the Western.

 

Sect. V

Condition of the Greek Population of the Empire from the reign of Constantine to that of Theodosius the Great

 

The establishment of a second capital at Constantinople has generally been considered a severe blow to the Roman Empire; but, from the time of Diocletian, Rome had ceased to be the residence of the emperors. Various motives induced the emperors to avoid Rome; the wealth and influence of the Roman senators circumscribed their authority; the turbulence and numbers of the people rendered even their government insecure; while the immense revenues required for donatives, for distributions of provisions, for pompous ceremonies, and for public games, formed a heavy burden on the imperial treasury, and the insubordination of the praetorian guards continually threatened their persons. When the emperor, therefore, by becoming a Christian, was placed in personal opposition to the Roman senate, there could be no longer any doubt that Rome became a very unsuitable residence for the Christian court. Constantine was compelled to choose a new capital; and in doing so he chose wisely. His selection of Byzantium was, it is true, determined by reasons connected with the imperial administration, without any reference to the influence which his choice might have on the prosperity of his subjects. Its first effect was to preserve the unity of the Eastern Empire. The Roman Empire had, for some time previous to the reign of Constantine, given strong proofs of a tendency to separate into a number of small states. The necessity of the personal control of the sovereign over the executive power in the provinces was so great, that Constantine himself, who had done all he could to complete the concentration of the general government, thought it necessary to divide the executive administration of the empire among his family before his death. The union effected by centralizing the management of the army and the civil and judicial authority, prevented the division of the executive power from immediately partitioning the empire. It was not until the increased difficulties of intercommunication had created two distinct centres of administration that the separation of the Eastern and Western empires was completed.

The foundation of Constantinople was the particular act which secured the integrity of the eastern provinces, and prevented their separating into a number of independent states. It is true, that by transferring the administration of the East more completely into the hands of the Greeks, it roused the nationality of the Syrians and Egyptians into activity, — an activity, however, which seemed to present no danger to the empire, as both these provinces were peopled almost exclusively by a tax-paying population, and contributed proportionally few recruits to the army. The establishment of the seat of government at Constantinople enabled the emperors to destroy many abuses, and effect numerous reforms, which recruited the resources and revived the strength of the eastern portion of the empire. The energy thus developed gave to the empire of the East the strength which enabled it ultimately to repulse all those hordes of barbarians who subdued the West.

Both the imperial power and the condition of society assumed more settled forms after the change of the capital. Before the reign of Constantine, ambition had been the leading feature of the Roman state. Everybody was striving for official rank; and the facilities of ascending the throne, or arriving at the highest dignities, were indefinitely multiplied by the rapid succession of emperors, by the repeated proscriptions of senators, and by the incessant confiscations of the property of the wealthiest Romans. Constantine, in giving to the government the form of a regular monarchy, introduced greater stability into society; and as ambition could no longer be gratified with the same ease as formerly, avarice, or rather rapacity, became the characteristic feature of the ruling classes. This love of riches soon caused the venality of justice. The middle classes, already sinking under the general anarchy and fiscal oppression of the empire, were now exposed to the extortions of the aristocracy, and property became almost as insecure among the smaller proprietors as it had formerly been among those who held great estates.

The condition of Greece, nevertheless, improved considerably in the interval which elapsed between the invasion of the Goths in the reign of Gallienus and the time of Constantine. History, it is true, supplies only a few scattered incidents from which the fact of this improvement can be inferred; but the gradual progress of the amelioration is satisfactorily established. When Constantine and Licinius prepared to dispute the sole possession of the empire, they assembled two powerful fleets, both of which were composed chiefly of Greek vessels. The armament of Constantine consisted of two hundred light galleys of war, and two thousand transports, and these immense naval forces were assembled at the Piraeus. This selection of the Piraeus as a naval station indicates that it was no longer in the desolate condition in which it had been seen by Pausanias in the second century, and it shows that Athens itself had recovered from whatever injury it had sustained during the Gothic expedition. To these frequent reconstructions of the buildings and walls of Greek cities, caused by the vicissitudes which frequently occurred in the numbers and wealth of their inhabitants during the period of eight centuries and a half which is reviewed in this volume, we are to attribute the disappearance of the immense remains of ancient constructions which once covered the soil, and of which no traces now exist, as they have been broken up on these occasions to serve as materials for new structures.

The fleet of Constantine was collected among the Europeans; that of Licinius, which consisted of triremes, was furnished chiefly by the Asiatic and Libyan Greeks. The number of the Syrian and Egyptian vessels was comparatively smaller than would have been the case two centuries earlier. It appears, therefore, that the commerce of the Mediterranean had returned into the hands of the Greeks. The trade of central Asia, which took the route of the Black Sea, increased in consequence of the insecure state of the Red Sea, Egypt, and Syria, and gave a new impulse to Greek industry.

The carrying trade of Western Europe was again falling into Greek hands. Athens, as the capital of the old Hellenic population, from its municipal liberty and flourishing schools of learning, was rising into importance. Constantine honoured this city with marks of peculiar favour, which were conferred certainly from a regard to its political importance, and not from any admiration of the studies of its pagan philosophers. He not only ordered an annual distribution of grain to be made to the citizens of Athens, from the imperial revenues, but he accepted the title of Strategos when offered by its inhabitants.

As soon as Julian had assumed the purple in Gaul, and marched against Constantius, he endeavoured to gain the Greek population to his party, by flattering their national feelings; and he strove to induce them to connect their cause with his own, in opposition to the Roman government of Constantius. He seems, in general, to have been received with favour by the Greeks, though his aversion to Christianity must have excited some distrust. Unless the Greek population in Europe had greatly increased in wealth and influence, during the preceding century, or Roman influence had suffered a considerable diminution in the East, it could hardly have entered into the plans of Julian to take the prominent measures which he adopted to secure their support. He addressed letters to the municipalities of Athens, Corinth, and Lacedaemon, in order to persuade these cities to join his cause. The letter to the Athenians is a carefully prepared political manifesto, explaining the reasons which compelled him to assume the purple. Athens, Corinth, and Lacedaemon, must have possessed some acknowledged political and social influence in the empire, otherwise Julian would only have rendered his cause ridiculous by addressing them at such a critical moment; and, though he was possibly ignorant of the state of religious feeling in the popular mind, he must have been too well acquainted with the statistics of the empire to commit any error of this kind in public business. It may also be observed, that the care with which history has recorded the ravages caused in Greece by earthquakes, during the reigns of Valentinian and Valens, affords conclusive testimony of the importance then attached to the well-being of the Greek population.

The ravages committed by the Goths in the provinces immediately to the south of the Danube must have turned for a time to the profit of Greece. Though some bands of the barbarians pushed their incursions into Macedonia and Thessaly, still Greece generally served as a place of retreat for the wealthy inhabitants of the invaded districts. When Theodosius, therefore, subdued the Goths, the Greek provinces, both in Europe and Asia, were among the most flourishing portions of the empire; and the Greek population, as a body, was, without question, the most numerous and best organized part of the emperor’s subjects; property, in short, was nowhere more secure than among the Greeks.

The rapacity of the imperial government had, however, undergone no diminution; and the weight of taxation was still compelling the people everywhere to encroach on the capital accumulated by former ages, and to abstain from all investments which only promised a distant remuneration. The influx of wealth from the ruined provinces of the North, and the profits of a change in the direction of trade, were temporary causes of prosperity, and could only render the burden of the public taxes lighter for one or two generations. The imperial treasury was sure ultimately to absorb the whole of these accidental supplies. It was, indeed, only in the ancient seats of the Hellenic race that any signs of returning prosperity were visible; for in Syria, Egypt, and Cyrene, the Greek population displayed evident proofs that they were suffering in the general decline of the empire. Their number was gradually diminishing in comparison with that of the native inhabitants of these countries. Civilization was sinking to the level of the lower grades of society. In the year A. D. 363, the Asiatic Greeks received a blow from which they never recovered. Jovian, by his treaty with Sapor II, ceded to Persia the five provinces of Arzanene, Moxoene, Zabdicene, Rehimene, and Corduene, and the Roman colonies of Nisibis and Singara in Mesopotamia. As Sapor was a fierce persecutor of the Christians, the whole Greek population of these districts was obliged to emigrate. The bigoted attachment of the Persians to the Magian worship never allowed the Greeks to regain a footing in these countries, or to obtain again any considerable share in their trade. From this time the natives acquired the complete ascendancy in all the country beyond the Euphrates. The bigotry of the Persian government is not to be overlooked in estimating the various causes which drove the trade of India through the northern regions of Asia to the shores of the Black Sea.

 

Sect. VI

 Communications of the Greeks with countries beyond the bounds of the Roman Empire

 

It would be a depressing idea were it to be admitted that the general degradation of mankind after the time of the Antonines was the effect of some inherent principle of decay, proceeding from an inevitable state of exhaustion in the condition of a highly civilized society; that a moral deficiency produced incurable corruption, and rendered good government impracticable; that these evils were irremediable, even by the influence of Christianity; and, in short, that the destruction of all the elements of civilization was necessary for the regeneration of the social as well as the political system. But there is happily no ground for any such opinion. The evils of society were produced by the injustice and oppression of the Roman government, and that government was so powerful that the nations it ruled were unable to force it to reform its conduct. The middle classes were almost excluded from all influence in their own municipal affairs by the oligarchical constitution of the curia, so that public opinion was powerless. After the Roman central authority was destroyed, similar causes produced the same effects in the barbarian monarchies of the West; and the revival of civilization commenced only when the people acquired power sufficient to enforce some respect for their feelings and rights. History has fortunately preserved some scanty memorials of a Greek population living beyond the bounds of the Roman Empire, which afford the means of estimating the effects of political causes in modifying the character and destroying the activity of the Greek nation. The flourishing condition of the independent Greek city of Cherson, in Tauris, furnishes ample testimony that the state of society among the Greeks admitted of the existence of those virtues, and of the exercise of that energy, which are necessary to support independence; but without institutions which confer on the people some control over their government, and some direct interest in public affairs, nations soon sink into lethargy, from which they can only be roused by war.

The Greek city of Chersonesos, a colony of Heraclea in Pontus, was situated on a small bay to the south-west of the entrance into the great harbour of Sebastopol, a name now memorable in European history. The defeat of Mithridates, to whom it had been subject, did not re-establish its independence. But in the time of Augustus it possessed the privileges of freedom and self-government under the protection of Rome. Its distant and isolated situation protected it from the arbitrary exactions of Roman magistrates, and rendered its municipal rights equivalent to political independence. In the reign of Hadrian, this independence was officially recognised, and Chersonesos received the rank of an allied city. In the third century we find the name abbreviated into Cherson, and the city removed somewhat to the eastward of the old site. Its extent was diminished, and the fortifications of Cherson only embraced a circumference of about two miles, on the promontory to the west of the present quarantine harbour of Sebastopol. It preserved the republican form of government, and contrived to defend its freedom for centuries against the ambition of the kings of Bosporus, and the attacks of the neighbouring Goths, who had rendered themselves masters of the open country. The wealth and power of Cherson depended on its commerce, and this commerce flourished under institutions which guaranteed the rights of property. The Emperor Constantine, in his Gothic wars, did not disdain to demand the aid of this little State; and he acknowledged with gratitude the great assistance which the Roman Empire had derived from the military forces of the Chersonites. No history could present more instructive lessons to centralized despotisms than the records of the administration and taxation of these Greeks, in the Tauric Chersonesus, during the decline of the empire, and it is deeply to be regretted that none exist. About three hundred and fifty years before the Christian era, the kingdom of the Cimmerian Bosporus, one of these Greek colonies, was in a flourishing agricultural condition; and its monarch had been able to prevent a famine at Athens, by supplying that city with two million bushels of wheat in a single season. Three hundred and fifty years after the birth of Christ all was changed in ancient Greece, and Cherson alone of all the cities inhabited by Greeks enjoyed the blessing of freedom. The fertile fields which had fed the Athenians were converted into pasturage for the cattle of the Goths; but the commerce of the Chersonites enabled them to import com, oil, and wine from the richest provinces of the Roman Empire.

The commercial Greeks of the empire began to feel that there were countries in which men could live and prosper beyond the power of the Roman administration. Christianity had penetrated far into the East, and Christians were every- where united by the closest ties. The speculations of trade occupied an important place in society. Trade carried many Greeks of education among foreign nations little inferior to the Romans in civilization, and surpassing them in wealth. It was impossible for these travellers to avoid examining the conduct of the imperial administration with the critical eye of men who viewed various countries and weighed the merits of different systems of fiscal government. For them, therefore, oppression had certain limits from which, when transgressed, they would have escaped by transporting themselves and their fortunes beyond the reach of the imperial tax-gatherers. The inhabitants of the Western Empire could entertain no similar hope of avoiding oppression.

About the time of Constantine, the Greeks carried on an extensive commerce with the northern shores of the Black Sea, Armenia, India, Arabia, and Ethiopia, and some merchants carried their adventures as far as Ceylon. A Greek colony had been established in the island of Socotra (Dioscorides), in the time of the Ptolemies, as a station for the Indian trade; and this colony, mixed with a number of Syrians, still continued to exist, in spite of the troubles raised by the Saracens on the northern shores of the Red Sea, and their wars with the emperors, particularly with Valens. The travels of the philosopher Metrodorus, and the missionary labours of the Indian bishop Theophilus, prove the existence of a regular intercourse between the empire, India, and Ethiopia, by the waters of the Red Sea. The curiosity of the philosopher, and the enthusiasm of the missionary, were excited by the reports of the ordinary traders; while their enterprises were everywhere facilitated by the mercantile speculations of a regular traffic. Feelings of religion at this time extended the efforts of the Christians, and opened up new channels for commerce. The kingdom of Ethiopia was converted to Christianity by two Greek slaves, who rose to the highest dignities in the State, whose influence must have originated in their connection with the Roman Empire, and whose power must have opened new means of communication with the heathens in the south of Africa, and assisted Greek traders, as well as Christian missionaries, in penetrating into countries whither no Roman had ever ventured.

 

Sect. VII

 Effect of the separation of the Eastern andWestern Empires on the Greek nation A.D. 395.

 

The separation of the eastern and western portions of the Roman Empire into two independent states, under Arcadius and Honorius, was the last step, in a long series of events, which seemed tending to restore the independence of the Greek nation. The interest of the sovereigns of the Eastern Empire became intimately connected with the fortunes of their Greek subjects. The Greek language began to be generally spoken at the court of the eastern emperors, and Greek feelings of nationality gradually made their way, not only into the administration and the army, but even into the family of the emperors. The numbers of the Greek population in the Eastern Empire gave a unity of feeling to the inhabitants, a nationality of character to the government, and a degree of power to the Christian church, which were completely wanting in the ill-cemented structure of the West. New vigour seemed on the point of being infused into the imperial government, as circumstances strongly impelled the emperors to participate in the feelings and national interests of their subjects. Nor were these hopes entirely delusive. The slow and majestic decline of the Roman Empire was arrested under a singular combination of events, as if expressly to teach the historical lesson that the Roman government had fallen through its own faults, by consuming the capital from which its resources were derived, by fettering the industry of the people, and thus causing a decline in the numbers of the population; for even in the West the strength of the barbarians was only sufficient to occupy provinces already depopulated by the policy of the government.

As soon as the Eastern Empire was definitely separated from the Western, the spirit of the Greek municipalities, and the direct connection of the body of the people with the clergy, began to exercise a marked influence on the general government. The increasing authority of the defensor in the municipalities modified, in some degree, the oligarchy of the Roman curia. Though the imperial administration continued, in fiscal matters, to maintain the old axiom that the people were the serfs of the State, yet the emperors, from the want of an aristocracy whom they could plunder, were thrown back on the immediate support of the people, whose goodwill could no longer be neglected. It is not to be supposed that, in the general decline of the empire, any disorganization of the frame of civil society was manifest in the various nations which lived under the Roman government. The numbers of the population had, indeed, everywhere diminished, but no convulsions had yet shaken the frame of society. Property was as secure as it had ever been, and the courts of law were gaining additional authority and a better organization. Domestic virtue was by no means rarer than it had been in brighter periods of history. The even tenor of life flowed calmly on, in a great portion of the Eastern Empire, from generation to generation. Philosophical and metaphysical speculations had, in the absence of the more active pursuits of political life, been the chief occupation of the higher orders; and when the Christian religion became universal, it gradually directed the whole attention of the educated to theological questions. These studies certainly exercised a favourable influence on the general morality, if not on the temper of mankind, and the tone of society was characterised by a purity of manners, and a degree of charitable feeling to inferiors, which have probably never been surpassed. Nothing can more remarkably display the extent to which the principles of humanity had penetrated, than the writings of the Emperor Julian. In the fervour of his pagan enthusiasm, he continually borrows Christian sentiments and inculcates Christian philanthropy.

Public opinion, which in the preceding century had attributed the decline of the empire to the progress of Christianity, now, with more justice, fixed on the fiscal system as the principal cause of its decay. The complaints of the oppression of the public administration were, by the common consent of the prince and people, directed against the abuses of the revenue-officers. The historians of this period, and the decrees of the emperors themselves, charge these officers with producing the general misery by the peculations which they committed; but no emperor yet thought of devoting his attention to a careful reformation of the system which allowed such disorders. The venality of the Roman officials excited the indignation of Constantine, who publicly threatened them with death if they continued their extortions, and the existence of a law inveighing against corruption speaks indirectly in favour of the state of society in which the vices of the administration were so severely reprehended.

An anecdote often illustrates the condition of society more correctly than a dissertation, though there is always some danger that an anecdote has found its place in history from the singularity of the picture which it presents. There is nevertheless one anecdote which is interesting, as affording a faithful picture of general manners, and as giving an accurate view of the most prominent defects in the Roman administration. Acindynus, the prefect of the Orient, enjoyed the reputation of an able, just, and severe governor. He collected the public revenues with inflexible justice. In the course of his ordinary administration, he threatened one of the inhabitants of Antioch, already in prison, with death, in case he should fail to discharge, within a fixed term, a debt due to the imperial treasury. His power was admitted, and his habitual attention to the claims of the fisc gave public defaulters at Antioch no hope of escaping with any punishment short of slavery, which was civil death. The prisoner was married to a beautiful woman, and the parties were united by the warmest affection. The circumstances of their case, and their situation in life, excited some attention. A man of great wealth offered to pay the husband’s debt, on condition that he should obtain the favours of his beautiful wife. The proposal excited the indignation of the lady, but when it was communicated to her imprisoned husband, he thought life too valuable not to be preserved by such a sacrifice; and his prayers had more effect with his wife than the wealth or the solicitations of her admirer. The libertine, though wealthy, proved to be mean and avaricious, and contrived to cheat the lady with a bag filled with sand instead of gold. The unfortunate wife, baffled in her hopes of saving her husband, threw herself at the feet of the prefect Acindynus, to whom she revealed the whole of the disgraceful transaction. The prefect was deeply moved by the evil effects of his severity. Astonished at the variety of crimes which he had caused, he attempted to render justice, by apportioning a punishment to each of the culprits, suitable to the nature of his offence. As the penalty of his own severity, he condemned himself to pay the debt due to the imperial treasury. He sentenced the fraudulent seducer to transfer to the injured lady the estate which had supplied him with the wealth which he had so infamously employed. The debtor was immediately released— he appeared to be sufficiently punished by his imprisonment and shame.

The severity of the revenue laws, and the arbitrary power of the prefects in matters of finance, are well represented in this anecdote. The injury inflicted on society by a provincial administration so constituted must have been incalculable. Even the justice and disinterestedness of such a prefect as Acindynus required to be called into action by extraordinary crimes, and, after all, virtues such as his could afford no very sure guarantee against oppression.

In spite of the great progress which Christianity had made, there still existed a numerous body of pagans among the higher ranks of the old aristocracy, who maintained schools of philosophy, in which a species of allegorical pantheism was taught. The pure morality inculcated, and the honourable lives of the teachers in these schools, enabled these philosophers to find votaries long after paganism might be considered virtually extinct as a national religion. While the pagans still possessed a succession of distinguished literary characters, a considerable body of the Christians were beginning to proclaim an open contempt of all learning which was not contained in the Scriptures. This fact is connected with the increased power of national feelings in the provinces, and with the aversion of the natives to the oppression of the Roman government and the insolence of Greek officials. Literature was identified with Roman supremacy and Greek arrogance. The Greeks, having long been in possession of the privileges of Roman citizens, and calling themselves Romans, now filled the greater part of the civil employments in the East.

From the time of Constantine, the two great principles of law and religion began to exert a favourable influence on Greek society, by their effect in moderating the despotic power of the imperial administration in its ordinary communications with the people. They created new institutions in the State, having a sphere of action independent of the arbitrary power of the emperor. The lawyers and the clergy acquired a fixed position as political bodies; and thus the branches of government with which they were connected were, in some degree, emancipated from arbitrary changes, and obtained a systematic or constitutional form. The dispensation of justice, though it remained dependent on the executive government, was placed in the hands of a distinct class; and as the law required a long and laborious study, its administration followed a steady and invariable course, which it was difficult for any other branch of the executive to interrupt. The lawyers and judges, formed in the same school and guided by the same written rules, were placed under the influence of a limited public opinion, which at least insured a certain degree of self-respect, supported by professional interests, but founded on general principles of equity. The body of lawyers not only obtained a complete control over the judicial proceedings of the tribunals, and restrained the injustice of proconsuls and prefects, but they even assigned limits to the wild despotism exercised by the earlier emperors. The department of general legislation was likewise intrusted to lawyers; and the good effects of this arrangement are apparent, from the conformity of the decrees of the worst emperors, after this period, with the principles of justice.

The power of the clergy, originally resting on a more popular and purer basis than that of the law, became at last so great, that it suffered the inevitable corruption of all irresponsible authority intrusted to humanity. The power of the bishops almost equalled that of the provincial governors, and was not under the constant control of the imperial administration. To gain such a position, intrigue, simony, and popular sedition were often employed. Supported by the people, a bishop ventured to resist the emperor himself; supported by the emperor and the people, he ventured even to neglect the principles of Christianity. Theophilus, the patriarch of Alexandria, ordained the Platonic philosopher Synesius, bishop of Ptolemais, in Cyrenaica, when he was a recent and not an orthodox Christian; for, as a bishop, he refused to put away his wife, and he declared that he neither believed in the resurrection of the body nor in the eternity of punishments.

In estimating the relative extent of the influence exercised by law and religion on the social condition of the Greeks, it must be remarked that Greek was the language of the Eastern Church from the time of its connection with the imperial administration; while, unfortunately for the law, Latin continued to be the language of legal business in the East, until after the time of Justinian. This fact explains the comparatively trifling influence exercised by the legal class, in establishing the supremacy of the Greek nation in the Eastern Empire, and accounts also for the undue influence which the clergy were enabled to acquire in civil affairs. Had the language of the law been that of the people, the Eastern lawyers, supported by the municipal institutions and democratic feelings of the Greeks, could hardly have failed, by combining with the church, to form a systematic and constitutional barrier against the arbitrary exercise of the imperial authority. The want of national institutions forming a portion of their system of law, was a defect in the social condition of the Greeks which they never supplied.

Slavery continued to exist in the same manner as in earlier times; and the slave-trade formed the most important branch of the commerce of the Roman Empire. It is true that the humanity of a philosophical age, and the precepts of the Gospel, introduced some restraints on the most barbarous features of the power possessed by the Romans over the lives and persons of their slaves; still, freemen were sold as slaves if they failed to pay their taxes, and parents were allowed to sell their own children. A new and more systematic slavery than the old personal service grew up in the rural districts, in consequence of the fiscal arrangements of the empire. The public registers showed the number of slaves employed in the cultivation of every farm; and the proprietor was bound to pay a certain tax for these slaves according to their employment. Even when the land was cultivated by free peasants, the proprietor was responsible to the fisc for their capitation-tax. As the interest of the government and of the proprietor, therefore, coincided to restrain the free labourer employed in agriculture from abandoning the cultivation of the land, he was attached to the soil, and gradually sank into the condition of a serf; while, on the other hand, in the case of slaves employed in farming, the government had an interest in preventing the proprietor from withdrawing their labour from the cultivation of the soil : these slaves, therefore, rose to the rank of serfs. The cultivators of the soil became, for this reason, attached to it, and their slavery ceased to be personal; they acquired rights, and possessed a definite station in society. This was the first step made by mankind towards the abolition of slavery.

The double origin of serfs must be carefully observed, in order to explain some apparently contradictory expressions of the Roman law. There is a law of Constantius preserved in Justinian’s code, which shows that slaves were then attached to the soil, and could not be separated from it. There is a law, also, of the Emperor Anastasius, which proves that a freeman, who had cultivated the property of another for thirty years, was prohibited from quitting that property; but he remained in other respects a freeman. The cultivator was called by the Romans colonus, and might, consequently, be either a slave or a freeman. His condition, however, was soon so completely determined by special laws, that its original constitution was lost.

 

Sect. VIII

Attempts of the Goths to establish themselves in Greece

 

The first great immigration of the Goths to the south of the Danube took place with the permission of the Emperor Valens; but as the Roman government adopted no measures for insuring their tranquil settlement in the country, these troublesome colonists were soon converted into dangerous enemies. Being ill supplied with provisions, finding the country unprotected, and having been allowed to retain possession of their arms, they began to plunder Moesia, Thrace, and Macedonia, for subsistence. At last, emboldened by success, they extended their incursions over the whole country, from the walls of Constantinople to the borders of Illyricum. The Roman troops were defeated. The emperor Valens, advancing inconsiderately in the confidence of victory, was vanquished in the battle of Adrianople, and perished A.D. 378. The massacre of a considerable number of Goths, retained in Asia as hostages and mercenaries, roused the fury of their victorious countrymen, and gave an unusual degree of cruelty to the war of devastation which they carried on for three years. Theodosius the Great put an end to these disorders. The Goths were still unable to resist the Roman troops when properly conducted. Theodosius induced their finest bodies of warriors to enter the imperial service, and either destroyed the remaining bands, or compelled them to escape beyond the Danube.

The depopulated state of the empire induced Theodosius to establish colonies of Goths, whom he had forced to submit, in Phrygia and Lydia. Thus the Roman government began to replace the ancient population of its provinces, by introducing new races of inhabitants into its dominions. Theodosius granted many privileges to these dangerous colonists, who were allowed to remain in possession of much of the wild liberty secured to them by their national institutions, merely on condition that they should furnish a certain number of recruits for the military service of the State. When the native population of the empire was gradually diminishing, some suspicion must surely have been entertained that this diminution was principally caused by the conduct of the government; yet so deeply rooted was the opposition of interests between the government and the governed, and so distrustful were the emperors of their subjects, that they preferred confiding in foreign mercenaries, to reducing the amount, and changing the nature, of the fiscal contributions, though by doing this they might have secured the support, and awakened the energy of their native subjects.

The Roman despotism had left the people almost without any political rights to defend, and with but few public duties to perform; while the free inhabitants deplored the decline of the agricultural population, and lamented their own degeneracy, which induced them to crowd into the towns. They either did not perceive, or did not dare to proclaim, that these evils were caused by the imperial administration, and could only be remedied by a milder and more equitable system of government. In order to possess the combination of moral and physical courage necessary to defend their property and rights against foreign invasion, civilized nations must feel convinced that they have the power of securing that property and those rights against all domestic injustice and arbitrary oppression on the part of the sovereign.

The Goths commenced their relations with the Roman Empire before the middle of the third century; and during the period they dwelt in the countries adjoining the Roman provinces, they made great progress in civilization, and in military and political knowledge. From the time Aurelian abandoned to them the province of Dacia, they became the lords of a fertile, cultivated, and well-peopled country. As the great body of the agricultural population was left behind by the Romans when they vacated the province, the Goths found themselves the proprietors of lands, from which they appear to have drawn a fixed revenue, leaving the old inhabitants in the enjoyment of their estates. To warriors of their simple habits of life, these revenues were amply sufficient to enable them to spend their time in hunting, to purchase arms and horses, and to maintain a band of retainers trained to war. The personal independence enjoyed by every Gothic warrior who possessed a landed revenue, created a degree of anarchy in the territories they subdued which was everywhere more ruinous than the systematic oppression of Rome. Still in Dacia the Goths were enabled to improve their arms and discipline, and to assume the ideas and manners of a military and territorial aristocracy. Though they remained always inferior to the Romans in military science and civil arts, they were their equals in bravery, and their superiors in honesty and truth; so that the Goths were always received with favour in the imperial service. It must not be forgotten, that no comparison ought to be established between the Gothic contingents and the provincial conscripts. The Gothic warriors were selected from a race of landed gentry devoted exclusively to arms, and which looked with contempt on all industrious occupations; while the native troops of the empire were taken from the poorest peasantry, torn from their cottages, and mingled with slaves and the dissolute classes of the cities, who were induced to enlist from hunger or a love of idleness. The number and importance of the Gothic forces in the Roman armies during the reign of Theodosius, enabled several of their commanders to attain the highest rank ; and among these officers, Alaric was the most distinguished by his future greatness.

The death of Theodosius threw the administration of the Eastern Empire into the hands of Rufinus, the minister of Arcadius; and that of the Western, into those of Stilicho, the guardian of Honorius. The discordant elements which composed the Roman Empire began to reveal all their incongruities under these two ministers. Rufinus was a civilian from Gaul; and from his Roman habits and feelings, and western prejudices, disagreeable to the Greeks. Stilicho was of barbarian descent, and consequently equally unacceptable to the aristocracy of Rome; but he was an able and popular soldier, and had served with distinction both in the East and in the West. As Stilicho was the husband of Serena, the niece and adopted daughter of Theodosius the Great, his alliance with the imperial family gave him an unusual influence in the administration. The two ministers hated one another with all the violence of aspiring ambition; and, unrestrained by any feeling of patriotism, each was more intent on ruining his rival than on serving the State. The greater number of the officers in the Roman service, both civil and military, were equally inclined to sacrifice every public duty for the gratification of their avarice or ambition.

At this time Alaric, partly from disgust at not receiving all the preferment which he expected, and partly in the hope of compelling the government of the Eastern Empire to agree to his terms, quitted the imperial service and retired towards the frontiers, where he assembled a force sufficiently large to enable him to act independently of all authority. Availing himself of the disputes between the ministers of the two emperors, and perhaps instigated by Rufinus or Stilicho to aid their intrigues, he established himself in the provinces to the south of the Danube. In the year 395 he advanced to the walls of Constantinople; but the movement was evidently a feint, as he must have known his inability to attack a large and populous city defended by a powerful garrison, and which even in ordinary times received the greater part of its supplies by sea. After this demonstration, Alaric marched into Thrace and Macedonia, and extended his ravages into Thessaly. Rufinus has been accused of assisting Alaric’s invasion, and his negotiations with him while in the vicinity of Constantinople countenance the suspicion. When the Goth found the northern provinces exhausted, he resolved to invade Greece and Peloponnesus, which had long enjoyed profound tranquillity. The cowardly behaviour of Antiochus the proconsul of Achaia, and of Gerontius the commander of the Roman troops, both friends of Rufinus, was considered a confirmation of his treachery. Thermopylae was left unguarded, and Alaric entered Greece without encountering any resistance.

The ravages committed by Alaric’s army have been described in fearful terms; villages and towns were burnt, the men were murdered, and the women and children carried away to be sold as slaves by the Goths. But even this invasion affords proofs that Greece had recovered from the desolate condition in which it had been seen by Pausanias. The walls of Thebes had been rebuilt, and it was in such a state of defence that Alaric could not venture to besiege it, but hurried forward to Athens, where he concluded a treaty with the civil and military authorities, which enabled him to enter the city without opposition. His success may have been assisted by treacherous arrangements with Rufinus, for he appears to have really occupied Athens rather as a federate leader than as a foreign conqueror. The tale recorded by Zosimus of the Christian Alaric having been induced by the apparition of the goddess Minerva to spare Athens, is refuted by the direct testimony of other writers, who mention the capitulation of the city. The fact that the depredations of Alaric hardly exceeded the ordinary license of a rebellious general is, at the same time, perfectly established. The public buildings and monuments of ancient splendour suffered no wanton destruction from his visit; but there can be no doubt that Alaric and his troops levied heavy contributions on the city and its inhabitants. Athens evidently owed its good treatment to the condition of its population, and perhaps to the strength of its walls, which imposed some respect on the Goths; for the rest of Attica did not escape the usual fate of the districts through which the barbarians marched. The town of Eleusis, and the great temple of Ceres, were plundered and then destroyed. Whether this work of devastation was caused by the Christian monks who attended the Gothic host, and excited their bigoted Arian votaries to avenge the cause of religion on the temples of the pagans at Eleusis, because they had been compelled to spare the shrines at Athens, or whether it was the accidental effect of the eager desire of plunder, or of the wanton love of destruction, among a disorderly body of troops, is not very material. Bigoted monks, avaricious officers, and disorderly soldiers, were probably all numerous in Alaric’s band.

Gerontius, who had abandoned the pass of Thermopylae, took no measures to defend the Isthmus of Corinth and the difficult passes of Mount Geranea, so that Alaric marched unopposed into the Peloponnesus, and, in a short time, captured almost every city in it without meeting with any resistance. Corinth, Argos, and Sparta, were all plundered. The security in which Greece had long remained, and the policy of the government, which discouraged their independent institutions, had conspired to leave the province without protection, and the people without arms. The facility which Alaric met with in effecting his conquest, and his views, which were directed to obtain an establishment in the empire as an imperial officer or feudatory governor, rendered the conduct of his army not that of avowed enemies. Yet it often happened that they laid waste everything in the line of their march, burnt villages, and massacred the inhabitants.

Alaric passed the winter in the Peloponnesus without encountering any opposition from the people; yet many of the Greek cities still kept a body of municipal police, which might surely have taken the field, had the imperial officers endeavoured to organize a regular resistance in the country districts. The moderation of the Goth, and the treason of the Roman governor, seem both attested by this circumstance. The government of the Eastern Empire had fallen into such disorder at the commencement of the reign of Arcadius, that even after Rufinus had been assassinated by the army, the new ministers of the empire gave themselves very little concern about the fate of Greece. Honorius had a more able, active, and ambitious minister in Stilicho, and he determined to punish the Goths for their audacity in daring to establish themselves in the empire without the imperial authority. Stilicho had attempted to save Thessaly in the preceding year, but had been compelled to return to Italy, after he had reached Thessalonica, by an express order of the emperor Arcadius, or rather of his minister Rufinus. In the spring of the year 396, he assembled a fleet at Ravenna, and transported his army directly to Corinth, which the Goths do not appear to have garrisoned, and where, probably, the Roman governor still resided. Stilicho’s army, aided by the inhabitants, soon cleared the open country of the Gothic bands; and Alaric drew together the remains of his diminished army in the elevated plain of Mount Pholoe, which has since served as a point of retreat for other northern invaders of Greece. Stilicho contented himself with occupying the passes; but his carelessness, or the relaxed discipline of his troops, afforded the watchful Alaric an opportunity of escaping with his army, of carrying off all the plunder which he had collected, and of gaining the Isthmus of Corinth.

Alaric succeeded in conducting his army into Epirus, which he treated, as he had expected to treat the Peloponnesus. Stilicho was supposed to have winked at his proceedings, in order to render his own services indispensable by leaving a dangerous enemy in the heart of the Eastern Empire; but the truth appears to be, that Alaric availed himself so ably of the jealousy with which the court of Constantinople viewed the proceedings of Stilicho, as to negotiate a treaty, by which he was received into the Roman service, and that he really entered Epirus as a general of Arcadius. Stilicho was again ordered to retire from the Eastern Empire, and he obeyed rather than commence a civil war by pursuing Alaric. The conduct of the Gothic troops in Epirus was, perhaps, quite as orderly as that of the Roman legionaries; so that Alaric was probably welcomed as a protector when he obtained the appointment of Commander-in-chief of the imperial forces in Eastern Illyricum, which he held for four years. During this time he prepared his troops to seek his fortune in the Western Empire. The military commanders, whether Roman or barbarian, were equally indifferent to the fate of the people whom they were employed to defend; and the Greeks appear to have suffered equal oppression from the armies of Stilicho and Alaric.

The condition of the European Greeks underwent a great change for the worse, in consequence of this unfortunate plundering expedition of the Goths. The destruction of their property, and the loss of their slaves, were so great, that the evil could only have been slowly repaired under the best government, and with perfect security of their possessions. In the miserable condition to which the Eastern Empire was reduced, this was hopeless; and a long period elapsed before the mass of the population of Greece again attained the prosperous condition in which Alaric had found it; nor were some of the cities which he destroyed ever rebuilt. The ruin of roads, aqueducts, cisterns, and public buildings, erected by the accumulation of capital in prosperous and enterprising ages, was a loss which could never be repaired by a diminished and impoverished population. History generally preserves but few traces of the devastations which affect only the people; but the sudden misery inflicted on Greece was so great, when contrasted with her previous tranquillity, that testimonies of her sufferings are to be found in the laws of the empire. Her condition excited the compassion of the government during the reign of Theodosius II. There exists a law which exempts the cities of Illyricum from the charge of contributing towards the expenses of the public spectacles at Constantinople, in consequence of the sufferings which the ravages of the Goths, and the oppressive administration of Alaric, had inflicted on the inhabitants. There is another law which proves that many estates were without owners, in consequence of the depopulation caused by the Gothic invasions; and a third law relieves Greece from two-thirds of the ordinary contributions to government, in consequence of the poverty to which the inhabitants were reduced.

This unfortunate period is as remarkable for the devastations committed by the Huns in Asia, as for those of the Goths in Europe, and marks the commencement of the rapid decrease of the Greek race, and of the decline of Greek civilization throughout the empire. While Alaric was laying waste the provinces of European Greece, an army of Huns from the banks of the Tanais penetrated through Armenia into Cappadocia, and extended their ravages over Syria, Cilicia, and Mesopotamia. Antioch, at last, resisted their assaults, and arrested their progress; but they took many Greek cities of importance, and inflicted an incalculable injury on the population of the provinces which they entered. In a few months they retreated to their seats on the Palus Maeotis, having contributed much to accelerate the ruin of the richest and most populous portion of the civilized world.

 

Sect. IX.

 The Greeks arrested the conquests of the Northern barbarians

 

From the time of Alaric’s ravages in the Grecian provinces, until the accession of Justinian, the government of the Eastern Empire assumed more and more that administrative character which it retained until the united forces of the Crusaders and Venetians destroyed it in the year 1204. A feeling that the interests of the emperor and his subjects were identical, began to become prevalent throughout the Greek population. This feeling was greatly strengthened by the attention which the government paid to improving the civil condition of its subjects. The judicial and financial administration received, during this period, a greater degree of power, as well as a more bureaucratic organization; and the whole strength of the government no longer reposed on the military establishments. Rebellions of the army became of rarer occurrence, and usually originated in civil intrigues, or the discontent of unrewarded mercenaries. A slight glance at the history of the Eastern Empire is sufficient to show that the court of Constantinople possessed a degree of authority over its most powerful officers, and a direct connection with its distant provinces, which had not previously existed in the Roman Empire.

Still the successful resistance which the Eastern Empire offered to the establishment of the northern nations within its limits, must be attributed to the density of the native population, to the number of the walled towns, and to its geographical configuration, rather than to the spirit of the Greeks, to the military force of the legions, or to any general measures of improvement adopted by the imperial government. Even where most successful, it was a passive rather than an active resistance. The sea which separated the European and Asiatic provinces opposed physical difficulties to invaders, while it afforded great facilities for defence, retreat, and renewed attack to the Roman forces, as long as they could maintain a naval superiority. These circumstances unfortunately increased the power of the central administration to oppress the people, as well as to defend them against foreign invaders, and allowed the emperors to persist in the system of fiscal rapacity which constantly threatened to annihilate a large portion of the wealth from which a considerable mass of the citizens derived their subsistence. At the very moment when the evils of the system became so apparent as to hold out some hope of reform, the fiscal exigencies of the government were increased by money becoming an important element in war, since it was necessary to hire armies as well as to provide facilities of transport, and means of concentration, in cases of danger, defeat, or victory; so that it began to be a financial calculation in many cases, whether it was more prudent to defend or to ransom a province. The great distance of the various frontiers, though it increased the difficulty of preventing every hostile incursion, hindered any rebellious general from uniting under his command the whole forces of the empire. The control which the government was thus enabled to exercise over all its military officers, secured a regular system of discipline, by centralizing the services of equipping, provisioning, and paying the soldiers; and the direct connection between the troops and the government could no longer be counteracted by the personal influence which a general might acquire, in consequence of a victorious campaign. The power of the emperors over the army, and the complete separation which existed in the social condition of the citizen and the soldier, rendered any popular movement in favour of reform hopeless. A successful rebellion could only have created a new military power; it could not have united the interests of the military with those of the people, unless changes had been effected which were too great to be attempted by any individual legislator, and too extensive to be accomplished during one generation. The subjects of the empire were also composed of so many nations, differing in language, usages, and civilization, that unity of measures on the part of the people was impossible, while no single province could expect to obtain redress of its own grievances by an appeal to arms.

The age was one of war and conquest; yet, with all the aspirations and passions of a despotic and military State, the Eastern Empire was, by its financial position, compelled to act on the defensive, and to devote all its attention to rendering the military subordinate to the civil power, in order to save the empire from being eaten up by its own defenders. Its measures were at last successful; the northern invaders were repulsed, the army was rendered obedient, and the Greek nation was saved from the fate of the Romans. The army became gradually attached to the source of pay and honour; and it was rather from a general feature of all despotic governments, than from any peculiarity in the Eastern Empire, that the soldiery frequently appear devoted to the imperial power, but perfectly indifferent to the person of the emperor. The condition of the Western Empire requires to be contrasted with that of the Eastern, in order to appreciate the danger of the crisis through which favourable circumstances, and some prudence, carried the government of Constantinople. Yet, even in the West, in spite of all the disorganization of the government, the empire suffered more from the misconduct of the Roman officers than from the strength of its assailants. Even Genseric could hardly have penetrated into Africa unless he had been invited by Boniface, and assisted by his rebellion; while the imperial officers in Britain, Gaul, and Spain, who, towards the end of the reign of Honorius, assumed the imperial title, laid those provinces open to the incursions of the barbarians. The government of the Western Empire was really destroyed, the frame of political society was broken in pieces, and the provinces depopulated, some time before its final conquest had been achieved by foreigners. The Roman principle of aristocratic rule was unable to supply that bond of union which the national organization of the Greeks, aided by the influence of the established church, furnished in the East.

It has been already observed that the geographical features of the Eastern Empire exercised an important influence on its fate. Both in Europe and Asia extensive provinces are bounded or divided by chains of mountains which terminate on the shores of the Adriatic, the Black Sea, or the Mediterranean. These mountain-ranges compel all invaders to advance by certain well-known roads and passes, along which the means of subsistence for large armies can only be collected by foresight and prudent arrangements. The ordinary communication by land between neighbouring provinces is frequently tedious and difficult; and the inhabitants of many mountain districts retained their national character, institutions, and language, almost unaltered during the whole period of the Roman sway. In these provinces the population was active in resisting every foreign invader; and the conviction that their mountains afforded them an impregnable fortress insured the success of their efforts. Thus the feelings and prejudices of the portion of the inhabitants of the empire which had been long opposed to the Roman government, now operated powerfully to support the imperial administration. These circumstances and some others which acquired strength as the general civilization of the empire declined, concurred to augment the importance of the native population existing in the different provinces of the Eastern Empire, and prevented the Greeks from acquiring a moral, as well as a political, ascendancy in the distant provinces. In Europe, the Thracians distinguished themselves by their hardihood and military propensities. In Asia, the Pamphylians, having obtained arms to defend themselves against the brigands who began to infest the provinces in large bands, employed them with success in opposing the Goths. The Isaurians, who had always retained possession of their arms, began to occupy a place in the history of the empire, which they acquired by their independent spirit and warlike character. The Armenians, the Syrians, and the Egyptians, all engaged in a rivalry with the Greeks, and even contested their superiority in literary and ecclesiastical knowledge. These circumstances exercised considerable influence in preventing the court of Constantinople from identifying itself completely with the Greek people, and enabled the Eastern emperors to cling to the maxims and pride of ancient Rome as the ground of their sovereignty over so many various races of mankind.

The wealth of the Eastern Empire was a principal means of its defence against the barbarians. While it invited their invasions, it furnished the means of repulsing their attacks or of bribing their forbearance. It was usefully employed in securing the retreat of those bodies who, after having broken through the Roman lines of defence, found themselves unable to seize any fortified post, or to extend the circle of their ravages. Rather than run the risk of engaging with the Roman troops, by delaying their march for the purpose of plundering the open country, they were often content to retire without ravaging the district, on receiving a sum of money and a supply of provisions. These sums were generally so inconsiderable, that it would have been the height of folly in the government to refuse to pay them, and thus expose its subjects to ruin and slavery; but as it was evident that the success of the barbarians would invite new invasions, it is surprising that the imperial administration should not have taken better measures to place the inhabitants of the exposed districts in a condition to defend themselves, and thus secure the treasury against a repetition of this ignominious expenditure. But the jealousy with which the Roman government regarded its own subjects was the natural consequence of the oppression with which it ruled them. No danger seemed so great as that of intrusting the population with arms.

The commerce of the Eastern Empire, and the gold and silver mines of Thrace and Pontus, still furnished abundant supplies of the precious metals. We know that the mint of Constantinople was always rich in gold, for its gold coinage circulated through western and northern Europe, for several centuries after the destruction of the Western Empire. The proportion in the value of gold to silver, which in the time of Herodotus was as one to thirteen, was, after a lapse of eight centuries, in the time of Arcadius and Honorius, as one to fourteen and two-fifths. The commerce of Constantinople embraced, at this time, almost the trade of the world. The manufactories of the East supplied Western Europe with many articles of daily use, and the merchants carried on an extensive transport trade with Central Asia. By means of the Red Sea, the productions of southern Africa and India were collected and distributed among numerous nations who inhabited the shores within and without the Straits of Babelmandeb —countries which were then far richer, more populous, and in a much higher state of civilization than at present. The precious metals, which were becoming rare in Europe, from the stagnation of trade, and the circumscribed exchanges which take place in a rude society, were still kept in active circulation by the various wants of the population of the Eastern Empire. Commodities from far distant lands were still consumed in large quantities. The island of Jotaba, which was a free city in the Red Sea, became a mercantile position of great importance; and from the title of the col- lectors of the imperial customs which were exacted in its port, the Eastern emperors must have levied a duty of ten per cent, on all the merchandise destined for the Roman Empire. This island was occupied by the Arabs for some time, but returned under the power of the Eastern Empire during the reign of Anastasius.

As the Eastern Empire generally maintained a decided naval superiority over its enemies, commerce seldom suffered any serious interruption. The pirates who infested the Hellespont about the year 438, and the Vandals under Genseric who ravaged the coasts of Greece in 466 and 475, were more dreaded by the people on account of their cruelty than by the government or the merchants in consequence of their success, which was never great. In the general disorder which reigned over the whole of Western Europe, the only secure depots for merchandise were in the Eastern Empire. The emperors saw the importance of their commercial influence, and made considerable exertions to support their naval superiority. Theodosius II assembled a fleet of eleven hundred transports when he proposed to attack the Vandals in Africa. The armament of Leo the Great, for the same purpose, was on a still larger scale, and formed one of the greatest naval forces ever assembled by the Roman power.

 

Sect. X

 Declining condition of the Greek population in the European provinces of the Eastern Empire

 

The ravages inflicted by the northern nations on the frontier provinces, during the century which elapsed from the defeat of Valens to the immigration of the Ostrogoths into Italy, were so continual that the agricultural population was almost destroyed in the countries immediately to the south of the Danube, and the inhabitants of Thrace and Macedonia were greatly diminished in number, and began to lose the use of their ancient languages. The declining trade caused by decreased consumption, poverty, and insecurity of property, also lowered the scale of civilization among the whole Greek people. One tribe of barbarians followed another, as long as anything was left to plunder. The Huns, under Attila, laid waste the provinces to the south of the Danube for about five years, and were only induced to retreat on receiving from the emperor six thousand pounds of gold, and the promise of an annual payment of two thousand. The Ostrogoths, after obtaining an establishment to the south of the Danube, as allies of the empire, and receiving an annual subsidy from the Emperor Marcian to guard the frontiers, availed themselves of pretexts to plunder Moesia, Macedonia, Thrace, and Thessaly. Their king, Theodoric, proved by far the most dangerous enemy that the Eastern Empire had yet encountered. Educated as a hostage at the court of Constantinople, a residence of ten years enabled him to acquire a complete knowledge of the languages, the politics, and the administration of the imperial government. Though he inherited an independent sovereignty in Pannonia, he found that country so exhausted by the oppression of his countrymen, and by the ravages of other barbarians, that the whole nation of the Ostrogoths was compelled to emigrate, and Theodoric became a military adventurer in the Roman service, and acted as an ally, a mercenary, or an enemy, according as circumstances appeared to render the assumption of these different characters most conducive to his own aggrandisement.

It would throw little additional light on the state of the Greeks, to trace minutely the records of Theodoric’s quarrels with the imperial court, or to narrate, in detail, the ravages committed by him, or by another Gothic mercenary of the same name, in the provinces, from the shores of the Black Sea to those of the Adriatic. These plundering expeditions were not finally terminated until Theodoric quitted the Eastern Empire to conquer Italy, and found the Ostrogothic monarchy, by which he obtained the title of the Great.

It was certainly no imaginary feeling of respect which prevented Alaric, Genseric, Attila, and Theodoric, from attempting the conquest of Constantinople. If they had thought the task as easy as the subjugation of Rome, there can be no doubt that the Eastern Empire would have been as fiercely assailed as the Western, and new Rome would have shared the fate of the world’s ancient mistress. These warriors were only restrained by the difficulties which the undertaking presented, and by the conviction that they would meet with a far more determined resistance on the part of the inhabitants, than the corrupt condition of the imperial court and of the public administration appeared at first sight to promise. Their experience in civil and military affairs revealed to them the existence of an inherent strength in the population of the Eastern Empire, and a multiplicity of resources which their attacks might call into action but could not overcome. Casual encounters often showed that the people were neither destitute of courage nor military spirit, when circumstances favoured their display. Attila himself, the terror both of Goths and Romans — the Scourge of God — was defeated before the town of Asemous, a frontier fortress of Illyricum. Though he regarded its conquest as a matter of the greatest importance to his plans, the inhabitants baffled all his attempts, and set his power at defiance. Genseric was defeated by the inhabitants of the little town of Taenarus in Laconia. Theodoric did not venture to attack Thessalonica, even at a time when the inhabitants enraged at the neglect of the imperial government drove out the officers of the emperor Zeno, overthrew his statues, and prepared to defend themselves against the barbarians with their own unassisted resources. There is another remarkable example of the independent spirit of the Greek people, which saved their property from ruin, in the case of Heraclea, a city of Macedonia. The inhabitants, in the moment of danger, placed their bishop at the head of the civil government, and intrusted him with power to treat with Theodoric, who, on observing their preparations for defence, felt satisfied that it would be wiser to retire on receiving a supply of provisions for his army, than venture on plundering the country. Many other instances might be adduced to prove that the hordes of the northern barbarians were in reality not sufficiently numerous to overcome a determined resistance on the part of the Greek nation, and that the principal cause of their success within the Roman territories was the vicious nature of the Roman government.

Theodoric succeeded, during the year 479, in surprising Dyrrachium by treachery; and the alarm which this conquest caused at the court of Constantinople shows that the government was not blind to the importance of preventing any foreign power from acquiring a permanent dominion over a Greek city. The emperor Zeno offered to cede to the Goths the extensive province of Dardania, which was then almost destitute of inhabitants, in order to induce Theodoric to quit Dyrrachium. That city, the emperor declared, constituted a part of the well-peopled provinces of the empire, and it was therefore in vain for Theodoric to expect that he could keep possession of it. This remarkable observation shows that the desolation of the northern provinces was now beginning to compel the government of the Eastern Empire to regard the countries inhabited by the Greeks, which were still comparatively populous, as forming the national territory of the Roman Empire in Europe.

 

Sect. XI

 Improvement in the Eastern Empire from the death of Arcadius to the accession of Justinian

 

From the death of Arcadius to the accession of Justinian, during a period of one hundred and twenty years, the empire of the East was governed by six sovereigns of very different characters, whose reigns have been generally viewed through the medium of religious prejudices; yet, in spite of the dissimilarity of their personal conduct, the general policy of their government is characterized by similar features. The power of the emperor was never more unlimited, but it was never more systematically exercised. The administration of the empire, and of the imperial household, were equally regarded as forming a part of the sovereign’s private estate, while the lives and fortunes of his subjects were considered as a portion of the property of which he was the master. The power of the emperor was now controlled by the danger of foreign invasions, and by the power of the church. The oppressed could seek refuge with the barbarians, and the persecuted might find the means of opposing the government by the power of the orthodox clergy, who were strong in the support of a great part of the population. The fear of divisions in the Church itself, which was now intimately connected with the State, served also in some degree as a restraint on the arbitrary conduct of the emperor. The interest of the sovereign became thus identified with the sympathies of the majority of his subjects; yet the difficulty of deciding what policy the emperor ought to follow in the ecclesiastical disputes of the heretics and the orthodox was so great, as at times to give an appearance of doubt and indecision to the religious opinions of several emperors.

The decline of the Roman power had created an eager desire to remedy the disorders which had brought the empire to the brink of destruction. Most of the provinces of the West were inhabited by mixed races without union; the power of the military commanders was beyond the control of public opinion; and neither the emperor, the senate, nor the higher clergy, were directly connected with the body of the people. In the East, the opinion of the people possessed some authority, and it was consequently studied and treated with greater deference. The importance of enforcing the impartial administration of justice was so deeply felt by the government, that the emperors themselves attempted to restrict the application of their legislative power in individual and isolated cases. The Emperor Anastasius ordered the judges to pay no attention to any private rescript, if it should be found contrary to the received laws of the empire, or to the public good; in such cases, he commanded the judges to follow the established laws. The senate of Constantinople possessed great authority in controlling the general administration, and the dependent position of its members prevented that authority from being regarded with jealousy. The permanent existence of this body enabled it to establish fixed maxims of policy, and to render these maxims the grounds of the ordinary decisions of government. By this means a systematic administration was firmly consolidated, over which public opinion exerted some direct influence, and by its systematic operation and fixed rules of procedure it became in some degree a check on the temporary and fluctuating views of the sovereign.

Theodosius II succeeded his father Arcadius at the age of eight; and he governed the Empire for forty-two years, during which he left the care of the public administration very much in the hands of others. His sister Pulcheria, though only two years older than her brother, exercised great influence over his education; and she seems, in all her actions, to have been guided by sentiments of philanthropy as well as piety. She taught him to perform the ceremonial portion of his imperial duties with grace and dignity, but she could not teach him, perhaps he was incapable of learning, how to act and think as became a Roman emperor. At the age of fifteen Pulcheria received the rank of Augusta, and assumed the direction of public affairs for her brother. Theodosius was naturally mild, humane, and devout. Though he possessed some manly personal accomplishments, his mind and character were deficient in strength. He cultivated the arts of writing and painting with such success as to render his skill in the illumination of manuscripts his most remarkable personal distinction. His Greek subjects, mingling kindness with contempt, bestowed on him the name of Kalligraphos. His incapacity for business was so great, that he is hardly accused of having augmented the misfortunes of his reign by his own acts. A spirit of reform, and a desire of improvement, had penetrated into the imperial administration; and his reign was distinguished by many internal changes for the better. Among these, the publication of the Theodosian code, and the establishment of the university of Constantinople, were the most important. The Theodosian code afforded the people the means of arraigning the conduct of their rulers before fixed principles of law, and the university of Constantinople established the influence of Greek literature, and gave the Greek language an official position in the Eastern Empire. The reign of Theodosius was also distinguished by two great remissions of arrears of taxation. By these concessions the greatest possible boon was conferred on the people, for they extinguished all claim for unpaid taxation over a period of sixty years. The weakness of the emperor, by throwing the direction of public business into the hands of the senate and the ministers, for a long period consolidated that systematic administration which characterizes the government of his successors. He was the first of the emperors who was more a Greek than a Roman in his feelings and tastes; but his inactivity prevented his private character from exercising much influence on his public administration.

In the long series of eight centuries which elapsed from the final establishment of the Eastern Empire, at the accession of Arcadius, to its destruction by the Crusaders, no Athenian citizen gained a place of honour in the annals of the empire. The schools of Athens were fruitful in pedants, but they failed to produce true men. In ancient times, it was observed that those who were trained as athletes were not distinguished as soldiers; and modern times confirm the testimony afforded by the history of the Eastern Empire, that professors of universities, and even teachers of political philosophy, make bad statesmen. But though the men of Athens had degenerated into literary triflers, the women upheld the fame of the city of Minerva. Two Athenian beauties, Eudocia and Irene, are among the most celebrated empresses who occupied the throne of Constantinople. The eventful life of Eudocia, the wife of Theodosius II, does not require to borrow romantic incidents from Eastern tales; it only asks for genius in the narrator to unfold a rich web of romance. Some circumstances in her history deserve notice, even in this volume, as they throw light incidentally on the state of society among the Greeks.

The beautiful Eudocia was the daughter of an Athenian philosopher, Leontios, who still sacrificed to the heathen divinities. Her heathen name was Athenais. She received a classical education, while she acquired the elegant accomplishments of that aristocratic society which had cultivated the amenities of life from the time of Plato, who made use of carpets in his rooms, and allowed ladies to attend his lectures. Her extraordinary talents induced her father to give her a careful literary and philosophical education. All her teachers were gratified with her progress. Her native accent charmed the inhabitants of Constantinople, accustomed to pure Attic Greek by the eloquence of Chrysostom; and she also spoke Latin with the graceful dignity of a Roman lady. The only proof of rustic simplicity which her biography enables us to trace in Athenian manners, is the fact that her father, who was a man of wealth as well as a philosopher, believed that her beauty, virtue, and accomplishments, would obtain her a suitable marriage without any dowry. He left his whole fortune to his son, and the consequence was that the beautiful Athenais, unable to find a husband among the provincial nobles who visited Athens, was compelled to try her fortune at the court of Constantinople, under the patronage of Pulcheria, in the semi-menial position which we now term a maid of honour. Pulcheria was then only fifteen years old, and Eudocia was probably twenty. The young Augusta was soon gratified by the conversion of her beautiful heathen protégée to Christianity; but time passed on, and the courtiers of Constantinople showed no better taste in matrimony than the provincial decurions. The dowerless Eudocia remained unmarried, until Pulcheria persuaded her docile brother to fall in love with the fair Athenian. At the ripe age of twenty-seven, she became the wife of Theodosius II, who was twenty, and the pagans might then boast that Leontios had acted as a seer, not as a pedant, in leaving her without a dowry.

Twenty years after her marriage, Eudocia was accused of a criminal passion for Paulinus, a handsome officer of the court. At the age of fifty the blood is usually tame, and waits upon the judgment. We are also led to suppose that Paulinus, whom one of the chroniclers tells us Eudocia loved because he was very learned and very handsome, had also fallen into the sere and yellow leaf, for the unlawful attachment of the empress was revealed by his being laid up with the gout. The story runs thus. As the emperor Theodosius was going to church on the feast of Epiphany, a poor man presented him with a Phrygian apple of extraordinary size. The emperor and all the senate stopped and admired the monstrous apple, and Theodosius made his treasurer pay the poor man 150 gold byzants. The apple was sent immediately to Eudocia, who lost no time in forwarding it to the constant object of her thoughts, the gouty Paulinus. He, with less of devoted affection than might have been expected considering the rank and circumstances of the donor, despatched it as a present to the emperor, who, on his return from church, found his costly Phrygian apple ready to welcome him a second time. Theodosius not being satisfied with the manner in which his wife had treated his present, asked her what she had done with it; and Eudocia, whose fifty years had not diminished her appetite for fruit in a forenoon, replied with delightful simplicity, that she had eaten the monster. This falsehood awakened green-eyed jealousy in the heart of Theodosius. Perhaps the Kalligraphos, on his way home from church, had contemplated adorning the initial letter of a manuscript with a miniature of Eudocia holding the enormous apple in her hand. A scene of course followed; the apple was produced; the emperor was eloquent in his reproaches, the empress equally eloquent in her tears, as may be found better expressed in similar cases in modern novels than in ancient histories. The result was that the handsome man with the gout was banished, and shortly after put to death. The empress was sent into exile with becoming pomp, under the pretext of making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where she displayed her learning by paraphrasing several portions of Scripture in heroic verses. Gibbon very justly observes that this celebrated story of the apple is fit only for the Arabian Nights, where something not very unlike it may be found. His opinion is doubly valuable, from the disposition he generally shows to credit similar tales of scandal, as in the case of the secret history of Procopius, to which he ascribes more authority than it deserves. Eudocia on her deathbed declared that the reports of her criminal attachment to Paulinus were false. They must have been very prevalent, or she would not have considered it necessary to give them this solemn denial. Her death is placed in the year 460.

Marcian, a Thracian of humble birth, who had risen from a common soldier to the rank of senator, and had already attained the age of fifty-eight, was selected by Pulcheria as the man most worthy to fill the imperial throne on the death of her brother. He received the rank of her husband merely to secure his title to the empire. She had taken monastic vows at an early age, though she continued to bear, during her brother’s reign, a considerable part in the conduct of public business, having generally acted as his counsellor. The conduct of Marcian, after he became emperor, justified Pulcheria’s choice; and it is probable that he was one of the senators who had supported the systematic policy by which Pulcheria endeavoured to restore the strength of the empire; a policy which sought to limit the arbitrary exercise of the despotic power of the emperor by fixed institutions, well-regulated forms of procedure, and an educated and organized body of civil officials. Marcian was a soldier who loved peace without fearing war. One of his first acts was to refuse payment of the tribute which Attila had exacted from Theodosius. His reign lasted six years and a half, and was chiefly employed in restoring the resources of the empire, and alleviating its burdens. In the theological disputes which divided his subjects, Marcian attempted to act with impartiality; and he assembled the council of Chalcedon in the vain hope of establishing a system of ecclesiastical doctrine common to the whole empire. His attempt to identify the Christian church with the Roman Empire only widened the separation of the different sects of Christians; and the opinions of the dissenters, while they were regarded as heretical, began to be adopted as national. Religious communities everywhere assumed a national character. The Eutychian heresy became the religion of Egypt; Nestorianism was that of Mesopotamia. In such a state of things Marcian sought to temporize from feelings of humanity, and bigots made this spirit of toleration a reproach.

Leo the Elder, another Thracian, was elected emperor, on the death of Marcian, by the influence of Aspar, a general of barbarian descent, who had acquired an authority similar to that which Stilicho and Aetius had possessed in the West. Aspar being a foreigner and an Arian, durst not himself, notwithstanding his influence and favour with the army, aspire to the imperial throne; a fact which proves that the political constitution of the government, and the fear of public opinion, exercised some control over the despotic power of the court of Constantinople. The insolence of Aspar and his family determined Leo to diminish the authority of the barbarian leaders in the imperial service; and he adopted measures for recruiting the army from his native subjects. The system of his predecessors had been to place more reliance on foreigners than on natives; to employ mercenary strangers as their guards, and to form the best armed and highest paid corps entirely of barbarians. In consequence of the neglect with which the native recruits had been treated, they had fallen into such contempt that they were ranked in the legislation of the empire as an inferior class of military. Leo could not reform the army without removing Aspar; and, despairing of success by any other means, he employed assassination; thus casting, by the murder of his benefactor, so deep a stain on his own character that he received the surname of the Butcher. During his reign, the arms of the empire were generally unsuccessful; and his great expedition against Genseric, the most powerful and expensive naval enterprise which the Romans had ever prepared, was completely defeated. As it was dangerous to confide so mighty a force to any general of talent, Basiliscus, the brother of the empress, was intrusted with the chief command. His incapacity assisted the Vandals in defeating the expedition quite as much as the prudence and talents of Genseric. The Ostrogoths, in the meantime, extended their ravages from the Danube as far as Thessaly, and there appeared some probability that they would succeed in establishing a kingdom in Illyricum and Macedonia, completely independent of the imperial power. The civil administration of Leo was conducted with great prudence. He followed in the steps of his predecessor in all his attempts to lighten the burdens of his subjects, and to improve their condition. When Antioch suffered severely from an earthquake, he remitted the public taxes to the amount of one thousand pounds of gold, and granted freedom from all imposts to those who rebuilt their ruined houses. In the disputes which still divided the church, he adopted the orthodox or Greek party, in opposition to the Eutychians and Nestorians. The epithet of Great has been bestowed on him by the Greeks — a title, it should seem, conferred upon him rather with reference to his being the first of his name, and on account of his orthodoxy, than from the pre-eminence of his personal actions. He died at the age of sixty-three, and was succeeded by his grandson, Leo II, an infant, who survived his elevation only a few months, A.D. 474.

 Zeno mounted the throne on the death of his son, Leo II. He was an Isaurian, whom Leo the Great had selected as the husband of his daughter Ariadne, when he was engaged in rousing the military spirit of his own subjects against the barbarian mercenaries. In the eyes of the Greeks, the Isaurians were little better than barbarians; but their valour had obtained for them a high reputation among the troops in the capital. The origin of Zeno rendered him unpopular with the Greeks; and as he did not participate in their nationality in religion, any more than in descent, he was accused of cherishing heretical opinions. He appears to have been unsteady in his views, and vicious in his conduct; yet the difficulties of his position were so great, and the prejudices against him so strong, that, in spite of all the misfortunes of his reign, the fact of his having maintained the integrity of the Eastern Empire attests that he could not have been totally deficient in courage and talent. The year after he ascended the throne, he was driven from Constantinople by Basiliscus, the brother of Leo’s widow Verina; but Basiliscus could only keep possession of the capital for about twenty months, and Zeno recovered his authority. The great work of his reign, which lasted seventeen years and a half, was the formation of an army of native troops to serve as a counterpoise to the barbarian mercenaries who threatened the Eastern Empire with the same fate as the Western. About the commencement of his reign he witnessed the final extinction of the Western Empire, and, for many years, the Theodorics threatened him with the loss of the greater part of the European provinces of the Eastern. Surely the man who successfully resisted the schemes and the forces of the great Theodoric could not have been a contemptible emperor, even though his orthodoxy were questionable. When it is remembered, therefore, that Zeno was an Isaurian, and a peacemaker in theological quarrels, it will not be surprising that the Greeks, who regarded him as a heterodox barbarian, should have heaped many calumnies on his memory. From his laws which have been preserved in the code of Justinian, he seems to have adopted judicious measures for alleviating the fiscal obligations of the landed proprietors, and his prudence was shown by his not proposing to the senate the adoption of his brother as his successor. The times were difficult; his brother was worthless, and the support of the official aristocracy was necessary. The disposal of the imperial crown was again placed in the hands of Ariadne.

Anastasius secured his election by his marriage with Ariadne. He was a native of Dyrrachium, and must have been near the age of sixty when he ascended the throne. In the year 514, Vitalian, general of the barbarian mercenaries, and a grandson of Aspar, assumed the title of emperor, and attempted to occupy Constantinople. His principal reliance was on the bigotry of the orthodox Greeks, for Anastasius showed a disposition to favour the Eutychians. But the military power of the mercenaries had been diminished by the policy of Leo and Zeno; and it now proved insufficient to dispose of the empire, as it could derive little support from the Greeks, who were more distinguished for ecclesiastical orthodox than for military courage. Vitalian was defeated in his attempt on Constantinople, and consented to resign the imperial title on receiving a large sum of money and the government of Thrace. The religious opinions of Anastasius unfortunately rendered him always unpopular, and he had to encounter some serious seditions while the empire was involved in wars with the Persians, Bulgarians, and Goths. Anastasius was more afraid of internal rebellions and seditions than of defeat by foreign armies; and he subdivided the command of his troops in such a way, that success in the field of battle was almost impossible. In one important campaign against Persia, the intendant-general was the officer of highest rank in an army of fifty thousand men. Military subordination, and vigorous measures, under such an arrangement, were impossible; and it reflects some credit on the organization of the Roman troops, that they were enabled to keep the field without total ruin.

Anastasius devoted his anxious care to alleviate the misfortunes of his subjects, and to diminish the taxes which oppressed them. He reformed the oligarchical system of the Roman curia, which had already received some modifications tending to restrict the ruinous obligation of mutual responsibility imposed on all members of municipalities for the whole amount of the land-tax due to the imperial treasury. The immediate consequence of his reforms was to increase the revenue, a result which was probably effected by preventing the local aristocracy from combining with the officers of the fisc. Such changes, though they are extremely beneficial to the great body of the people, are rarely noticed with much praise by historians, who generally write under the influence of central prejudices. He constructed the great wall, to secure from destruction the rich villages and towns in the vicinity of Constantinople. This wall extended from the Sea of Marmora, near Selymbria, to the Black Sea, forming an arc of about forty-two miles, at a distance of twenty-eight miles from the capital. The rarest virtue of a sovereign is the sacrifice of his own revenues, and, consequently, the diminution of his own power, for the purpose of increasing the happiness of his people. The greatest action of Anastasius was this voluntary diminution of the revenues of the State. He abolished the Chrysargyron, a lucrative but oppressive tax which affected the industry of every subject. The increased prosperity which this concession infused into society soon displayed its effects; and the brilliant exploits of the reign of Justinian must be traced back to the reinvigoration of the body politic of the Roman Empire by Anastasius. He also expended large sums in repairing the damages caused by war and earthquakes. He constructed a canal from the lake Sophon to the Gulf of Astacus, near Nicomedia, a work which Pliny had proposed to Trajan, and which was restored by the Byzantine emperor Alexius I; yet so exact was his economy, and so great were the revenues of the Eastern Empire, that he was enabled to accumulate, during his reign, three hundred and twenty thousand pounds of gold in the public treasury. The people had prayed at his accession that he might reign as he had lived; and, even in the eyes of the Greeks, he would probably have been regarded as the model of a perfect monarch, had he not shown a disposition to favour heresy. Misled, either by his wish to comprehend all sects in the established church, — as all nations were included in the empire, — or by a too decided attachment to the doctrines of the Eutychians, he excited the opposition of the orthodox party, whose domineering spirit troubled his internal administration by several dangerous seditions, and induced the Greeks to overlook his humane and benevolent policy. He reigned more than twenty-seven years.

Justin, the successor of Anastasius, had the merit of being strictly orthodox. He was a Thracian peasant from Tauresium, in Dardania, who entered the imperial guard as a common soldier. At the age of sixty-eight, when Anastasius died, he had attained the rank of commander-in-chief of the imperial guards, and a seat in the senate. It is said that he was intrusted with a large sum of money to further a court intrigue for the purpose of placing the crown on the head of some worthless courtier. He appropriated the money to secure his own election. His reign tended to unite more closely the church with the imperial authority, and to render the opposition of the heterodox more national in the various provinces where a national clergy and a national language existed. Justin was without education, but he possessed experience and talents. In his civil government he imitated the wise and economical policy of his predecessor, and his military experience enabled him to improve the condition of the army. He furnished large sums to alleviate the misery caused by a terrible earthquake at Antioch, and paid great attention to repairing the public buildings throughout the empire. His reign lasted nine years, A.D. 518-527.

It must be observed that the five emperors of whose character and policy the preceding sketch has described the prominent features, were men born in the middle or lower ranks of society; and all of them, with the exception of Zeno, had witnessed, as private individuals, the ravages of the barbarians in their native provinces, and suffered personally from the weak and disorganized state of the empire. They had all ascended the throne at a mature age, and these coincidences tended to imprint on their councils that uniformity of policy which marks their history. They had all more of the feelings of the people than of the dominant class, and were, consequently, more subjects than Romans. They appear to have participated in popular sympathies to a degree natural only to men who had long lived without courtly honours, and rare, indeed, even among those of the greatest genius, who are born or educated near the steps of a throne. That some part of the merit of these sovereigns was commonly ascribed to the experience which they had gained by a long life, is evident from the reply which, it is said, the Emperor Justin gave to the senators, who wished him to raise Justinian, at the age of forty, to the dignity of Augustus: “You should pray”, said the prudent monarch, “that a young man may never wear the imperial robes”.

During this eventful period, the Western Empire crumbled into ruins, while the Eastern was saved, in consequence of these emperors having organized the system of administration which has been most unjustly calumniated, under the name of Byzantine. The highest officers, and the proudest military commanders, were rendered completely dependent on ministerial departments, and were no longer able to conspire or rebel with impunity. The sovereign was no longer exposed to personal danger, nor the treasury to open peculation. But, unfortunately, the central executive power could not protect the people from fraud with the same ease as it guarded the treasury; and the emperors never perceived the necessity of intrusting the people with the power of defending themselves from the financial oppression of the subaltern administration.

The principles of political science and civil liberty were, indeed, very little understood by the people of the Roman Empire. The legislative, executive, and administrative powers of government were confounded, as well as concentrated, in the person of the sovereign. The emperor represented the sovereignty of Rome, which, even after the establishment of Christianity, was considered as something superhuman, if not precisely a divine institution. But, so ill can despotism balance the various powers of the State, and so incapable is it of studying the condition of the governed, that even under the best emperors, seditions and rebellions were not rare. They constituted the only means whereby the people could make their petitions heard; and the moment the populace ceased to be overawed by military force, every trifling discontent might, from accident, break out into a rebellion. The continual abuse to which arbitrary power is liable was felt by the emperors; and several of them attempted to restrain its exercise, in order that the general principles of legislation might not be violated by the imperial ordinances. Such laws express the sentiments of justice which animate the administration, but they are always useless; for no law can be of any avail unless a right to enforce its observance exist in some tribunal, independent of the legislative and executive powers of the State; and the very existence of such a tribunal implies that the State possesses a constitution which renders the law more powerful than the prince. Much, however, as many of the Roman emperors may have loved justice, no one was ever found who felt inclined to diminish his own authority so far as to render the law permanently superior to his own will. Yet a strong impulse towards improvement was felt throughout the empire; and, if the middle and upper classes of society had not been already so far reduced in number as to make their influence almost nugatory in the scale of civilization, there might have been some hope of the political regeneration of the Roman state. Patriotism and political honesty can, however, only become national virtues when the people possess a control over the conduct of their rulers, and when the rulers themselves publicly announce their political principles.

Erroneous views also of political economy led many of the emperors to increase the evil which they were endeavouring to remedy. Had the Emperor Anastasius left the three hundred and twenty thousand pounds of gold which he accumulated in the treasury circulating among his subjects, or had he employed it in works extending the industry of his people and adding to the security of their property, it is probable that his reign would have very greatly augmented the population of the empire, and pressed back the barbarians on their own thinly peopled lands. If it had been in his power to have added to this boon some guarantee against arbitrary impositions on the part of his successors, and against the unjust exactions of the administration, there can be no doubt that his reign would have restored to the empire much of the pristine energy of the republic; and that, instead of giving a false brilliancy to the reign of Justinian, he would have increased the happiness of the most civilized portion of mankind, and given a new impulse to population.

 

Sect. XII

 State of civilization and influence of national feelings during this period

 

The ravages of the Goths and Huns in Europe and Asia assisted in producing a great change in the state of society in the Eastern Empire, even though their efforts at conquest were successfully repulsed. In many provinces the higher classes were completely exterminated. The loss of their slaves and serfs, who had been carried away by the invaders, either reduced them to the condition of humble cultivators, or forced them to emigrate, and abandon their land, from which they were unable to obtain any revenue in the miserable state of cultivation to which the capture of their slaves, the destruction of their agricultural buildings, and the want of a market, had reduced the country. In many of the towns the diminished population was reduced to misery by the ruin of the district. The higher classes disappeared under the weight of the municipal duties which they were called upon to perform. Houses remained unlet; and even when let, the portion of rent which was not absorbed by the imperial taxes, was insufficient to supply the demands of the local expenditure. The labourer and the artisan alone could find bread; the walls of cities were allowed to fall into ruins; the streets were neglected; many public buildings had become useless; aqueducts remained unrepaired; internal communications ceased; and, with the extinction of the wealthy and educated classes, the local prejudices of the lower orders became the law of society. Yet, on the other hand, even amidst all the evidences of decline and misery in many parts of the empire, there were some favoured cities and districts which afforded evidence of progress. The lives and fortunes of the lower orders, and particularly of the slaves, were much better protected than in the most glorious periods of Greek and Roman history. The police was improved; and though luxury assisted the progress of effeminacy, it also aided the progress of civilization by giving stability to order. The streets of the great cities of the East were traversed with as much security during the night as by day.

The devastations of the northern invaders prepared the way for a great change in the races of mankind who dwelt in the regions between the Danube and the Mediterranean. New races were introduced from abroad and new races were formed by the admixture of native proprietors and colons with emigrants and domestic slaves. Colonies of agricultural emigrants were introduced into every province of the empire. Several of the languages still spoken in Eastern Europe bear evidence of changes which commenced at this period. Modern Greek, Albanian, and Vallachian may be considered more or less the representatives of the ancient languages of Greece, Epirus, and Thrace, though modified by the influence of foreign elements. In the provinces, the clergy alone were enabled to maintain a position which allowed them to devote some time to study. They accordingly became the principal depositaries of knowledge, and as their connection with the people was of the most intimate and friendly character, they employed the popular language to instruct their flocks, to preserve their attachment, and rouse their enthusiasm. In this way, ecclesiastical literature grew up in every province which possessed its own language and national character. The Scriptures were translated, read, and expounded to the people in their native dialect, in Armenian, in Syriac, in Coptic, and in Gothic, as well as in Latin and Greek. It was this connection between the people and their clergy which enabled the Orthodox Church, in the Eastern Empire, to preserve a popular character, in spite of the exertions of the emperors and the popes to give it a Roman or imperial, organization. Christianity, as a religion, was always universal in its character, but the Christian church long carried with it many national distinctions. The earliest church had been Jewish in its forms and opinions, and in the East it long retained a tincture of the oriental philosophy of its Alexandrine proselytes. After Christianity became the established religion of the empire, a struggle arose between the Latin and Greek clergy for supremacy. The greater learning and the more popular character of the Greek clergy, supported by the superior knowledge and higher political importance of the laity in the East, soon gave to the Greeks a predominant influence. But this influence was still subordinate to the authority of the Bishop of Rome, who arrogated the rank of a spiritual emperor, and whose claims to represent the supremacy of Rome were admitted, though not without jealousy, by the Greeks. The authority of the Bishop of Rome and of the Latin element in the established church was so great in the reign of Marcian, that the legate of Pope Leo the Great, at the general council of Chalcedon, though a Greek bishop, made use of the Latin language when addressing an audience composed entirely of Eastern bishops, and for whom his discourse required to be translated into Greek. It was inconsistent with the dignity of the Roman pontiff to use any language but that of Rome, though doubtless St. Peter had made use of Greek, except when speaking with the gift of tongues. Latin, however, was the official language of the empire; and the Emperor Marcian, in addressing the same council of the church, spoke that language, though he knew that Greek alone could be intelligible to the greater number of the bishops whom he addressed. It was fortunate for the Greeks, perhaps also for the whole Christian world, that the popes did not, at this time, lay claim to the gift of tongues, and address every nation in its own language. If it had occurred to them that the head of the universal church ought to speak all languages, the bishops of Rome might perhaps have rendered themselves the political sovereigns of the Christian world.

The attempt of the popes to introduce the Latin language into the East roused the opposition of all the Greeks. The constitution of the Eastern Church still admitted the laity to a share in the election of their bishops, and obliged the members of the ecclesiastical profession to cultivate the goodwill of their flocks. In the East, the language of the people was the language of religion and of ecclesiastical literature, consequently the cause of the Greek clergy and people was united. This connection with the people gave a weight and authority to the Greek clergy, which proved extremely useful in checking the religious despotism of the popes, as well as in circumscribing the civil tyranny of the emperors.

Though the emperor still maintained his supremacy over the clergy, and regarded and treated the popes and patriarchs as his ministers, still the church as a body had already rendered itself superior to the person of the emperor, and had established the principle, that the orthodoxy of the emperor was a law of the empire. The Patriarch of Constantinople, suspecting the emperor Anastasius of attachment to the Eutychian heresy, refused to crown him until he gave a written declaration of his orthodoxy. Yet the ceremony of the emperor’s receiving the imperial crown from the Patriarch was introduced, for the first time, on the accession of Leo the Great, sixty-six years before the election of Anastasius. It is true that the church was not always able to enforce the observance of the principle that the empire of the East could only be governed by an orthodox sovereign. The aristocracy and the army proved at times stronger than the orthodox clergy.

The state of literature and the fine arts always affords a correct representation of the condition of society among the Greeks, though the fine arts, during the existence of the Roman Empire, were more closely connected with the government and the aristocracy than with popular feelings. The assertion that Christianity tended to accelerate the decline of the Roman Empire has been already refuted; but although the Eastern Empire received immeasurable benefits from Christianity, both politically and socially, still the literature and the fine arts of Greece received from it a mortal blow. The Christians soon declared themselves the enemies of all pagan literature. Homer, and the Attic tragedians, were prohibited books; and the fine arts were proscribed, if not persecuted. Many of the early fathers held opinions which were not uncongenial with the fierce contempt for letters and art entertained by the first Mohammedans. It is true that this anti-pagan spirit might have proved temporary, had it not occurred at a period when the decline of society had begun to render knowledge rarer, and learning of more difficult attainment than formerly.

Theodosius the Younger found the administration in danger of not procuring a regular supply of well-educated aspirants to civil offices; and in order to preserve the state from such a misfortune, he established a university at Constantinople, as has been already mentioned, and which was maintained at the public expense. The composition of this university demonstrates the important political position occupied by the Greek nation : fifteen professors were appointed to teach Greek literature; thirteen only were named to give instruction in Latin; two professors of law were added, and one of philosophy. Such was the imperial university of Theodosius, who did everything in his power to render the rank of professor highly honourable. The candidate who aspired to a chair in the university was obliged to undergo an examination before the senate, and it was necessary for him to possess an irreproachable moral character, as well as to prove that his learning was profound. The term of twenty years’ service secured for the professors the title of count, and placed them among the nobility of the empire. Learning, it is evident, was still honoured and cultivated in the East; but the attention of the great body of society was directed to religious controversy, and the greatest talents were devoted to these contests. The few philosophers who kept aloof from the disputes of the Christian church, plunged into a mysticism more injurious to the human intellect, and less likely to be of any use to society, than the most furious controversy. Most of these speculators in metaphysical science abandoned all interest in the fate of their country, and in the affairs of this world, from an idle hope of being able to establish a personal intercourse with an imaginary world of spirits. With the exception of religious writings, and historical works, there was very little in the literature of this period which could be called popular. The people amused themselves with chariot races instead of the drama; and, among the higher orders, music had long taken the place of poetry. Yet the poets wanted genius, not encouragement; for John Lydus tells us that one of his poetical effusions was rewarded by the patron in whose praise it was written, with a gold byzant for each line. Pindar probably would not have expected so much.

The same genius which inspires poetry is necessary to excellence in the fine arts: yet, as these are more mechanical in their execution, good taste may be long retained, after inspiration has entirely ceased, merely by imitating good models. The very constitution of society in the fifth century seemed to forbid the existence of genius. In order to produce the highest degree of excellence in works of literature and art, it is absolutely necessary that the author and the public should participate in some common feelings of admiration for simplicity, beauty, and sublimity. When the condition of society places the patron of works of genius in a totally different rank of life from their authors, and renders the criticisms of a small and exclusive circle of individuals the law in literature and art, then an artificial taste must be cultivated, in order to secure the applause of those who alone possess the means of rewarding the merit of which they approve. The very fact that this taste, which the author or the artist is called upon to gratify, is to him more a task of artificial study than an effusion of natural feeling, must of itself produce a tendency to exaggeration or mannerism. There is nothing in the range of human affairs so completely democratic as taste. Sophocles addressed himself alike to the educated and the uneducated; Demosthenes spoke to the crowd; Phidias worked for the people.

Christianity engaged in direct war with the arts. The Greeks had united painting, sculpture, and architecture, in such a way, that their temples formed a harmonious illustration of the beauties of the fine arts. The finest temples were museums of paganism, and, consequently, Christianity repudiated all connection with this class of buildings until it had disfigured and degraded them. The courts of judicature, the basilicas, not the temples, were chosen as the models of Christian churches, and the adoption of the ideal beauty of ancient sculpture was treated with contempt. The earlier Fathers of the church wished to represent our Saviour as unlike the types of the pagan divinities as possible.

Works of art gradually lost their value as creations of the mind; and their destruction commenced whenever the material of which they were composed was of great value, or happened to be wanted for some other purpose more useful in the opinion of the possessor. The Theodosian Code contains many laws against the destruction of works of ancient art and the plundering of tombs. The Christian religion, when it deprived the temples and the statues of a religious sanction, permitted the avaricious to destroy them in order to appropriate the materials; and, when all reverence for antiquity was effaced, it became a profitable, though disgraceful occupation, to ransack the pagan tombs for the ornaments which they contained. The clergy of the new religion demanded the construction of new churches; and the desecrated buildings falling into ruins, supplied materials at less expense than the quarries.

Many of the celebrated works of art which had been transported to Constantinople at its foundation, were destroyed in the numerous conflagrations to which that city was always liable. The celebrated statues of the Muses perished in the time of Arcadius. The fashion of erecting statues had not become obsolete, though statuary and sculpture had sunk in the general decline of taste; but the vanity of the ambitious was now more gratified by the costliness of the material than by the beauty of the workmanship. A silver statue of the empress Eudocia, placed on a column of porphyry, excited so greatly the indignation of John Chrysostom, that he indulged in the most violent invectives against the empress. His virulence caused the government to exile him from the patriarchal chair. Many valuable Grecian works of bronze were melted down, in order to form a colossal statue of the Emperor Anastasius, which was placed on a lofty column to adorn the capital; others, of gold and silver, were melted, and coined into money, and augmented the sums which he laid up in the public treasury. Still it is unquestionable that a taste for painting had not entirely ceased among the educated and wealthy classes. Mosaics and engraved gems were fashionable luxuries, but the general poverty had decreased the numbers of the patrons of art, and the prejudices of the Christians had greatly restricted its range.