Divisions Of The Empire

( Originally Published Early 1900's )

FROM A.D. 283 TO A.D. 330.

THE army appointed the two sons of Carus to the imperial dignity. One of these, Carînus, was in Gaul. The other, Numerian, had accompanied his father to Persia. The soldiers, weary of the distant war, insisted on being led back to Italy. Numerian, sick and suffering severely from inflarnmation of the eyes, was compelled to yjeld to the demands of the troops. The army, by slow marches, retraced its steps, eight months being occupied in reaching the Bosphorus. Numerian was conveyed in a litter, shut up from the light, and he issued his daily orders through his minister, Aper. He at length died, and Aper, concealing his death, continued, from the Imperial pavilion, to proclaim mandates to the army rn the name of the invisible sovereign. They had already reached the Bosphorus, when the suspicions of the army were excited, and the soldiers, breaking into the regal tent, discovered the embalmed body of the emperor. Aper, accused of his murder, was seized and brought before a military tribunal. At the same time, with unanimous voice, the army chose Diocletian emperor, who was in command of the gnard. Diocletian was born a slave—the child of slaves owned by a Roman senator. Having attained his freedom, he had worked his way to the highest posts in the army. Aper was brought before him for trial. This first act of his reign developed the promptness, the energy, and the despotism of Diocletian. As the accused was led in chains to the tribunal, Diocletian, looking upon him sternly and asking for no proof, said

" This man is the murderer of Numerian."

Drawing his sword he plunged it into the prisoner's heart, and all the army applauded the deed. Carinus, the brother and colleague of Numerian was at Rome, rioting in the utmost voluptuousness of dissolute pleasures. Alarmed by the announcement of the election of Diocletian, he summoned an army and marched to meet him. The two rival emperors, at the head of their legions, confronted each other near Margus, a city of Moesia, on the lower Danube. In the heat of the battle a general of his own army, whose wife Carinus had seduced, watching his opportunity, with one blow of his massive sword, struck the despicable emperor down in bloody death.

Diocletian was now sole sovereign. Assassination was the doom which seemed to await every emperor. The first measure of Diocletian was sagaciously adopted as a protection against this peril. He appointed as his colleague on the throne, Maximian, a general of most heroic bravery, but a man of lowly birth and exceedingly uncultivated in mind, and unpolished in manners. Both of these emperors assumed the title of Augustus, the highest title recognized in Rome. They had been intimate friends in private life, companions in many bloody battles, and they now devoted their energies to the support of each other on the throne, each conscious that the fall of one would only accelerate the ruin of the other. In this partnership Diocletian was the head, Maximian the sword ; they even assumed corresponding titles, the one that of Jupiter, the other Hercules.

As an additional precaution, each of these emperors chose a successor, to be associated with him in the government, with the more humble title of Cæsar. Galerius was the associate and appointed successor of Diocletian, and Constantius of Maximian. To strengthen the bonds of this union, each of these heirs to the throne were required to repudiate his former wife, and marry a daughter of the Augustus whose successor he was to be. There were thus four princes on the throne, bound together by the closest ties, and they divided the administration of the Roman empire between them. Gaul, Spain, and Britain were assigned to Constantius ; the Danubian provinces and Illyria were entrusted to Galerius. Maximizn took charge of Italy and Africa, while Diocletian assumed the sovereignty of Greece, Egypt, and Asia. Each one was undisputed sovereign in his own realms ; while unitedly they administered the general interests of the whole empire. Several years were occupied in maturing this plan.

But the world seemed to have conspired against the Roman empire. The Britons rose in successful rebellion, and through many a fierce battle maintained, for a time, their independence. Barbaric tribes seemed to blacken the shores of the Rhine and the Danube in their incessant incursions of devastation and plunder. Africa was in arms from the Nile to Mount Atlas,—the Moorish nations issuing, with irrepressible ferocity, from their pathless deserts. And Persia was roused to new and herculean efforts to humble the hereditary enemy by whom she had so often been chastised.

Maximian, who was regarded as the emperor, of the west, selected Milan for his capital, it being more conveniently situated at the foot of the Alps, for him to watch the motion of the barbarians on the Danube and the Rhine. Milan thus rose rapidly to the splendor of an imperial city.

Diocletian chose for his residence Nicomedia, in Bithynia, on the Asiatic coast of the sea of Marmora, and he endeavored even to eclipse the grandeur of Rome, in the oriental magnificence with which ne embellished his Asiatic capital. The two subordidate emperors, who were Cesar only, not Augustus, were practically governers of provinces and generals of the armies.

A large portion of the imperial life, both of Diocletian and Maximian, was spent in camps. Rome was hardly known to them. In the brief respites from war they retired to their palaces in Nicomedia and Milan. Indeed, it is said that Diocletian never visited Rome, until in the twentieth year of his reign, he repaired to the ancient capital to celebrate, with gorgeous triumph, a great victory over the Persians. Diocletian ambitiously surrounded himself with all the stately magnificence of the Persian court. He robed himself in the most sumptuous garments of silk and gold, and wore a diadem set with pearls, an ornament which Rome had hitherto de-tested as luxurious and effeminate. Even his shoes were studded with precious gems. Eunuchs guarded the interior of the palace. All who were admitted to the presence of the emperor were obliged to prostrate themselves before him, and to address him with the titles of the Divinity. These innovations were introduced, not for the gratification of vanity, but as a protection from the rude license of the people, which exposed the sovereign to assassination.

Guided by the same principle, Diocletian multiplied the agents of the government, by greatly dividing every branch of the civil and military administration. Diocletian was, so to speak, the supreme emperor. He had selected Maximian to be associated with him as Augustus, and had also chosen Constantius and Galerius as subordinate emperors, with the title of Cæsar, to succeed to the imperial purple. The mind of Diocletian was the primal element in the administration. He intended this arrangement to be perpetual,—two elder princes wearing the diadem as Augustus, two younger, as Cæsar, aiding in the administration and prepared to succeed. Such an array of power would discourage any aspiring general, who otherwise, by assassination, might hope to attain the crown. To support this splendor and to meet the expenses of the incessant wars with the barbarians, from whom no plunder could be obtained, by way of reprisal, he burdened the state with taxation which doomed the laboring classes to the most abject poverty.

In the twenty-first year of his reign, Diocletian, then fifty-nine years of age, abdicated the empire. He was led to this by long and severe illness, which so enfeebled him that he was quite unable to sustain the toils and cares of government. Weary of conducting the administration from a bed of sickness and pain, he resolved to seek retirement and repose. About three miles from the city of Nicomedia there is a spacious plain, which the emperor selected for the ceremony of his abdication. A lofty throne was erected, upon which Diocletian, pale and emaciate, in a dignified speech, announced to the immense multitude he had assembled there, his resignation of the diadem. Then laying aside the imperial vestments, he entered a closed chariot, and repaired to a rural retreat he had selected at Salona, in his native province of Dalmatia, on the Grecian shore of the Adriatic sea. On the same day, which was May 1, A. D. 305, Maximian, by previous concert, also abdicated at Milan. He was constrained to this act by the ascendency which the imperial mind of Diocletian had obtained over him. Maximian, in vigorous health and martial in his tastes, found retirement very irk-some, and urged his weary and more philosophic colleague to resume the reins of government. Diocletian replied :

"Could you but see the fine cabbages in my garden, which I have planted and raised with my own hands, you would not ask me to relinquish such happiness for the pursuit of power."

But, notwithstanding Dioceletian's memorable speech about the cabbages, all the appliances of opulence and splendor surrounded him in his retreat. He had selected the spot with an eye of an artist; and when in possession of the revenues of the Roman empire, he devoted many years in rearing an imperial castle, suitable for one who had been accustomed, for nearly a quarter of a century, to more than oriental magnificence. From the portico of the palace, a view was spread out of wonderful beauty, combining the most extensive panorama of mountains and valleys, while a bay creeping in from the Adriatic sea, studded with picturesque islands, presented the aspect of a secluded and tranquil lake. But even here, in this most lovely of earthly retreats, man's doom of sorrow pursued the emperor ; and domestic griefs of the most afflictive character, blighted the bloom of his arbors and parterres, and darkened his saloons.

Ten acres were covered by this palace, which was constructed of free-stone, and flanked with sixteen towers. The principal entrance was denominated the golden gate, and gorgeous temples were reared in honor of the pagan gods, AEsculapius and Jupiter, whom Diocletian ostentatiously adored. The most exquisite ornaments of painting and sculpture embellished the architectural structure, the saloons, and the grounds. The death of Diocletian is shrouded in mystery. It is simply known that the most oppressive gloom and re-morse shadowed his declining years ; but whether his death was caused by poison, which he prepared for himself, or which was administered by another, or whether he fell a victim to disease, can now never be known.

The two Cæsars, Constantius and Galerius, now became Augusti, and were invested with the imperial insignia. The division of the empire into the east and the west became still more marked ; the morning sun rising upon the oriental provinces of Galerius, and its evening rays falling upon the occidental realms of Constantius. Two new Caesars were now needed to occupy the place of those who had ascended to the imperial government. Galerius chose his nephew, a rustic youth, to whom he entrusted the government of Egypt and Syria. Constantine, the son of Constantius, was appointed as the associate and successor of his father.

A revolt in Britain called for the presence of Constantius. His son accompanied him. Here Constantius was taken sick, and died fifteen months after he had received the title of Augustus. Constantine immediately succeeded him. Galerius did not cheerfully acquiesce in this arrangement, but Constantine, at the head of the army of Britain was too powerful to be opposed. Constantine was then thirty-two years of age. Italy had thus far been elevated in rank and privileges above the remote provinces of the empire; and the Roman citizens, for five hundred years, had been exempted from taxation, the burdens of state being borne by the subjugated nations. But the exigences of the impoverished empire were now such that Galerius, from his palace in Nicomedia, issued orders for numbering, even the proud citizens of Rome itself, and taxing them with all the rest.

Maximian, who had been exceedingly restless in the retreat to which his reluctant abdication had consigned him, hoped to take advantage of the disaffection in Rome to grasp the scepter again, notwithstanding the efforts of Galerius to place Severus, one of his partisans, in power there. Maximian and Severus soon met on the field of battle, and the latter being vanquished, was doomed to die, being allowed merely to choose the manner of his death. He opened his veins, and quietly passed away. Maximian had previously given his daughter in marriage to Constantine, hoping thus to secure his cooperation. Leaving his son Maxentius as acting emperor in Rome, he set out for Britain, to meet Constantine.

Galerius, enraged, gathered an army, and marched upon Italy to avenge the death of Severus, and to chastise the rebelbous Romans.

"I will extirpate," he exclaimed in his wrath, " both the senate and the people, by the sword."

Constantine was in Britain, but Maximian was a foe not easily to be vanquished. Galerius fought his way slowly to within sixty miles of Rome; but, hedged in on all sides, he could advance no farther. His perils hourly increasing, with extreme mortification he was compelled to order a retreat. Burning with rage, Galerius commenced his backward march, inflicting every conceivable outrage upon the Italian people. His soldiers plundered, ravished, murdered. Flocks and herds were driven away, cities and villages burned, and the country reduced to a smoldering desert. Galerius invested Licinius and Maximin with imperial powers, the one in Illyricum, and the other in Egypt, and thus there were now six emperors, each claiming the equal title of Augustus.

Maximian was now on his way to Britain, to the court of Constantine, to arrange a coalition. Constantine was suddenly summoned to the Rhine, by an incursion of the Franks. Maximian, at Arles, near the mouth of the Rhone in Gaul, where much treasure had been accumulated, took advantage of the absence of Constantine to endeavor to excite a mutiny in his own favor. With wonderful celerity Constantine turned upon him, pursued him to Marseilles, took him captive, and allowed him the same privilege which he had allowed to Severus—to choose his mode of death. The old emperor, who was father of the wife of Constantine, opened his veins, and sank into the tomb.

Galerius, retired from his unsuccessful campaign in Italy to his palaces in Nicomedia, where he indulged unrestrained, for four years, in that licentiousness and debauchery common to nearly all the Roman emperors. He became bloated and corpulent. Ulcers broke out over his whole body, and at length he died, a loathsome mass of corruption. He had ferociously persecuted the Christians during his whole reign, and by them his awful death was regarded as a Divine visitation. As soon as his death was announced, Maximin and Licinius divided his empire between them, the former taking the Asiatic, and the latter the European portion.

There were now four emperors regarding each other with a strong spirit of rivalry. Constantine in Britain and Gaul; Maxentius in Italy; Licinius in Macedonia and Greece; and Maximin in Asia. Constantine was renowned for his gentle-manly character, and his humane spirit ; and yet, after a great victory over the Franks and the Alemani, he entertained the people of Treves by throwing the captive princes into the amphitheater, to be torn to pieces by wild beasts ; and so barbarous were the times, that this act was not then deemed in. consistent with generosity and mercy.

Maxentius, in Rome, was one of the most odious of tyrants. The Christians suffered fearfully under his reign, and history has preserved the name of one noble Christian matron, Sophronia, wife of the prefect of the city, who, to escape the violence of Maxentius, plunged a dagger into her own heart. The tyrant filled Rome with troops, and purchased their favor by indulging them in the most unbounded license. With Rome for his capital, he assumed to be sole emperor, regarding the other emperors as his subordinates. Open collision soon arose between Maxentius and Constantine. Maxentius had under his command a very formidable force, amounting to one hundred and seventy thousand foot, and eighteen thousand horse. Constantine, at the head of but forty thousand troops, marched to attack him. Constantine, however, was well assured of the secret sympathy in his behalf, both of the senate, and the people of Rome.

Marching from Gaul, Constantine crossed the great Alpine barrier by what is now called the pass of Mount Cenis, and had descended into the plains of Piedmont, before Maxentius had received tidings of his departure from Gaul. He took Suza by storm. Sweeping resistlessly along, Turin and Milan, after fierce battles, fell into his hands. He was now within four hundred miles of Rome, and a magnificent road, through a rich country, invited his march.

His number of prisoners became so great, that chains were needed to shackle them ; and a vast number of smiths were employed in hammering the swords of the vanquished into fetters. With wonderful celerity he pressed forward, surmounting all opposition, until he arrived at a place called Saxa Rubra, within nine miles of Rome, where he found Maxentius intrenched in great force. His army, in long array, reached even to the banks of the Tiber. The defeat of Maxentius was entire, and the carnage of his troops awful. Maxentius himself, in attempting to escape across the Milvian bridge, was crowded into the river, and, from the weight of his armor, instantly sank to the bottom. His body, the next day, was dragged from the mud, and, being decapitated, the ghastly head was exposed to the rejoicing people.

Constantine, thus decisively victorious, entered the city in triumph. The pliant senate gathered around him in homage, and assigned him the first rank among the three remaining Augusti, then sharing the dominion of the world. Games were instituted, and a triumphal arch was reared to his honor, which still remains. Rome was fallen so low that the arch of Trajan was shamefully despoiled of its ornaments, that they might be transferred to the arch of Constantine. Constantine suppressed the Pretorian guard forever, and utterly destroyed their camp. He remained two months in Rome, consolidating his power. He also negotiated an alliance with Licinius, the Illyrian emperor, conferring upon him his sister Constantia in marriage.

Maximin, in Asia, alarmed by this coalition of the two European emperors, in dead of winter marched from the heart of Syria, crossed the Thracian Bosphorus, captured Byzantium, now Constantinople, after a siege of eleven days, and met Licinius, at the head of seventy thousand troops, near Heraclea, about fifty miles west of Byzantium. In a terrible battle the army of Maximin was almost annihilated, and the Syrian monarch, pale with rage and despair, fled with such celerity, that in twenty-four hours he entered Nicomedia, one hundred and sixty miles from the field of battle. There he soon died, whether from despair, or poison which his own hand had mingled, is not known. There were now two emperors left, Constantine and Licinius. The provinces of the East accepted Licinius, and thus the Roman empire became again divided into the eastern and the western. Maximin left two children ; a son eight years of age, and a daughter seven. Licinius, with Roman mercilessness, put them both to death. All the other relatives, who could in any possible way endanger the sway of Licinius, were also, with the most relentless cruelty, consigned to the executioner.

Hardly a year now elapsed ere Constantine and Licinius turned their arms against each other. Licinius was tyrannical and perfidious ; Constantine insatiately aspiring. Sirmium, on the river Save, not far from its confluence with the Danube, was the capital of the vast province of Illyricum. On the banks of the Save, fifty miles above Sirmium, at Cibalis, the two emperors met in hostile array. It was the eighth of October, A. D. 315. The battle raged from dawn till dark ; and then Licinius, leaving twenty thousand of his men dead upon the field, in the night retreated, abandoning his camp and all his magazines. Constantine pursued. Licinius, accumulating recruits as he fled, again made a stand on the plain of Mardia, in Thrace. Again they fought from the earliest ray of the morning until night darkened the field. Again Licinius was worsted, and he continued his flight toward the mountains of Macedonia. He now sued for peace. Constantine consented to leave him in command of Thrace, Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt, but wrested from him Illyricum, Dalmatia, Dacia, Macedonia, and Greece, which were all attached to the western empire. Thrace was the only foot-hold which Licinius held in Europe.

Affairs thus remained in comparative tranquillity for about eight years, during which time Constantine devoted himself very assiduously to the government of his vast empire.

Constantine, with his empire firmly established, and lui armies thoroughly disciplined, was no longer disposed. to endure a partner in the empire, and he found no difficulty in " picking a quarrel " with Licinius, now infirm with age, dissolute, tyrannical, and execrated. But the old man developed unexpected and amazing energy. He speedily assembled, on the fields of Thrace, an army of one hundred and fifty thous-and foot, and fifteen thousand horse. The straits of the Bosporus and the Hellespont were filled with his fleet, consisting of three hundred and fifty galleys of three banks of oars.

Constantine rendezvoused his army of one hundred and twenty thousand horse and foot, in the highest discipline, at Thessalonica, in Macedonia. In the celebrated harbor of Piræus he had a fleet of two hundred transports. Licinius intrenched himself at Adrianople, in the heart of Thrace, about two hundred miles northeast from Thessalonica, and awaited the attack of his foe. They soon met. The disciplined legions of Constantine trampled the eastern legions of Licinius in the dust, and in a few hours thirty-four thousand of the soldiers of Licinius were silent in death. The remainder fled wildly. The fortified camp fell into the hands of the victor, and Licinius, putting spurs to his horse, hardly looked behind him till he found himself within the walls of Byzantium.

The siege of the city was immediately commenced. It had been fortified with the utmost skill which the military art of that day could suggest, and the wealth of an empire could execute. After a long and cruel siege the city capitulated. One final battle was fought on the Asiatic shore, near the heights of Scutari, and Licinius fled to Nicomedia without an army and powerless. His wife, Constantia, sister of Constantine, pleaded so earnestly with her brother for her husband, that the conqueror, after subjecting Licinius to the most humiliate mg acts of homage, allowed him to retire to a retreat of powerlessness, but of luxury, in Thessalonica Here he was soon accused of meditating treason, and was put to death. Thus was the Roman empire again united under one emperor, and Constantine remained sole monarch of what was then caked the world.

Constantine now adopted the memorable resolve to establish Christianity on a stable foundation as the honored religion of the empire. The doctrines and precepts of our Saviour had thoroughly undermined the old pagan superstitions, and, notwithstanding the most bloody persecutions, Christianity had at length attained such supremacy that, by an imperial decree, the banners of the cross were unfurled over the ruined temples of Greece and Rome.

During the first two centuries Christianity spread over the whole region between the Euphrates and the Ionian sea, and flourishing churches were established in all the principal cities. Under nearly all the emperors the Christians were persecuted, sometimes legally, sometimes illegally, now with blind, frantic, indiscriminate fury, and now under the semblance of moderation and calm judicial process. All conceivable forms of terror were brought to operate against them. They were driven into exile, torn to pieces by wild beasts, beheaded on the block, and burnt at the stake. Several of the emperors exerted all the power with which the scepter invested them, for the utter extermination of the Christians. Historians have generally enumerated ten persecutions of peculiar malignity.

The city of Rome had been gradually losing its ascendency, and Diocletian had reared Nicomedia into a capital almost rivaling Rome in opulence and splendor. Constantine, the child of camps, and whose life had been spent almost wholly in the remote provinces of the empire, had no especial attach ment for the imperial city, and he was ambitious of rearing a new capital, occupying a more central spot in his vast empire, and which should also bear and immortalize his name. With sagacity which has never been questioned, he selected for this purpose Byzantium, and gave it the name of Constantinople or the city of Constantine.

The imperial city, enjoying the most salubrious clime, surrounded by realms of inexhaustible fertility, occupying an eminence which commanded an extensive view of the shores of Europe and of Asia; with the Bosphorus on the north, and the Dardanelles on the south, fortified gates which no for could penetrate, with a harbor spacious, and perfectly secure, and with the approaches on the side of the continent easy of defense, presented to the sagacious Constantine a site fox the metropolis of universal dominion, all unrivaled. The wealth, energy, and artistic genius of the whole Roman empire were immediately called into requisition, to enlarge and beautify the new metropolis. The boundaries of the city were marked out, fourteen miles in circumference. It is said that a sum amounting to twelve millions of dollars, was expended in walls and public improvements. The forests which then frowned almost unbroken along the shores of the Euxine, and a fine quarry of white marble in a neighboring island, afforded an inexhaustible supply of materials.