Marius was purchased, within a few years, by Lucullus, and the price had increased from two thousand five hundred, to more than fourscore thousand, pounds sterling (130). It was adorned by the new proprietor with Grecian arts, and Asiatic treasures; and the houses and gardens of Lucullus obtained a distinguished rank in the list of Imperial palaces (131). When the Vandals became formidable to the sea-coast, the Lucullan villa, on the promontory of Misenum, gradually assumed the strength and appellation of a strong castle, the obscure retreat of the last emperor of the West. About twenty years after that great revolution, it was converted into a church and monastery, to receive the bones of St. Severinus. They securely reposed, amidst the broken trophies of Cimbric and Armenian victories, till the beginning of the tenth century; when the fortifications, which might afford a dangerous shelter to the Saracens, were demolished by the people of Naples (132).

Roman spirit.

Odoacer was the first Barbarian who reigned in Italy, over a Decay of the people who had once asserted their just superiority above the rest of mankind. The disgrace of the Romans still excites our respectful compassion, and we fondly sympathise with the imaginary grief and indignation of their degenerate posterity. But the calamities of Italy had gradually subdued the proud consciousness of freedom and glory. In the age of Roman virtue, the provinces were subject to the arms, and the citizens to the laws, of the republic; till those laws were subverted by civil discord, and both the city and the provinces became the servile property of a tyrant. The forms of the constitution, which alleviated or disguised their abject slavery, were abolished by time and violence; the Italians alternately lamented the presence or the absence of the sovereigns, whom they detested or despised; and the succession of five centuries inflicted the various evils of military licence, capricious despotism, and elaborate oppression. During the same period, the Barbarians had emerged from obscurity and contempt, and the warriors of Germany and Scythia were introduced into the provinces, as the servants, the allies, and at length the masters, of the Romans, whom they insulted or protected. The hatred of the people was sup

In Misenensem villam venisset suam,,

Quæ monte summo posita Luculli manu

Prospectat Siculum et prospicit Tuscum mare.

(130) From seven myriads and a half to two hundred and fifty myriads of drachmæ. Yet even in the possession of Marius, it was a luxurious retirement. The Romans derided his indolence: they soon bewailed his activity. See Plutarch, in Mario, tom. ii. p. 524.

(131) Lucullus had other villas of equal, though various, magnificence, at Baix, Naples, Tusculum, &c. He boasted that he changed his climate with the storks and cranes. Plutarch, in Lucull. tom. iii. p. 193.

See

(132) Severinus died in Noricum, A. D. 482. Six years afterwards, his body, which scattered miracles as it passed, was transported by his disciples into Italy. The devotion of a Neapolitan lady invited the saint to the Lucullan villa, in the place of Augustulus, who was probably no more. Baronius (Annal. Eccles. A. D. 496. No. 50, 51.) and Tillemont (Mém. Ecclés. tom. xvi. p. 178–181.), from the original life by Eugippius. The narrative of the last migration of Severinus to Naples is likewise an authentic piece.

A. D.

pressed by fear; they respected the spirit and splendour of the martial chiefs who were invested with the honours of the empire; and the fate of Rome had long depended on the sword of those formidable strangers. The stern Ricimer, who trampled on the ruins of Italy, had exercised the power, without assuming the title, of a king; and the patient Romans were insensibly prepared to acknowledge the royalty of Odoacer and his Barbaric successors.

Character The king of Italy was not unworthy of the high station to which and reign of Odoacer, his valour and fortune had exalted him: his savage manners were 476-490. polished by the habits of conversation; and he respected, though a conqueror and a Barbarian, the institutions, and even the prejudices, of his subjects. After an interval of seven years, Odoacer restored the consulship of the West. For himself, he modestly, or proudly, declined an honour which was still accepted by the em– perors of the East; but the curule chair was successively filled by eleven of the most illustrious senators (133); and the list is adorned by the respectable name of Basilius, whose virtues claimed the friendship and grateful applause of Sidonius, his client (134). The laws of the emperors were strictly enforced, and the civil administration of Italy was still exercised by the Prætorian præfect, and his subordinate officers. Odoacer devolved on the Roman magistrates the odious and oppressive task of collecting the public revenue; but he reserved for himself the merit of seasonable and popular indulgence (135). Like the rest of the Barbarians, he had been instructed in the Arian heresy; but he revered the monastic and episcopal characters; and the silence of the Catholics attests the toleration which they enjoyed. The peace of the city required the interposition of his præfect Basilius in the choice of a Roman pontiff: the decree which restrained the clergy from alienating their lands was ultimately designed for the benefit of the people, whose devotion would have been taxed to repair the dilapidations of the church (136). Italy was protected by the arms of its conqueror; and its frontiers were respected by the Barbarians of Gaul and Germany, who had so long insulted the feeble race of Theodosius. Odoacer passed the Hadriatic, to chastise the assassins of the emperor Nepos, and to acquire the maritime province of Dalmatia. He passed the Alps, to rescue the remains of Noricum from Fava, or Feletheus, king of the Rugians, who held his residence beyond

(133) The consular Fasti may be found in Pagi or Muratori. The consuls named by Odoacer, or perhaps by the Roman senate, appear to have been acknowledged in the Eastern empire.

(134) Sidonius Apollinaris (1. i. epist. 9. p. 22. edit. Sirmond) has compared the two leading senators of his time (A. D. 468), Gennadius Avienus and Cæcina Basilius. To the former he assigns the specious, to the latter the solid, virtues of public and private life. A Basilius junior, possibly his son, was consul in the year 480.

(135) Epiphanius interceded for the people of Pavia; and the kings first granted an indulgence of five years, and afterwards relieved them from the oppression of Pelagius, the Prætorian præfect(Ennodius, in Vit. St. Epiphan. in Sirmond. Oper. tom. i. p. 1670. 1672.).

(136) See Baronius, Annal. Eccles. A. D. 483. No. 10-15. Sixteen years afterwards, the irregular proceedings of Basilius were condemned by pope Symmachus in a Roman synod.

state of Italy.

the Danube. The king was vanquished in battle, and led away prisoner; a numerous colony of captives and subjects was transplanted into Italy; and Rome, after a long period of defeat and disgrace, might claim the triumph of her Barbarian master (137). Notwithstanding the prudence and success of Odoacer, his kingdom Miserable exhibited the sad prospect of misery and desolation. Since the age of Tiberius, the decay of agriculture had been felt in Italy; and it was a just subject of complaint, that the life of the Roman people depended on the accidents of the winds and waves (138). In the division and the decline of the empire, the tributary harvests of Egypt and Africa were withdrawn; the numbers of the inhabitants continually diminished with the means of subsistence; and the country was exhausted by the irretrievable losses of war, famine (139), and pestilence. St. Ambrose has deplored the ruin of a populous district, which had been once adorned with the flourishing cities of Bologna, Modena, Regium, and Placentia (140). Pope Gelasius was a subject of Odoacer; and he affirms, with strong exaggeration, that in Æmilia, Tuscany, and the adjacent provinces, the human species was almost extirpated (141). The plebeians of Rome, who were fed by the hand of their master, perished or disappeared, as soon as his liberality was suppressed; the decline of the arts reduced the industrious mechanic to idleness and want; and the senators, who might support with patience the ruin of their country, bewailed their private loss of wealth and luxury.* One third of those ample estates, to which the ruin of Italy is originally imputed (142), was extorted for the use of the conquerors. Injuries were aggravated by insults; the sense of actual sufferings was embittered by the fear of more dreadful evils;

(137) The wars of Odoacer are concisely mentioned by Paul the Deacon (de Gest. Langobard. 1. i. c. 19. p. 757. edit. Grot.), and in the two Chronicles of Cassiodorius and Cuspinian. The life of St. Severinus, by Eugippius, which the count de Buat (Hist. des Peuples, &c. tom. viii. c. 1. 4. 8, 9.) has diligently studied, illustrates the ruin of Noricum and the Bavarian antiquities.

(138) Tacit. Annal. iii. 53. The Recherches sur l'Administration des Terres chez les Romains (p. 351-361.) clearly state the progress of internal decay.

(139) A famine, which afflicted Italy at the time of the irruption of Odoacer, king of the Heruli, is eloquently described in prose and verse, by a French poet (Les Mois, tom. ii. p. 174. 206. edit. in 12mo.). I am ignorant from whence he derives his information; but I am well assured that he relates some facts incompatible with the truth of history.

(140) See the xxxixth epistle of St. Ambrose, as it is quoted by Muratori, sopra le Antichità Italiane, tom. i. Dissert. xxi. p. 354.

(141) Emilia, Tuscia, ceteræque provinciæ in quibus hominum prope nullus existit. Gelasius, Epist. ad Andromachum, ap. Baronium, Annal. Eccles. A. D. 496. No. 36.

(142) Verumque confitentibus, latifundia perdidere Italiam. Plin. Hist. Natur. xviii. 7.

and as new lands were allotted to new swarms of Barbarians, each senator was apprehensive lest the arbitrary surveyors should approach his favourite villa, or his most profitable farm. The least unfortunate were those who submitted without a murmur to the power which it was impossible to resist. Since they desired to live, they owed some gratitude to the tyrant who had spared their lives; and since he was the absolute master of their fortunes, the portion which he left must be accepted as his pure and voluntary gift (143). The distress of Italy* was mitigated by the prudence and humanity of Odoacer, who had bound himself, as the price of his elevation, to satisfy the demands of a licentious and turbulent multitude. The kings of the Barbarians were frequently resisted, deposed, or murdered, by their native subjects; and the various bands of Italian mercenaries, who associated under the standard of an elective general, claimed a larger privilege of freedom and rapine. A monarchy destitute of national union, and hereditary right, hastened to its dissolution. After a reign of fourteen years, Odoacer was oppressed by the superior genius of Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths; a hero alike excellent in the arts of war and of government, who restored an age of peace and prosperity, and whose name still excites and deserves the attention of mankind.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

Origin, Progress, and Effects of the Monastic Life. Conversion of the Barbarians to Christianity and Arianism. - Persecution of the Vandals in Africa. - Extinction of Arianism among the Barbarians.

THE indissoluble connexion of civil and ecclesiastical affairs has compelled, and encouraged, me to relate the progress, the persecutions, the establishment, the divisions, the final triumph, and the gradual corruption, of Christianity. I have purposely delayed the consideration of two religious events, interesting in the study of human nature, and important in the decline and fall of the Roman empire. I. The institution of the monastic life (1); and, II. The conversion of the northern Barbarians.

(143) Such are the topics of consolation, or rather of patience, which Cicero (ad Familiares, lib. ix. Epist. 17.) suggests to his friend Papirius Pætus, under the military despotism of Cæsar. The argument, however, of "vivere pulcherrimum duxi," is more forcibly addressed to a Roman philosopher, who possessed the free alternative of life or death.

(1) The origin of the monastic institution has been laboriously discussed by Thomasin (Discipline de l'Église, tom. i. p. 1419-1426.) and Helyot (Hist. des Ordres Monastiques, tom. i. p. 1—66.). These authors are very learned and tolerably honest, and their difference of opinion shows the

* Compare, on the desolation and change of property in Italy, Manso, Geschichte des Ost-Gothischen Reiches. Part ii. p. 73, et seqq.-M.

I. Prosperity and peace introduced the distinction of the vulgar and the Ascetic Christians (2). The loose and imperfect practice of religion satisfied the conscience of the multitude. The prince or magistrate, the soldier or merchant, reconciled their fervent zeal, and implicit faith, with the exercise of their profession, the pursuit of their interest, and the indulgence of their passions: but the Ascetics, who obeyed and abused the rigid precepts of the Gospel, were inspired by the savage enthusiasm, which represents man as a criminal, and God as a tyrant. They seriously renounced the business, and the pleasures, of the age; abjured the use of wine, of flesh, and of marriage; chastised their body, mortified their affections, and embraced a life of misery, as the price of eternal happiness. In the reign of Constantine, the Ascetics fled from a profane and degenerate world, to perpetual solitude, or religious society. Like the first Christians of Jerusalem (3),* they resigned the use, or the property, of their temporal possessions; established regular communities of the same sex, and a similar disposition; and assumed the names of Hermits, Monks, and Anachorets, expressive of their lonely retreat in a natural or artificial desert. They soon acquired the respect of the world, which they despised; and the loudest applause was bestowed on this DIVINE PHILOSOPHY (4), which surpassed, without the aid of science or reason, the laborious virtues of the Grecian schools. The monks might indeed contend with the Stoics, in the contempt of fortune, of pain, and of death: the Pythagorean silence and submission were revived in their servile discipline; and they disdained, as firmly as the Cynics themselves, all the forms and decencies of civil society. But the votaries of this Divine Philosophy aspired to imitate a purer and more perfect model. They trod in the footsteps of the prophets, who had retired to the desert (5); and they re

subject in its full extent. Yet the cautious Protestant, who distrusts any popish guides, may consult the seventh book of Bingham's Christian Antiquities.

(2) See Euseb. Demonstrat. Evangel. (1. i. p. 20, 21. edit. Græc. Rob. Stephani, Paris, 1545.) In his Ecclesiastical History, published twelve years after the Demonstration, Eusebius (I. ii. c. 17.) asserts the Christianity of the Therapeuta; but he appears ignorant, that a similar institution was actually revived in Egypt.

(3) Cassian (Collat. xviii. 5.) claims this origin for the institution of the Cœnobites, which gradually decayed till it was restored by Anthony and his disciples.

(4) Ωφελιμώτατον γάρ τι χρῆμα εἰς ἀνθρώπους ἐλθούσα παρὰ Θέου ἡ τοιαύτη coopía. These are the expressive words of Sozomen, who copiously and agreeably describes (l. i. c. 12, 13, 14.) the origin and progress of this monkish philosophy (see Suicer. Thesaur. Eccles. tom. ii. p. 1441.). Some modern writers, Lipsius (tom. iv. p. 448. Manuduct. ad Philosoph. Stoic. iii. 13.), and La Mothe le Vayer (tom. ix. de la Vertu des Payens, p. 228-262.), have compared the Carmelites to the Pythagoreans, and the Cynics to the Capucins.

(5) The Carmelites derive their pedigree, in regular succession, from the prophet Elijah (see the Theses of Beziers, A. D. 1682, in Bayle's Nouvelles de la République des Lettres, OEuvres, tom. in p. 82, &c. and the prolix irony of the Ordres Monastiques, an anonymous work, tom i. p. 1-433. Berlin, 1751). Rome, and the inquisition of Spain, sileuced the profane criticism of the Jesuits of

* It has before been shown that the first Christian community was not strictly cœnobitic. See vol. ii. p. 89.-M.

1. THE MONASTIC LIFE.

Origin of the monks.