452 RISE OF MILAN AND NICOMEDIA. [CH XIIL their founder Maximian; porticoes adorned with statues, and a double circumference of walls, contributed to the beauty of the Lew capital; nor did it seem oppressed even by the proximity of Rome.* To rival the majesty of Rome was the ambition likewise of Diocletian, who employed his leisure, and the wealth of the east, in the embellishment of Nicomedia, a city placed on the verge of Europe and Asia, almost at an equal distance between the Danube and the Euphrates. By the taste of the monarch, and at the experse of the people, Nicomedia acquired, in the space of a few years, a degree of magnificence which might appear to have required the labour of ages; and became inferior only to Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch, in extent or populousness. The life of Diocletian and Maximian was a life of action, and a considerable portion of it was spent in camps, or in their long and frequent marches; but whenever the public business allowed them any relaxation, they seem to have retired with pleasure to their favourite residences of Nicomedia and Milan. Till Diocletian, in the twentieth year of his reign, celebrated his Roman triumph, it is extremely doubtful whether he ever visited the ancient capital of the empire. Even on that memorable occasion his stay did not exceed two months. Disgusted with the licentious familiarity of the people, he quitted Rome with precipita tion, thirteen days before it was expected that he should have appeared in the senate, invested with the ensigns of the consular dignity.‡ * See Aurelius Victor, who likewise mentions the buildings erected by Maximian at Carthage, probably during the Moorish war. We shall insert some verses of Ausonius de Clar. Urb. 5. Et Mediolani mira omnia; copia rerum; Innumeræ cultæque domus; facunda virorum +Lactant. de M. P. c. 17. Libanius, Orat. 8, p. 203. + Lactant M. P. c. 17. On a similar occasion Ammianus mentions the dicaci tas plebis, as not very agreeable to an imperial ear. (See lib. 16, a 10) The dislike expressed by Diocletian towards Rome and Roman freedom, was not the effect of momentary caprice, but the result of the most artful policy. That crafty prince had framed a new system of imperial government, which was afterwards completed by the family of Constantine; and as the image of the oid constitution was religiously preserved in the senate, he resolved to deprive that order of its small remains of power and consideration. We may recollect, about eight years before the elevation of Diocietian, the transient greatness, and the ambitious hopes, of the Roman senate. As long as that enthusiasm prevailed, many of the nobles imprudently displayed their zeal in the cause of freedom; and after the successors of Probus had withdrawn their countenance from the republican party, the senators were unable to disguise their impotent resentment. As the sovereign of Italy, Maximian was intrusted with the care of extinguishing this troubiesome, rather than dangerous spirit, and the task was perfectly suited to his cruel temper. The most illustrious members of the senate, whom Diocletian always affected to esteem, were involved, by his colleague, in the accusation of imaginary plots; and the possession of an elegant villa, or a well-cultivated estate, was interpreted as a convincing evidence of guilt.* The camp of the prætorians, which had so long oppressed, began to protect the majesty of Rome; and as those haughty troops were conscious of the decline of their power, they were naturally disposed to unite their strength with the authority of the senate. By the prudent measures of Diocletian, the numbers of the prætorians were insensibly reduced, their privileges abolished,† and their place supplied by two faithful legions of Illyricum, who, under the new titles of Jovians and Herculians, were appointed to perform the service of the imperial guards. But the most fatal, * Lactantius accuses Maximian of destroying fictis criminationibus lumina senatus. (De M. P. c. 8.) Aurelius Victor speaks very doubtfully of the faith of Diocletian towards his friends. + Truncatæ vires urbis, imminuto prætoriarum cohortium, atque in armis vulgi numero. Aurelius Victor. Lactantus attributes to Galerius the prosecution of the same plan (c. 26). They were old corps stationed at Illyricum; and according to the ancient establishment, they each consisted of six thousand men. They had acquired much repu tation by the use of the plumbata, or darts loaded with lead. Each 454 DECLINE OF THE SENATE. CH. XIII. hough secret, wound, which the senate received from the hands of Diocletian and Maximian, was inflicted by the inevitable operation of their absence. As long as the emperors resided at Rome, that assembly might be oppressed, but it could scarcely be neglected. The successors of Augustus exercised the power of dictating whatever laws their wisdom c caprice might suggest; but those laws were ratified by the sanction of the senate. The model of ancient freedom was preserved in its deliberations and decrees; and wise princes, who respected the prejudices of the Roman people, were, in some measure, obliged to assume the language and behaviour suitable to the general and first magistrate of the republic. In the armies and in the provinces, they displayed the dignity of monarchs; and when they fixed their resi dence at a distance from the capital, they for ever laid aside the dissimulation which Augustus had recommended to his successors. In the exercise of the legislative as well as the executive power, the sovereign advised with his ministers, instead of consulting the great council of the nation. The name of the senate was mentioned with honour till the last period of the empire; the vanity of its members was still flattered with honorary distinctions; but the assembly which had so long been the source, and so long the instru ment of power, was respectfully suffered to sink into oblivion. The senate of Rome, losing all connexion with the imperial court, and the actual constitution, was left a venerable but useless monument of antiquity on the Capitoline hill. When the Roman princes had lost sight of the senate and of their ancient chapel, they easily forgot the origin and nature of their legal power. The civil offices of consul, of proconsul, of censor, and of tribune, by the union of which it had been formed, betrayed to the people its republican extraction. Those modest titles were laid aside;† and if they still distinguished their high station by the appellation of Emperor, or Imperator, that word was understood in soldier carried five of these, which he darted from a considerable distance with great strength and dexterity. See Vegetius, 1, 17. * See the Theodosian code, lib. 6, tit. 2, with Godefroy's commentary. See the twelfth dissertatlon in Spanheim's excellent work, de Usu Numismatum. From medals, inscriptions, and historians, he a new and more dignified sense, and no longer denoted the general of the Roman armies, but the sovereign of the Roman world. The name of Emperor, which was at first of a military nature, was associated with another of a more servile kind. The epithet of Dominus, or Lord, in its primitive signification, was expressive, not of the authority of a prince over his subjects, or of a commander over his soldiers, but of the despotic power of a master over his domestic slaves. Viewing it in that odious light, it had been rejected with abhorrence by the first Cæsars. Their resistance insensibly became more feeble, and the name less odious; till at length the style of our Lord and Emperor was not only bestowed by flattery, but was regularly admitted into the laws and public monuments. Such lofty epithets were sufficient to elate and satisfy the most excessive vanity; and if the successors of Diocletian still declined the title of King, it seems to have been the effect, not so much of their moderation, as of their delicacy. Wherever the Latin tongue was in use (and it was the language of government throughout the empire), the imperial title, as it was peculiar to themselves, conveyed a more respectable idea than the name of king, which they must have shared with a hundred barbarian chieftains; or which, at the best, they could derive only from Romulus or from Tarquin. But the sentiments of the east were very different from those of the west. From the earliest period of history, the sovereigns of Asia had been celebrated in the Greek language by the title of Basileus, or King; and since it was considered as the first distinction among men, it was soon employed by the servile provincials of the east, in their humble addresses to the Roman throne.t Even the attributes, or at least the titles, of the Divinity were usurped by Diocletian and Maximian, who transmitted them to a succession of Christian emperors. Such extravagant compliments, however, soon examines every title separately, and traces it from Augustus to the moment of its disappearing. * Pliny (in Panegyr. c. 3, 55, &c.) speaks of dominus with execration as synonymous to tyrant, and opposite to prince. And the same Pliny regularly gives that title (in the tenth book of the epistles) to his friend rather than master, the virtuous Trajan. This strange contradiction puzzles the commentators, who think, and the translators, who can write. Synesius de Regno, edit. Petav. p. 15. I am indebted for this quotation to the abbé de la Bleterie. See Van Dale de Consecratione, p. 354, &c. It was cus 456 THE COURT [CH. XIII. lose their impiety by losing their meaning; and when the ear is once accustomed to the sound, they are heard with indifference, as vague, though excessive, professions of respect. From the time of Augustus to that of Diocletian, the Roman princes, conversing in a familiar manner among their fellow-citizens, were saluted only with the same respect that was usually paid to senators and magistrates. Their principal distinction was the imperial or military robe of purple, whilst the senatorial garment was marked by a broad, and the equestrian by a narrow, band or stripe of the same honourable colour. The pride, or rather the policy, of Diocletian, engaged that artful prince to introduce the stately magnificence of the court of Persia. He ventured to assume the diadem, an ornament detested by the Romans as the odious ensign of royalty, and the use of which had been considered as the most desperate act of the madness of Caligula. It was no more than a broad white fillet set tomary for the emperors to mention (in the preamble of laws) their numen, sacred majesty, divine oracles, &c. According to Tillemont, Gregory of Nazianzen complains most bitterly of the profanation, especially when it was practised by an Arian emperor. ** See Spanheim de Usu Numismat. Dissertat. 12. [The influence of new institutions has seldom been more philosophically shewn, than by M. Hegewisch, in his Historical Essay on the Roman Finances, from which work (Germ. ed. p. 249) the following passage is taken: "In the time of the republic, when the consuls, prætors, and other magistrates appeared in public to discharge their official duties, their dignity was announced as well by the symbols which custom had consecrated, as by the brilliant trains that attended them. But these marked the dignity of the office, not of the individual-the pomp of the magistrate, not of the man. The consul who in the comitia was followed by all the senate, the prætors, quæstors, ædiles, lictors, apparitors, and heralds, was waited upon in his own home by a few freedmen and slaves. A limited number of these sufficed for the personal service of the first emperors, and with this, as we learn from Tacitus (Ann. 1. 4, c. 27), Tiberius was content. But as the republican forms gradually disappeared one after another, the emperors manifested more and more a disposition to surround themselves with magnificence. The splendour and formalities of the east were introduced by Diocletian and carried fully out by Constantine-palaces, furniture, table, personal display, all distinguished the emperor from his subjects even more than his exalted dignity. The distribution of office made by Diocletian in his new court, attached less honour and importance to the service of the State than to personal attendance on the members of the imperial family."— GUIZOT.] |