character his mother Faustina, a woman infamous for all manner of vice, but who yet had passed with her husband Marcus for & paragon of virtue. Commodus had from his infancy an aversion to every rational and liberal pursuit, and a fond attachment to the sports of the circus and amphitheatre, the hunting of wild beasts, and the combats of boxers and gladiators. The measures of this reign were as unimportant as the character of the sovereign was contemptible. His favourite concubine, Marcia, and some of his chief officers, prevented their own destruction by assassinating the tyrant, in the thirty-second year of his age and thirteenth of his reign, Dec. 31, 192 A. C.

4. [The extinction of the race of the Antonines, by the death of Commodus, was attended with convulsions similar to those which took place when the house of Cæsar became extinct on the death of Nero. A period of military despotism followed.]—The prætorian guards gave the empire to Publius Helvius Pertinax, the prefect of the city, a man of mean birth, but who had risen to esteem by his virtues and military talents. He applied himself with zeal to the correction of abuses; but the austerity of his government deprived him of the affections of a corrupted people. He had disappointed the army of a promised reward; and, after a reign of eighty-six days, was murdered in the imperial palace by the same hands which had placed him on the throne, March 28, 192 A.C.

5. The empire was now put up to auction by the prætorians, and was purchased by the rich and profligate Didius Julianus; while Pescennius Niger in Asia, Clodius Albinus in Britain, and Septimius Severus in Illyria, were each chosen emperor by the armies they commanded. [Severus was the first who got possession of Rome, having marched his army from the neighbourhood of Vienna, a distance of eight hundred miles, in about forty days.* On his approach, Severus was acknowledged emperor by the senate, and Julian was formally deposed and put to death, after an anxious reign of sixty days. Before the new emperor entered Rome, he commanded the prætorian guards to wait his arrival on a large plain near the city, without arms, as they were accustomed to attend their sovereign. When they were encompassed by a chosen part of the Illyrian army; and another detachment was sent to seize their arms, and оссиру their camp. Severus then sternly reproached them for their perfidy and cowardice, despoiled them of their splendid uniforms, and banished them, on pain of death, to the distance of an hundred miles from the capital. Severus, now master of Rome, after a stay of thirty days, departed] to reduce the provinces which had acknowledged the sovereignty of Niger and Albinus; and these two rivals being

Gibbon remarks tnat the almost incredible expedition of Severus, who conducted a numerous army from the banks of the Danube to those of the Tiber in so short a space of time, is a proof of the abundance of provisions produced by agriculture and commerce, the goodness of the roads, and the discipline of the legions.

successively subdued, the one lost his life in battle near Ipus, in 194, and the other fell by his own hands, after having been defeated near Lyons, in 197. The administration of Severus was wise and equitable, but tinctured with despotic rigour. It was his purpose to erect the fabric of absolute monarchy, and all his institutions operated with able policy to that end. He possessed eminent military talents; and it was a glorious boast of his, that having received the empire oppressed with foreign and domestic wars, he left it in profound, universal, and honourable peace. He carried with him into Britain his two sons Caracalla and Geta, whose unpromising dispositions clouded his latter days. In this war the Caledonians, under Fingal, are said to have defeated, on the banks of the Carron, Caracul (Caracalla), the son of the king of the world. Severus died at York, in the sixty-sixth year of his age, after a reign of eighteen years, in 211 A.C.

6. On the death of Severus, Čaracalla and Geta were proclaimed emperors of Rome, but the mutual hatred which had existed from their earliest youth, was increased by their association in the empire; and the former, with brutal inhumanity, caused his brother to be openly murdered in the arms of his mother Julia; and about 20,000 persons are computed to have perished under the vague appellation of Geta's friends. His reign, which was of six years' duration, and one continued series of atrocities, was at length terminated by assassination, in 217 a. C. 7. The prætorian præfect Macrinus, the murderer of Caracalla, was recognised as emperor by the soldiers, and acknowledged by the senate. Military despotism had now reached its greatest height: emperors were deposed and murdered by emperors; seditions arose on every side, and the incursions of the barbarians became more terrible as the means of resisting them became more feeble. The legions generally decided the succession to the empire; and the nomination of their leaders to the purple became the consequence not only of the uncertainty of succession, but often of an invincible necessity. This state of anarchy, which commenced with the death of Commodus, continued for about a century, till the accession of Diocletian. That interval was filled by the reigns of Macrinus, Heliogabalus, Alexander Severus, Maximin, Gordian, Decius, Gallus, Valerianus, Gallienus, Claudius, Aurelianus, Tacitus, Probus, and Carus; a period of which the annals furnish neither amusement nor useful information. The single exception is the reign of Alexander Severus, a mild, beneficent, and enlightened prince, whose character shines the more from the contrast of those who preceded and followed him.

8. [After the death of Carus, who was killed by lightning during his expedition against the Persians, and the murder of his son Numerianus by his own father-in-law, the prætorian præfect Aper, Diocletian was proclaimed emperor by the troops in Chalcedno, 284 A. c. The parents of Diocletian had been

slaves; and he derived his name from a small town in Dalmatia, from which his mother deduced her origin. He was successively promoted to the government of Mæsia, the honours of the consulship, and the important command of the guards of the palace. His abilities were useful rather than splendid; a vigorous mind, improved by the experience and study of mankind; steadiness to pursue his ends; flexibility to vary his means; and, above all, the art of submitting his passions, as well as those of others, to the interest of his ambition. His moderation was remarkable, after the defeat and death of Carinus, the remaining son of Carus; he spared the lives, the fortunes, and the dignities of his adversaries, and even continued in their respective stations the greater number of the servants of Carinus. Conscious of his inability to defend the empire against the incursions of the barbarians, who were now pressing on it, he associated with him in the government Maximian, a rough warrior, who had been his companion in arms, which provided for the defence both of the East and the West. Maximian shared with Diocletian the title of Augustus; and, a few years after, in 292, finding that the empire, assailed on every side by the barbarians, required on every side the presence of a great army and of an emperor, they determined to confer on two generals of approved merit an equal share of the sovereign authority. Each of them therefore created a Cæsar; Diocletian chose Galerius, and Maximian, Constantius. Diocletian retained the east; Maximian, Italy, Africa, and the Islands; Galerius, Thrace and Illyria; and Constantius, Gaul, Spain, and Britain. Each had his separate department or province, all nominally supreme, but in reality under the direction of the superior talents and authority of Diocletian; an unwise policy which depended for its efficacy on individual ability alone. Diocletian, trusting to the continuance of that order in the empire which his policy had established, determined to resign the cares of government, and induced Maximian to do the same, which they did on the same day, May 1, 305; the one at Nicomedia, and the other at Milan. The two Cæsars, Galerius and Constantius, were then proclaimed Augusti; the former having the seniority and presidence, had the nomination of the two Cæsars, Severus and Maximin. Constantius died soon after, at York (306), leaving his son Constantine heir to his authority, who was proclaimed Augustus by the legions, although Galerius would only acknowledge him as Cæsar, giving the higher title to Severus. The balance of power established by Diocletian subsisted no longer than while it was sustained by the firm and dexterous hand of the founder. "The abdication of Diocletian and Maximian was followed by eighteen years of discord and confusion. The empire was afflicted with five civil wars; and the remainder of the time was not so much a state of tranquillity as a suspension of arms between several hostile monarchs (there being at one time six emperors), who,

viewing each other with an eye of fear and hatred, strove to mcrease their respective forces at the expense of their subjects.”— Gibbon.]

9. [On the death of Galerius in 311, there remained Constantine, Licinius, Maximin, and Maxentius. The latter was soon after defeated and slain before the gates of Rome by Constantine, who thereby became master of Italy and the capital, 312. About the same time a war broke out between Licinius and Maximin, when the latter was defeated near Adrianople, and then killed himself, 313. In the following year Constantine and Licinius were at war, which ended in an accommodation; Constantine obtaining all the countries on the south bank of the Danube, as well as Thrace and Mæsia Inferior. This arrangement continued till 322, when the war between them again broke out, and was finally terminated by the decisive battle of Chrysopolis (now Scutari), in Bithynia. Licinius afterwards surrendered to Constantine, and was put to death, 324.]

10. The administration of Constantine was, in the beginning of his reign, mild, equitable, and politic. Though zealously attached to the Christian faith, he made no violent innovations on the religion of the state. He introduced order and economy into the civil government, and repressed every species of oppression and corruption. But his natural temper was severe and cruel; and the latter part of his reign was as much deformed by intolerant zeal and sanguinary rigour, as the former had been remarkable for equity and benignity. From this unfavourable change of character, he lost the affections of his subjects: and, from a feeling probably of reciprocal disgust, he removed the seat of the Roman empire to Byzantium, now termed Constantinople. The court followed the sovereign; the opulent proprietors were attended by their slaves and retainers; Rome was in a few years greatly depopulated, and the new capital swelled at once to enormous magnitude. It was characterized by eastern splendour, luxury, and voluptuousness; and the cities of Greece were despoiled for its embellishment. Of the internal policy of the empire we shall treat in the next section. In an expedition against the Persians, Constantine died at Nicomedia, in the thirtieth year of his reign and sixty-third of his age, 337 A. C. In the time of Constantine, the Goths had made several irruptions on the empire, and, though repulsed and beaten, began gradually to encroach on the provinces.

SECTION LV.

STATE OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE AT THE TIME OF

CONSTANTINE.-HIS SUCCESSORS.

1. [THE removal of the seat of empire from Rome to Constantinople, and the establishment of Christianity as the religion of the state, was followed by important changes in the administration of government.] In lieu of the ancient republican distinctions, which were founded chiefly on personal merit, a rigid subordination of rank and office now went through all the orders of the state. The magistrates were divided into three classes, distinguished by the unmeaning titles of, 1. The Illustrious; 2. The Respectable; 3. The Honourable.-The epithet of Illustrious was bestowed on, 1. The consuls and patricians; 2. The prætorian prefects, with those of Rome and Constantinople; 3. The masters-general of the cavalry and infantry; 4. The seven ministers of the palace, who exercised their functions about the person of the emperor. From the reign of Diocletian, the consuls had been created by the sole authority of the emperor: their dignity was inefficient; they had no appropriate function in the state, and their names served only to give the legal date to the year. The dignity of patrician* was not, as in ancient times, an hereditary distinction, but was bestowed as a title of honour by the emperor on his favourites. From the time of the abolition of the prætorian bands by Constantine, the prætorian prefects had been deprived of all military command, and reduced to the station of useful and obedient ministers. They were four in number, and to their care was intrusted the civil administration of the four præfectures, or departments into which the whole empire was divided. These were, the East, Illyria, Italy, and the Gauls, each of which having its dioceses, and each diocese its provinces. The prefects had the supreme administration of justice and of the finances, the power of supplying all the inferior magistracies in their district, and an appellative jurisdiction from all its tribunals. Independent of their authority, Rome and Constantinople had each its own prefect, who presided over the senate, and was the chief magistrate of the city; he received appeals from the distance of 100 miles from his respective city, and was the acknowledged source of all municipal authority. In the second class, the Respectable, were the proconsuls of Asia, Achaia, and Africa, and the military counts and dukes (comites and duces) or generals of the imperial armies. The third class, the Honourable, comprehended the

By this time very few of the ancient patrician families remained, or even of those created by Cæsar and the succeeding emperors.