The reign of Diocletian forms a great epoch in Roman history. He shows himself everywhere a distinguished man: although we may censure many of his plans, yet even to have made an attempt is a proof of that ability which shines forth in everything that he did, and in the whole of his reign. There now follows a time which, when compared with the former ones, is one of recovery, and which lasted about an hundred years, down to the battle of Hadrianople (378). During this period, the government is settled in one dynasty, and the establishment of the Christian religion is greatly facilitated. One great source of relief was, the ceasing of some years, ever since Probus, of the frightful plague which had so long wasted the Roman empire. It had first made its appearance in the reign of M. Antoninus and L. Verus, when, however, it was far from spreading over every part of the world; even in the time of Septimius Severus, as we know from Tertullian, it had not yet visited Africa: about the middle of the third century, until just before the reign of Decius, epidemics are mentioned. The real terrible plague broke out in the days of Decius (249), although I would not take it upon myself to say that it did not exist previously: in the reign of Commodus, and also of Caracalla, there was a very fierce plague at Rome; but in that of Decius it spreads all over the Roman empire, making dreadful ravages even in Africa and Egypt as well. Thus it still continues. Claudius dies at Sirmium of the plague in 270, and in the days of Gallienus and Valerian its fury is unabated: as many as two thousand people are said at times to have died at Rome in one day. Dionysius the bishop tells us that, when the plague had left off in Alexandria, the number of all the grown up persons from fourteen to seventy, was not greater than what had formerly been the number of those who were between forty and seventy; whence it follows, that about the third part only—not, as Gibbon states, one half of the inhabitants had remained alive. From the beginning of this period, date the last writings of Saint Cyprian, and his remarkable treatise against Demetrian, in which this great mortality is distinctly acknowledged: even at that time, people had begun to lay this decrease of the human race to the charge of the Christians. After the black death, as Matteo Villani, a contemporary writer, remarks, when people thought that they should have everything in abundance, just the reverse took place, namely a grievous famine, owing to there not being men enough to till the fields. This also happened now; and it was even yet a great deal worse, as the finest countries were laid waste by the ravages of the barbarians.

In the same proportion as the world was made desolate, did intellect also decay. Until the middle of the third century, the western world was very civilized; we still meet with distinguished poetical talent, and jurisprudence reached its highest state of development: but after that time, down to the days of Constantine, we already find throughout it the most downright barbarism: in the plastic arts, the decline begins even as early as in the times of Septimius Severus, the busts alone being still somewhat tolerable. As for poems, that of Nemesian on the chase, and the eclogues of Calpurnius in the reign of Carinus, are very characteristic of the age: it is sheer verse-making. Prose is no longer to be met with. There is indeed not one writer of it worth mentioning, except Lactantius the contemporary of Constantine, who has made the style of Cicero quite his own: even as Curtius is a reproduction of Livy, so is Lactantius of Cicero. Yet the man himself is also interesting: in his seventh book, he shows real imagination. Before him lived Arnobius, who is instructive and useful, his erudition being of great value to us; but he is without originality.

In the East, a different class of writers had arisen. Instead of people trying, as in the second and third centuries, to reproduce the ancient Attic, the language of Plato and Demosthenes, which Dio Chrysostom and several others after him had done; there sprang up in the third century, from the times of Ammonius in Syria, the so-called New-Platonism, a system which aimed at higher things, and from the intellect which there was in it, was widely different from the rhetorical school before it. But it became thoroughly unreal, inasmuch as its votaries tampered with the hallowed mysteries of former times, being ashamed of them in their old form, and had foisted in what was altogether foreign to it.

Of the events which now follow, I can give you but an outline, such as every one ought to know by heart. Too great a stress was formerly laid on such a chronological skeleton of history; yet it ought not to be altogether neglected: the succession of the Roman emperors, with the dates of their reigns, is what every one ought to have in his memory. Diocletian had reigned for about a year, when, without any external cause, he took his countryman Maximian as his colleague. Of Diocletian we have many hostile accounts; but they are very much exaggerated, nor are they the only ones. It is said that his father had been a slave, or at best a freedman; by this, however, a colonus, perhaps is meant, that is to say, a serf from the Dalmatian frontier. He cannot himself have been a slave, as slaves were not yet at that time received in the legions: the derivation of his name from Doclea, a town on the Dalmatian frontier, is a very likely one indeed. Diocletian had risen in the army by his own merit, a fact which sufficiently refutes the charge of cowardice brought against him as well as many other great generals, such as Napoleon. Against the latter also this charge is highly unjust. He often wanted moral courage, as, for instance, on the 19th of Brumaire; but the courage of a general he had. He is taxed with cowardice in cases when he did not choose to place himself in a position in which he could neither see nor hear, and thus neglect his duties as a general; but in so doing he was perfectly justified. Only he ought to have died at Waterloo: his leaving that battlefield can never be excused.—Diocletian was, on the whole, a mild man. On two occasions only, he laid himself open to the charge of cruelty,—in his chastisement of the rebels at Alexandria, and in his persecution of the Christians, to the latter of which he was beguiled in his old age by Galerius. Maximian, on the contrary, was a coarse and cruel man, who murdered the Roman nobles to get held of their treasures; or because he had been offended; or else because their very rank annoyed him: for the senate seems now to have become more and more hereditary.

Diocletian, who was a man of uncommon shrewdness, could not disguise from himself, how highly dangerous it was to keep jarring elements together by force. He therefore bethought himself of what would seem the strange plan of healing the many splits between the East and the West by a distinct government for each under different princes, they being, however, so united by one common centre, as still to form one whole. This worked well so long as he reigned himself. The legislative power, the consulship, and the high offices were to be in common: but in both parts of the empire there was to be a distinct Augustus; and by the side of every Augustus a Cæsar as his coadjutor, who was to succeed to the throne after his death. The latter clause was to prevent the throne from being kept vacant, or being given away by the soldiers. It would seem that the senior Augustus had the right of naming the Cæsars. The Præfectura Galliarum (which consisted of Gaul, Britain, and Spain), together with Mauretania, was to have a Cæsar; Italy and Africa were placed under the immediate rule of the Augustus. The countries on the Danube, Pannonia and Mœsia (afterwards the præfectura of Illyria), were likewise under a Cæsar: the other Augustus had the whole of the East. All these were ingenious combinations: but they showed by their result, what such combinations will generally lead to.

Diocletian reigned for twenty years (from 285 to 305), and then by his paramount influence, he got Maximian to resign his dignity at the same time with him (May 1st, 305); so that, while he was yet living, the machine might be set up anew. The Cæsar in the East, Galerius, and his colleague Constantius, were both of them Illyrians. The former was a common soldier who had gotten the surname of Armentarius from having been a drover; the other (to whom we do not give the name of Chlorus, as it is only to be found in Byzantine writers, and not even in the earlier ones, nor on coins; and as we are not able to make out its derivation) was of high birth, his father being a man of rank in the diocese of Illyricum, and his mother a niece of the Emperor Claudius Gothicus. The two were of a very different stamp. Constantius was an accomplished and well educated gentleman; Galerius was a rough fellow: both of them, however, were distinguished generals, though indeed Galerius was the bolder of the two. This division led afterwards to that of the empire into prefectures: not only every Augustus, but also every Cæsar had his præfectus prætorio; whence arose the four dioceses, each of which had a præfectus, as we see at a later period, there being traces of it even in the times of Justinian. Of the other measures of Diocletian, we shall mention here but the following. He transplanted the ceremonial of the East into his court: neither of the two emperors, however, resided at Rome; Maximian lived at Milan; Diocletian, in Nicomedia. Whatever may be said of Constantine, he was a great man: one of the many traits which mark him as such, is his not overlooking the situation of Byzantium. If those who founded Chalcedon were called blind by the oracle, Diocletian also is among the blind. In those eastern parts therefore, in which Asiatic manners spread more and more, Diocletian completely adopted the etiquette of the East.

The most important events in this reign, are the revolt of Britain under Carausius; a rising in Egypt; and the Persian war, the most glorious for a long time which the Romans had waged, and even the last glorious war of all.

Carausius—the admiral of a fleet stationed at Bononia (Boulogne) to keep in check the Franks and other tribes in the Netherlands, who had already begun to carry on piracy—revolted; made himself master of Britain; and assumed the title of Augustus. After having once been even acknowledged by Diocletian and Maximian, he was murdered by his own soldiers: his successor Allectus, who seized the reins of government after him, was overpowered by Constantius.—The reduction of Egypt was achieved by Diocletian himself: after a long siege, Alexandria had to surrender at discretion, and was severely punished.—Against Persia, Galerius had the command for two campaigns; and though, at first, he suffered a defeat, he afterwards gained a decided victory, routing and scattering the Persians, whose king was obliged to make peace. Armenia was recognised as a tributary dependency of Rome; Aderbidjan, with Tauris its capital, was given up by Persia to Armenia; Rome likewise gained the countries south of Lake Van as far as Mosul to the east, that is to say the countries on the Euphrates and Tigris, even beyond the eastern banks of the latter river. This happened A. D. 296, four years after the appointment of the Cæsares. Time hinders me from dwelling on the persecutions of the Christians by Diocletian; so that I shall only remark that Diocletian and his counsellors, going against the stream, and quite heedless of the wants of the age (even looking upon the matter in a worldly point of view), sought to crush the Christian religion. This led them to that shocking persecution, which, however, was not so frightful as we are wont to believe it to have been. Dodwell is right in saying that it was nothing to what the Duke of Alva did in the Netherlands. Yet it was after all a struggle against the tide: for whenever a people wills a thing in good earnest, it does not allow itself to be kept back. Annihilation or slavery alone are able to stop its onward march.

The results of the new measures were like those which we have seen during the last forty years in Europe, where constitutions have been drawn up, which when brought to bear on life and its real business, have worked quite differently from what had been expected. After Diocletian and Maximian’s resignation, Constantius and Galerius succeeded as Augusti, and the places of the Cæsars became vacant. As the Augusti were bound to make Milan or Nicomedia their abode, Constantius remained in Gaul, where his court was generally at Treves. In his stead, a Cæsar was to be appointed, who had to rule over Africa and Italy; and Galerius, claiming the right of nomination, made choice of another Illyrian named Severus: over the East he set his own nephew Maximinus Daza, a common soldier, to whom he gave the administration of Syria and Egypt, while he himself remained in Nicomedia, and kept Illyricum, Greece, and Asia Minor. The persecution of the Christians went on at a fearful rate, but without any effect; so that at last it was even obliged to slacken.

Diocletian remained quiet during all these changes; but old Maximian did not approve of them. He returned from Lucania to Rome, where he again came forth as an Augustus, and got the senate to proclaim his son Maxentius a Cæsar instead of Severus. Soon afterwards, Constantius died, and the legions proclaimed his son Constantine Augustus; but Galerius, who had formerly plotted against his life, wished to acknowledge him as Cæsar only, and on the other hand, appointed Severus Augustus, and set him on against Maximian and Maxentius. But Severus died in his attempt to invade Italy, and Constantine for the present submitted to the degradation.

Constantine was the son of Constantius’ first wife Helena, a woman of low birth from Roussillon, whom her husband had been obliged to put away that he might marry Theodora, a stepdaughter of Maximian. Constantine was thirty-two years old, when his father died. He is a truly great man, and on him the attention of the whole of the then Roman world was directed. Though not an accomplished scholar, neither yet was he an untaught barbarian, as he spoke Greek and Latin.

Whilst Constantine contented himself with establishing his power in the three western provinces, Galerius undertook to avenge the death of Severus on Maxentius. He therefore came with an army to Italy, and advanced as far as Narni; but there he found himself so closely hemmed in by the forces of old Maximian, and so little supported, that he had to retreat and make peace. How it was concluded, we have in truth no account whatever. After the death of Severus, Galerius had given up Illyricum to Licinius, and had bestowed on him at the same time the title of Augustus; the east he had assigned to Maximinus Daza: he acknowledged Constantine as Augustus. Thus the Roman world had no more Cæsars, but six Augusti,—Galerius, Licinius, Maximin in the east; Maximian, Maxentius, and Constantine in the west. Notwithstanding this, there was no peace, and the artificial combination of Diocletian proved insufficient. Maximian had given his daughter Fausta in marriage to Constantine, who therefore divorced himself from his first wife Minervina. But dissensions arose between Maximian and his son Maxentius. Maxentius, who was a fell tyrant in the style of Caracalla, had no dutiful feelings towards a father who had raised him to the throne; and he answered the claims of his father to rule the state, by the counter demand that he should retire from public affairs. The prætorians, whom Maxentius had brought out again from the obscurity into which Diocletian had thrown them, decided that Maxentius should reign alone. Maximian now went to his daughter in Gaul, where at first he met with a friendly reception; but he soon got embroiled with Constantine. When the latter tried to secure himself against him, Maximian, who was not able to stand his ground at Arles, fled to Marseilles, where he was besieged, and delivered up as a victim by his own troops. He fell into Constantine’s power, who made him kind promises; notwithstanding which, under the pretext of his having set on foot a conspiracy, he was soon afterwards put to death.

Shortly after began the war of Constantine with Maxentius, so memorable for its important consequences in history, and not less memorable for the triumphal arch of Constantine and Raphael’s painting of the battle. Maxentius ruled Italy as a tyrant, and the oppression of the people had increased. Italy had hitherto been free from the land-tax, having only indirect taxes and a legacy duty to pay; but Maxentius, to whom this, and the revenues raised from Africa, did not yet appear sufficient, proceeded to lay a land and an income tax on Italy. Then was Constantine called upon for help.—In the meanwhile also, Galerius had died, and the European part of his empire had been taken by Licinius, and the Asiatic by Maximin.—Constantine, at the head of a greatly superior force, crossed Mount Cenis; defeated the troops of Maxentius near Turin; marched against Verona, a very strong fortress; besieged it and beat an army which came to its relief; took it, and advanced by the Via Flaminia towards Rome. Maxentius met him three Italian miles from the Porta Collina, near Ponte Mollo. But his whole army was routed and himself killed; and Constantine, amid the general exultation, took possession of Rome.

Soon afterwards, a war broke out in the East between Maximin and Licinius, Their forces encountered near the Thracian Heraclea, when Licinius conquered with a considerably weaker army: Maximin surrendered at discretion in Tarsus, and was condemned to die. There were now but two emperors left, Constantine in the west, Licinius in the east. Between these two, before long, the first war arose, A. D. 314, in which Constantine gained the victory at the battles of Cibalis and Mardia, and Licinius sought and obtained peace on condition of giving up Illyricum, Macedon, and Greece; so that he had only left to him the Asiatic countries, Egypt, and Thrace, such a large and rich dominion, that no state of modern Europe is to be compared to it. After nine years (323), a new war broke out, although Licinius was married to Constantia a half-sister of Constantine, and had children by her. For this struggle, Licinius had equipped a fleet, as had also Constantine: it was the first war since the battle of Actium, in which the Roman Emperors brought fleets into action. Constantine gained a victory near Adrianople; and Crispus, his son by Minervina, who commanded the fleet, decided the war by the battle of Scutari, and forced the Hellespont. Near Chrysopolis, he crossed over to Asia, and again beat the enemy’s reserves: on this, Licinius fled to Cilicia. Here he capitulated. Constantine at first promised him his life; but he did not keep his word: nay, after some time, he even had Licinius, the son of his own sister, a guiltless and most hopeful boy, likewise put to death. Here Constantine first showed signs of cruelty, from which he had hitherto kept himself quite free.

Thus the whole world was again brought into unity. The rest of Constantine’s reign is not very rich in remarkable events. He carried on wars against the Goths and Sarmatians, the latter of whom dwelt in those days from the Theiss to Moravia, whilst the Goths were masters of Dacia. The Sarmatians make their appearance as the lords of vanquished Germans; and these serfs, when arms are put into their hands, take advantage of the opportunity to rid themselves of the yoke. Now were the Sarmatians obliged to apply to the Romans for protection, and they were scattered in all directions under the name of Limigantes: hence a Sarmatian colony as far off as the Moselle, is mentioned by Ausonius. Constantine undoubtedly ruled from the Roman Wall in Scotland to the borders of Khurdistan, and to Mount Atlas, just as Diocletian did.

The restoration of the Empire had begun under Diocletian, and it must also have quite recovered under the rule of Constantine and his sons. One great drawback, however, was the very heavy weight of taxation which Diocletian had devised and Constantine had completed, and the system of indictions. A province was valued in the lump, and assessed at a fixed sum, which was divided into capita (quotas); and these capita were imposed in an arbitrary manner, sometimes several of them on one man, and sometimes one on several persons. The details of this system are not yet sifted as much as one would wish, although Savigny has written a very fine treatise on the subject.^[65] The chief revenues were those which were derived from the land-tax, and from personal taxes. These burthens daily became more oppressive as the expense of the army increased, which was more and more composed of mercenaries. It is evident that the value of every kind of produce had now quite fallen off, and with this the complete change of the monetary system was connected. In the third century, silver of a very bad standard was coined, but the currency was not changed: the state seems to have paid in bad silver, and to have required gold in exchange at the rate of good old silver. The sesterces are done away with, and henceforth we meet with the aurei, which were formerly mentioned only in connexion with the pay of the soldiers, and even then but seldom. This most wretched coinage, of which all the collections of the kind in Europe may afford specimens,—these chiefly belong to the times between Valerian and Probus,—gave occasion for a great deal of counterfeit money, of which the dies and the whole apparatus have every now and then been found in France. The bad money also accounts for the strange story in Aurelian’s life of an insurrection, of which the master of the mint is said to have been the prime mover. Aurelian, in fact, may have tried to bring in again the good currency, whereas the master of the mint, on his side, may have found his profit in the bad money; just as Itzig and others did in the Seven Years’ War. Constantine, however, made the aureus lighter, in the ratio of 72 to 45, which, as it was a very great relief to the rate payers and to those who were in debt, was a very wise measure. On the whole, there are among his laws not a few sensible and beneficial ones. Others, on the contrary, are mischievous; for instance, he pressed very hardly upon the municipalities.

Historians say that in the beginning of his reign, Constantine was optimis principibus accensendus; but afterwards mediis, or vix mediis. Gibbon judged of him with great fairness; otherwise, he has met with scarcely any but fanatical admirers or detractors, and the manner in which he was idolized by the Eastern church is so bad, that one might easily go into the other extreme. The war against Maxentius was a benefit, and the subjects also of Licinius were freed by his defeat from a very harsh master. The death of Licinius, on the other hand, and that of Crispus, are very ugly facts: but we ought not, after all, to be harder upon Constantine than upon others. His motives in establishing the Christian religion are something very strange indeed. The religion there was in his head, must have been a rare jumble. On his coins, he has the Sol invictus; he worships pagan deities, consults the haruspices, holds heathen superstitions; and yet he shuts up the temples and builds churches. As the president of the Nicene council, we can only look upon him with disgust: he was himself no Christian at all, and he would only be baptized when in articulo mortis. He had taken up the Christian Faith as a superstition, which he mingled with all his other superstitions. When therefore eastern writers speak of him as an ἰσαπόστολος, they do not know what they are saying; and to call him even a saint, is a profanation of the word.

In other respects, Constantine was not a bad man. He had much about him which was like Hadrian, except only as to learning, in which he was very deficient; for though indeed he knew Greek very well, he was destitute of every literary accomplishment: the increasing irritability of the last years of his life, which betrayed him into deeds of cruelty, he has in common with Hadrian. Well known is the unfortunate death of his son Crispus, whom he first banished to Pola, and then caused to be executed: but as yet no proof has been brought to show that he died innocent. His father refused him the title of Augustus, and he was also the son of a repudiated wife; so that hence may have arisen feelings of jealousy against the children of Fausta, his brothers, and he may thus have been drawn into a plot against his father. Yet, even then, his death must be deemed a shocking event. There is another story, which is that Constantine’s wife Fausta was suffocated in a bath by his orders. Against this, Gibbon has raised very weighty objections, as even after Constantine’s death, Fausta was still alive: in the accounts, she is represented as a Phædra. In the meanwhile, Constantine had founded a new Rome in Constantinople, of which the situation is so fine. With his three half brothers, Constantius, Dalmatius, and Hannibalianus, he lived in exemplary harmony. Hannibalianus died without issue; Dalmatius had two sons, Hannibalianus and Dalmatius; Julius Constantius likewise had two, Julian and Gallus: he himself had three sons, Constantine, Constans, and Constantius. He now, towards the end of his life, divided the empire among these three sons and the children of Dalmatius; and he died at Nicomedia, after having completed his darling city of Constantinople, A. D. 337.