The Caesars

T >> Thomas de Quincey >> The Caesars

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16

'Remorse is as the mind in which it grows:
If _that_ be gentle,' &c.

For the remorse of Caracalla put on no shape of repentance. On the
contrary, he carried anger and oppression wherever he moved; and protected
himself from plots only by living in the very centre of a nomadic camp.
Six years had passed away in this manner, when a mere accident led to his
assassination. For the sake of security, the office of praetorian prefect
had been divided between two commissioners, one for military affairs, the
other for civil. The latter of these two officers was Opilius Macrinus.
This man has, by some historians, been supposed to have harbored no bad
intentions; but, unfortunately, an astrologer had foretold that he was
destined to the throne. The prophet was laid in irons at Rome, and letters
were dispatched to Caracalla, apprizing him of the case. These letters, as
yet unopened, were transferred by the emperor, then occupied in witnessing
a race, to Macrinus, who thus became acquainted with the whole grounds of
suspicion against himself,--grounds which, to the jealousy of the emperor,
he well knew would appear substantial proofs. Upon this he resolved to
anticipate the emperor in the work of murder. The head-quarters were then
at Edessa; and upon his instigation, a disappointed centurion, named
Martialis, animated also by revenge for the death of his brother,
undertook to assassinate Caracalla. An opportunity soon offered, on a
visit which the prince made to the celebrated temple of the moon at
Carrhae. The attempt was successful: the emperor perished; but Martialis
paid the penalty of his crime in the same hour, being shot by a Scythian
archer of the body-guard.

Macrinus, after three days' interregnum, being elected emperor, began his
reign by purchasing a peace from the Parthians. What the empire chiefly
needed at this moment, is evident from the next step taken by this
emperor. He labored to restore the ancient discipline of the armies in all
its rigor. He was aware of the risk he ran in this attempt; and that he
_was_ so, is the best evidence of the strong necessity which existed
for reform. Perhaps, however, he might have surmounted his difficulties
and dangers, had he met with no competitor round whose person the military
malcontents could rally. But such a competitor soon arose; and, to the
astonishment of all the world, in the person of a Syrian. The Emperor
Severus, on losing his first wife, had resolved to strengthen the
pretensions of his family by a second marriage with some lady having a
regal "genesis," that is, whose horoscope promised a regal destiny. Julia
Domna, a native of Syria, offered him this dowry, and she became the
mother of Geta. A sister of this Julia, called Moesa, had, through two
different daughters, two grandsons--Heliogabalus and Alexander Severus.
The mutineers of the army rallied round the first of these; a battle was
fought; and Macrinus, with his son Diadumenianus, whom he had adopted to
the succession, were captured and put to death. Heliogabalus succeeded,
and reigned in the monstrous manner which has rendered his name infamous
in history. In what way, however, he lost the affections of the army, has
never been explained. His mother, Sooemias, the eldest daughter of Moesa,
had represented herself as the concubine of Caracalla; and Heliogabalus,
being thus accredited as the son of that emperor, whose memory was dear to
the soldiery, had enjoyed the full benefit of that descent, nor can it be
readily explained how he came to lose it.

Here, in fact, we meet with an instance of that dilemma which is so
constantly occurring in the history of the Caesars. If a prince is by
temperament disposed to severity of manners, and naturally seeks to
impress his own spirit upon the composition and discipline of the army, we
are sure to find that he was cut off in his attempts by private
assassination or by public rebellion. On the other hand, if he wallows in
sensuality, and is careless about all discipline, civil or military, we
then find as commonly that he loses the esteem and affections of the army
to some rival of severer habits. And in the midst of such oscillations,
and with examples of such contradictory interpretation, we cannot wonder
that the Roman princes did not oftener take warning by the misfortunes of
their predecessors. In the present instance, Alexander, the cousin of
Heliogabalus, without intrigues of his own, and simply (as it appears) by
the purity and sobriety of his conduct, had alienated the affections of
the army from the reigning prince. Either jealousy or prudence had led
Heliogabalus to make an attempt upon his rival's life; and this attempt
had nearly cost him his own through the mutiny which it caused. In a
second uproar, produced by some fresh intrigues of the emperor against his
cousin, the soldiers became unmanageable, and they refused to pause until
they had massacred Heliogabalus, together with his mother, and raised his
cousin Alexander to the throne.

The reforms of this prince, who reigned under the name of Alexander
Severus, were extensive and searching; not only in his court, which he
purged of all notorious abuses, but throughout the economy of the army. He
cashiered, upon one occasion, an entire legion: he restored, as far as he
was able, the ancient discipline; and, above all, he liberated the
provinces from military spoliation. "Let the soldier," said he, "be
contented with his pay; and whatever more he wants, let him obtain it by
victory from the enemy, not by pillage from his fellow-subject." But
whatever might be the value or extent of his reforms in the marching
regiments, Alexander could not succeed in binding the praetorian guards to
his yoke. Under the guardianship of his mother Mammaea, the conduct of
state affairs had been submitted to a council of sixteen persons, at the
head of which stood the celebrated Ulpian. To this minister the praetorians
imputed the reforms, and perhaps the whole spirit of reform; for they
pursued him with a vengeance which is else hardly to be explained. Many
days was Ulpian protected by the citizens of Rome, until the whole city
was threatened with conflagration; he then fled to the palace of the young
emperor, who in vain attempted to save him from his pursuers under the
shelter of the imperial purple. Ulpian was murdered before his eyes; nor
was it found possible to punish the ringleader in this foul conspiracy,
until he had been removed by something like treachery to a remote
government.

Meantime, a great revolution and change of dynasty had been effected in
Parthia; the line of the Arsacidae was terminated; the Parthian empire was
at an end; and the sceptre of Persia was restored under the new race of
the Sassanides. Artaxerxes, the first prince of this race, sent an embassy
of four hundred select knights, enjoining the Roman emperor to content
himself with Europe, and to leave Asia to the Persians. In the event of a
refusal, the ambassadors were instructed to offer a defiance to the Roman
prince. Upon such an insult, Alexander could not do less, with either
safety or dignity, than prepare for war. It is probable, indeed, that, by
this expedition, which drew off the minds of the soldiery from brooding
upon the reforms which offended them, the life of Alexander was prolonged.
But the expedition itself was mismanaged, or was unfortunate. This result,
however, does not seem chargeable upon Alexander. All the preparations
were admirable on the march, and up to the enemy's frontier. The invasion
it was, which, in a strategic sense, seems to have been ill combined.
Three armies were to have entered Persia simultaneously: one of these,
which was destined to act on a flank of the general line, entangled itself
in the marshy grounds near Babylon, and was cut off by the archery of an
enemy whom it could not reach. The other wing, acting upon ground
impracticable for the manoeuvres of the Persian cavalry, and supported by
Chosroes the king of Armenia, gave great trouble to Artaxerxes, and, with
adequate support from the other armies, would doubtless have been
victorious. But the central army, under the conduct of Alexander in
person, discouraged by the destruction of one entire wing, remained
stationary in Mesopotamia throughout the summer, and, at the close of the
campaign, was withdrawn to Antioch, _re infecta_. It has been observed
that great mystery hangs over the operations and issue of this short war.
Thus much, however, is evident, that nothing but the previous exhaustion
of the Persian king saved the Roman armies from signal discomfiture; and
even thus there is no ground for claiming a victory (as most historians
do) to the Roman arms. Any termination of the Persian war, however,
whether glorious or not, was likely to be personally injurious to
Alexander, by allowing leisure to the soldiery for recurring to their
grievances. Sensible, no doubt, of this, Alexander was gratified by the
occasion which then arose for repressing the hostile movements of the
Germans. He led his army off upon this expedition; but their temper was
gloomy and threatening; and at length, after reaching the seat of war, at
Mentz, an open mutiny broke out under the guidance of Maximin, which
terminated in the murder of the emperor and his mother. By Herodian the
discontents of the army are referred to the ill management of the Persian
campaign, and the unpromising commencement of the new war in Germany. But
it seems probable that a dissolute and wicked army, like that of
Alexander, had not murmured under the too little, but the too much of
military service; not the buying a truce with gold seems to have offended
them, but the having led them at all upon an enterprise of danger and
hardship.

Maximin succeeded, whose feats of strength, when he first courted the
notice of the Emperor Severus, have been described by Gibbon. He was at
that period a Thracian peasant; since then he had risen gradually to high
offices; but, according to historians, he retained his Thracian brutality
to the last. That may have been true; but one remark must be made upon
this occasion: Maximin was especially opposed to the senate; and, wherever
that was the case, no justice was done to an emperor. Why it was that
Maximin would not ask for the confirmation of his election from the
senate, has never been explained; it is said that he anticipated a
rejection. But, on the other hand, it seems probable that the senate
supposed its sanction to be despised. Nothing, apparently, but this
reciprocal reserve in making approaches to each other, was the cause of
all the bloodshed which followed. The two Gordians, who commanded in
Africa, were set up by the senate against the new emperor; and the
consternation of that body must have been great, when these champions were
immediately overthrown and killed. They did not, however, despair:
substituting the two governors of Rome, Pupienus and Balbinus, and
associating to them the younger Gordian, they resolved to make a stand;
for the severities of Maximin had by this time manifested that it was a
contest of extermination. Meantime, Maximin had broken up from Sirmium,
the capital of Pannonia, and had advanced to Aquileia,--that famous
fortress, which in every invasion of Italy was the first object of attack.
The senate had set a price upon his head; but there was every probability
that he would have triumphed, had he not disgusted his army by immoderate
severities. It was, however, but reasonable that those, who would not
support the strict but equitable discipline of the mild Alexander, should
suffer under the barbarous and capricious rigor of Maximin. That rigor was
his ruin: sunk and degraded as the senate was, and now but the shadow of a
mighty name, it was found on this occasion to have long arms when
supported by the frenzy of its opponent. Whatever might be the real
weakness of this body, the rude soldiers yet felt a blind traditionary
veneration for its sanction, when prompting them as patriots to an act
which their own multiplied provocations had but too much recommended to
their passions. A party entered the tent of Maximin, and dispatched him
with the same unpitying haste which he had shown under similar
circumstances to the gentle-minded Alexander. Aquileia opened her gates
immediately, and thus made it evident that the war had been personal to
Maximin.

A scene followed within a short time which is in the highest degree
interesting. The senate, in creating two emperors at once (for the boy
Gordian was probably associated to them only by way of masking their
experiment), had made it evident that their purpose was to restore the
republic and its two consuls. This was their meaning; and the experiment
had now been twice repeated. The army saw through it: as to the double
number of emperors, _that_ was of little consequence, farther than as
it expressed their intention, viz. by bringing back the consular
government, to restore the power of the senate, and to abrogate that of
the army. The praetorian troops, who were the most deeply interested in
preventing this revolution, watched their opportunity, and attacked the
two emperors in the palace. The deadly feud, which had already arisen
between them, led each to suppose himself under assault from the other.
The mistake was not of long duration. Carried into the streets of Rome,
they were both put to death, and treated with monstrous indignities. The
young Gordian was adopted by the soldiery. It seems odd that even thus far
the guards should sanction the choice of the senate, having the purposes
which they had; but perhaps Gordian had recommended himself to their favor
in a degree which might outweigh what they considered the original vice of
his appointment, and his youth promised them an immediate impunity. This
prince, however, like so many of his predecessors, soon came to an unhappy
end. Under the guardianship of the upright Misitheus, for a time he
prospered; and preparations were made upon a great scale for the energetic
administration of a Persian war. But Misitheus died, perhaps by poison, in
the course of the campaign; and to him succeeded, as praetorian prefect, an
Arabian officer, called Philip. The innocent boy, left without friends,
was soon removed by murder; and a monument was afterwards erected to his
memory, at the junction of the Aboras and the Euphrates. Great obscurity,
however, clouds this part of history; nor is it so much as known in what
way the Persian war was conducted or terminated.

Philip, having made himself emperor, celebrated, upon his arrival in Rome,
the secular games, in the year 247 of the Christian era--that being the
completion of a thousand years from the foundation of Rome. But Nemesis
was already on his steps. An insurrection had broken out amongst the
legions stationed in Moesia; and they had raised to the purple some officer
of low rank. Philip, having occasion to notice this affair in the senate,
received for answer from Decius, that probably the pseudo-imperator would
prove a mere evanescent phantom. This conjecture was confirmed; and Philip
in consequence conceived a high opinion of Decius, whom (as the
insurrection still continued) he judged to be the fittest man for
appeasing it. Decius accordingly went, armed with the proper authority.
But on his arrival, he found himself compelled by the insurgent army to
choose between empire and death. Thus constrained, he yielded to the
wishes of the troops; and then hastening with a veteran army into Italy,
he fought the battle of Verona, where Philip was defeated and killed,
whilst the son of Philip was murdered at Rome by the praetorian guards.

With Philip ends, according to our distribution, the second series of the
Caesars, comprehending Commodus, Pertinax, Didius Julianus, Septimius
Severus, Caracalla, and Geta, Macrinus, Heliogabalus, Alexander Severus,
Maximin, the two Gordians, Pupienus and Balbinus, the third Gordian, and
Philip the Arab.

In looking back at this series of Caesars, we are horror-struck at the
blood-stained picture. Well might a foreign writer, in reviewing the same
succession, declare, that it is like passing into a new world when the
transition is made from this chapter of the human history to that of
modern Europe. From Commodus to Decius are sixteen names, which, spread
through a space of 59 years, assign to each Caesar a reign of less than
four years. And Casaubon remarks, that, in one period of 160 years, there
were 70 persons who assumed the Roman purple; which gives to each not much
more than two years. On the other hand, in the history of France, we find
that, through a period of 1200 years, there have been no more than 64
kings: upon an average, therefore, each king appears to have enjoyed a
reign of nearly nineteen years. This vast difference in security is due to
two great principles,--that of primogeniture as between son and son, and
of hereditary succession as between a son and every other pretender. Well
may we hail the principle of hereditary right as realizing the praise of
Burke applied to chivalry, viz., that it is "the cheap defence of
nations;" for the security which is thus obtained, be it recollected, does
not regard a small succession of princes, but the whole rights and
interests of social man: since the contests for the rights of belligerent
rivals do not respect themselves only, but very often spread ruin and
proscription amongst all orders of men. The principle of hereditary
succession, says one writer, had it been a discovery of any one
individual, would deserve to be considered as the very greatest ever made;
and he adds acutely, in answer to the obvious, but shallow objection to it
(viz. its apparent assumption of equal ability for reigning in father and
son for ever), that it is like the Copernican system of the heavenly
bodies,--contradictory to our sense and first impressions, but true
notwithstanding.

CHAPTER VI.

To return, however, to our sketch of the Caesars--at the head of the third
series we place Decius. He came to the throne at a moment of great public
embarrassment. The Goths were now beginning to press southwards upon the
empire. Dacia they had ravaged for some time; "and here," says a German
writer, "observe the shortsightedness of the Emperor Trajan." Had he left
the Dacians in possession of their independence, they would, under their
native kings, have made head against the Goths. But, being compelled to
assume the character of Roman citizens, they had lost their warlike
qualities. From Dacia the Goths had descended upon Moesia; and, passing
the Danube, they laid siege to Marcianopolis, a city built by Trajan in
honor of his sister. The inhabitants paid a heavy ransom for their town;
and the Goths were persuaded for the present to return home. But sooner
than was expected, they returned to Moesia, under their king, Kniva; and
they were already engaged in the siege of Nicopolis, when Decius came in
sight at the head of the Roman army. The Goths retired, but it was to
Thrace; and, in the conquest of Philippopolis, they found an ample
indemnity for their forced retreat and disappointment. Decius pursued, but
the king of the Goths turned suddenly upon him; the emperor was obliged to
fly; the Roman camp was plundered; Philippopolis was taken by storm; and
its whole population, reputed at more than a hundred thousand souls,
destroyed.

Such was the first great irruption of the barbarians into the Roman
territory: and panic was diffused on the wings of the winds over the whole
empire. Decius, however, was firm, and made prodigious efforts to restore
the balance of power to its ancient condition. For the moment he had some
partial successes. He cut off several detachments of Goths, on their road
to reinforce the enemy; and he strengthened the fortresses and garrisons
of the Danube. But his last success was the means of his total ruin. He
came up with the Goths at Forum Terebronii, and, having surrounded their
position, their destruction seemed inevitable. A great battle ensued, and
a mighty victory to the Goths. Nothing is now known of the circumstances,
except that the third line of the Romans was entangled inextricably in a
morass (as had happened in the Persian expedition of Alexander). Decius
perished on this occasion--nor was it possible to find his dead body. This
great defeat naturally raised the authority of the senate, in the same
proportion as it depressed that of the army; and by the will of that body,
Hostilianus, a son of Decius, was raised to the empire; and ostensibly on
account of his youth, but really with a view to their standing policy of
restoring the consulate, and the whole machinery of the republic, Gallus,
an experienced commander, was associated in the empire. But no skill or
experience could avail to retrieve the sinking power of Rome upon the
Illyrian, frontier. The Roman army was disorganized, panic-stricken,
reduced to skeleton battalions. Without an army, what could be done? And
thus it may really have been no blame to Gallus, that he made a treaty
with the Goths more degrading than any previous act in the long annals of
Rome. By the terms of this infamous bargain, they were allowed to carry
off an immense booty, amongst which was a long roll of distinguished
prisoners; and Caesar himself it was--not any lieutenant or agent that
might have been afterwards disavowed--who volunteered to purchase their
future absence by an annual tribute. The very army which had brought their
emperor into the necessity of submitting to such abject concessions, were
the first to be offended with this natural result of their own failures.
Gallus was already ruined in public opinion, when further accumulations
arose to his disgrace. It was now supposed to have been discovered, that
the late dreadful defeat of Forum Terebronii was due to his bad advice;
and, as the young Hostilianus happened to die about this time of a
contagious disorder, Gallus was charged with his murder. Even a ray of
prosperity, which just now gleamed upon the Roman arms, aggravated the
disgrace of Gallus, and was instantly made the handle of his ruin.
AEmilianus, the governor of Moesia and Pannonia, inflicted some check or
defeat upon the Goths; and in the enthusiasm of sudden pride, upon an
occasion which contrasted so advantageously for himself with the military
conduct of Decius and Gallus, the soldiers of his own legion raised
AEmilianus to the purple. No time was to be lost. Summoned by the troops,
AEmilianus marched into Italy; and no sooner had he made his appearance
there, than the praetorian guards murdered the Emperor Gallus and his son
Volusianus, by way of confirming the election of AEmilianus. The new
emperor offered to secure the frontiers, both in the east and on the
Danube, from the incursions of the barbarians. This offer may be regarded
as thrown out for the conciliation of all classes in the empire. But to
the senate in particular he addressed a message, which forcibly
illustrates the political position of that body in those times. AEmilianus
proposed to resign the whole civil administration into the hands of the
senate, reserving to himself only the unenviable burthen of the military
interests. His hope was, that in this way making himself in part the
creation of the senate, he might strengthen his title against competitors
at Rome, whilst the entire military administration going on under his own
eyes, exclusively directed to that one object, would give him some chance
of defeating the hasty and tumultuary competitions so apt to arise amongst
the legions upon the frontier. We notice the transaction chiefly as
indicating the anomalous situation of the senate. Without power in a
proper sense, or no more, however, than the indirect power of wealth, that
ancient body retained an immense _auctoritas_--that is, an influence
built upon ancient reputation, which, in their case, had the strength of a
religious superstition in all Italian minds. This influence the senators
exerted with effect, whenever the course of events had happened to reduce
the power of the army. And never did they make a more continuous and
sustained effort for retrieving their ancient power and place, together
with the whole system of the republic, than during the period at which we
are now arrived. From the time of Maximin, in fact, to the accession of
Aurelian, the senate perpetually interposed their credit and authority,
like some _Deus ex machina_ in the dramatic art. And if this one fact
were all that had survived of the public annals at this period, we might
sufficiently collect the situation of the two other parties in the empire
--the army and the imperator; the weakness and precarious tenure of the
one, and the anarchy of the other. And hence it is that we can explain the
hatred borne to the senate by vigorous emperors, such as Aurelian,
succeeding to a long course of weak and troubled reigns. Such an emperor
presumed in the senate, and not without reason, that same spirit of
domineering interference as ready to manifest itself, upon any opportunity
offered, against himself, which, in his earlier days, he had witnessed so
repeatedly in successful operation upon the fates and prospects of others.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16