William Jackson Brodribb and Walter Besant

“ The empire was supposed to be immensely rich, but wild extravagance in the court and capital and an ill-administered financial system had made it poor. We are told that the wealthy nobles and citizens had to sell their wives' jewels by auction, and part with the sumptuous furniture of their mansions, which usually included a semicircular table of solid silver and a dinner service of gold. It seems as if henceforth the empire was to exist simply on sufferance. The young Theodosius was styled indeed a Roman emperor, but of the Roman there was really nothing about him. ”

“ To those who follow with interest the declining fortunes of Rome's empire, he figures as one of the most unfortunate of her rulers, perishing as he did in as fatal a reverse as ever befell the Roman arms. It was in the reign of Valens, from 364 to 378, that the Huns first appeared in Europe, and drove before them the Goths, then in some degree a civilized and Christian people, to the banks of the Danube. We must bear in mind that for some time past the Goths had been on peaceful and even friendly terms with the empire, and had supplied a great number of its soldiers. ”

“ The late disastrous war with Persia may have led him to this decision; perhaps, too, being a plain soldier without much education, he may have thought he was peculiarly ill-fitted to reign over the more highly polished eastern half of the Roman world. "The weight of the universe," he is represented as saying, "is too great for the hands of a feeble mortal." So he associated with him as his colleague in empire his brother Valens, who was indeed grateful for the honour conferred on him, but who seems to have had no great and worthy qualities. ”

“ No doubt the luxury of the time, in the capital especially, was a scandal and a source of corruption and feebleness; but luxury is, we know, inseparable from wealth and softness of manners, and throughout the East it may have been a civilizing and not a purely demoralizing agency.
A university was founded at Constantinople in the reign of Theodosius—a distinct symptom of intellectual activity. We may conjecture that the emperor's cultivated and energetic sister helped on the movement. ”

“ The administration was in the hands of a multitude of imperial officials: it was a bureaucracy, with all the weaknesses of that system. How Constantine could have done otherwise in the interests of order, it is not easy to see. The empire had to be held together, and there was apparently only one way of preserving its unity; but unfortunately that way was one which led to a method of government in which anything like national feeling and a sense of responsibility among the governed had no place. ”

“ Although he had been a plain soldier, he knew and recognised the value of learning and education. Once a courtier ventured to upbraid him for giving a pension to a philosopher. Leo's reply was, "Would God that I had to pay no other people than scholars!" He was a really wise and well-meaning ruler. His reign, too, was not without some military glory. The Huns were checked near Sophia, and were glad to make peace. His attempt, however, with the aid of the empire of the West, now much enfeebled, to overthrow the kingdom of the Vandals under Genseric in Africa, was a disastrous failure. ”

“ Constantinople was plentifully supplied with gold and silver from the regions of Thrace and the Pontus, and its coinage was particularly famous. Its merchants, too, almost monopolised the commerce of the world, and its wealth and luxury seem to have become prodigious. There is every reason to believe that many of the countries under the sway of the Eastern empire were richer and more populous than at present. ”

“ Matters were made worse by legislative attempts to bind a man down to the condition in which he happened to be born. The son of a farmer or landed proprietor was obliged to abide in his father's calling, unless he had a brother to take his place and to pay the land-tax. In fact, the rural population was tied to the soil, and reduced to serfdom. These people, which had been the strength of Rome's armies, had now to be disarmed, lest they should rise in rebellion. They could not become soldiers, and thus the soldier-class became a distinct one, quite apart from the rest of the community. ”

“ After Theodosius, who died in 450 from an accident in the hunting-field, the empire fell to a man strangely unlike his predecessor. Marcian, by birth a Thracian peasant, had begun life as a common soldier, and at the age of fifty-six he was a member of the senate. He had served in wars in Persia and Africa under an able general, Aspar, a man of barbaric origin, whom the imperial minister had found it useful to employ. Pulcheria made him emperor, and, at the same time, for political purposes, her nominal husband. ”

“ The Eastern empire was safe, though much of its territory had suffered calamities so dreadful that Jerome quaintly describes them as leaving nothing in the countries desolated but "the sky and the earth."
Once more the world was to be united for the short space of a few months under one head, in the person of a man of whom Gibbon says, "that with him the genius of Rome expired." This was Theodosius, the first emperor who humbled himself before a Christian bishop. ”

“ We may infer that there were many able and learned lawyers at Constantinople. The imperial revenue had been raised in a bad and oppressive way; the rich provinces were drained for useless expenditure in the capital, and thus steady industry was discouraged. Liberal concessions were made, and arrears of taxation, which had accumulated during the calamitous periods of barbaric invasion, were remitted. The remission is said to have covered as much as sixty years. One would suppose, indeed, that the ravages of the Huns must have totally destroyed many sources of the imperial revenue. ”

“ The armies of the empire were thrice discomfited by him in the plains of Bulgaria. Amid these woful calamities, in which seventy cities are said to have perished, the emperor took his ease, and life in Constantinople seems to have undergone no change. But the citizens must have been fearfully panic-stricken by the great earthquake in 447, which shattered their walls into a ruin and threw down fifty-eight of the towers. ”

“ So, while there must have been much misery and confusion in the world, we may believe that the seeds of improvement were being sown, and that there was real progress in the condition of the poor and labouring class. ”

“ Anastasius, his successor, was elected to the empire in 491 because he married the last emperor's widow, Ariadne. Probably the lady chose him for a husband, just as Pulcheria had chosen Marcian. Anastasius was sixty years of age, and he had been an officer in the imperial guard. Gibbon speaks of him as "a prudent emperor;" a title he deserves, as he contrived by skilful administration to relieve the burdens of his subjects, and to bequeath a well-filled treasury to his successor. One particularly oppressive tax, a poll-tax on men and domestic animals, he abolished with very happy effect ”

“ The fact that Huns and Goths, in Asia and in Europe, were menacing its order and civilization, does not seem to have seriously troubled him.
Along with the idle love of vain show and amusement in the capital there must have been genuine religious feeling. By the lower orders Chrysostom was honoured and respected. He had been raised to the archbishopric by the eunuch-minister Eutropius, who had heard him at Antioch, and had much admired his preaching. Base as the man was, Chrysostom thought it his duty to protect him when the rebel Gothic chief, an Arian and a heretic, demanded his life. ”

“ A professor of twenty years' standing received the title of "count," and became, in fact, a nobleman of the empire. It seems that the officials of the civil service were chosen from distinguished members of the university. Greek was one of the chief subjects of study; Latin was by no means neglected, and there were chairs of law and philosophy. The Eastern world evidently set a high value on learning and culture. Literature was hardly popular in our sense of the word, but religious books were widely read, and religious controversy, as we have seen, excited a keen interest. ”

“ His rival was given up to him and killed, and now Theodosius was able to hand over the empire of the West to his youthful brother-in-law. But the unfortunate Valentinian was himself soon afterwards murdered by one of his generals, Arbogastes, who had served under Theodosius in the war with Maximus, and who was then commanding the Roman army in Gaul. The man, instead of having himself made emperor (he was but a barbarian) , raised to the imperial power one Eugenius, said to be a rhetorician, and his secretary. ”

“ He was then an old man, but he lived on to ninety years of age, bequeathing the empire, after a reign of twenty-seven years, to a man of humble birth, and also a soldier, Justin. "Reign as you have lived," is said to have been the people's prayer on the accession of Anastasius, and he seems not to have disappointed their hopes, or to have been unworthy of his elevation. ”

“ It is said that heaven favoured him in the battle, and contributed to his enemy's discomfiture by a violent storm. Now for the last time the empire was united under a single head. For a few months Theodosius was emperor of the East and of the West, but in the following year (395) he died. His two sons, Honorius and Arcadius, had already received the rank and title of Augusti. The first was a boy of eleven years of age, and, with Stilicho for his guardian, he was to reign over the West. ”

“ Gratian was advancing by rapid marches, and the two armies, it may be presumed, would have overpowered the Goths. But Valens was eager to snatch a victory, and on the ninth day of August, in the year 378 A.D., as black a day in the Roman calendar as that of Allia or Cannæ, he marched to attack the enemy, who was now about twelve miles from the city. His troops, weary and exhausted by exposure for several hours to a burning sun, must have been unfit for battle; and though they seem to have fought bravely, they must have fought at a great disadvantage. ”

“ Hitherto the theory had been that the empire should have a single head. Now at last, in the year 364, it was finally and once for all divided, the division being formally executed by the two brothers near Nissa, a name which we have before had occasion to mention. Valentinian was to be the emperor of the West, Valens of the East, and on this understanding they took leave of each other. ”

“ If they did not lead to any positive results, we may be sure that their general effect was humanising. It was better for the higher and wealthier class to take pleasure in discussing theological dogmas than in witnessing the last agonies of dying gladiators. ”

“ We see what strength the Church must have already acquired among the masses of the people. It is true, indeed, that he was again banished, and banished finally, through the influence of the empress, whom he exasperated by condemning the honours paid to one of her statues. ”