Valerius MAXIMIANUS, another Illyrian peasant by birth, was declared, first Cæsar (A.D. 285), and afterwards Augustus (April 1, 286). Sprung, like Aurelian and Probus, from Sirmium in Pannonia, Maximian expressed even in his dress and manners, the character of the rude unlettered soldier. While his martial courage qualified him to guard the empire against the barbarians, he was no less fitted by his savage nature to exercise over domestic enemies the tyranny which Diocletian reserved to himself the merit of tempering. The characters and functions of the two emperors were symbolized by the divine titles which they assumed, of Jovius and Herculius. "While the motion of the world (such was the language of their venal orators) was maintained by the all-seeing wisdom of Jupiter, the invincible arm of Hercules purged the earth from monsters and tyrants."

In thus creating a second Augustus, and assigning the West as his sphere of government, Diocletian not only began the partition of the empire, but indicated one of the leading motives of that policy, the separation of the supreme ruler from the direct influence of the Senate. Even while affecting to inaugurate a new empire, like Augustus, and to govern in the spirit of Aurelius, Diocletian severed the link which had connected the empire with the old constitution, by handing over that illustrious body to the tender mercies of a Maximian, while he himself filled the throne of an oriental monarch. The Senate, thus deprived of all authority by Diocletian, had to suffer the hatred which his rude colleague felt for the nobility.

The further development of the new system into the full quadruple hierarchy of two Augusti and two Cæsars was promoted by events that occurred in the West. Amidst the annals of imperial changes and wars, we obtain a rare glimpse of the social state of so important a province as Gaul. The Celtic peasantry had long since sunk into the condition of serfs to their own nobles or the Roman settlers-serfs bound to the soil, upon which they often worked in fetters. Aggravated as their oppression was by the troubles of that disastrous age, they took up arms, their masters escaping as they could to the protection of the towns. Under the name of Bagaude (that is, rebels, in Celtic) they were for some time masters of the open country, and two of the insurgents, Elianus and Amandus, assumed the purple. The rebellion was speedily quelled and cruelly punished by Maximian, who was immediately called to cope with a more formidable revolt in Britain (A.D. 286).

The naval expedition of the Franks in the reign of Probus is but a specimen of the increasing boldness of the maritime enterprises of the people of Lower Germany, among whom the name of the SAXONS now begins to be conspicuous.* To protect the shores of Gaul and Britain, a naval station was established at Gessoriacum or Bononia (Boulogne), under an officer who was called the Count of the Saxon Coast (Comes Littoris Saxonici), and the command was entrusted to a German named CARAUSIUS. He conceived the bold scheme of erecting a separate principality in Britain, relying on his fleet, and perhaps on the support of German tribes already settled on the British coasts. Carausius assumed the purple in A.D. 287, and for nearly ten years our island anticipated its future destiny by maintaining its maritime independence against all the power of the Continent. The British emperor retained Boulogne as a tête-de-pont upon the mainland, while his fleet not only commanded the ocean, and carried devastation up the Rhine and Seine, but entered the Mediterranean. After a year spent in preparation, Maximian found it impossible to cope with the powerful navy of Carausius; and the emperors in the East and West deemed it prudent to acknowledge him as their colleague in Britain (A.D. 290). Carausius defended his northern frontier against the Caledonians; maintained a close alliance with the maritime tribes of Lower Germany; and fostered the civilization of the province. His coins, executed in the best style of Roman art, prove that his designs were not bounded within his island. One, with the ancient effigy of the twins suckled by the wolf, bears the inscription, ROMA RENOVA; while on another, his agreement with Diocletian and Maximian, symbolized by the triple effigies of the emperors, is vaunted as a renewal of the PAX AUGusta.

In the year after the peace with Carausius, Diocletian came from the East to hold a conference with Maximian; and the following year witnessed the completion of his plan for a division of the government between two Augusti and two Cæsars (A.D. 292). The latter dignity was conferred upon Galerius and Constantius. Their appointment is stated to have been made by Diocletian; but it was doubtless the result of an agreement between the emperors, with each of whom one of the Cæsars was regarded as more especially connected both by adoption and by

Eutropius expressly mentions Saxons, as well as Franks, among the pirates of this age. The events now related have an important bearing on the question of Saxon settlements in Britain before the time of Hengist and Horsa; but this is not the place to enter on that controversy.

Meanwhile the

of the Cæsars beneath the banner of the Cross. accession of Diocletian formed a new and important epoch in the development of the imperial system. The restoration of Roman greatness for a time was purchased at the cost of the last semblance of liberty; and the government, originally modelled on the forms of the Republic, assumed the undisguised character of an Eastern monarchy.

The period of revival had begun from the accession of Claudius; and the sixteen years spent in reuniting the severed empire, and repelling the attacks of Goths and Sarmatians, Franks and Alemanni, had been fruitful in military experience. "Carus, Diocletian, Maximian, Constantius, Galerius, and a crowd of other chiefs, who afterwards ascended or supported the throne, were trained to arms in the severe school of Aurelian and Probus." Constantius, who was destined to found the dynasty under which the revived empire reached its highest pitch of greatness, is said to have been already chosen for an associate by Carus, when that emperor's sudden death prevented the fulfilment of his design; and the accident of Diocletian's presence with the army, at the death of Numerian, caused the preference to be given to him, of whom the historian says that, "as his reign was more illustrious than that of any of his predecessors, so was his birth more abject and obscure." That he was not himself a slave, as is often asserted, may be inferred from his enlistment in a legion; and Niebuhr inclines to interpret the statement, that his father was a slave or a freedman, as signifying a colonus or serf on the Dalmatian frontier. At all events, the serf does not even appear to have had a client's title to the proud patrician name of Valerius, which he assumed as emperor, at the same time that he Romanized into Diocletianus the alto

gether foreign name of Diocles. Nor had even this name any connection with the Greeks among whom it had become illustrious; for it was probably derived from his native village of Doclea or Dioclea, in Dalmatia, near the capital Salona, which was afterwards honoured with the emperor's residence.

We need not trace the steps through which the soldier of fortune rose by his own merit, and encouraged by favourable oracles, to the eminence which caused him to be unanimously hailed as the

* Gibbon, just after stating that the father was probably a freedman, proceeds, for the sake of rhetoric, to call the son a slave.

Among the famous Greeks who bore it, was the Attic exile Diocles, who was honoured as a hero at Megara, in the feast of the Diocleia; and the popular leader and legislator of Syracuse, in B.C. 412.

successor and avenger of Numerian. That he was not free from the cruelty which we have already seen attaching to the rude Illyrian nature in Aurelian and Probus, is proved by his terrible persecution of the Christians; but the imputation of personal cowardice, at least in the common sense of the word, is declared unjust by the calm judgment of Niebuhr, as well as by the historian who imputes it to "the malice of religious zeal! " * "Yet," adds the same writer, "even calumny is sagacious enough to discover and to attack the most vulnerable part. The valour of Diocletian was never found inadequate to his duty, or to the occasion; but he appears not to have possessed the daring and generous spirit of a hero who courts danger and fame, disdains artifice, and boldly challenges the allegiance of his equals. His abilities were useful rather than splendid-a vigorous mind, improved by the experience and study of mankind; dexterity and application in business; a judicious mixture of liberality and economy, of mildness and vigour; profound dissimulation, under the disguise of military frankness; steadiness to pursue his ends; flexibility to vary hist means; and, above all, the great art of submitting his own passions, as well as those of others, to the interest of his ambition, and of colouring his ambition with the most specious pretences of justice and public utility. Like Augustus, Diocletian may be considered as the founder of a new empire. Like the adopted son of Cæsar, he was distinguished as a statesman rather than as a warrior; nor did either of those princes employ force, whenever their purpose could be effected by policy." Such are the lofty principles in which only Christian calumny would dare to detect a flaw!

Diocletian was in his fortieth year when he began his long reign. of more than twenty years. He at once proved that he understood his true position as the most successful among a band of generals who might have aspired to the purple, and whom it was his policy to attach to himself. His victory over Carinus was sullied by no acts of vengeance; and one of his first acts was to associate his most dangerous rival in the honours of the empire. M. Aurelius

For higher purposes than a mere question of one prince's character, it is worth while to quote the words that roused Gibbon's spleen. The Christian orator, Lactantius, or whoever wrote the treatise ascribed to him, On the Deaths of Persecutors, besides making the imputation in two other passages (c. 7, 8), says of Diocletian (c. 9): “Erat in omni tumultu meticulosus et animi disjectus." The question between the admirers and detractors of great men upon this ground often turns solely upon what sort of courage is meant, to say nothing of the vulgar error which regards nervous susceptibility as the opposite of that courageous resolve which it frequently proves, just as the recoil of the gun proves the force it is exerting.

Valerius MAXIMIANUS, another Illyrian peasant by birth, was declared, first Cæsar (A.D. 285), and afterwards Augustus (April 1, 286). Sprung, like Aurelian and Probus, from Sirmium in Pannonia, Maximian expressed even in his dress and manners, the character of the rude unlettered soldier. While his martial courage qualified him to guard the empire against the barbarians, he was no less fitted by his savage nature to exercise over domestic enemies the tyranny which Diocletian reserved to himself the merit of tempering. The characters and functions of the two emperors were symbolized by the divine titles which they assumed, of Jorius and Herculius. "While the motion of the world (such was the language of their venal orators) was maintained by the all-seeing wisdom of Jupiter, the invincible arm of Hercules purged the earth from monsters and tyrants."

In thus creating a second Augustus, and assigning the West as his sphere of government, Diocletian not only began the partition of the empire, but indicated one of the leading motives of that policy, the separation of the supreme ruler from the direct influence of the Senate. Even while affecting to inaugurate a new empire, like Augustus, and to govern in the spirit of Aurelius, Diocletian severed the link which had connected the empire with the old constitution, by handing over that illustrious body to the tender mercies of a Maximian, while he himself filled the throne of an oriental monarch. The Senate, thus deprived of all authority by Diocletian, had to suffer the hatred which his rude colleague felt for the nobility.

The further development of the new system into the full quadruple hierarchy of two Augusti and two Cæsars was promoted by events that occurred in the West. Amidst the annals of imperial changes and wars, we obtain a rare glimpse of the social state of so important a province as Gaul. The Celtic peasantry had long since sunk into the condition of serfs to their own nobles or the Roman settlers-serfs bound to the soil, upon which they often worked in fetters. Aggravated as their oppression was by the troubles of that disastrous age, they took up arms, their masters escaping as they could to the protection of the towns. Under the name of Bagaude (that is, rebels, in Celtic) they were for some time masters of the open country, and two of the insurgents, Elianus and Amandus, assumed the purple. The rebellion was speedily quelled and cruelly punished by Maximian, who was immediately called to cope with a more formid revolt in Britain (A.D. 286).