(616 A.D.) |

of Austrasia.

AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY

CHAPTER I

THE ROME OF GREGORY THE GREAT

THE Rome of Gregory the Great was no longer the powerful and splendid city of the early Emperors with which we are most familiar. It had long since ceased to be the capital of the Empire. From the death of Gallienus (A.D. 260), with the short interval of seven years of the reigns of Tacitus and Probus (275-282 A.D.), the Emperors had practically ceased to reside in Rome; the defence of the Empire from the Barbarians required their presence nearer the frontiers, at the centre of military operations; and the camp was also the court and the centre of political administration.

When Diocletian divided and reorganised the Empire, he founded an Eastern capital at Nicomedia, on the eastern shore of the Propontis, which Constantine removed to Constantinople on the western shore of the Bosphorus. Milan was chosen as the capital of the Western Augustus. Both, with the concourse of people which public affairs and private interests and

pleasures attract to a capital, grew into great cities, and were adorned with such splendid public buildings as became the dignity of the Empire.

While a new nobility, of the great officers of the army and of the household and of the provincial governors, was growing up at the new capitals, the great nobles of old Rome held themselves aloof from the courts of the imperial adventurers, and kept up the splendour and luxury of the ancient city out of the revenues of the vast estates acquired by their ancestors in all parts of the world which Roman arms had subdued.

This splendid luxury was rudely interrupted. Alaric with his Goths appeared before the gates of the city in 409 A.D., and was bought off with a great ransom. But he came again the following year and gave up the city to sack and plunder.

It was the nobles who suffered most; their wealth was the great prize at which the Barbarians aimed; their palaces were the first objects of the pillagers. Who shall tell the fate of a proud, luxurious aristocracy amidst the brutal horrors of a city given up to sack and pillage by a horde of Barbarians. were put to the sword; some were tortured to make Many them reveal the supposed hiding-place of their treasures; some disappeared under the ruins of their burnt palaces; some escaped to Africa and elsewhere; some perished under the hardships of their flight. Rome was left half consumed by fire and half depopulated. Its fate excited the horror and amazement of the civilised world. Half a century (455 A.D.) later, the Vandals under Genseric completed the plunder of the city. "The pillage lasted fourteen