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historians claim him as the first Christian emperor. The celebration of the secular games with old heathen ceremonies, and the use of pagan emblems upon his coins, are urged in disproof of the statement. The truth is very difficult to discover, nor is he a convert who would be eagerly claimed.*

What is far more certain is that the celebration of Rome's millennium was the preface to the drama of her fall. The mistress of the world decked herself in all the accumulated splendours of a thousand years to take her seat, like the Danish king, upon the margin of the flood of barbarian power, whose foremost waves were already dashing at her feet. At this epoch, then, we may pause, with the great historian of the age, to take that survey of the past and future, which must have forced itself upon the minds of the discerning few, amidst the throng who regarded the splendour of Philip's shows as the promise of still many a thousand years of empire.

"Since Romulus, with a small band of shepherds and outlaws, fortified himself on the hills near the Tiber, ten centuries had already elapsed. During the first four ages, the Romans, in the laborious school of poverty, had acquired the virtues of war and government: by the vigorous exertion of those virtues, and by the assistance of fortune, they had obtained, in the course of the three succeeding centuries, an absolute empire over many countries of Europe, Asia, and Africa. The last three hundred years had been consumed in apparent prosperity and internal decline. The nation of soldiers, magistrates, and legislators, who composed the thirtyfive tribes of the Roman people, was dissolved into the common mass of mankind, and confounded with the millions of servile provincials, who had received the name, without adopting the spirit, of Romans. A mercenary army, levied among the subjects and barbarians of the frontier, was the only order of men who preserved and abused their independence. By their tumultuary election, a Syrian, a Goth, or an Arab, was exalted to the throne of Rome, and invested with despotic power over the conquests and over the country of the Scipios.

* The statement derives little weight from the eager partisanship of Orosius, and the epitome of Zonaras; and the slender grounds on which Niebuhr inclines to support it will appear from the statement of his own arguments:-Pagan emblems appear also on the coins of Constantine: Origen addressed letters to Philip on Christianity: the Arab city of Bostra was near Pella, the refuge of the Christians of Jerusalem : there is a tradition that Philip did penance, and was absolved, for the murder of Gordian: he may have been merely a catechumen, and not have received baptism till just before his death, as a purification from all his sins.

The youthful Gordian, whose name was dear to the Senate and the people, and whose tender age prevented his being feared by the soldiers, was carried to the prætorian camp, and saluted Imperator and Augustus (June, A.D. 238). In the first six months of a single year, Rome had had as many emperors, beginning with the savage barbarian of Thrace, and ending with a boy of twelve years old.

In the obscurity which involves the history of this whole period, we can only make out with certainty that GORDIAN III. escaped the tutelage of his mother's eunuchs by his affection for his instructor in rhetoric, Misitheus,* whose daughter he married before he was sixteen. The progress of the Persians called the emperor and his minister to the East; and it appears that Mesopotamia had been recovered, when Misitheus died, not without suspicion of having been poisoned by Philip, an adventurer of Arab race, who succeeded him in the office of prætorian prefect. If he committed the crime, it was but a step to one bolder still; for Gordian was soon after murdered in a mutiny of the soldiers, who elected Philip as his successor (March, A.D. 244). Though the last of the Gordians had reigned eight years, he did not live to be nineteen. A tumulus on the bank of the Euphrates, about twenty miles from Circesium, was pointed out as his tomb to the time of Julian.

PHILIP I., having appointed his son of the same name as Cæsar, was welcomed back to Rome by the Senate and people; and the completion of the city's millennium saw the great Secular Games celebrated with unusual pomp by an emperor of Arabian birth (April 21, A.D. 248).† But it was a short-lived glory both for Rome and her foreign lord. In the very next year the legions of Moesia and Pannonia proclaimed a certain Marinus emperor; and Decius, a noble senator, who was sent to put down the rebellion, was compelled to become its leader, and to march with the insurgents into Italy. It is said that he foresaw the result, and warned Philip not to place him in a position which would compel him to violate his faith. The emperor paid for his over-confidence with his life, in a battle near Verona, in the autumn of A.D. 249. His son was put to death at Rome by the prætorian guards; and the dignity of Augustus, already conferred on Decius by the revolted legions, was ratified by the Senate. The brief reign of Philip is peculiarly interesting from the circumstance that the Christian

* This is the common form of the name, which seems rather to have been Timesicles or Timesitheus.

†This was the fifth celebration inclusive from that of Augustus; the intervening three were held by Claudius, Domitian, and Severus.

historians claim him as the first Christian emperor. The celebration of the secular games with old heathen ceremonies, and the use of pagan emblems upon his coins, are urged in disproof of the statement. The truth is very difficult to discover, nor is he a convert who would be eagerly claimed.*

What is far more certain is that the celebration of Rome's millennium was the preface to the drama of her fall. The mistress of the world decked herself in all the accumulated splendours of a thousand years to take her seat, like the Danish king, upon the margin of the flood of barbarian power, whose foremost waves were already dashing at her feet. At this epoch, then, we may pause, with the great historian of the age, to take that survey of the past and future, which must have forced itself upon the minds of the discerning few, amidst the throng who regarded the splendour of Philip's shows as the promise of still many a thousand years of empire.

"Since Romulus, with a small band of shepherds and outlaws, fortified himself on the hills near the Tiber, ten centuries had already elapsed. During the first four ages, the Romans, in the laborious school of poverty, had acquired the virtues of war and government: by the vigorous exertion of those virtues, and by the assistance of fortune, they had obtained, in the course of the three succeeding centuries, an absolute empire over many countries of Europe, Asia, and Africa. The last three hundred years had been consumed in apparent prosperity and internal decline. The nation of soldiers, magistrates, and legislators, who composed the thirtyfive tribes of the Roman people, was dissolved into the common mass of mankind, and confounded with the millions of servile provincials, who had received the name, without adopting the spirit, of Romans. A mercenary army, levied among the subjects and barbarians of the frontier, was the only order of men who preserved and abused their independence. By their tumultuary election, a Syrian, a Goth, or an Arab, was exalted to the throne of Rome, and invested with despotic power over the conquests and over the country of the Scipios.

The statement derives little weight from the eager partisanship of Orosius, and the epitome of Zonaras; and the slender grounds on which Niebuhr inclines to support it will appear from the statement of his own arguments:-Pagan emblems appear also on the coins of Constantine: Origen addressed letters to Philip on Christianity: the Arab city of Bostra was near Pella, the refuge of the Christians of Jerusalem : there is a tradition that Philip did penance, and was absolved, for the murder of Gordian: he may have been merely a catechumen, and not have received baptism till just before his death, as a purification from all his sins.

"The limits of the Roman Empire still extended from the Western Ocean to the Tigris, and from Mount Atlas to the Rhine and the Danube. To the undiscerning eye of the vulgar, Philip appeared a monarch no less powerful than Hadrian or Augustus had formerly been. The form was still the same, but the animating health and vigour were fled. The industry of the people was discouraged and exhausted by a long series of oppression. The discipline of the legions, which alone, after the extinction of every other virtue, had propped the greatness of the state, was corrupted by the ambition, or relaxed by the weakness, of the emperors. The strength of the frontiers, which had always consisted in arms rather than in fortifications, was insensibly undermined; and the fairest provinces were left exposed to the rapaciousness or ambition of the barbarians, who soon discovered the decline of the Roman Empire."

The decline of the empire was marked in those things which had been its greatest pride. Art had sunk into a state of barbarism, as is proved by the existing monuments. With the great exceptions of Dion Cassius, and the writers on Roman law-whose literary merits culminated and ceased in the first half of the third century-literature was almost extinct at Rome, while it was rising to importance among the Christians. "The barbarous character," says Niebuhr, "which commenced with the third century, gradually spread over all things in which taste can be displayed, even down to coins and inscriptions." The new power, which we have seen rising in the East, prepared a series of dangers and humiliating defeats for those princes who were bold enough to encounter it; and the dark cloud which had so long hung over the North began to pour down its deluge in the reign of Decius.

Such was the millennial state to which an empire founded on force was reduced by the righteous and never-failing laws of providential retribution. In the cry which called the Goths to "arise and glut their ire," the poet sees a just revenge for the torrents of barbarian blood drunk up by the sand of the amphitheatre. In the light of a higher revelation, the Christians beheld the answer to the cry of the martyrs, "How long, O Lord, holy and mighty, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?" But all who believe in the working of the will of God for the final happiness of man in freedom may concur in acknowledging His judgment upon a system, the very essence of which was tyranny and oppression.

CHAPTER XLII.

IRRUPTIONS OF THE BARBARIANS.

FROM DECIUS TO

DIOCLETIAN. A.D. 249 TO A.D. 284.

"A multitude, like which the populous North
Poured never from her frozen loins, to cross
Rhene or the Danaw, when her barbarous sons
Came like a deluge on the South, and spread
Beneath Gibraltar to the Libyan sands."-MILTON.

REIGN OF DECIUS-MISERY OF THE ROMAN WORLD-PERSECUTION OF THE CHRISTIANS— ORIGIN OF THE GOTHS-THEIR MIGRATION TO SOUTH-EASTERN EUROPE OSTROGOTHS AND VISIGOTHS-THEIR CONNECTION WITH OTHER TRIBES-THEY CROSS THE DANUBE-GOTHIC CAMPAIGN AND DEATH OF DECIUS-GALLUS TREBONIANUSEMILIANUS - VALERIAN AND GALLIENUS-ORIGIN OF THE FRANKS-THEY INVADE GAUL, SPAIN, AND AFRICA-THE ALEMANNI INVADE ITALY AND ARE

DEFEATED BY AURELIAN-PERSIAN SUCCESSES ON THE EUPHRATES-VALERIAN MADE PRISONER BY SAPOR-AN IMPERIAL HORSE-BLOCK AND STUFFED SKIN-SAPOR SACKS ANTIOCHI AND CESAREA-THE SARACEN KINGDOM OF PALMYRA-ODENATHUS DEFEATS SAPOR NAVAL INCURSIONS OF THE GOTHS THEY TAKE TREBIZOND, RAVAGE BITHYNIA, SACK OYZICUS, PASS THE HELLESPONT, AND RAVAGE GREECE THEIR RETREAT-BURNING OF THE TEMPLE OF EPHESUS CONDUCT OF THE GOTHS AT ATHENS THE THIRTY TYRANTS-ODENATHUS AND ZENOBIA IN THE EAST-POSTUMUS AND TETRICUS IN THE WEST-MACRIANUS AND AUREOLUS-DEATH OF GALLIENUS-PUBLIC CALAMITIES-CLAUDIUS II. GOTHICUS DEFEATS THE ALEMANNI AND GOTHS-AURELIAN EMPEROR-DEFEATS THE MARCOMANNI AND ALEMANNI-NEW WALLS OF ROME-AURELIAN DEFEATS ZENOBIA-DEATH OF LONGINUS-AURELIAN PUTS DOWN TETRICUS IN GAUL-HIS TRIUMPH AND DEATH-TACITUS-PROBUS DEFEATS THE BARBARIANS-CARUS, CARINUS, AND NUMERIANUS-SARMATIAN AND PERSIAN WARS-ACCESSION OF DIOCLETIAN.

"FROM the great Secular Games celebrated by Philip, to the death of the emperor Gallienus, there elapsed twenty years of shame and misfortune. During that calamitous period, every instant of time was marked, every province of the Roman world was afflicted, by barbarous invaders and military tyrants, and the ruined empire seemed to approach the last and fatal moment of its dissolution." From this summary by our great historian, it might seem that the period could be of little interest; but in truth it carries us beyond the boundaries of the empire, to see how new nations are approaching to fill their place in the History of the World. The emperor DECIUS is lauded by the pagan writers for his firm and wise administration, and execrated by the Christians as the author of the Seventh great Persecution. One of its victims was Fabianus, bishop of Rome, and the emperor's motive of jealousy at the

His full name was C. Messius Quintus Trajanus Decius. He was a native of Illyricum, and had no real connection with the Gens Decia.

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