which naturally flowed from it in the uninterrupted
pursuit of the ordinary occupations of life. This is
indisputable. There was the increase of wealth, the
enjoyment of security, the absence of fears, and the
reign of law. Life and property were guarded. A
man could travel from one part of the Empire to the
other without fear of robbers or assassins. All these
things are great blessings. Materially we have no
higher civilization. But with peace and prosperity
were idleness, luxury, gambling, dissipation, extrava-
gance, and looseness of morals of which we have no
conception, and which no subsequent age of the world
has seen. It was the age of most scandalous monopo-
lies, and disproportionate fortunes, and abandonment
to the pleasures of sense. Any Eoman governor could
make a fortune in a year ; and his fortune was spent
in banquets and fetes and races and costly wines, and
enormous retinues of slaves. The theatres, the chariot
128 MARCUS AURELIUS.
races, the gladiatorial shows, the circus, and the sports
of the amphitheatre were then at their height. The
central spring of society was money, since it purchased
everything which Epicureanism valued. No dignitary
was respected for his office, only for the salary or
gains which his office brought. All professions which
were not lucrative gradually fell into disrepute ; and
provided they were lucrative, it was of no consequence
whether or not they were infamous. Dancers, cooks,
and play-actors received the highest consideration, since
their earnings were large. Scholars, poets, and phi-
losophers what few there were pined in attics.
Epictetus lived in a miserable cottage with only a straw
pallet and a single lamp. Women had no education,
and were disgracefully profligate ; even the wife of
Marcus Aurelius (the daughter of Antoninus Pius)
was one of the most abandoned women of the age,
notwithstanding all the influence of their teachings and
example. Slavery was so great an institution that half
of the population were slaves. There were sixty mill-
ions of them in the Empire, and they were generally
treated with brutal cruelty. The master of Epictetus,
himself a scholar and philosopher, broke wantonly the
leg of his illustrious slave to see how well he could bear
pain. There were no public charities. The poor and
miserable and sick were left to perish unheeded and un-
relieved. Even the free citizens were fed at the public
THE GLORY OF ROME. 129
expense, not as a charity, but to prevent revolts. About
two thousand people owned the whole civilized world,
and their fortunes were spent in demoralizing it. What
if their palaces were grand, and their villas beautiful,
and their dresses magnificent, and their furniture costly,
if their lives were spent in ignoble and enervating pleas-
ures, as is generally admitted. There was a low religious
life, almost no religion at all, and what there was was
degrading by its superstition. Everywhere were seen
the rites of magical incantations, the pretended virtue of
amulets and charms, soothsayers laughing at their own
predictions, nowhere the worship of the one God who
created the heaven and the earth, nor even a genuine
worship of the Pagan deities, but a general spirit of
cynicism and atheism. What does St. Paul say of the
Eomans when he was a prisoner in the precincts of the
imperial palace, and at a time of no greater demoral-
ization? We talk of the glories of jurisprudence;
but what was the practical operation of laws when
such a harmless man as Paul could be brought to
trial, and perhaps execution ! What shall we say of
the boasted justice, when judgments were rendered on
technical points, and generally in favor of those who
had the longest purses ; so that it was not only expen-
sive to go to law, but so expensive that it was ruinous ?
What could be hoped of laws, however good, when they
were made the channels of extortion, when the occupa-
130 MARCUS AURELIUS.
tion of the Bench itself was the great instrument by
which powerful men protected their monopolies ? We
speak of the glories of art ; but art was prostituted to
please the lower tastes and inflame the passions. The
most costly pictures were hung up in the baths, and
were disgracefully indecent. Even literature was directed
to the flattery of tyrants and rich men. There was no
manly protest from literary men against the increasing
vices of society, not even from the philosophers.
Philosophy continually declined, like literature and art.
Nothing strikes us more forcibly than the absence of
genius in the second century. There was no reward
for genius except when it flattered and pandered to
what was demoralizing. Who dared to utter manly
protests in the Senate ? Who discussed the principles
of government? Who would venture to utter anything
displeasing to the imperial masters of the world ? In
this age of boundless prosperity, where were the great
poets, where the historians, where the writers on politi-
cal economy, where the moralists ? For one hundred
years there were scarcely ten eminent men in any de-
partment of literature whose writings have come down
to us. There was the most marked decay in all branches
of knowledge, except in that knowledge which could be
utilized for making money. The imperial regime cast
a dismal shadow over all the efforts of independent
genius, on all lofty aspirations, on all individual free-
From 11 photograph of the statue at the Capitol, Rome
MARCUS AUKELIUS
THE GLORY OF ROME. 131
dom. Architects, painters, and sculptors there were
in abundance, and they were employed and well paid ;
but where were poets, scholars, sages? where were
politicians even? The great and honored men were
the tools of emperors, the prefects of their guards,
the generals of their armies, the architects of their
palaces, the purveyors of their banquets. If the emperor
happened to be a good administrator of this complicated
despotism, he was sustained, like Tiberius, whatever his
character. If he was weak or frivolous, he was removed
by assassination. It was a government of absolute phy-
sical forces, and it is most marvellous that such a man
as Marcus Aurelius could have been its representative.
And what could he have done with his philosophical
inquiries had he not also been a great general and a
practical administrator, a man of business as well
as a man of thought?
But I cannot enumerate the evils which coexisted
with all the boasted prosperity of the Empire, and
which were preparing the way for ruin, evils so dis-
graceful and universal that Christianity made no im-
pression at all on society at large, and did not modify
a law or remove a single object of scandal. Do you call
that state of society prosperous and happy when half
of the population was in base bondage to cruel masters ;
when women generally were degraded and slighted ;
when money was the object of universal idolatry ; when
132 MARCUS AURELIUS.
the only pleasures were in banquets and races and other
demoralizing sports ; when no value was placed upon
the soul, and infinite value on the body ; when there
was no charity, no compassion, no tenderness; when
no poor man could go to law ; when no genius was
encouraged unless for utilitarian ends; when genius
was not even appreciated or understood, still less re-
warded; when no man dared to lift up his voice against
any crying evil, especially of a political character;
when the whole civilized world was fettered, deceived,
and mocked, and made to contribute to the power,
pleasure, and pride of a single man and the minions
upon whom he smiled? Is all this to be overlooked
in our estimate of human happiness? Is there nothing
to be considered but external glories which appeal to
the senses alone? Shall our eyes be diverted from the
operation of moral law and the inevitable consequences
of its violation ? Shall we blind ourselves to the future
condition of our families and our country in our esti-
mate of happiness? Shall we ignore, in the dazzling
life of a few favored extortioners, monopolists, and
successful gamblers all that Christianity points out as
the hope and solace and glory of mankind ? Not thus
would we estimate human felicity. Not thus would
Marcus Aurelius, as he cast his sad and prophetic eye
down the vistas of succeeding reigns, and saw the fut-
ure miseries and wars and violonc" whirh were the
THE GLORY OF ROME. 133
natural result of egotism and vice, have given his
austere judgment on the happiness of his Empire.
In all his sweetness and serenity, he penetrated the
veil which the eye of the worldly Gibbon could not
pierce. He declares that " those things which are most
valued are empty, rotten, and trifling," these are his
very words ; and that the real life of the people, even
in the days of Trajan, had ceased to exist, that every-
thing truly precious was lost in the senseless grasp
after what can give no true happiness or permanent
prosperity.
AUTHORITIES.
THE " Meditations " of Marcus Aurelius ; Epictetus should be read
in connection. Kenan's Life of Marcus Aurelius. Farrar's Seekers after
God. Arnold has also written some interesting things about this em-
peror. In Smith's Dictionary there is an able article. Gibbon says
something, but not so much as we could wish. Tillemont, in nis History
of the Emperors, says more. I would also refer my readers to my " Old
Roman World," to Sismondi's Fall of the Roman Empire, and to Montes-
quieu's treatise on the Decadence of the Romans. The original Roman
authorities which have come down to us are meagre and few.
CONSTANTINE THE GREAT.
CHRISTIANITY ENTHRONED.
A. D. 274-337.
CONSTANTINE THE GREAT.
CHRISTIANITY ENTHRONED.
of the links in the history of civilization is
the reign of Constantine, not unworthily called
the Great, since it would be difficult to find a greater
than he among the Eoman emperors, after Julius
Caesar, while his labors were by far more beneficent.
A new era began with his illustrious reign, the tri-
umph of Christianity as the established religion of the
crumbling Empire. Under his enlightened protection
the Church, persecuted from the time of Nero, and never
fashionable or popular, or even powerful as an insti-
tution, arose triumphant, defiant, almost militant, with
new passions and interests ; ambitious, full of enthu-
sisasm, and with unbounded hope, a great spiritual
power, whose authority even princes and nobles were
at last unable to withstand. No longer did the Chris-
tians live in catacombs and hiding-places; no longer
did they sing their mournful songs over the bleeding
and burning bodies of the saints, but arose in the
138 CONSTANTINE THE GREAT.
majesty of a new and irresistible power, temporal
as well as spiritual, breathing vengeance on ancient
foes, grasping great dignities, seizing the revenues of
princes, and proclaiming the sovereignty of their invisi-
ble King. In defence of their own doctrines they be-
came fierce, arrogant, dogmatic, contentious, not with
sword in one hand and crucifix in the other, like the
warlike popes and bishops of mediaeval Europe, but
with intense theological hatreds, and austere contempt
of those luxuries and pleasures which had demoralized
society.
The last great act of Diocletian one of the ablest
and most warlike of the emperors was an unrelent-
ing and desperate persecution of the Christians, whose
religion had been steadily gaining ground for two cen-
turies, in spite of martyrdoms and anathemas ; and this
was so severe and universal that it seemed to be suc-
cessful. But he had no sooner retired from the govern-
ment of the world (A. D. 305) than the faith he supposed
he had suppressed forever sprung up with new force,
and defied any future attempt to crusli it.
The vitality of the new religion had been preserved
in ages of unparalleled vices by two things especially,
by martyrdom and by austerities ; the one a noble
attestation of faith in an age of unbelief, and the other
a lofty, almost stoical, disdain of those pleasures which
centre in the body.
CHRISTIANITY ENTHRONED. 139
The martyrs cheerfully and heroically endured physi-
cal sufferings in view of the glorious crown of which
they were assured in the future world. They lived in
the firm conviction of immortality, and that eternal
happiness was connected indissolubly with their cour-
age, intrepidity, and patience in bearing testimony to
the divine character and mission of Him who had shed
his blood for the remission of sins. No sufferings were
of any account in comparison with those of Him who
died for them. Filled with transports of love for the
divine Kedeemer, who rescued them from the despair
of Paganism, and bound with ties of supreme alle-
giance to Him as the Conqueror and Saviour of the
world, they were ready to meet death in any form for
his sake. They had become, by professing Him as
their Lord and Sovereign, soldiers of the Cross, ready to
endure any sacrifices for his sacred cause.
Thus enthusiasm was kindled in a despairing and
unbelieving world. And probably the world never saw,
in any age, such devotion and zeal for an invisible power.
It was animated by the hope of a glorious immortality,
of which Christianity alone, of all ancient religions, in-
spired a firm conviction. In this future existence were
victory and blessedness everlasting, not to be had un-
less one was faithful unto death. This sublime faith
this glorious assurance of future happiness, this devotion
to an unseen King made a strong impression on those
140 CONSTANTINE THE GREAT.
who witnessed the physical torments which the suffer-
ers bore with unspeakable triumph. There must be,
they thought, something in a religion which could take
away the sting of death and rob the grave of its victory.
The noble attestation of faith in Jesus did perhaps more
than any theological teachings towards the conversion
of men to Christianity. And persecution and isolation
bound the Christians together in bonds of love and
harmony, and kept them from the temptations of life.
There was a sort of moral Freemasonry among the de-
spised and neglected followers of Christ, such as has
not been seen before or since. They were in the world
but not of the world. They were the precious salt to
preserve what was worth preserving in a rapidly dis-
solving Empire. They formed a new power, which
would be triumphant amid the universal destruction
of old institutions ; for the soul would be saved, and
Christianity taught that the soul was everything,
that nothing could be given in exchange for it.
The other influence which seemed to preserve the
early Christians from the overwhelming materialism
of the times was the asceticism which so early became
prevalent. It had not been taught by Jesus, but seemed
to arise from the necessities of the times. It was a
fierce protest against the luxuries of an enervated age.
The passion for dress and ornament, and the indul-
gence of the appetites and other pleasures which pam-
CHRISTIANITY ENTHRONED. 141
pered the body, and which were universal, were a
hindrance to the enjoyment of that spiritual life which
Christianity unfolded. As the soul was immortal and
the body was mortal, that which was an impediment
to the welfare of what was most precious was early
denounced. In order to preserve the soul from the pol-
lution of material pleasures, a strenuous protest was
made. Hence that defiance of the pleasures of sense
which gave loftiness and independence of character
soon became a recognized and cardinal virtue. The
Christian stood aloof from the banquets and luxuries
which undermined the virtues on which the strength
of man is based. The characteristic vices of the Pagan
world were unchastity and fondness for the pleasures
of the table. To these were added the lesser vices of
display and ornaments in dress. From these the Chris-
tian fled as fatal enemies to his spiritual elevation. I
do not believe it was the ascetic ideas imported from
India, such as marked the Brahmins, nor the visionary
ideas of the Sufis and the Buddhists, and of other Ori-
ental religionists, which gave the impulse to monastic
life and led to the austerities of the Church in the sec-
ond and third centuries, so much as the practical evils
with which every one was conversant, and which were
plainly antagonistic to the doctrine that the life is more
than meat. The triumph of the mind over the body ex-
cited an admiration scarcely less marked than the vol-
142 CONSTANTINE THE GREAT.
untary sacrifice of life to a sacred cause. Asceticism,
repulsive in many of its aspects, and even unnatural
and inhuman, drew a cordon around the Christians, and
separated them from the sensualities of ordinary life.
It was a reproof as well as a protest. It attacked Epi-
cureanism in its most vulnerable point. " How hardly
shall they who have riches enter into the kingdom of
God I " Hence the voluntary poverty, the giving away
of inherited wealth to the poor, the extreme simplicity
of living, and even retirement from the habitations of
men, which marked the more earnest of the new be-
lievers. Hence celibacy, and avoidance of the society
of women, all to resist most dangerous temptation.
Hence the vows of poverty and chastity which early
entered monastic life, a life favorable to ascetic vir-
tues. These were indeed perverted. Everything good
is perverted in this world. Self-expiations, flagellations,
sheepskin cloaks, root dinners, repulsive austerities, fol-
lowed. But these grew out of the noble desire to keep
unspotted from the world. And unless this desire had
been encouraged by the leaders of the Church, the
Christian would soon have been contaminated with the
vices of Paganism, especially such as were fashionable,
as is deplorably the case in our modern times, when
it is so difficult to draw the line between those who
do not and those who do openly profess the Christian
faith. It is quite probable that Christianity would not
CHRISTIANITY ENTHRONED. 143
have triumphed over Paganism, had not Christianity
made so strong a protest against those vices and fash-
ions which were peculiar to an Epicurean age and an
Epicurean philosophy.
It was at this period, when Christianity was a great
spiritual power, that Constantine arose. He was born
at Naissus, in Dacia, A. D. 274, his father being a sol-
dier of fortune, and his mother the daughter of an inn-
keeper. He was eighteen when his father, Constantius,
was promoted by the Emperor Diocletian to the dignity
of Caesar, a sort of lieutenant-emperor, and early
distinguished himself in the Egyptian and Persian wars.
He was thirty-one when he joined his father in Brit-
am, whom he succeeded, soon after, in the imperial
dignity. Like Theodosius, he was tall, and majestic in
manners ; gracious, affable, and accessible, like Julius ;
prudent, cautious, reticent, like Fabius; insensible to
the allurements of pleasure, and incredibly active and
bold, like Hannibal, Charlemagne, and Napoleon ; a pol-
itic man, disposed to ally himself with the rising party.
The first few years of his reign, which began in
A. D. 306, were devoted to the establishment of his
power in Britain, where the flower of the Western army
was concentrated, foreseeing a desperate contest with
the five rivals who shared between them the Empire
which Diocletian had divided ; which division, though
144 CONSTANTINE THE GREAT.
possibly a necessity in those turbulent times, would yet
seem to have been an unwise thing, since it led to civil
wars and rivalries, and struggles for supremacy. It is
a mistake to divide a great empire, unless mechanism
is worn out, and a central power is impossible. The
tendency of modern civilization is to a union of States,
when their language and interests and institutions are
identical. Yet Diocletian was wearied and oppressed
by the burdens of State, and retired disgusted, dividing
the Empire into two parts, the Eastern and Western.
But there were subdivisions in consequence, and civil
wars ; and had the policy of Diocletian been continued,
the Empire might have been subdivided, like Charle-
magne's, until central power would have been destroyed,
as in the Middle Ages. But Constantine aimed at a gene-
ral union of the East and West once again, partly from
the desire of centralization, and partly from ambition.
The military career of Constantine for about seventeen
years was directed to the establishment of his power in
Britain, to the reunion of the Empire, and the subjuga-
tion of his colleagues, a long series of disastrous civil
wars. These wars are without poetic interest, in this
respect unlike the wars between Caesar and Pompey, and
that between Octavius and Antony. The wars of Caesar
inaugurated the imperial rdgime when the Empire was
young and in full vigor, and when military discipline
was carried to perfection ; those of Constantine were
CHRISTIANITY ENTHRONED. 145
in the latter days of the Empire, when it was impos-
sible to reanimate it, and all things were tending rap-
idly to dissolution, an exceedingly gloomy period,
when there were neither statesmen nor philosophers
nor poets nor men of genius, of historic fame, outside
the Church. Therefore I shall not dwell on these un-
interesting wars, brought about by the ambition of six
different emperors, all of whom were aiming for undi-
vided sovereignty. There were in the West Maximian,
the old colleague of Diocletian, who had resigned with
him, but who had reassumed the purple ; his son, Max-
entius, elevated by the Koman Senate and the Prse-
torian Guard, a dissolute and imbecile young man,
who reigned over Italy ; and Constantine, who pos-
sessed Gaul and Britain. In the East were Gale-
rius, who had married the daughter of Diocletian, and
who was a general of considerable ability ; Licmius,
who had the province of Illyricum ; and Maximin, who
reigned over Syria and Egypt.
The first of these emperors who was disposed of was
Maximian, the father of Maxentius and father-in-law
of Constantine. He was regarded as a usurper, and
on the capture of Marseilles, he under pressure of Con-
stantine committed suicide by strangulation, A.D. 310.
Galerius did not long survive, being afflicted with a
loathsome disease, the result of intemperance and glut-
tony, and died in his palace in Nicomedia, in Bythinia,
10
146 CONSTANTINE THE GREAT.
the capital of the Eastern provinces. The next em-
peror who fell was Maxentius, after a desperate strug-
gle in Italy with Constantine, whose passage over the
Alps, and successive victories at Susa (at the foot of
Mont Cenis, on the plains of Turin), at Verona, and
Saxa Rubra, nine miles from Rome, from which Max-
entius fled, only to perish in the Tiber, remind us of
the campaigns of Hannibal and Napoleon. The tri-
umphal arch which the victor erected at Rome to com-
memorate his victories still remains as a monument of
the decline of Art in the fourth century. As a result
of the conquest over Maxentius, the Praetorian guards
were finally abolished, which gave a fatal blow to the
Senate, and left the capital disarmed and exposed to
future insults and dangers.
The next emperor who disappeared from the field was
Maximin, who had embarked in a civil war with Lici-
nius. He died at Tarsus, after an unsuccessful contest,
A. D. 313 ; and there were left only Licinius and Con-
stantine, the former of whom reigned in the East and
the latter in the West. Scarcely a year elapsed before
these two emperors embarked in a bloody contest for
the sovereignty of the world. Licinius was beaten, but
was allowed the possession of Thrace, Asia Minor, Syria,
and Egypt. A hollow reconciliation was made between
them, which lasted eight years, during which Constan-
tine was engaged in the defence of his empire from the
CHRISTIANITY ENTHRONED. 147
hostile attacks of the Goths in Illyricum. He gained
great victories over these barbarians, and chased them
beyond the Danube. He then turned against Licinius,
and the bloody battle of Adrianople, A. D. 323, when
three hundred thousand combatants were engaged, fol-
lowed by a still more bloody one on the heights of
Chrysopolis, A. D. 324, made Constantine supreme mas-
ter of the Empire thirty-seven years after Diocletian
had divided his power with Maximian.
The great events of his reign as sole emperor, with
enormous prestige as a general, second only to that of
Julius Caesar, were the foundation of Constantinople
and the establishment of Christianity as the religion of
the Empire.
The ancient Byzantium, which Constantine selected
as the new capital of his Empire, had been no incon-