The Empire Dismembered

( Originally Published Early 1900's )

FROM A.D. 330 TO A.D. 375.

NO man has ever been more warmly applauded, or more venomously condemned than Constantine, surnamed the Great. And though fifteen centuries have passed away since he disappeared from life's busy arena, his character is still the subject of the most bitter denunciation, and of the most lofty panegyric.

By nature Constantine was enriched with the choicest endowments. In person he was majestic and graceful, with fea. tures of the finest mold. Either from natural felicity of temperament, or from his own powers of self-restraint, during all his reign he preserved, to a wonderful degree, the virtues of chastity and temperance. In mental capacity he was both acute and comprehensive, having gathered from books and travel a vast fund of information. He possessed great capabilities of endurance, physical and intellectual. In the field he displayed alike the bravery of the soldier, and the talents of the general. Fully conscious of his superior abilities, with boundless resources at his command, and warmly sustained by the popular voice, he commenced and pursued a career to which we with difficulty find a parallel.

The execution of the emperor's son Crispus, and of his seo and wife Fausta, was one of those appalling and awful events which will probably ever be involved in some degree of obscurity. So far as we can collect the facts, from the exceedingly unsatisfactory and contradictory accounts, they were these. Fausta, an exceedingly beautiful woman, and mien younger than her husband, fell in love with Crispus, the son of Constantine's former wife, and a prince of remarkable attractions, and who had imbibed the Christian views of his teacher Lactantius. Fausta, in accordance with the spirit of pagan Rome, which never revolted from any crime of this nature, after earnest efforts at the seduction of her son-in-law, made an open confession to him of her desires. Crispus repel-led her, as Joseph did the wife of Potiphar. In confirmation of the sentiment that

" Hell has no fury like a woman scorned,"

Fausta, in her rage, fled to the emperor, declaring that Crispus had made violent attempts upon her virtue. Constantine, in the blindness of his jealousy and indignation, condemned the innocent prince to death. Circumstances soon after revealing the truth of the case, in remorse and despair he sentenced Fausta to be stifled in her bath. Some others who were her accomplices in the foul accusation perished with her. It is said that from the gloom of these events Constantine never recovered. For forty days he fasted and mourned bitterly, denying himself all the ordinary comforts of life. He erected a golden statue to Crispus, with this inscription :

"To my son whom I unjustly condemned."

The death of Crispus, perhaps, bound the imperial father wore closely to ifs surviving sons. He resolved to divide the empire net weer them, at his death ; and he gave them all the title of Caesar. He placed them under the most celebrated professors of the Christian faith, and of all Greek and Roman learning. Constantine had been trained in the school of hard-ships. His sons, from the cradle, were accustomed to luxury, were surrounded with flatterers, and anticipated the throne as their hereditary right. To train them to the cares of government, the eldest son, Constantine, was sent to Gaul, the second Constantius to Asia, and the third, Constans, was entrusted with the administration of Italy and Africa. Constantine, the father, reserved for himself the title of Augustus, conferring upon his sons only that of Cesar. Two nephews, Dalmatius and Hannibalianus were also raised to the title of princes, and invested with distinct commands.

After a reign of singular prosperity, continuing for nearly thirty-one years, Constantine, in the sixty-fourth year of his age, died, in one of his rural palaces in the suberbs of Nice-media. On his dying bed he sought the consolations of that Christian faith which he had ever politically favored, and was then baptized as a disciple of Jesus, thus professing a personal interest in the redemption our Saviour has purchased. His funeral was attended with all the pageantry which Roman power could suggest and execute.

The three sons of Constantine divided the realm to suit themselves. Constantine, the eldest, with the recognition of some slight preeminence in rank, established himself at Constantinople, in command of the central provinces. Constantius took charge of the eastern, and Constans of the western realms. The new emperors were all dissolute young men, of the several ages of twenty-one, twenty, and seventeen years.

The death of Constantine the Great was the signal for war. Persia, under the leadership of Sapor, endeavored to throw off the Roman yoke, and Constantius found it necessary immediately to relinquish the voluptuousness of his palace for the hardships of the camp ou the plains of Mesopotamia. The usual scenes of blood and misery ensued, as the hostile armies,now my surging waves of victory, and now in the refluent billows of defeat, swept the doomed land.

While Constantius, the second brother, was thus battling on the fields of Mesopotamia, Constantine, the elder, was preparing to rob his younger brother, Constans of his imperial patrimony. Breaking through the Carnac or Julian Alps, he invaded Venetia, in Italy. Constans, who was then in Dacia, north of the Danube, three hundred miles distant, detached a division of his army, which he :Followed in person, lured Constantine into an ambuscade, surrounded and killed him, and attached all his domains, with Constantinople, to his own realms. He thus became the undisputed sovereign of two thirds of the Roman empire. Constans was still but a boy, with but little ability and abundant self-conceit. His incompetency excited contempt.

An ambitious soldier, named Magnentius, of barbarian extraction, conspired against him. On the occasion of a feast, in the city of Autun, subsequently renowned as the seat of the bishopric of Talleyrand, which feast was protracted until the hour of midnight, the conspiracy was consummated. On a sudden, in the midst of the carousal, the doors were thrown open, and Magnentius presented himself, arrayed in the imperial purple. There was a moment's pause, as of consternation, and then the whole assembly, with enthusiasm, wild and in-flamed by wine and wassail, greeted the usurper with the titles of Augustus and emperor. The soldiers were rallied, and they took the oath of fidelity ; the gates of the city were closed, and the banner of the new emperor floated over the citadel.

Constans was at the time absent on a hunting excursion in a neighboring forest. He heard at the same moment of the conspiracy, and of the defection of his guard, which left him utterly powerless. Putting spurs to his horse, he endeavored to reach the sea shore, but was overtaken at Helena, now Elne, at the foot of the Pyrenees, and was instantly put to death. All the provinces of the west acknowledged Magnentius. The tidings soon reached Constantius, on the plains of Mesopotamia. Leaving his lieutenants to conduct the warfare there, with a strong division of his army he turned his steps toward Italy. But in the meantime, the powerful army, ever encamped on the bunks of the Danube, in cooperation with Magnentius, appointed their renowned general, Vetranio associate emperor. Again the whole Roman empire was agitated with preparations for the most desperate civil war.

As soon as Constantius reached Illyricum on the frontiers of Italy, he sagaciously made propositions to Vetranio, that he would acknowledge him as associate emperor if he would abandon the cause of Magnentius and ally himself with Constantius. Basely the venal general accepted the bribe, and wheeled his whole army of twenty thousand horse, and several legions of infantry into the lines of Constantius. The soldiers blended in enthusiastic fraternization, intertwining their banners, and causing the plains of Sardinia to resound with the cries of " Long live Constantius."

Constantius, however, having thus gained the army of Vetranio, and conscious of his ability to reward it, so that there should be no fear of defection, at once relieved Vetranio of all the cares of empire, and sent him immediately into luxurious exile. A magnificent palace was assigned him at Prusa, in Bithynia. He was sumptuously provided with every luxury, and was there left to " fatten like a pig" until he died.

Magnentius, a bold and determined soldier, was a very different foe to encounter. Though Constantius had now b far the most powerful army, Magnentius was in every respect his superior, intellectually, physically, and morally. The two emperors marched eagerly to meet each other, neither of them reluctant to submit the question to the arbitrament of battle.

On the twenty-eighth of September the hostile armies were concentrated before the city of Mursa, now called Esseg, in Sclavonia, on the Drave, about ten miles from its embouchure into the Danube. Constantius, fully aware of the military superiority of his antagonist, after earnestly addressing his troops, wisely, but not very heroically, retired to a church at a safe distance from the field, and left the conduct of the decisive day to his veteran generals.

A more fierce and sanguinary battle was perhaps never fought. All the day long the hideous carnage continued—Romans and barbarians, with gladiatorial sinews, blending in the strife. The air was darkened with stones, arrows, and javelins. Clouds of horsemen, glittering in their scaly armor, like statues of steel, swept the field, breaking the ranks, cutting down the fugitives, and trampling alike the wounded and the dead beneath their iron feet. Night alone terminated the strife. The army of Magnentius, overpowered by numbers, was almost annihilated. Fifty-four thousand were left dead upon the plain. But they had sold their lives dearly, for a still greater number of the legions of Constantius slept gory and lifeless at their sides. Nearly one hundred and twenty thousand men, the veteran soldiers of the Roman empire, perished in this one battle. Thus did Rome, in civil strife, devour her own children, and open the way for the march of barbarian bands.

Magnentius, in the darkness of the night, casting away his imperial ornaments, mounted a fleet horse, and, accompanied by a few friends, attempted to escape directly west toward the Julian Alps. He reached the city of Aquileia, at the head of the Adriatic sea, not far from the present city of Trieste. Here, in the midst of mountain defiles and pathless morasses, he made a brief pause, and collected around him all the troops who yet remained faithful. But city after city in Italy abandoned his cause, and raised the banner of the victorious Constantius. He then fled to Gaul. But Constantius directed all the energies of the empire in the pursuit. At length Magnentins, hemmed in on every side, fell upon his own sword, and thus obtained a more easy and honorable death than he could hope for from his foe. Thus was the whole Roman empire brought again under the sway of a single sovereign, and Constantius, the son of Constantine, reigned without a rival from the western shores of Britain to the banks of the Tigris, and from the unexplored realms of Central Germany to the dark Interior of Africa.

There were still living two nephews of Constantine the Great, Gallus and Julian. Constantius regarded them with great jealousy, and for several years had kept them, under careful surveillance, exiled in a remote city in Bithynia. As they advanced toward manhood, he watched them with in-creasing apprehension, and imprisoned them in a strong castle near Cæsarea. The castle had formerly been a palace, and was provided with all the appliances of luxury, in the way of spacious saloons and inclosed gardens. Here the young princes were placed under the care of able teachers, and were thoroughly instructed in all the learning of the day.

Still their hours passed heavily along in loneliness and gloom. They were deprived of their fortune, their liberty, their birthright as princes. They could not pass the walls of the castle, and could enjoy only such society as the tyrant would allow them. When Gallus, the elder of the two, had attained his twenty-fifth year, Eusebius, the emperor, invested him with the title of Cæsar, thus constituting him heir to the throne ; and at the same time united him in marriage to the princess Constantina. Constantius, having consummated this arrangement, went to the west to superintend the administra tion there, leaving Gallus to take up his residence at Antioch, as viceroy of the eastern empire. Gallus immediately released his younger brother Julian, and invested him with rank and dignity.

Gallus and his wife Constantina developed characters which assimilate them to demons. Instruments of death and torture filled the dungeons of their palace, and scenes of woe ensued which can only be revealed when the arch-angel's trump shall summon the world to judgment. Constantina died of a fever. The emperor resolved to dispatch Gallus to seek her in the world of spirits. With treacherous professions of affection he lured Gallus on a journey to visit him in his imperial residence at Milan. Just as Gallus was approaching the frontiers of Italy he was seized, carried to Pola, in Istria, and there, with his hands tied behind him, was beheaded, a fate he richly merited. A band of soldiers was sent to arrest Julian. He was taken a captive to Milan, where he was imprisoned seven months, in the daily expectation of meeting the doom of his brother.

In this severe school of adversity Julian acquired firmness of character and much sagacity. Through the intercession of Eusebia, the wife of Constantius, the life of Julian was spared, and lie was sent to honorable exile in the city of Athens. Here he spent six months in the groves of the Academy, engaged in the study of Greek literature, peculiarly congenial to his tastes, and associating with the most accomplished scholars of the day. By the execution of Gallus, the emperor Constantius was left with no partner to share the toil of empire. The Goths were again deluging Gaul. Other bands were crossing the Danube where there was no longer any force sufficient to repel them. The Persian monarch also, elated with recent victories, was ravaging the eastern provinces of the empire.

Constantius was bewildered with these menaces which he knew not how to face, and listening to the advice of the empress Eusebia, he consented to give his sister Helena in marriage to Julian, and then to appoint him, with the title of Cæsar, to administer the government on the other side of the Julian Alps. The young prince received the investiture of the purple in Milan, on the day he attained the twenty-fifth year of his age. Still he was watched with such jealousy by Constan tins, that for some time he was detained, rigidly captive, in the palace of Milan.

Constantius embraced this opportunity to visit the ancient capital of Rome, which had now become comparatively provincial from its desertion by the court. Approaching the city along the Aemilian and Flaminian ways, he assumed the triumph of a conqueror. A splendid train of troops, in glittering armor, accompanied him, waving silken banners embroidered with gold, and enlivening the march with bursts of music. As the procession entered the streets of the imperial city, Rome was overjoyed in beholding this revival of its ancient splendor. Constantius expressed much surprise in view of the immense population of the city, and, surrounded by such acclaim as had never greeted him before, took up his residence in the palace of Augustus, which had entertained no imperial guest for thirty-two years.

He remained but one month, admiring the monuments of power and art spread over the seven hills. Wishing to leave in Rome some memorial of his visit, which should transmit his name, with that of others of the most illustrious emperors, to posterity, he selected a magnificent obelisk which stood before the Temple of the Sun at Heliopolis, on the Nile, and ordered its transportation to the Roman circus. An enormous vessel was constructed for the purpose. The majestic shaft, one hundred and fifteen feet in length, was floated from the Nile to the Tiber, and thus became one of the prominent embellishments of the imperial city.

Constantius was suddenly recalled from Rome to meet the barbarians, who were crowding across the Danube and ravaging the frontier. They had seized many captives, and carried them as slaves into their inaccessible wilds. But the emperor, summoning troops from the East, pursued them with vigor, and compelled them to sue for peace, and to liberate their slaves. And now, with a host of a hundred thousand of the choicest troops of the East, Sapor, king of Persia, crossed the Tigris, marched resolutely through Mesopotamia, finding no foe to obstruct his march until he arrived at Amida. Constantius marched to meet this foe, and Julian was sent to encounter the fierce legions of the north.

It would have been difficult to have found a man apparently less qualified to lead in such a warfare and against such a foe, than was the bookish, bashful, idol-worshiping Julian. The strong men of Rome, who were nominal pagans, in heart despised the superstitions of their country, regarding them only as means of overawing the vulgar; but Julian was actually a worshiper at those besotted shrines. It was, however, necessary for him to repair to Gaul, and to take his stand in the tented field. In view of it he was heard to exclaim, with a deep sigh, " O Plato, Plato, what a task for a philosopher !"

But Julian developed traits of character which astonished his contemporaries, and which have not ceased to astonish mankind. He inured himself to hardship, not indulging in a fire in his chamber in the cold climate of northern Gaul. He slept upon the floor, frequently rising in the night to take the rounds of his camp. He allowed no delicacies to be brought to his table, but shared in the coarse fare and in all the hardships and toils of the common soldiers. After one unfortunate campaign, in which the barbarians firmly stood their ground and repelled their assailants., Julian, at the head of but thirteen thousand men, assailed, at Strasbourg, on the Rhine, thirty-five thousand of the bravest warriors of Germany. After a long battle, in which both parties fought with the utmost fury, the Germans were put to flight, leaving six thousand dead upon the field. In the heat of the battle six hundred of the Roman cuirassiers, in a panic, fled. After the battle, Julian punished them by dressing them in women's clothes, and exposing them to the derision of the army. He then marched down the Rhine, and through a series of sieges and battles drove back the Franks, who had taken possession of all that region.

In imitation of Julius Cæsar, Julian, with scholarly elegance, wrote the annals of the Gallic war. He crossed the Rhine, marched boldly into the almost unknown regions of the north, cutting down the barbarians before him, and re-turned with twenty thousand Roman slaves, whom, by the sword, he had liberated from their barbarian masters. The country, thus ravaged by war, was suffering all the horrors of famine. Julian sent six hundred barges to the coasts of Britain, from whence they returned laden with grain, which was distributed along the banks of the Rhine.

Engaged in these labors, Julian selected Paris as the seat of his winter residence. Julius Cæsar had found this now renowned city but a collection of fisherman's huts, on a small island in the Seine. It was called Lutetia, or the city of mire. The place had since gradually increased. The small island was covered with houses ; two wooden bridges connected it with the shore. A wall surrounded the city, and many dwellings were scattered about the suburbs. Julian became very partial to the place, and built for himself a palace there.

Constantius, in the meantime, was in the far east, fighting the Persians. The victories of Julian, and his renown, excited the jealousy of the emperor, and to weaken the arm of the Cæsar, the Augustus sent for a large division of Julian's army to be forwarded to Persia. The soldiers refused to go ; rallied around Julian ; declared him Augustus, and both emperors, one from the heart of Gaul, the other from beyond the Euphrates, left their natural enemies, and turned furiously to as-sail each other. Months would elapse, and many thousands of miles were 5o be traversed before the heads of their columns could meet. Constantius had but reached Tarsus in Cilicia, when he was seized with a fever and died. The imperial dignity, the purl le vesture, the scepter and diadem, did not disarm death of its terror. The monarch was but a poor sinner, dying, and going to the bar of God. Enlightened by revels. tion, he knew his duty, but did it not. He trembled, he prayed, he was baptized, and received the sacrament of the Lord's supper, and passed away to that tribunal where menarch and subject, master and slave, stand upon the same equality, and where every man shall receive according to his deeds.

Julian heard the welcome tidings of the death of Constantius, just as he was entering the defiles of the Alps, which bound the eastern frontiers of northern Italy. With renewed alacrity he pressed on to Constantinople, where he was crowned undisputed sovereign of the Roman empire, in the thirty-second year of his age. He immediately commenced vigorous measures to restore the heathen worship in all its splendor, and to throw every available obstacle in the way of the propagation of Christianity. The temples were repaired, embellished, and the worship of idols made fashionable by gorgeous parades, and by the presence of the court, Julian himself often officiating as a priest. The churches were robbed of their property, and Christians were ejected from all lucrative and honorable offices, and their places supplied by pagans. The schools of the Christians were broken up, and they were denied the privileges of education. To prove Christ a false prophet in regard to the temple at Jerusalem, he ordered the demolished edifice to be rebuilt. Encountering unexpected obstacles, he was exasperated to press forward in his endeavor with all the energy and power which a Roman emperor could wield. To his amazement, he failed, and failed utterly.

Whatever may have been the cause of this failure, the memorable fact remains forever undeniable. The Roman emperor Julian could not rebuild the temple at Jerusalem. It is stated, and the statement is confirmed by very important testimony, that the workmen were terrified and driven away by phenomena which they certainly regarded as supernatural. Julian, a well read scholar, knew that open persecution, imprisonment, torture, and death had utterly failed in arresting the progress of Christianity, and he endeavored to paralyze the energies of the church by the influences of ignorance, con-tempt, and neglect.

Under such teaching and example from the imperial palace, bitterness of feeling was rapidly springing up between the pagans and the Christians. Then, as now, there were millions who had no faith, but who were drifted along with the popular current. The empire was menaced with the most terrible civil war. Julian was called to Persia, to resist the invasions which were there making desolating headway. Gloom over-shadowed the empire. Julian was discomfited in battle; pestilence and famine wasted his ranks, and with a heavy heart the emperor was compelled to order a retreat. As he was leading his exhausted troops over the burning plains of Mesopotamia, which were utterly scathed and desolated by war, the soldiers dropping dead in the ranks from sheer exhaustion, while the cavalry of the Persians mercilessly harassed them, Julian, in rage and despair, turned upon his foes. A javelin pierced him with a mortal wound. Tradition says, that as he tore the weapon from the quivering flesh and sank dying upon the sand, he raised his eyes to heaven and said, " O Galilean, thou hast conquered." Conveyed to his tent, he died, descanting upon the virtues of his life, and solacing himself with the thought that without any personal or conscious immortality, his soul was to be absorbed in the ethereal substance of the universe.

The retreating troops, pressed by the foe, had no time to mourn the dead. Surrounded with famine, pestilence, gory corpses, dismay, and the din of war, a few voices proclaimed Jovian, one of the leading officers of the imperial guard, to succeed the emperor. With faint acclaim the army ratified the choice, and Jovian, as he urged forward the retreating legions, found time hastily to slip on the imperial purple. Rome had indeed fallen. Utterly unable to resist the Persians, Jovian was reduced to the ignominy of purchasing a truce with Sapor for thirty years, by surrendering to him many of the eastern provinces. And here commenced the dismemberment of the Roman empire. All the garrisons were with-drawn from these provinces, and the humiliated army, with downcast eyes, left the banks of the Tigris forever.

Jovian repealed all the laws which had been enacted against the Christians, and immediately the idol temples were abandoned, and paganism, like a hideous dream of night, passed away to be revived no more forever. The army was seven months slowly retracing its march fifteen hundred miles to Antioch. Jovian was anxious to reach Constantinople. When he had arrived within about three hundred miles of the imperial city, he passed a night in the obscure town of Dadastana, and was in the morning found dead in bed, accidentally stifled, as it is supposed, by the fumes of a charcoal fire in his apartment. His broken-hearted wife met his remains on the road, and with the anguish and tears of widowhood, bitter then as now accompanied them to the tomb in Constantinople.

For ten days the Roman world was without a master. Bud at length the straggling divisions of the army were assembled at Nice, in Bithynia. After unusually mature deliberation the diadem was placed upon the brow of Valentinian, an offices of much merit, who had retired from active service and was living in the enjoyment of an ample fortune. In all respects he seems to have been worthy of the throne. Majestic in stature, temperate in his habits, inflexibly upright, and with a comprehensive and commanding mind, he was peculiarly qualified to win and retain public esteem. Julian had dismissed him from service in consequence of his adhesion to the Christian faith. The new emperor, crowned by the army in Nice, Bithynia, immediately proceeded to Constantinople, and there appointed his brother Valens associate emperor with the equal title of Augustus.