empire, and the building of the new capital at Byzantium. Recognition of Christianity. Contantinople. The alliance which Constantine inaugurated between the Christian church and the imperial government, while it enlisted on the side of the state one of the most powerful of the new forces with which it had to reckon, imposed a check, which was in time to become a powerful one, on the imperial authority. The establishment of the new “City of Constantine” as a second Rome paved the way for the final separation of East and West by providing the former for the first time with a suitable seat of government on the Bosphorus. The death of Constantine in 337 was followed, as the abdication of Diocletian had been, by the outbreak of quarrels among rival Caesars. Of the three sons of Constantine who in 337 divided the empire between them, Constantine the eldest fell in civil war against his brother Constans; Constans himself was, ten years afterwards, defeated and slain by Magnentius; and the latter in his turn was in 353 vanquished by Constantine's only surviving son Constantius. Contantius II., 351-63. Thus for the second time the whole empire was united under the rule of a member of the house of Constantine. But in 355 Constantius granted the title of Caesar to his cousin Julian and placed him in charge of Gaul, where the momentary elevation of a tyrant, Silvanus, and still more the inroads of Franks and Alamanni, had excited alarm. But Julian's successes during the next five years were such as to arouse the jealous fears of Constantius. In order to weaken his suspected rival the legions under Julian in Gaul were suddenly ordered to march eastward against the Persians Julian, 361-63. (360). They refused; and when the order was repeated, replied by proclaiming Julian himself emperor and Augustus. Julian, with probably sincere reluctance, accepted the position, but the death of Constantius in 361 saved the empire from the threatened civil war. Julian's attempted restoration of pagan and in especial of Hellenic worships had no more permanent effect than the war which he courageously waged against the multitudinous abuses which had grown up in the luxurious court of Constantius.[1] But his vigorous administration in Gaul undoubtedly checked the barbarian advance across the Rhine, and postponed the loss of the Western provinces; on the contrary, his campaign in Persia, brilliantly successful at first, ended in his own death Jovian, 363-64. Valentinian I., 364-75. Division of the Empire, 364. Valens, 364-78. Revolt of the Goths. (363), and his successor, Jovian, immediately surrendered the territories beyond the Tigris won by Diocletian seventy years before. Jovian died on the 17th of February 364; and on the 26th of February Valentinian was acknowledged as emperor of the army at Nicaea. In obedience to the wish of the soldiers that he should associate a colleague with himself, he conferred the title of Augustus upon his brother Valens, and the division of the empire was at last effected,—Valentinian became emperor of the West, Valens of the East. Valentinian maintained the integrity of the empire until his death (in 375), which deprived the weaker Valens of a trusted counsellor and ally, and was followed by a serious crisis on the Danube. In 376 the Goths, hard pressed by their new foes from the eastward, the Huns, sought and obtained the protection of the Roman Empire. They were transported across the Danube and settled in Moesia, but, indignant at the treatment they received, they rose in arms against their protectors. In 378 at Adrianople Valens was defeated and killed, and the victorious Goths advanced eastward to the very walls of Constantinople. Once more, however, the danger passed away. The skill and tact Theodosius I., 378-95. of Theodosius, who had been proclaimed emperor of the East by Gratian,[2] conciliated the Goths; they were granted an allowance, and in large numbers entered the service of the Roman emperor. The remaining years of Theodosius's reign (382-95) were mainly engrossed by the duty of upholding the increasingly feeble authority of his western colleague against the attacks of pretenders. Maximus, the murderer of Gratian (383), was at first recognized by Theodosius as Caesar, and left in undisturbed command of Gaul, Spain and Britain; but, when in 386 he proceeded to oust Valentinian II; from Italy and Africa, Theodosius marched westward, crushed him, and installed Valentinian as emperor of the West. In the very next year, however, the murder of Valentinian (392) by Arbogast, a Frank, was followed by the appearance of a fresh tyrant in the person of Eugenius, a domestic officer and nominee of Arbogast himself. Once more Theodosius marched westward, and near Division of the empire between Arcadius and Honorius. Fall of the Western Empire. Distress of the provinces in the 4th century. Aquileia decisively defeated his opponents. But his victory was quickly followed by his own illness and death (395), and the fortunes of East and West passed into the care of his two sons Arcadius and Honorius.
(b) From the Death of Theodosius to the Extinction of the Western Empire (395-476).—Through more than a century from the accession of Diocletian the Roman Empire had succeeded in holding at bay the swarming hordes of barbarians. But, though no province had yet been lost, as Dacia had been lost in the century before, and though the frontier lines of the Rhine and the Danube were still guarded by Roman forts and troops, there were signs in plenty that a catastrophe was at hand.
From all the writers who deal with the 4th century we have one long series of laments over the depression and misery of the provinces.[3] To meet the increased expenditure necessary to maintain the legions, to pay the hosts of officials, and to keep up the luxurious splendour of the imperial courts, not only were the taxes raised in amount, but the most oppressive and inquisitorial methods were adopted in order to secure for the imperial treasury every penny that could be wrung from the wretched taxpayer. The results are seen in such pictures as that which the panegyrist Eumenius[4] draws of the state of Gaul (306-12) under Constantine, in the accounts of the same province under Julian fifty years later, in those given by Zosimus early in the 5th century, and in the stringent regulations of the Theodosian code, dealing with the assessment and collection of the taxes. Among the graver symptoms of economic ruin were the decrease of population, which seriously diminished not only the number of taxpayers, but the supply of soldiers for the legions;[5] the spread of infanticide; the increase of waste lands whose owners and cultivators had fled to escape the tax collector; the declining prosperity of the towns; and the constantly recurring riots and insurrections, both among starving peasants, as in Gaul,[6] and in populous cities like Antioch.[7] The distress was aggravated by the civil wars, by the rapacity of tyrants, such as Maxentius and Maximus, but above all by the raids of the barbarians, who seized every opportunity afforded by the dissensions or incapacity of the emperors to cross the frontiers and harry the lands of the provincials. Constantine (306-12), Julian (356-60) and Valentinian I. (364-75) had each to give a temporary breathing-space to Gaul by repelling the Franks and Alamanni. Britain was harassed by Picts and Scots from the north (367-70), while the Saxon pirates swept the northern seas and the coasts both of Britain and Gaul. On the Danube the Quadi, Sarmatae, and above all the Goths, poured at intervals into the provinces of Pannonia and Moesia, and penetrated to Macedon and Thrace. In the East, in addition to the constant border feud with Persia, we hear of ravages by the Isaurian mountaineers, and by a new enemy, the Saracens.[8]
- ↑ In especial against the overweening influence of the eunuchs, an influence at once greater and more pernicious than even that of the imperial freedmen in the days of Claudius.
- ↑ The son of Valentinian and ruler of the West.
- ↑ F. Dill, Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire (2nd ed., 1899).
- ↑ Eumenius, Paneg. Vet. vii.
- ↑ Gibbon ii. 179.
- ↑ For the Bagaudae, see Jung, Die romanischen Landschaften, p. 264, where the authorities are given.
- ↑ In 387; Hodgkin i. 483.
- ↑ Amm. Marc. xiv. 4.
