G. E. Wyatt - "Archie's Mistake"

Everett McNeil - "The Cave of Gold"

Christian Fuerchtegott Gellert - "Fabeln und Erzaehlungen"

Alexandre Dumas père - "The Queen's Necklace"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

The Caesars

T >> Thomas de Quincey >> The Caesars




It is a circumstance, moreover, to be noticed in the aspect of the Roman
monarchy at this period, that the pressure of the evils we are now
considering, applied to this particular age of the empire beyond all
others, as being an age of transition from a greater to an inferior power.
Had the power been either greater or conspicuously less, in that
proportion would the pressure have been easier, or none at all. Being
greater, for example, the danger would have been repelled to a distance so
great that mere remoteness would have disarmed its terrors, or otherwise
it would have been violently overawed. Being less, on the other hand, and
less in an eminent degree, it would have disposed all parties, as it did
at an after period, to regular and formal compromises in the shape of
fixed annual tributes. At present the policy of the barbarians along the
vast line of the northern frontier, was, to tease and irritate the
provinces which they were not entirely able, or prudentially unwilling, to
dismember. Yet, as the almost annual irruptions were at every instant
ready to be converted into _coup-de-mains_ upon Aquileia--upon
Verona--or even upon Rome itself, unless vigorously curbed at the outset,
--each emperor at this period found himself under the necessity of
standing in the attitude of a champion or propugnator on the frontier line
of his territory--ready for all comers--and with a pretty certain prospect
of having one pitched battle at the least to fight in every successive
summer. There were nations abroad at this epoch in Europe who did not
migrate occasionally, or occasionally project themselves upon the
civilized portion of the globe, but who made it their steady regular
occupation to do so, and lived for no other purpose. For seven hundred
years the Roman Republic might be styled a republic militant: for about
one century further it was an empire triumphant; and now, long retrograde,
it had reached that point at which again, but in a different sense, it
might be styled an empire militant. Originally it had militated for glory
and power; now its militancy was for mere existence. War was again the
trade of Rome, as it had been once before: but in that earlier period war
had been its highest glory now it was its dire necessity.

Under this analysis of the Roman condition, need we wonder, with the crowd
of unreflecting historians, that the senate, at the era of Aurelian's
death, should dispute amongst each other--not, as once, for the possession
of the sacred purple, but for the luxury and safety of declining it? The
sad pre-eminence was finally imposed upon Tacitus, a senator who traced
his descent from the historian of that name, who had reached an age of
seventy--five years, and who possessed a fortune of three millions
sterling. Vainly did the agitated old senator open his lips to decline the
perilous honor; five hundred voices insisted upon the necessity of his
compliance; and thus, as a foreign writer observes, was the descendant of
him, whose glory it had been to signalize himself as the hater of
despotism, under the absolute necessity of becoming, in his own person, a
despot.

The aged senator then was compelled to be emperor, and forced, in spite of
his vehement reluctance, to quit the comforts of a palace, which he was
never to revisit, for the hardships of a distant camp. His first act was
strikingly illustrative of the Roman condition, as we have just described
it. Aurelian had attempted to disarm one set of enemies by turning the
current of their fury upon another. The Alani were in search of plunder,
and strongly disposed to obtain it from Roman provinces. "But no," said
Aurelian; "if you do that, I shall unchain my legions upon you. Be better
advised: keep those excellent dispositions of mind, and that admirable
taste for plunder, until you come whither I will conduct you. Then
discharge your fury, and welcome; besides which, I will pay you wages for
your immediate abstinence; and on the other side the Euphrates you shall
pay yourselves." Such was the outline of the contract; and the Alans had
accordingly held themselves in readiness to accompany Aurelian from Europe
to his meditated Persian campaign. Meantime, that emperor had perished by
treason; and the Alani were still waiting for his successor on the throne
to complete his engagements with themselves, as being of necessity the
successor also to his wars and to his responsibilities. It happened, from
the state of the empire, as we have sketched it above, that Tacitus really
_did_ succeed to the military plans of Aurelian. The Persian expedition
was ordained to go forward; and Tacitus began, as a preliminary step in
that expedition, to look about for his good allies the barbarians. Where
might they be, and how employed? Naturally, they had long been weary of
waiting. The Persian booty might be good after _its_ kind; but it was far
away; and, _en attendant_, Roman booty was doubtless good after _its_
kind. And so, throughout the provinces of Cappadocia, Pontus, &c., far as
the eye could stretch, nothing was to be seen but cities and villages in
flames. The Roman army hungered and thirsted to be unmuzzled and slipped
upon these false friends. But this, for the present, Tacitus would not
allow. He began by punctually fulfilling all the terms of Aurelian's
contract,--a measure which barbarians inevitably construed into the
language of fear. But then came the retribution. Having satisfied public
justice, the emperor now thought of vengeance: he unchained his legions: a
brief space of time sufficed for a long course of vengeance: and through
every outlet of Asia Minor the Alani fled from the wrath of the Roman
soldier. Here, however, terminated the military labors of Tacitus: he died
at Tyana in Cappadocia, as some say, from the effects of the climate of
the Caucasus, co-operating with irritations from the insolence of the
soldiery; but, as Zosimus and Zonaras expressly assure us, under the
murderous hands of his own troops. His brother Florianus at first usurped
the purple, by the aid of the Illyrian army; but the choice of other
armies, afterwards confirmed by the senate, settled upon Probus, a general
already celebrated under Aurelian. The two competitors drew near to each
other for the usual decision by the sword, when the dastardly supporters
of Florian offered up their chosen prince as a sacrifice to his
antagonist. Probus, settled in his seat, addressed himself to the regular
business of those times,--to the reduction of insurgent provinces, and the
liberation of others from hostile molestations. Isauria and Egypt he
visited in the character of a conqueror, Gaul in the character of a
deliverer. From the Gaulish provinces he chased in succession the Franks,
the Burgundians, and the Lygians. He pursued the intruders far into their
German thickets; and nine of the native German princes came spontaneously
into his camp, subscribed such conditions as he thought fit to dictate,
and complied with his requisitions of tribute in horses and provisions.
This, however, is a delusive gleam of Roman energy, little corresponding
with the true condition of the Roman power, and entirely due to the
_personal_ qualities of Probus. Probus himself showed his sense of the
true state of affairs, by carrying a stone wall, of considerable height,
from the Danube to the Neckar. He made various attempts also to effect a
better distribution of barbarous tribes, by dislocating their settlements,
and making extensive translations of their clans, according to the
circumstances of those times. These arrangements, however, suggested often
by short-sighted views, and carried into effect by mere violence, were
sometimes defeated visibly at the time, and, doubtless, in very few cases
accomplished the ends proposed. In one instance, where a party of Franks
had been transported into the Asiatic province of Pontus, as a column of
defence against the intrusive Alans, being determined to revisit their own
country, they swam the Hellespont, landed on the coasts of Asia Minor and
of Greece, plundered Syracuse, steered for the Straits of Gibraltar,
sailed along the shores of Spain and Gaul, passing finally through the
English Channel and the German Ocean, right onwards to the Frisic and
Batavian coasts, where they exultingly rejoined their exulting friends.
Meantime, all the energy and military skill of Probus could not save him
from the competition of various rivals. Indeed, it must then have been
felt, as by us who look back on those times it is now felt, that, amidst
so continued a series of brief reigns, interrupted by murders, scarcely
any idea could arise answering to our modern ideas of treason and
usurpation. For the ideas of fealty and allegiance, as to a sacred and
anointed monarch, could have no time to take root. Candidates for the
purple must have been viewed rather as military rivals than as traitors to
the reigning Caesar. And hence one reason for the slight resistance which
was often experienced by the seducers of armies. Probus, however, as
accident in his case ordered it, subdued all his personal opponents,--
Saturninus in the East, Proculus and Bonoses in Gaul. For these victories
he triumphed in the year 281. But his last hour was even then at hand. One
point of his military discipline, which he brought back from elder days,
was, to suffer no idleness in his camps. He it was who, by military labor,
transferred to Gaul and to Hungary the Italian vine, to the great
indignation of the Italian monopolist. The culture of vineyards, the
laying of military roads, the draining of marshes, and similar labors,
perpetually employed the hands of his stubborn and contumacious troops. On
some work of this nature the army happened to be employed near Sirmium,
and Probus was looking on from a tower, when a sudden frenzy of
disobedience seized upon the men: a party of the mutineers ran up to the
emperor, and with a hundred wounds laid him instantly dead. We are told by
some writers that the army was immediately seized with remorse for its own
act; which, if truly reported, rather tends to confirm the image,
otherwise impressed upon us, of the relations between the army and Caesar
as pretty closely corresponding with those between some fierce wild beast
and its keeper; the keeper, if not uniformly vigilant as an Argus, is
continually liable to fall a sacrifice to the wild instincts of the brute,
mastering at intervals the reverence and fear under which it has been
habitually trained. In this case, both the murdering impulse and the
remorse seem alike the effects of a brute instinct, and to have arisen
under no guidance of rational purpose or reflection. The person who
profited by this murder was Carus, the captain of the guard, a man of
advanced years, and a soldier, both by experience and by his propensities.
He was proclaimed emperor by the army; and on this occasion there was no
further reference to the senate, than by a dry statement of the facts for
its information. Troubling himself little about the approbation of a body
not likely in any way to affect his purposes (which were purely martial,
and adapted to the tumultuous state of the empire), Carus made immediate
preparations for pursuing the Persian expedition,--so long promised, and
so often interrupted. Having provided for the security of the Illyrian
frontier by a bloody victory over the Sarmatians, of whom we now hear for
the first time, Carus advanced towards the Euphrates; and from the summit
of a mountain he pointed the eyes of his eager army upon the rich
provinces of the Persian empire. Varanes, the successor of Artaxerxes,
vainly endeavored to negotiate a peace. From some unknown cause, the
Persian armies were not at this juncture disposable against Carus: it has
been conjectured by some writers that they were engaged in an Indian war.
Carus, it is certain, met with little resistance. He insisted on having
the Roman supremacy acknowledged as a preliminary to any treaty; and,
having threatened to make Persia as bare as his own skull, he is supposed
to have kept his word with regard to Mesopotamia. The great cities of
Ctesiphon and Seleucia he took; and vast expectations were formed at Rome
of the events which stood next in succession, when, on Christmas day, 283,
a sudden and mysterious end overtook Carus and his victorious advance. The
story transmitted to Rome was, that a great storm, and a sudden darkness,
had surprised the camp of Carus; that the emperor, previously ill, and
reposing in his tent, was obscured from sight; that at length a cry had
arisen,--"The emperor is dead!" and that, at the same moment, the imperial
tent had taken fire. The fire was traced to the confusion of his
attendants; and this confusion was imputed by themselves to grief for
their master's death. In all this it is easy to read pretty
circumstantially a murder committed on the emperor by corrupted servants,
and an attempt afterwards to conceal the indications of murder by the
ravages of fire. The report propagated through the army, and at that time
received with credit, was, that Carus had been struck by lightning: and
that omen, according to the Roman interpretation, implied a necessity of
retiring from the expedition. So that, apparently, the whole was a bloody
intrigue, set on foot for the purpose of counteracting the emperor's
resolution to prosecute the war. His son Numerian succeeded to the rank of
emperor by the choice of the army. But the mysterious faction of murderers
were still at work. After eight months' march from the Tigris to the
Thracian Bosphorus, the army halted at Chalcedon. At this point of time a
report arose suddenly, that the Emperor Numerian was dead. The impatience
of the soldiery would brook no uncertainty: they rushed to the spot;
satisfied themselves of the fact; and, loudly denouncing as the murderer
Aper, the captain of the guard, committed him to custody, and assigned to
Dioclesian, whom at the same time they invested with the supreme power,
the duty of investigating the case. Dioclesian acquitted himself of this
task in a very summary way, by passing his sword through the captain
before he could say a word in his defence. It seems that Dioclesian,
having been promised the empire by a prophetess as soon as he should have
killed a wild boar [Aper], was anxious to realize the omen. The whole
proceeding has been taxed with injustice so manifest, as not even to seek
a disguise. Meantime, it should be remembered that, _first,_ Aper, as the
captain of the guard, was answerable for the emperor's safety; _secondly,_
that his anxiety to profit by the emperor's murder was a sure sign that he
had participated in that act; and, _thirdly,_ that the assent of the
soldiery to the open and public act of Dioclesian, implies a conviction on
their part of Aper's guilt. Here let us pause, having now arrived at the
fourth and last group of the Caesars, to notice the changes which had been
wrought by time, co-operating with political events, in the very nature
and constitution of the imperial office.

If it should unfortunately happen, that the palace of the Vatican, with
its thirteen thousand [Footnote: "_Thirteen thousand chambers_."--The
number of the chambers in this prodigious palace is usually estimated at
that amount. But Lady Miller, who made particular inquiries on this
subject, ascertained that the total amount, including cellars and closets,
capable of receiving a bed, was fifteen thousand.] chambers, were to take
fire--for a considerable space of time the fire would be retarded by the
mere enormity of extent which it would have to traverse. But there would
come at length a critical moment, at which the maximum of the retarding
effect having been attained, the bulk and volume of the flaming mass would
thenceforward assist the flames in the rapidity of their progress. Such
was the effect upon the declension of the Roman empire from the vast
extent of its territory. For a very long period that very extent, which
finally became the overwhelming cause of its ruin, served to retard and to
disguise it. A small encroachment, made at any one point upon the
integrity of the empire, was neither much regarded at Rome, nor perhaps in
and for itself much deserved to be regarded. But a very narrow belt of
encroachments, made upon almost every part of so enormous a circumference,
was sufficient of itself to compose something of an antagonist force. And
to these external dilapidations, we must add the far more important
dilapidations from within, affecting all the institutions of the State,
and all the forces, whether moral or political, which had originally
raised it or maintained it. Causes which had been latent in the public
arrangements ever since the time of Augustus, and had been silently
preying upon its vitals, had now reached a height which would no longer
brook concealment. The fire which had smouldered through generations had
broken out at length into an open conflagration. Uproar and disorder, and
the anarchy of a superannuated empire, strong only to punish and impotent
to defend, were at this time convulsing the provinces in every point of
the compass. Rome herself had been menaced repeatedly. And a still more
awful indication of the coming storm had been felt far to the south of
Rome. One long wave of the great German deluge had stretched beyond the
Pyrenees and the Pillars of Hercules, to the very soil of ancient
Carthage. Victorious banners were already floating on the margin of the
Great Desert, and they were not the banners of Caesar. Some vigorous hand
was demanded at this moment, or else the funeral knell of Rome was on the
point of sounding. Indeed, there is every reason to believe that, had the
imbecile Carinus (the brother of Numerian) succeeded to the command of the
Roman armies at this time, or any other than Dioclesian, the empire of the
west would have fallen to pieces within the next ten years.

Dioclesian was doubtless that man of iron whom the times demanded; and a
foreign writer has gone so far as to class him amongst the greatest of
men, if he were not even himself the greatest. But the position of
Dioclesian was remarkable beyond all precedent, and was alone sufficient
to prevent his being the greatest of men, by making it necessary that he
should be the most selfish. For the case stood thus: If Rome were in
danger, much more so was Caesar. If the condition of the empire were such
that hardly any energy or any foresight was adequate to its defence, for
the emperor, on the other hand, there was scarcely a possibility that he
should escape destruction. The chances were in an overbalance against the
empire; but for the emperor there was no chance at all. He shared in all
the hazards of the empire; and had others so peculiarly pointed at
himself, that his assassination was now become as much a matter of certain
calculation, as seed-time or harvest, summer or winter, or any other
revolution of the seasons. The problem, therefore, for Dioclesian was a
double one,--so to provide for the defence and maintenance of the empire,
as simultaneously (and, if possible, through the very same institution) to
provide for the personal security of Caesar. This problem he solved, in
some imperfect degree, by the only expedient perhaps open to him in that
despotism, and in those times. But it is remarkable, that, by the
revolution which he effected, the office of Roman Imperator was completely
altered, and Caesar became henceforwards an Oriental Sultan or Padishah.
Augustus, when moulding for his future purposes the form and constitution
of that supremacy which he had obtained by inheritance and by arms,
proceeded with so much caution and prudence, that even the style and title
of his office was discussed in council as a matter of the first moment.
The principle of his policy was to absorb into his own functions all those
offices which conferred any real power to balance or to control his own.
For this reason he appropriated the tribunitian power; because that was a
popular and representative office, which, as occasions arose, would have
given some opening to democratic influences. But the consular office he
left untouched; because all its power was transferred to the imperator, by
the entire command of the army, and by the new organization of the
provincial governments. [Footnote: In no point of his policy was the
cunning or the sagacity of Augustus so much displayed, as in his treaty of
partition with the senate, which settled the distribution of the
provinces, and their future administration. Seeming to take upon himself
all the trouble and hazard, he did in effect appropriate all the power,
and left to the senate little more than trophies of show and ornament. As
a first step, all the greater provinces, as Spain and Gaul, were
subdivided into many smaller ones. This done, Augustus proposed that the
senate should preside over the administration of those amongst them which
were peaceably settled, and which paid a regular tribute; whilst all those
which were the seats of danger,--either as being exposed to hostile
inroads, or to internal commotions,--all, therefore, in fact, _which
could justify the keeping up of a military force,_ he assigned to
himself. In virtue of this arrangement, the senate possessed in Africa
those provinces which had been formed out of Carthage, Cyrene, and the
kingdom of Numidia; in Europe, the richest and most quiet part of Spain
_(Hispania Baetica),_ with the large islands of Sicily, Sardinia,
Corsica, and Crete, and some districts of Greece; in Asia, the kingdoms of
Pontus and Bithynia, with that part of Asia Minor technically called Asia;
whilst, for his own share, Augustus retained Gaul, Syria, the chief part
of Spain, and Egypt, the granary of Rome; finally, all the military posts
on the Euphrates, on the Danube, or the Rhine.

Yet even the showy concessions here made to the senate were defeated by
another political institution, settled at the same time. It had been
agreed that the governors of provinces should be appointed by the emperor
and the senate jointly. But within the senatorian jurisdiction, these
governors, with the title of _Proconsuls,_ were to have no military
power whatsoever; and the appointments were good only for a single year.
Whereas, in the imperatorial provinces, where the governor bore the title
of _Propraetor,_ there was provision made for a military establishment; and
as to duration, the office was regulated entirely by the emperor's
pleasure. One other ordinance, on the same head, riveted the vassalage of
the senate. Hitherto, a great source of the senate's power had been found
in the uncontrolled management of the provincial revenues; but at this
time, Augustus so arranged that branch of the administration, that,
throughout the senatorian or proconsular provinces, all taxes were
immediately paid into the _ararium_, or treasury of the state; whilst the
whole revenues of the propraetorian (or imperatorial) provinces, from this
time forward, flowed into the _fiscus_, or private treasure of the
individual emperor.] And in all the rest of his arrangements, Augustus had
proceeded on the principle of leaving as many openings to civic
influences, and impressing upon all his institutions as much of the old
Roman character, as was compatible with the real and substantial supremacy
established in the person of the emperor. Neither is it at all certain, as
regarded even this aspect of the imperatorial office, that Augustus had
the purpose, or so much as the wish, to annihilate all collateral power,
and to invest the chief magistrate with absolute irresponsibility. For
himself, as called upon to restore a shattered government, and out of the
anarchy of civil wars to recombine the elements of power into some shape
better fitted for duration (and, by consequence, for insuring peace and
protection to the world) than the extinct republic, it might be reasonable
to seek such an irresponsibility. But, as regarded his successors,
considering the great pains he took to discourage all manifestations of
princely arrogance, and to develop, by education and example, the civic
virtues of patriotism and affability in their whole bearing towards the
people of Rome, there is reason to presume that he wished to remove them
from popular control, without, therefore, removing them from popular
influence.

Hence it was, and from this original precedent of Augustus, aided by the
constitution which he had given to the office of imperator, that up to the
era of Dioclesian, no prince had dared utterly to neglect the senate, or
the people of Rome. He might hate the senate, like Severus, or Aurelian;
he might even meditate their extermination, like the brutal Maximin. But
this arose from any cause rather than from contempt. He hated them
precisely because he feared them, or because he paid them an involuntary
tribute of superstitious reverence, or because the malice of a tyrant
interpreted into a sort of treason the rival influence of the senate over
the minds of men. But, before Dioclesian, the undervaluing of the senate,
or the harshest treatment of that body, had arisen from views which were
_personal_ to the individual Caesar. It was now made to arise from the
very constitution of the office, and the mode of the appointment. To
defend the empire, it was the opinion of Dioclesian that a single emperor
was not sufficient. And it struck him, at the same time, that by the very
institution of a plurality of emperors, which was now destined to secure
the integrity of the empire, ample provision might be made for the
personal security of each emperor. He carried his plan into immediate
execution, by appointing an associate to his own rank of Augustus in the
person of Maximian--an experienced general; whilst each of them in effect
multiplied his own office still farther by severally appointing a Caesar,
or hereditary prince. And thus the very same partition of the public
authority, by means of a duality of emperors, to which the senate had
often resorted of late, as the best means of restoring their own
republican aristocracy, was now adopted by Dioclesian as the simplest
engine for overthrowing finally the power of either senate or army to
interfere with the elective privilege. This he endeavored to centre in the
existing emperors; and, at the same moment, to discourage treason or
usurpation generally, whether in the party choosing or the party chosen,
by securing to each emperor, in the case of his own assassination, an
avenger in the person of his surviving associate, as also in the persons
of the two Caesars, or adopted heirs and lieutenants. The associate
emperor, Maximian, together with the two Caesars--Galerius appointed by
himself, and Constantius Chlorus by Maximian--were all bound to himself by
ties of gratitude; all owing their stations ultimately to his own favor.
And these ties he endeavored to strengthen by other ties of affinity; each
of the Augusti having given his daughter in marriage to his own adopted
Caesar. And thus it seemed scarcely possible that a usurpation should be
successful against so firm a league of friends and relations.

Copyright (c) 2007. topboookz.com. All rights reserved.