At the age of 68, Tiberius left Rome for the island of Capri, where he would spend the rest of his life, ruling, relaxing and bathing with boys he called his minnows.
Tiberius died at 77 and this news was welcomed by the citizenry. He was succeeded by the great grandson of Augustus: Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, whose nickname was Caligula.
Caligula was a mediocrity. He wanted to rule well but was ill-equipped to handle the challenge of absolute rule. He failed that ingredient needed with power: measure. He had not proven himself with accomplishments and service to Rome. He had merely been born into the right family. It was the emperor's guard, the Praetorian Guard, that selected Caligula – a selection rubber stamped by the Senate.
Caligula began by wanting to rule well. He returned to the courts the power to make indpendent decisions in sentencing people, and he increased the number of jurors. He began publishing a budget and he began more building. But along with good intentions he suffered from vanity.. The godliness that was atttibuted to his great-grandfather Augustisus may have led him to believe not that he was a god but that he should be worshiped as a god.
He lacked self-restraint. He indulged his appetites for food and grew fat and irritable. He indulged his sexual appetites. He wanted to be adored, but he made enemies and indulged an appetite for revenge and control. He used his power to have those he saw as enemies executed. A conspiracy against him arose among those who felt their lives endangered, including officers of the Praetorian Guard. In the year 41, at the age of 29, after having been in power three years and ten months, members of his guard assassinated him.
By now, senators had acquired the habit of timidity. There would be no restoration of the Senate's power. Instead, rule passed to Caligula's uncle, Claudius, who had bribed the Praetorian Guard into supporting him.
Claudius stammered and had a disability that made him clumsy. He had been an embarrassment to the imperial family and had spent much of his life secluded, writing books on Roman, Etruscan and Carthaginian history. (He is the last person known to have been able to read Etruscan.) Like historians with any competence, his histories offended. Not taken seriously as a possible heir, he had survived purges during the reigns of Tiberius and Caligula.
In addition to an unusually high intelligence, Claudius was genuinely affable. And he cared about the empire. He proved to be an able and efficient administrator. He was also an ambitious builder, constructing many new roads, aqueducts, and canals across the Empire.
Wanting public support, Claudius tried reviving the image of an expanding empire. A Celtic tribal king fled from southern Britain to Rome and appealed for help against invasion by another tribe in Britain, and this gave Claudius his opportunity in his third year of rule. Britain was a strange place for Romans, and Claudius' 40,000 troops at first refused to disembark from their invasion boats. But they overcame their first hesitation and that same year with their conquests they created Roman Britain, a new province.
An edict by Claudius held that a master who murdered his slave because the slave was no long of use to him could be tried for murder, and Caludius extended freedom to a slave who had been abandoned by his or her master.
He was annoyed by Jews and tried to expell them from Rome, but like others who thought of themselves as polytheists he was generally tolerant of the worship of gods that he didn't worship, but not tolerant of Druidism. Druids were known to perform human sacrifices, which the Romans viewed with abhorrence. It was around their Druid religion that Gauls rallied in opposition to Roman rule. With religious diffusion still common, Claudius was on guard against its spread and he had a Roman executed after he noticed a Duridic talisman on his breast.
Claudius married four times. The first was to his distant cousin Aemilia Lepida, but it was broken for political reasons. He divorced second wife, Aelia Paetina. After becoming empero he married again, when he fifty and she was about twenty.. She was flagrantly unfaithful and the marriage ended seven years later. His last marriage was on January 1, 49, to one of the few remaining descendants of Augustus, a great-granddaughter, Julia Agrippina (Agrippina the Younger), Caligula's sister. She was 33 and with a 10 year-old son by a previous marriage, a boy named Nero. And rumor has it she had poisoned her previous husband.
Empress Agripppina succeeded in getting Claudius to favor Nero as his heir-designate rather than his own son, Britannicus. In an attempt to make Nero eloquent, Agrippina had him schooled in mythology, the classical writers, rhetoric and philosophy. While a boy, Nero developed a liking for art, drama and music, especially singing, and he liked horses. When he was sixteen, Agrippina had him marrry Claudius's daughter by a previous marriage: Octavia.
Aggrippina used her power to destroy people she saw as a threat or who had crossed her. The Roman historian Tacitus was to writed that in the year 53 she goaded Claudius "into acts of savagery" against her imagined enemies.
The following year, 54, Claudius died, some believe by Agrippina having poisoned him after he had expressed second thoughts about Nero as his successor.
Nero became emperor at seventeen, the day that Claudius died. Like Caligula had wanted when he took power, Nero wanted to rule well. And, like Caligula, he craved public adoration. But he was never able to bear frustrations with patience. His mother became an irritant, and in the year 59 he had her murdered. Following this, Nero became more defensive and by the year 61 he had re-instituted treason trials.
His wife, Octavia, grew to hate him, and he feared that she was spreading dislike of him in his household and at court. He had her charged with treason and executed in the year 62. He had a love interest at this time, remarried and exercised this power against his next wife, Poppaea Sabina, one of the many attractive women across history who sought association with men of wealth and fame. She married Nero in 62.
The popularity Nero had wanted escaped him. Military commanders outside Rome were aware of Nero's unpopularity. Nero didn't realize where the real power was. In 68, he ordered the execution of his military commander in Spain, Servius Galba. With nothing to lose, Galba declared himself a subject of the Senate and Rome's citizens rather than of the emperor. Galba and his army headed for Rome. Realizing that he was powerless, Nero ran through his palace screaming hysterically. The Senate aroused itself, declared Nero a public enemy and ordered his execution. Soldiers closed in on Nero at his villa. The family dynasty begun by Augustus was at an end 54 years after it had begun. With Senate approval, power passed to Servius Galba. An era of rule by military men had begun.
Nero was the last emperor of the Julio-Claudian family, a dynasty that had lasted only 54 years following the death of its founder, Augustus – not an ucommon length of time for a ruling dynasty, but much shorter than some other dynasties elsewhere in the world.
Blunders, from Galba to Dometian
Galba tried to correct the misrule of Nero by restoring Rome's finances and restoring discipline to the military. However much Galba had the qualities of leadership that Rome needed, he would be destroyed by the weaknesses and corruption of others. Galba's frugality alienated citizens, and it alienated his soldiers, with Galba saying in response that he levied troops rather than bribed them for their support. Galba announced that he had adopted someone as his heir, but he failed to pay the Praetorian Guard the donation that it had come to expect for supporting a new emperor. A senator, Otho, age 37, was eager to replace Galba and offered the Praetorian Guard the donation that it expected. Galba was cut down in the street by guardsmen on horseback. His close associates were murdered soon after, and the Senate proclaimed Otho emperor.
Otho's rule went unrecognized among Roman soldiers in Germany, and they followed the precedent laid down by Galba's troops and hailed as emperor their commander, Vitellius. Vitellius had become popular with his troops by allowing them to bully civilians and take anything they could grab. Vitellius and his army marched toward Rome and battled troops that supported Otho. Vitellius won. Otho committed suicide after only three months in office. It was believed by many that he had done so to save Rome from another civil war, and a few impressed soldiers who considered Otho heroic tried to match his heroism by throwing themselves onto his funeral pyre.
The new emperor by military coup, Vitellius, was unpopular with everyone but his troops. He executed everyone he believed had wronged him. His bloodbath disgusted the Romans. And picking up on his unpopularity, soldiers of another army selected their military commander to put things straight in Rome. That commander was Flavius Vespasian, aged 60, who had led Rome's recent campaign against a the Jewish uprising in 66 in Judea. Vespasian and his army marched on Rome. They found Vitellius hiding in the palace. Vitellius was taken to the Forum, and there the crowds ridiculed him before someone stabbed him to death.
Vespasian was capable politically and generally good natured. He re-established order and ruled for ten years. His son Titus modeled himself after his father. He had won the admiration of the Romans for his devotion to his father, and like his father he was bright and good natured. But his rule was plagued by disasters not of his making.
Mount Vesuvius erupted. Titus provided relief and rehabilitation programs for survivors, and he paid for much of it with his own money. Then came another great fire that burned Rome, followed by an epidemic of disease. Titus made great efforts to find a remedy for the epidemic and to comfort his subjects. Then, after having been in power only two years, Titus himself died of fever, and the Romans responded with more genuine grief than they had with the death of any previous emperor, including Augustus.
Titus was succeeded by his thirty year-old brother, Domitian, younger than Titus by eleven years. Domitian skillfully managed the state's finances and contributed more to public construction. He insisted on each individual being protected by law, and he was concerned with morality. He wanted senators and their families and the equites (families of wealth from commerce) to behave according to accepted moral standards and to avoid scandals. He severely punished Vestal Virgins who had given into the temptation of sexual intercourse. He drove prostitutes from Rome's streets and enforced a law against what was considered unnatural sexual practices, including homosexuality. In the interest of children he outlawed their castration, which had been the practice of some religious cults. And he sought to end the buying and selling of eunuchs.
But Domitian became impatient with criticism and dissent and afraid of opposition, which started him down the same path as the failed emperors before him. His brother Titus had acted against subversion, banning anarchists and cynic-philosophers from Rome, but he had done so with confidence about Rome's security. But Domitian feared that subversion was about to get out of hand. He banned philosophers from Italy, and he overreacted when some soldiers stationed on the Rhine River revolted against his rule. The revolt was easily crushed, but he began a reign of terror against imagined traitors, including burning books and listening more to informers.
With the public, Domitian remained popular, as most people were not the target of his campaign against subversion. But his zeal in weeding out enemies created fear among those who were close to power, and after seven years of rule, palace officials who felt threatened joined a conspiracy that led to his assassination – a familiar way of recalling an emperor.
Emperors Trajan, Hadrian and Prosperity
A new emperor had to be found, and Senators and palace officials, including those who had conspired against Domitian, hoped to avoid civil war. They sought consensus and joined together in selecting an interim ruler: a 66-year-old senior senator named Nerva, who had not taken part in the conspiracy against Domitian but had probably been aware of it. Nerva sought allies in army generals and was able to stay in power. And as these generals wished, he adopted one of their own as his son and successor, a forty-four year-old commander named Trajan. Two years later, Nerva died, and Trajan became emperor.
Similar to Vespasian, Trajan was a good soldier and a man of talent. He was also a man of tolerance and courtesy. He expanded the empire against the Parthians. He put down another rebellion by Jews. He favored applying the law against only those Christians about whom people complained, or Christians who had created disturbances, and he declared that the accused were to receive a proper trial in which they were able to face their accusers. During his nineteen years of rule he improved the empire's roads and harbors, he beautified Rome and he provided support for the children of Rome's poor. And although the Senate continued to have little real power, Trajan consulted it and maintained its good will. The historian Tacitus – who lived during Trajan's rule – praised Trajan for restoring Rome's "old spirit," including the feeling that one could express oneself freely.
Trajan, a "good" emperor
Before Trajan died he selected as his successor another soldier: Hadrian. And, like Trajan, Hadrian would be considered a good emperor. Hadrian traveled across the empire, stabilizing local governments. He patronized the arts and added to the beautification of cities. He continued Trajan's policy regarding law and the treatment of Christians. He penalized those who mistreated their slaves. He kept the army at peak efficiency through constant training and unannounced inspections. He strengthened the empire's frontiers by building walls.
Four generals disappointed by Hadrian's retreat from military aggression and imperial expansion plotted to overthrow him. But Hadrian learned of their conspiracy before they attacked, and he had the generals executed.
Hadrian ruled for 21 years, to the year 138, during which the empire prospered. The
Roman Empire was the largest area in the world without internal customs barriers. Its roads had improved. Private industry was regulated but government did not interfere much in the economy. The empire had prospered from internal trade in agriculture and in crafted goods. From one end of the empire to the other were bountiful farms. Improvements had been made in medicine and public health, and across the empire were good hospitals. Trade from the empire reached as far east as China – the caravan route from
Parthia to China having opened in the year 115. The empire's trade reached eastern Africa, and it passed out through the Strait of Gibraltar (between Mauritania and Spain) to as far north as Norway. Roman ruled
Gaul and Western Germany had become the workshop of Europe. Gaul was busy with metal working. The city of Cologne had a glass blowing industry. The eastern provinces of the empire, including Greece, exercised age-old skills in technology and trade, and Greek businessmen had become the wealthiest in the empire.
Some of Rome's common people still grumbled, while welfare allowed them to survive. Many still lived in tiny quarters on narrow streets, amid overcrowding, noise and dirt, but their tenement houses were now likely to be of concrete faced with brick, and they were proud to be Romans.
Emperor Hadrian – a "good" man appointed by another "good" man. But it was destined not to last.
Rome's aristocrats were also proud, but this was not the same aristocracy that had been imagined to be the superior breed that had made Rome great. That aristocracy had disappeared through intermarriage and out-of-wedlock births. They and Rome's common people were becoming more of a blend. About four-fifths of Rome's plebeians carried some genes of former slaves. Around 140 years earlier, Emperor Augustus had laws passed that he hoped would reduce inter-breeding between Romans and non-Romans, laws prohibiting freed slaves from marrying Latins and prohibiting Senators from marrying freed women. But his attempt at what he saw as racial purity was by now a failure.
Rome Absorbed and Ruined Economically – 96 to 250 CE
The emperor from 161 to 180 was Marcus Aurelius, a student of philosophy, religion and morality. He wanted to do right by the empire and to improve the world. He defended the empire against military offensives by the Parthians and incursions by Germans. He was one of those who would be labeled a good emperor – a reminder to some that the saying "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely" is one of those sayings that sounds profound but is
Nevertheless, Aurelius made his contribution to Rome's failings. Staying with the passing of power from father to son, he had his son Commodus succeeed him, which began Rome on a path of ruin.
Commodus was not the hard worker and self-denying soldier that his father had been. He managed governmental affairs poorly, including selling government offices to the highest bidder. He was a disappointment to Romans. He disliked anyone who reminded him of his failure to live up to his father's moral standards or who reminded him that in his youth he had tried to pursue virtue. Like Nero, he tried to win popularity in public performances. He entered the arena, wearing animal skins or elaborate costumes that many thought too feminine. There he stabbed or clubbed animals to death to the applause of the crowd, while many who were not applauding thought that he was demeaning his position as emperor.
Emperor Marcus Aurelius, philosopher
His no-good son, Emperor Commodus
Emperor Severus, killed would-be opponents
Son of Serverus, Emperor Caracalla, had some citizens of Alexandria slaughtered because they had ridiculed him – not the kind of thing that happens in a democracy.
Commodus allowed his Guard in Rome and soldiers elsewhere to be abusive toward civilians. Concerned about opposition from military governors, he had their children cared for under his custody – in effect hostages. He had an enemies list of those he planned to execute, but others got to him first. He was assassinated twelve years after having succeeded his father.
The Senate then chose one of their own as emperor, Pertinex, who was assassinated after eighty-seven days. Another Senator, Julianus, bribed his way to a Senate declaration as emperor. Whenever Emperor Julianus appeared in public the Romans jeered him. When news of what was happening in Rome reached the military-governors in the provinces, a number of them became interested in replacing Julianus, and four years of civil war between rival military commanders followed.
The victorious commander was Septimius Severus. Like some other military commanders, he had been born outside Italy – in what today is Libya. He had spent most of his career in the provinces and had no sense of the people of Rome as privileged above others in the empire. Rome, in fact, was being swallowed by its empire. Severus deprived Rome's aristocracy of its traditional places in the city government of Rome and in the military.
Severus was followed by his son, Emperor Caracalla, who had murdered for power by killing his brother – in front of their mother. Caracalla extended citizenship to all free persons within the empire, further submerging Rome within the empire.
Caracalla was assassinated while urinating. He was followed by Severan family weaklings. One was Elgabalus in 218, emperor from age fourteen. Elgabalas was assassinated a little less than four years later in a plot formulated by his grandmother, Julia Maesa, and carried out by the Praetorian Guard. This made Elgabalas' cousin, Alexander Serverus, age 13, emperor. And he remained emperor until he was 26, with his mother continuing as his advisor. In the year 235, while in his tent during a millitary campaign, he was assassinated by military officers and he died cringing and crying in his mother's arms.
The new soldier-emperor, Maximinus, was not from Rome. He was the son of Thracian peasants – a German and an Alan. He had little respect for what remained of Rome's institutions. He was the first emperor who did not win or seek Senate confirmation of his rule. He was never to set foot in Rome. But the senators, afraid for their safety, were only silently antagonistic toward him.
Maximinus doubled the pay of his soldiers, and he upset Rome's civilians by giving money to the army that had been slated for welfare. Farmers in North Africa grew disturbed over Maximinus' high taxes, and they began to create disturbances. Romans in various parts of the empire saw Maximinus as a barbarian foreigner pretending to be an emperor. In Rome, angry packs of men hunted down and murdered his supporters. An army of North Africans, members of the Praetorian Guard, some senators, and some who saw themselves as the Romans of Old, went north from Rome to battle against Maximinus. They managed to isolate him and a some of his soldiers. To buy their safety, these soldiers killed Maximinus and his son.
Maximinus had ruled only three years – to the year 238. In the coming decades the rule of others would also be short. Soldiers would continue to choose their commanders as emperors, and some army commanders would become emperors only reluctantly, sensing the danger in it. Some of these emperors would attempt to bribe soldiers with gifts to ensure their continued loyalty, and the loyalty of some soldiers would depend on their being allowed to satisfy their appetite for booty at the expense of civilians. These new emperors would govern by decree, and they attempted to reinforce their rule with spies, informers and secret agents. In the coming five decades, only one emperor was to die a natural death, and only one was to die in battle. The rest would be murdered by soldiers,
The political chaos, meanwhile, produced a decline in respect for authority, caused in part by armies on the move within the empire, plundering towns and farms. Military-emperors sent tax collectors about the empire forcing more taxes from people.
During the first half of the 200s, taxation encouraged men of commerce to hoard their money rather than invest it. To pay soldiers, emperors debased money. Prices skyrocketed. The empire's middle class went bankrupt, and roads deteriorated.
More people had become beggars, and many others feared that they too would soon be impoverished. In Rome and other big cities, proletarians remained disinclined to organize themselves against authority, but here and there in the countryside desperate peasants did revolt, but their uprisings were not coordinated and not widespread enough to challenge the empire militarily. In various parts of the empire, bands of desperate people wandered the countryside, surviving by theft. In 235 bands of brigands had swept through Italy. In
Gaul, hordes of people roamed about, pillaging as they went. Piracy grew on the Aegean Sea, and tribal people from the Sahara attacked Roman cities along the coast of North Africa.
Disorders sometimes cut off trade routes. By 250, Rome's trade with China and India had ended. Agricultural lands in the empire were going unused. With the declining economy, people moved from cities and towns to rural areas in search of food. Cities began shrinking to a fraction of their former size, some to be occupied only by administrators. Where agricultural estates felt threatened by barbarian or Roman soldiers they protected themselves by fortification, and their neighbors surrendered their holdings to them in exchange for protection. Economic relations were developing that would last into the Middle Ages.
The kind of governance put in place by Rome's revered Augustus as an alternative to democracy and the chaos he wanted to avoid, had failed.
Order under Diocletian, to Constantine
Diocletian ran his government as a general runs an army, giving orders and expecting them to be carried out. Diocletian tried to restore order in the ruined economy by governmental directives. He created a national budget that aimed at balancing expenses and revenues. In 301 he responded to rising prices with an edict that fixed prices on thousands of commodities and services. In response to soaring interest rates, he fixed them to between six and twelve percent, depending upon the amount of risk involved in the loan.
Peace and a degree of order followed. Impressed, some people looked to him with hope. But Diocletian's economic policies failed. Despite the death penalty for violations of his laws on prices, violations became so widespread that his government stopped trying to enforce them. Diocletian's increased taxation resulted in the owners of estates producing less for the open market, and these estates continued to expand and absorb poor peasants as laborers.
For the sake of law and order and collecting taxes, Diocletian renewed an attempt made earlier in the century to prohibit people from moving off the lands they worked. Everyone was ordered to remain at his present occupation. Tenant farmers were to inherit the obligations of their fathers and were becoming serfs, to be sold as property when the landowner sold his land.
Diocletian tried to create order in the realm of ideas. He outlawed astrologers and the alchemists of Egypt and had their writings burned. He viewed Manichaeanism as a Persian religion and ordered Manichaean writings burned and death for those of the Manichaean faith.
Before the rule of Diocletian, disgust with Rome had led many citizens to embrace an alternative to its gods. Christians in the eastern half of the empire had increased to 20 or more percent of the population. North Africa had become largely Christian, the result of Christian evangelists having learned the Coptic and Berber languages. Across the empire as a whole, Christians were about ten percent of the population – their number having doubled in about fifty years.
Trouble arose involving Christians during a religious ritual performed in the presence of Diocletian. One or more of Diocletian's Christian courtiers made a sign of the cross to ward off the demonic influences of the ritual. Diocletian ordered everyone in the palace to worship Rome's gods or be beaten. More trouble with Christians resulted in Christians ordered to sacrifice to the gods of the state or face execution. Christian assemblies were forbidden. Bibles were confiscated and burned, and churches were destroyed. But by now, Christians had become too numerous to be wiped out. Moreover, because Christians could read and write – in an effort to study scripture – they had become an indispensable part of government. The purges slowly and intermittently dragged on into the year 305, when Diocletian retired because of ill-health.
This was followed by more war for power. Maxentius, the son of a former vice-emperor under Diocletian, claimed himself emperor in the west. The son of another vice-emperor, to be known as Constantine the Great, challenged Maxentius and extended his rule to Gaul. Maxentius extended his rule to
Hispania and to North Africa. Maxentius also warred against the emperor of the east, Galerius, while Constantine marked time. In 310, Galerius contacted a disease which he believed to be the retribution of the god of the Christians. As he lay dying he issued an edict ending his persecution of the Christians and asked Christians to pray for him so that he might live. He died anyway, in 311, and Constantine was impressed by what he believed was the victory of Christianity's god over Galerius.
In the spring of 312, Constantine moved against Maxentius, advancing from Gaul across the Alps and into Italy. The city of Milan surrendered to his forces, and Constantine won control over northern Italy. Maxentius and his army moved north to confront Constantine, and on October 28 the two forces met and fought at the Milvian Bridge along the Tiber River, a few miles north of the center of Rome. Constantine faced an army that greatly outnumbered his. But Constantine had trained his troops well, and his tactics were superior. His cavalry swept the left-wing of Maxentius' foot soldiers into the river. Maxentius lost many men and his own life when the pontoon bridge they were on collapsed. Constantine and his troops marched into Rome the next day, said to be welcomed by Rome's citizenry. Maxentius' decapitated head was paraded in trimphant display to show who was now boss. Constantine was now emperor of the Western half of the empire, and a new era had began.
Jewish Revolts and Christian Identities
Jesus left no writings, and known written descriptions of his life and what he said came decades after his death. These were to become known as the Gospels – a part of Christianity's New Testament – traditionally believed to have been written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Some scholars believe the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke were written between the years 70 and 100 and the Gospel of John between 90 and 110. Some others speculate that the Gospels may have originated as late as the year 140.
Matthew describes Jesus as having been born before the death of Herod the Great, which came in 4 BCE. Luke's account has Jesus born during or after the year 6 CE. According to the Gospels, Jesus was born in
Bethlehem – a village ten miles south of Jerusalem – a claim that might have been made to match Jesus with a prophesy in the book of Micah (5:2), where it was said that from Bethlehem one would go forth to become a ruler of Israel. But it is believed that Jesus may have been born in Galilee, in a village called
Nazareth, where Jesus is said to have lived as a youth.
It appears that as a young man Jesus worked at what was then considered a humble occupation: carpentry. The educated around him spoke Greek, while Jesus spoke Aramaic.
The Gospel of John, describes Jesus as having become a follower of the preacher
John the Baptist and as having begun his own ministry before John the Baptist's imprisonment. The Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke describe Jesus as beginning his ministry after John the Baptist's imprisonment. According to the Gospels, the neighbors of Jesus and his brother John saw Jesus' attempt to fill in for the loss of John the Baptist as presumptuous, and they rejected him. According to the Book of Matthew, rather than see himself as the predestined leader of John's movement, Jesus denied that he was equal to John. He said that "among those born of women there has not yet arisen anyone greater than John the Baptist"
note12 [ reader comment ]
The Gospels describe Jesus as preaching in rural towns and villages for three years, and they describe his message as close to that of the Essenes and John the Baptist. Jesus denounced spiritual corruption that pervaded Jewish society, and he disliked the ways of the well-to-do. According to the Gospels he advocated the sharing of possessions. If a man asks for your shirt, he is reported to have said, give your shirt and your coat too. He warned against serving two masters: God and mammon. He preached against the wearing of soft clothing, and he called upon his disciples to follow an ascetic life, to refrain from acquiring gold and silver for their money belts or bag for a journey.
note13
"Woe to you who are rich," he said, "for you are receiving your comfort in full. Woe to you who are well fed, for you shall be hungry."
note14
Like the Essenes and John the Baptist, Jesus was a devout Jew. He claimed that he had come to fulfill Judaic law and the word of the prophets, and he preached in Synagogues. Like the Essenes and John the Baptist, he spoke of a kingdom of heaven that was at hand. And like the Essenes he described his generation as evil and adulterous. He admonished his listeners to refrain from divorce and said that for a man to marry a divorced woman was to make that woman commit adultery. He commanded his listeners to follow the commandments of God. And, like the old prophets, he preached that foreign ways were evil and warned his listeners not to go the way of foreigners (gentiles).
Judaic law was complex, and some of Judaism's rituals were expensive, and, being bold enough to condemn the rest of society as corrupt, Jesus was also bold enough to ignore those laws that he thought impractical. According to the Gospels (written when Christians were themselves diverging from some Judaic laws) Jesus criticized the Pharisees for their impractical attempt at exactitude. Jesus, according to the Gospels, saw absurdity in their selecting to refrain from certain works on the Sabbath and not other works. Of those who criticized him for healing on the Sabbath he asked, "Does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the stall and lead him away to water him?
Jewish Revolts, Bar Kokhba and Dispersals
In 115, the emperor Trajan moved against the Parthians and overran Mesopotamia. Jews in Mesopotamia preferred Parthian rule to Roman rule, and military plans by the Parthian Empire against Rome included sending discontented Jews from Mesopotamia to encourage revolt in scattered Jewish communities within the Roman Empire. And it worked: numerous Jewish communities rose against the Romans. On the island of Cyprus and at the city of Cyrene (on the coast of North Africa), Jews massacred gentiles in great numbers. Trajan ended his war against Parthia and brought the great weight of Rome's military might down upon the rebellions. Rome let local gentile majorities have their revenge. In Cyprus every known Jew was killed and a law was passed forbidding any Jew, even from a shipwreck, to set foot on the island.
Fourteen years later, Trajan's successor, Hadrian, visited Jerusalem and ordered it rebuilt as a Roman city, to be called Aelia Capitolina. And, while he was in the area, Jews planned yet another rebellion. The revolt's leader was Simeon ben Kosiba, known by his admirers as Bar Kokhba (Son of a Star). The foremost rabbi and Judaic scholar Akiva hailed Simeon as another King David the Conquero, sent by God – in other words, that Simeon ben Kosiba was the Messiah.
In the year 132, after Hadrian had returned to Rome, the revolt began. The Roman legion on the outskirts of Jerusalem was caught by surprise and was driven from its encampments. All fighting was directed against the Romans, and Simeon ben Kosiba was able to establish a government in Jerusalem. He laid plans for rebuilding Solomon's temple, and a new coin was issued describing Simeon ben Kosiba as the president of a redeemed Israel
The empire was not held together by patriotism. It was held together by fear and a threat of violence, and Emperor Hadrian had to demonstrate to others that it could hold on to a province such as Judea. Hadrian sent new armies into Palestine. Lacking allies, or not being part of a greater war against Rome, this latest rebellion proved as hopeless as those before it. In two years the rebellion was crushed. Perhaps as many as 580,000 Jews died fighting, including Simeon ben Kosiba. It was the last of the Jewish rebellions. The Romans again glutted the slave markets with Jewish captives. Jerusalem was rebuilt as Aelia Capitolina and colonized with non-Jews, and the penalty for Jews entering the city was death. Judea was removed from the map. The prohibition against circumcision was renewed and celebration of the Jewish festivals, observance of the Sabbath, study of the Torah and possession of a scroll of Jewish Law became punishable by death. Judaism was outlawed in the hope that it would cause Jewish survivors elsewhere in the empire to fall away from what Hadrian saw as a troublesome creed.
Crushing an idea was difficult, and intellectual work among the Jews survived. Babylon rather than Jerusalem became the center for the preservation of Jewish tradition. The Talmud produced there was more detailed than previous versions and regarded as authoritative, and in the coming centuries it became the main source of instruction for Jews outside of Palestine.
Christian Bishops, Hierarchies and Orthodoxy
Christians had been organizing themselves in the manner of synagogues: a leader presiding over a group of elders. They called their local leaders
bishops, a Greek word meaning overseer. They called their elders
presbyters, and assistants to their bishops they called
deacons. Bishops of different Christian congregations tried to keep in contact with each other, and they tried to coordinate their beliefs. With this contact, bishops from the greater cities – like
Antioch,
Alexandria and
Rome – had greater prestige than did those from lesser cities.
The bishop of Rome benefited from the prestige of heading the Christian community in the empire's capital. The Christian community in Rome attracted Christians from around the empire. Having more wealth than other congregations in the west, it was able to give assistance to other congregations in that part of the empire. The first Bishop of Rome, Clement, who lived to around the year 97, supported his authority by linking God with Rome. In his first letter to the Corinthians, Clement described a hierarchy of authority that began with God, then Jesus, the apostles, and finally to bishops such as he, and he added that God had granted Rome "the authority of empire," glory, and honor.
The authority of the bishops was challenged by various Christians, adding to the diversity among the Christians. Among those who struggled with this diversity was the bishop of Antioch's congregation of Christians, Ignatius, who wrote letters championing the belief in the virgin birth of Jesus and the Trinity: God as the father, God as Jesus, and God as the spirit in all things. Ignatius is the first Christian known to have referred to Christian congregations as
catholic, a Greek word meaning universal. In a letter to the Christians of Smyrna he supported the authority of the bishops, declaring that baptisms were not permitted without the bishop and that "he who does anything without the knowledge of the bishop is serving the devil."
Bishops chose to assert their authority over what Christians should believe and not believe, and there were the Gnostic Christians who would persist in their conflict with that authority. Gnostic Christians believed that God distributed revelations without considering rank among the Christians and that bishops might be among those who had been denied revelation. Gnostics believed that matter (the opposite of spirit) was evil. Therefore, as they saw it, Jesus had not been a physical being. The Gnostics saw light as good and darkness as evil, not realizing that light was part of the world of matter and darkness merely its absence.
The fight against Gnosticism was led by Irenaeus, the Bishop of Lugdunum in Gaul (today Lyon, France). He argued that God had created everything, including soul and the material body and that soul and body could not be separated into good and evil. He argued for belief that conformed to the teachings of the Apostles and denounced Gnosticism as having come from "evil self-will," "vainglory" and "blindness."
Irenaeus had an impact on what would be appropriate reading for Christians. Writings were copied by hand, imperfectly. No two ancient manuscripts have been found to be exactly the same. (Exact similarity came with versions created by the printing press.) There were a variety of writings, with various anecdotes and sayings and various descriptions of the life of Jesus and his teachings. Among these writings were those of Mary Magdalene. The Gospel of Mary Magdalene describes her as one of Jesus' most beloved disciples. And it describes her defending herself against the doubts of Peter, with Mary asking Peter if he really thought that she would be "lying about the Lord."
Among the gospels was also that of Thomas, who described Jesus as advocating finding the Kingdom of God within oneself. And there was the Gospel of Philip with the same message. Here were calls to self-discovery and to becoming an authority unto oneself, which was in conflict with the notion of salvation from external sources: baptism and the Lord's forgiveness. Irenaeus was certain about which gospels were authentic. He described the other gospels as blasphemous and madness and proclaimed that there were only four gospels just as there were only four winds, four corners of the universe and four pillars holding up the sky. It was during the last twenty or so years of Irenaeus's life – around the years 180 to 200 – that the collection of books called the New Testament was formed. Other gospels were destroyed. Some were buried, to be discovered in the 20th century on papyrus fragments preserved by the dry climate in southern Egypt.
In attempting to define Christianity, Bishop Irenaeus found heresy in the beliefs of a Christian named Montanus, who encouraged celibacy and a literal interpretation of scripture. The Montanists believed, as had Paul, that procreation was unnecessary because the Second Coming of Jesus and the New Jerusalem were near. The Montanists found no support in the New Testament scripture for a systematic order and hierarchy in the worship of Jesus Christ, and they saw the rise of authority and hierarchy within the Church as a drift into worldliness. Not believing in authority within the Church, they believed that any one of them could acquire a special knowledge or inspiration from God.
The bishops chose to keep the Montanists within the Church, but they countered Montanist arguments, claiming that revealed truth no longer came to Christians who did not hold positions of authority within the Church. And the bishops announced that the age of the prophets had ended.
Christianity becomes Dominant
In addition to having become an emperor, Constantine took office as Supreme Pontiff. And, as Supreme Pontiff, he gave recognition to the god that had been his father's favorite: Sol Invictus, the Syrian sun god that had been brought to Rome by the boy-emperor Elagabalus some sixty years before. Constantine's half of the empire was five or more percent Christian. His mother, Helena, was among the Christians. Constantine had become sympathetic with the god of the Christians, and perhaps he gave Jesus at least part of the credit for his military victory over his rival, Maxentius, making Jesus Christ in his view a god of war.
In the eastern half of the empire, Galerius, who had died in 311, had been succeeded by his choice, his drinking companion, Licinius (pronounced Lick-IN-ee-us). At Milan in 313, Constantine came to an understanding with Licinius. The two recognized each other's rule, and they agreed that Christianity was to have full equality with other religions and that the property taken from Christians during the persecutions was to be returned. This was their Edict of Toleration.
Constantine gave the bishop of Roma imperial property where a new cathedral, the Lateran Basilica, would rise, and he provided for the building of other Christian churches across his part of the empire. He granted the Christian clergy special privileges and allowed people to will their property to the Church. He exempted the clergy from taxation, from military service and forced labor – as had been granted to the priests of other recognized religions. The tax exemptions for the Christian clergy were followed by a number of wealthy men rushing to join the clergy, and Constantine corrected this by making it illegal for rich pagans to claim tax exemptions as Christian priests.
The Christian church was experiencing numerous ideological conflicts, and the bishops sought help from Constantine in their effort to preserve what they called true Christianity. Constantine wanted Christianity to end its bickering, and he responded willingly to the bishops' requests. He saw it as his duty to suppress impiety, and the bishops accepted Constantine's authority.
Constantine's half of the empire remained from five to ten percent Christian, and the city of Rome remained largely pagan, especially the Senate, and so too did the high command of Constantine's army. Constantine had made no break with paganism. The arch dedicated to Constantine's victory over Maxentius, erected in 315 or 316, described that victory as an "instigation of divinity" and had not credited Jesus or the god of the Jews and Christrians, Jehovah (Yahweh). Constantine appointed pagan aristocrats to high offices in Rome while tolerating from his army the greeting "Constantine, may the immortal gods preserve you for us!" Then, in 321, in a move to accommodate Christianity with prevailing pagan ways, Constantine made the day of Sol Invictus a holy day and a day of rest for the Christians
Constantine Takes Control of the Eastern Half of the Empire
In the east, Licinius grew fearful of the respect that Christians in his realm had for Constantine. He expelled Christians from his household and executed a few bishops. In 323, Constantine and his army entered
Greece. Then he drove another wave of Goth invaders north and back across the Danube River. Although Constantine was still in what was officially the western half of the empire he was close enough to the east to concern Licinius. Licinius attempted negotiations with Constantine, which failed, and war erupted between the two. In late 324, Constantine's forces defeated those under Licinius, and Constantine became emperor of the entire empire. He had publicly promised to spare the life of Licinius, but he changed his mind, and the following year he had Licinius executed by strangulation.
After defeating Licinius, Constantine founded a new capital city in the eastern half of the empire, at
Byzantium. He called the city "New Rome." Later it would be called the City of Constantine, or Constantinople. Eventually it would be called Istanbul.
Constantine had not been baptized, but he appears to have become increasingly devoted to Christianity. He wrote of his successes as an indication of favor from Christianity's god. He attributed the failures of those recent emperors who had persecuted the Christians as an indication of the Christian god's power. Constantine granted more lands to the Church. He began a new series in the construction of Christian churches that were much grander than the Christians had before his time. And he gave Christian bishops the authority of judges – against whom there would be no appeal.
Constantine attempted to increase his appeal as a Christian by writing that his father, Constantius – a vice-emperor under Diocletian – had honored the "one supreme god," and that this god had given his father "manifestations and signs" of his assistance. It was a claim that overlooked that his father had worshiped Sol Invictus, had supported, however half-heartedly, Diocletian's persecutions of the Christians and had died a pagan.
Constantine's Harsh Rule
During his life and into the Middle Ages, Constantine was described as a man of virtue. Julian the Apostate (a nephew) would describe him differently, as would a Byzantine historian Zosimus almost two centuries later. And so too would modern scholars, working in a time of different values.
In the year 326, Constatine had his eldest son, who had helped him defeat Liciniius, Crispus seized and put to death, and he had his wife, the Empress Fausta, step mother to Crispus, killed at the behest of his mother, Helena. Fausta has been reported as forced to commit suicide. Constantine's motives are unknown. Constantine had been experiencing domestic tensions. There is speculation that the killings involved Constantine's role as Pontifex Maximus, Rome high priest and protector of virtue. The names of Crispus and Fausta were wiped from the face of inscriptions. References to their lives were erased, and memory of the two was condemned.
Constantine's treatment of Rome's pagans might also be described as harsh. He kept the pagans fearful and cowed as he confiscated from their priests much of the wealth they had accumulated, including their sacred icons. This brought to Constantine much wealth in the form of precious metal, which he gave to the Christian Church.
Constantine created severe penalties against adultery, concubinage and prostitution. For a variety of other crimes, people were to have their eyes gouged out or their legs maimed. But, influenced by Christianity, he ended crucifixion as a form of execution. He ended branding criminals and slaves on their face – the face according to Christians having been formed in the image of divine beauty. And in keeping with Christianity's devotion to the family, he forbade the separation of a family of slaves.
Emperors Julian (the Apostate) to Valentinian
The Emperor Constantine died in 337. Each of his three sons acquired rule in a portion of the empire. And the harmony that Eusebius celebrated did not materialize. The eldest son, Constantine II, claimed authority over his two brothers, who were unwilling to submit. One of the brothers, Constans, defeated the eldest, and the eldest died. Constans was killed by a rebel military commander, and the third and sole surviving brother, Constantius, abandoned his front against Persia and made war on the rebel commander, and defeating him he acquired rule over the entire empire. And to consolidate his rule he had members of his army murder possible rivals within his family: half-brothers and others.
Constantius (to be known to historians as Constantius II) attempted to extend his victories into the realm of religion. Unlike his deceased brothers and some others in his family, Constantius was an Arian rather than a Trinity-believing Christian. Believing that he was advancing the cause of Christianity, he exiled numerous Trinity-believing bishops. And, to advance the cause of Christianity, he also banned the ritual sacrifices of pagans, making participation in such rituals a capital offense. Mobs of zealous Christians followed the lead of Constantius by invading pagan temples and overturning alters. Pagans were offended, and across the empire they responded with bitterness and rioting.
Constantius had chosen to rear one of the boys orphaned by his soldiers' killings within the family: a five-year-old named Julian. Julian felt oppressed by Christian strictness and the earnestness with which his guardians espoused Christianity. Secretly Julian rebelled against Christianity. He became bookish and acquired a love for Hellenistic culture. Christian bishops had become proud of their Greek culture – another of the cultural diffusions of ancient times – and Julian was allowed to further his Hellenist education. Secretly he became a neo-Platonist, while continuing an outward appearance of a required Christian devotion.
When Julian was twenty-three, Constantius sent him to Gaul. He gave Julian the rank of Caesar at the head of an army against the Franks and Alamanni who were invading Gaul. There Julian proved himself an able leader, winning a great victory in 357 on the Rhine River at
Strasbourg and expelling the Franks and Alamanni from the empire. Constantius became jealous of the glory won by Julian and was concerned about Julian as a rival. He kept Julian and his army short of funds and kept him under surveillance. In 360 in Lutetia (Paris) his soldiers acclaimed Julian to be Augustus.
Constantius died of fever in 361. Julian became emperor – the last of Rome's non-Christian emperors. Not bound by monotheism's intolerances, he began his rule with an acceptance of other faiths. Lacking the hostility felt by Christians toward Jews, he rescinded a law that forbade marriage between Jews and Christians. He rescinded the law that banned Jews from entering Jerusalem, and he allowed Jews in Jerusalem to rebuild their temple.
With Julian's death, his army's leaders chose one among them as their commander. This was Jovian, a trinity-believing Christian. In becoming commander of what had been Julian's army, Jovian became emperor, and Christians in the Roman Empire celebrated the return of a Christian as head of state. Turning his attention to domestic affairs, Jovian transferred state support from pagan temples to Christian churches, but he followed Julian's example and decreed religious toleration for pagans and for Arian Christians. Then, after only months in power, he died from the fumes of his freshly plastered and unventilated bedroom.
In early 364 the army declared as emperor another Christian, a general to become known as Valentinian, age 43, a capable military commander from
Illyricum. Valentinian believed that defense of the empire required at least two emperors, and in March 364 he appointed his brother Valens as Emperor of the East. Valentinian continued religious toleration, declaring that no religion was to be declared criminal. He created schools throughout his realm. And to protect the poor he created offices called Defenders of the People.
In the year 366 the world of harmony that Eusebius thought God and Constantine had created receded a bit as rival factions in Rome supported different men for Bishop of Rome. Emperors no longer resided in Rome, and the bishops of Rome were becoming the city's leading potentate and authority. In the competition for power, a local Roman deacon, Damasus, was elected, but it was disputed by another deacon from Rome, Ursinus. Supporters clashed in the streets and in churches. Blood flowed and Emperor Valentinian had to send a force to quell the rioting. Ursinus and some of his followers were exiled and became established in Milan, and with continuing intrigues Ursinus was exiled to Cologne. He sought to succeed Damasus following Damasus' death in 384, but lost again, to Siricius, another deacon from Rome.
The Roman Empire Disintegrates
For two centuries, Germanic peoples had been moving into the empire and settling along its frontiers. Many of them converted to the emperor's faith: Christianity. And they had been adopting Roman ways while maintaining a sense of worth about common people, including women, that had been greater in their tribal society than in the civilization they were entering.
By the mid-300s, Germans inside the empire's frontiers were still only a small percentage of the empire's fifty to seventy million inhabitants. The Roman Empire might have been able to absorb more Germans, but Rome's ability to control its borders was seen as a problem, and it was addressed by a tract called
On Matters of Warfare, written anonymously for the imperial bureaucracy.
The author of
On Matters of Warfare advocated an increase in defense spending by cutting the bonuses that the state paid to soldiers and civil servants and by increasing the taxes on those landowners in areas threatened by invasion. And the tract addressed the issue of hearts and minds. It claimed that official corruption and the rich oppressing the poor were causing disorder. It called for increasing patriotism through social reform.
The tract was ignored. The imperial bureaucracy remained corrupt. Government positions were hereditary, honest government officials were rare, and people continued to detest officials as they did soldiers. Christian emperors had not changed that.
As for buying bigger and better equipped armies through increased taxation, already common people were over-taxed, and taxes were often taken by force, and at times with torture. Continual demands of the army and the empire's enormous bureaucracy were exhausting the empire's economy and adding to the alienation of those who peopled the empire. Meanwhile, tax evasions by the rich remained common, and the bigger landowners continued to pass their share of taxes onto their tenants. In the provinces suffering from invasions, people were forbidden to bear arms, limiting their ability to defend against any invasion. But hardly any loyalty to Rome remained.
The leadership to change the drift toward the empire's failure was not about to come from its emperors. Rule was divided again between two emperors. Valentinian I, who ruled from 364 to 375, was emperor of the western half of the empire, and his brother, Valens, was emperor in the eastern half, also beginning in the year 364. Both were intelligent military men dedicated to doing right, but like Marcus Aurelius in the previous century, they were not dedicated to social or political change.
Valentinian conscripted as best he could every year, but the wars among Constantine's sons had reduced the source of manpower for the military. Exemptions from military service were numerous, including exemptions for bureaucrats and the clergy. Farm workers remained in short supply, and landlords wished to exempt peasants whom they needed to work their lands. Great landlords could pay money, 25 gold coins, in place of each recruit they were obliged to send to the government. The landlords were supposed to send a number of recruits in proportion to the size of their land, but often they were uncooperative and would send only those men whom they wished to be rid of. Young men added to the shortage by trying to avoid military service, which offered them very low pay and hardship. Facing these shortages, the government had been recruiting Germans, who, with their warrior traditions, were more willing to serve in the military than most youthful Romans, especially city dwellers.
Valentinian and his army defeated German invasions three times, and he remained at the Rhine frontier for seven years, building fortifications. During this time, Rome's British province was again invaded. The invaders were Saxons, Angles and Jutes, collectively known as Anglo-Saxons. The Jutes and Angles were from
Jutland(today Denmark), and the Saxons were from Germany. And Britannia was attacked by men from
Frisia (today on the coast of the Netherlands). These peoples journeyed a hundred miles in their boats to Britannia's eastern coast. There they destroyed many villages, allowing many slaves to escape. Tribes from
Scotland, called Picts, took advantage of the invasions and pushed south across Hadrian's wall, and tribes from
Ireland began a series of destructive raids against Britannia's western coast. Valentinian sent his best commander to rescue Britannia, and by 369 the Roman army succeeded in re-establishing Roman authority there, protecting a network of councils that had been established by Britannia's Celts.
In 374, German tribes crossed the
Danube River into Pannonia. Some tribes of Samatians also crossed into the empire. Valentinian went to the frontier to meet the challenge. There, in 375, he died of a stroke, and his sixteen year-old son, Gratian, succeeded him as emperor of the western half of the empire.
Meanwhile, those Germans called Visigoths were being driven toward and into the empire by the Huns, who were moving westward. A confederation of about 100,000 Visigoths asked for and received permission from emperor Valens to settle within the empire – in
Moesia – in exchange for their providing him military services. The Visigoths, who were Arian Christians, might have been peacefully integrated into the empire, but Valens' agents failed to provide food for the Visigoths that they had been promised, and some Romans tried to buy Visigoth women and children for the slave market. This outraged the Visigoths. Visigoth warriors revolted, and discontented miners in the area joined the Visigoths as guides for their warriors.
Valens responded to the uprising by deciding to drive the Visigoths back across the border. His nephew Gratian, emperor in the western half of the empire, had recently won victories against invading Germans along the Rhine, and he asked Valens to wait for help from him and his armies before attacking. Valens might have easily defeated the Visigoths, but he was jealous of the glory that Gratian had already won and wanted all the glory from the coming war to himself. In 378, before Gratin and his troops arrived, he attacked the Visigoths. The empire's infantry was no match for Visigoth cavalry units. It was a revelation for the Romans and would lead to downgrading the use of foot soldiers for centuries to come. In what became known as the Battle of Adianople (100 miles northwest of Constantinople), the Visigoths destroyed two-thirds of Valens' troops and his best generals, and Valens was killed. News of the Roman defeat signaled to the world that the Roman Empire was weak and vulnerable, which endangered it further. Fall of the city of Rome and disintegration of the empire were approaching.
Theodosius, Persecutions and Disunity
By now, Christians saw Judaism and Christianity as absolutely separate, and Christians viewed Judaism as the work of the devil as much as it did paganism. Moreover, they saw Judaism as a special competitor. The Jews were burdened by an odium that pagans were spared: the Jews had rejected Jesus and Christians saw them as responsible for killing Jesus. And with Jews uninfluenced by the asceticism and asexuality of Jesus, and not seeing sexuality as tainted by lust and filth as Christians did, Christians were describing Jews as carnal. At Christian torchlight meetings, among the angry slogans shouted were those against Jews and Jew lovers.
As Roman citizens, Jews were protected from attack by law, and when Christians burned a synagogue, Theodosius ordered it rebuilt, the cost to be paid by the Church. Then Bishop Ambrose intervened. Outraged, he told Theodosius that he, Theodosius, was threatening the Church's prestige, and he convinced Theodosius to withdraw his move and let the destruction of the synagogue stand. Here and there across the Roman Empire, the burning of synagogues continued. In Judea, entire villages of Jews were set ablaze. Jews living in the empire had their privileges withdrawn. They were excluded from holding any state office, from the army, and they were not to proselytize Christians or intermarry with them.
Theodosius and Ambrose Persecute Pagans
In the city of
Salonika (Salonica), in northern Greece, a local military commander of German descent imprisoned a popular chariot driver for homosexuality. A crowd of outraged fans, anti-German in sentiment, lynched the military commander. Theodosius retaliated by ordering a massacre of seven thousand or so of the city's inhabitants, and the influential bishop Ambrose refused sacraments to Theodosius until he accepted penance for this deed
Theodosius did his penance, and in gratitude for his reconciliation with Ambrose he acted on Ambrose's views as to what should be done about paganism. Theodosius banned the Olympic games – which were considered pagan. He prohibited visits to pagan temples and forbade all pagan worship. Ordinary Christians were delighted at this move, and mobs of Christians joined the anti-pagan program by robbing pagan temples of their treasures and looting temple libraries, causing the disappearance of many writings. In the repression some of the most splendid buildings of Grecian architecture were destroyed.
Pagans in the east tried to defend their freedom to worship, and in the west some pagans rallied in an attempt to overthrow Gratian, and in 383 Gratian was assassinated. A military commander in the west, being a German and not eligible to be emperor, created an anti-Christian puppet named Eugenius, who announced that the hour of deliverance from Christianity was at hand.
In response, Theodosius cracked down harder on pagans in the eastern half of the empire. He made pagan worship punishable by death. In 394, he led an army of Visigoth cavalry and others against Eugenius in the west, defeating Eugenius' forces at the Frigidus River in the extreme northeast of Italy, a victory the Church was later to interpret as the work of God triumphing over paganism.
With his victory against Eugenius, Theodosius moved against paganism in the western half of the empire as he had in the east, wiping out freedom of worship across the whole of the empire. Then in 395, perhaps because of the strain of his recent military campaign against Eugenius, Theodosius died, at the age of fifty, believing that the empire had been unified by his wisdom and had become secure under the guidance of God.
Journey of the Visigoths
Honorius, Arcadius and the Visigoths
The guidance of God included rule by Theodosius' two sons: an eleven year-old, Honorius, who inherited the position of emperor in the west, and Arcadius, eighteen, who inherited rule in the eastern half of the empire. Honorius was moronic and would eventually spend much of his time raising chickens. Arcadius was pious and gentle, but he was also incompetent and ill-tempered. Theodosius left as regent for Honorius his talented and energetic aide and military commander-in-chief, Stilicho, who was half-Roman and half-Vandal (German) and married to Theodosius' favorite niece. Stilicho claimed that Theodosius left him in charge of both sons, but in the east a powerful aide and authority in Constantinople, Flavius Rufinus, claimed responsibility for the eighteen year-old, Arcadius.
The empire's Visigoths distrusted Honorius, Arcadius and their advisors. The leader of the Visigoths, Alaric, had bargained for pensions and for a post in the high command of the Roman army, and he had become disappointed over promises made by Theodosius that had not been fulfilled. The Visigoths wished to better themselves economically, and before Theodosius had been dead one year, Alaric and the Visigoths started marching toward Constantinople, devastating territory along the way. Rufinus, in Constantinople, requested help from Stilicho. Stilicho sent troops to Constantinople, and there members of his army murdered Rufinus. So hated had Rufinus been by the common people of Constantinople that upon hearing of his death they came running from every quarter of the city to trample upon his corpse. Someone put the head of Rufinus on the end of a lance, and the crowd followed it in a great parade through the city.
Sensing the weakness of the new rulers and taking advantage of the disunity between the western and eastern halves of the empire, the Visigoths marched into Greece where they sacked
Corinth, Argos and Sparta. Athens was spared by paying the Visigoths a ransom. In 397, Stilicho led troops against the Visigoths and drove them north into Illyricum, which the Visigoths also plundered. There the Visigoths settled with permission from the eastern emperor, Arcadius. And Arcadius made the leader of the Visigoths, Alaric, prefect of the province.
Invasion across Gaul; Visigoths besiege and burn Rome
Around 395, bands of Huns invaded Armenia, and they moved into Syria and
Cappadocia, where they plundered and killed. The Huns pushed against eastern Germans: Vandals, Suebi (or Suevi) and Burgundians. These Germans crossed the Danube River in great numbers, into the Roman province of
Pannonia. The Roman population there fled westward. The empire was further challenged in 399 when Alaric and his army of Visigoth warriors and civilians moved across the Alps and into Italy.
In 402 and 403, a Roman army led by Flavius Stilicho drove Alaric and the Visigoths back to Illyricum. In 405, Vandals, Suevi and Burgundians united under a leader named Radagaisus. He and about a third of his force moved from Pannonia into northern Italy, destroying cities and pillaging. The western emperor, Honorius, fled from the city of
Ravenna and found refuge behind the walls of Florence, forty miles southwest of Ravenna. From behind these walls the call went out for volunteers to help combat the invaders. No force of volunteers came, but Stilicho left his battle with invaders on the frontier and arrived just in time to rescue the emperor and the city of Florence. He had Radagaisus beheaded and those of Radagaisus' army who had survived sold into slavery.
In the winter of 406-07 came the greatest of invasions: Vandals, Suevi, Burgundians and Alans, with their farm animals and children, crossed the frozen Rhine River into Gaul. The frontier there had been undermanned and weakened by desertions, and soldiers in populated areas behind the frontier had been hanging around wine shops and spending their time in debauchery. The German invaders found only feeble opposition. They spread out, ravaged, burned and raped, some of them making it all the way to the Pyrenees mountains between Gaul and Hispania, while only a few towns, among them
Toulouse, attempted a significant resistance.
In 408, Arcadius suddenly died, leaving his six-year-old son, Theodosius II, as emperor in the east. In the west, an aide to Honorius was hostile to Stilicho and warned Honorius that Stilicho was plotting against him and aiming to put his own son on the eastern throne. The moronic Honorius believed the aide. The aide organized a coup against Stilicho and his supporters, who included the best military officers in the empire. These officers were largely Germans, like Stilicho. Inspired in part by hostility against Germans, Stilicho's supporters were massacred, as were the families of German soldiers serving as auxiliaries to the Roman army in the western half of the empire. Those still alive and attached to Stilicho called on him to rally his supporters and fight back. Instead, Stilicho went to the emperor's court at Ravenna without his bodyguard to meet Honorius. He was taken prisoner, charged with treason, and without a trial he and his son were executed. The last of the great Roman military commanders was dead, and thirty thousand or so German soldiers fled from Rome's army and joined Alaric and the Visigoths.
In the autumn of 408, encouraged by the death of Stilicho, Alaric and the Visigoths crossed the Alps and poured into Italy, to Ravenna. After failing to break through Ravenna's walls, Alaric decided to push on to North Africa, believing that grain grew there in great abundance, and he decided that on his way he would attack Rome to gain what he could.
Rome shut its gates as Alaric and his army approached. Alaric and his army besieged the city, and Rome's inhabitants grew hungry. As the siege continued plague appeared within Rome and corpses appeared on its streets. Rome's Senate decided to negotiate with Alaric and suggested it was not afraid of a fight. Alaric laughed and demanded gold, silver, moveable property and some three thousand pounds of Indian pepper in exchange for sparing the city and its inhabitants. Alaric gave Germans and slaves in the city safe passage out, some of whom joined his ranks, increasing Alaric's forces to about 40,000.
For more than a year Alaric kept Rome surrounded while waiting for his ransom. Then in August, 410, with assistance from within, his troops slipped into the city. For three days they looted and destroyed the houses of the rich. They killed some people, but being Christians they spared the Christian churches. Then Alaric and the Visigoths left for southern Italy, hoping to cross the Mediterranean Sea to North Africa.
News of what had happened to Rome left many across the empire believing that the end of civilization was at hand. In Palestine, the Christian scholar Jerome lamented that in the ruins of Rome the whole world had perished. Many Christians had believed that Rome would last until Armageddon, and when no Armageddon came they were bewildered.
In Rome, pagan survivors saw the sack of their city as the work of Rome's old gods – those gods whose power they believed had made Rome the most powerful of cities. They blamed the Christians for angering these gods. Hoping to appease their gods, some pagans called for performance of the sacred rites of the past, and the Christian authorities in Rome, wishing help from any source, approved such rites. But, distrusting the Christian authorities, none of the pagans had the courage to attempt their rites in public, where it was thought they had to be performed if they were to be effective.
Bishop Augustine, at the city of
Hippo in North Africa, protested against the view that God had participated in Rome's destruction. Augustine argued against the view of Bishop Eusebius, from a century before, that had linked Rome and Christianity. Augustine linked Rome with the devil and told that Christians that they were not citizens of Rome but of the heavenly city on the hill: Jerusalem
Vandals and Huns – the Empire from 410 to 450 CE
After the Visigoths besieged and departed from Rome, a storm frustrated their plans to cross from southern Italy into North Africa. Instead of trying to cross the Mediterranean the Visigoths journeyed north into southwestern
Gaul, spreading what to some appeared to be God's punishment of Rome. From his palace in
Ravenna, the Roman emperor in the west, Honorius, felt obliged to make peace with the Visigoths. His sister, Placidia, married their new leader, Atauf. And, in 418, the Visigoths were granted a legal domain in southwestern Gaul.
The Visigoths made
Toulouse their capital, and they established themselves as protectors of those who were there when they arrived. In accord with Roman tradition, as protectors the Visigoths had the right to possess from one-third to two-thirds of the land or the produce from those lands. Local people who owned large tracts of land lost much of it to the Visigoths, while most who came under Visigoth rule had little land to lose.
The Visigoths were awed by Roman civilization. They adopted local methods of agriculture. Already Chrisitian, they began to learn Latin, and they administered their territory as the Romans had, using local Roman bureaucrats. The cultural diffusion worked both ways: those who had been there before the Visigoths (the Gallo-Romans) began adopting Germanic ways, and some of them began wearing Visigoth trousers instead of the Roman toga. Some wore the jewelry worn by Visigoths, and they imitated the Visigoth rougher manners.
ome of Gaul, especially in the northwest, remained Roman. The Visigoths shared Gaul with other Germans: the Franks, who occupied Gaul's extreme northeast, and the Alemanni, who moved through central Gaul to the extreme south, along the Mediterranean coast near Hispania. And the Visigoths expanded into
Hispania, where they found Vandals – Germans who had arrived there in 409.
With the Vandals in Hispania were local people who had joined their ranks. Pushed on by the Visigoths, in the year 429 Vandals numbering around 80,000 moved across the Strait of Gibraltar to North Africa, known for its rich farmlands of wheat.
The Vandals were Arian Christians like the Visigoths, and they saw God as on their side. The Christians of North Africa thought otherwise, but their opposition to the Vandal invasion was weak. Military units in North Africa were few, scattered and unpopular. The Vandals easily overran the coast of
Mauritania and began moving eastward along the coast of Numidia. The Vandals banished the Trinity worshiping clergy and converted churches to Arian worship. Where the Vandals found resistance and suffered dead, they responded by looting, sacking and destroying the offending cities or razing country villas to the ground.
The Vandals settled down in North Africa and consolidated their rule. Within twenty years they built up their navy and began terrorizing shipping in the Western Mediterranean. And they would soon extend their rule to
Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica and the Balearic Islands, between Hispania and Sardinia.
Emperor Honorius, meanwhile, had died of dropsy, and rule from Italy passed to his sister Placidia's six-year old son, who took the title Valentinian III. Placidia put her armies under the command one of the few remaining Roman military leaders: Aetius. Aetius lacked money for recruiting a greater army, but against the invaders he used diplomacy. He hoped to keep the invaders divided. According to Gibbon's
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Aetius soothed the passions, consulted the prejudices and balanced the interests of those "barbarians" who occupied the Western provinces.
Aetius defended northern Gaul against the Salian Franks. In 437 he defeated an attempt by more Burgundian Germans to push into Gaul around the
Rhine River, and in 443 Aetius settled the Burgundians into a federated state southwest of Basel, in what today is Switzerland.
Meanwhile, disorders continued among local peoples in Gaul and Hispania. Roman citizens in Gaul and Hispania did not identify with Rome to the extent that Romanized Italians did, and many preferred poverty among the invaders to rule by Roman governors. A Christian priest from Gaul named Salvian wrote a work titled
On the Government of God. It described the poor of Gaul as being robbed and widows groaning, "so that even persons of good birth, who had enjoyed a liberal education" were seeking refuge with the Germans. Salvian praised the virtues of the Germans and wrote that Roman citizenship was now shunned and thought "almost abhorrent."
In Gaul, the homeless and others joined gangs of brigands. Rural discontent merged with Christian radicalism. Celtic nationalism re-surfaced. In Hispania and Gaul serious risings occurred against Roman rule. And, with an army of Germanic mercenaries and Huns, Aetius suppressed them.
A peace treaty between the Huns and the emperor of the east, Theodosius II, included a payment of subsidies to the Huns of seven hundred pounds of gold each year. In 441, Theodosius stopped these payments. The Huns retaliated by launching an assault across the Danube River into
Illyricum, razing a number of cities, including Belgrade and Sophia. The Huns, led by Attila, devastated the entire region between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, conquering numerous Germans called Ostrogoths (from the Crimea) and forced them to join his army. The Huns attacked
Constantinople, but they were unable to break through its great walls. They continued their attacks, into neighboring areas, until Theodosius II agreed to renew his payments to them, including back payments: 2,100 pounds of gold annually.
The Last Emperor in the West and Ostrogoth Rule
the western half of the empire, Emperor Valentinian III denied his strong-willed sister, Honoria, the marriage she wished, and she plotted with her lover to overthrow him. The plot was discovered, Honoria's lover was executed, and Honoria faced being forced to marry someone who could control her. She appealed to a power greater than Valentinian: the Hun leader, Attila. She sent him her ring. Attila took it as a proposal of marriage. He claimed Honoria as his, and he claimed the western half of the empire as her dowry.
Attila allied himself with the Franks and Vandals, and in 451 he crossed the Rhine into Gaul with his army. He sacked cities and devastated lands along the channel coast. Rome's General Aetius and the Visigoths joined forces against Attila, and in one of history's great battles in Gaul they served Attila his first defeat. Attila lost an estimated 175,000 to 300,000 of his warriors killed, and he retreated east of the
Rhine River.
In 452, after partially recovering from his defeat, Attila invaded Italy. He overran Milan and other cities and drove an Italian people called Veneti to seek refuge on a group of islands that were to become the city of Venice. Valentinian fled from his palace in Ravenna to Rome, and he sent the Bishop of Rome – Pope Leo I – and two Roman senators to meet with Attila. Christian legend has it that the Pope's presence awed Attila and that the ghosts of Peter and Paul appeared to Attila and terrified him. A more likely reason for Attila's withdrawal was that plague had broken out among his men, his supply of food was running out and military help for Valentinian was arriving from the eastern half of the empire. Attila returned to what is today Hungary, and the following year, 453, he died there, reportedly as the result of a burst artery. And without Attila's leadership, the collection of peoples that had made up his empire became disunited.
The western half of the empire was still on its feet, but the emperor there, Valentinian III, was to help it fall. He was involved in palace intrigue. Rome's great military leader, Aetius, was the victim of rumors. Valentinian was told that if he did not strike at Aetius first, Aetius would destroy him. When Aetius appeared before Valentinian to claim the emperor's daughter for his son, Valentinian accused him of treason, jumped from his throne and killed the defenseless man with his sword. Six months later, in 455, two men who had been Aetius' retainers retaliated by assassinating Valentinian.
Valentinian had fathered no son, and a scheming aristocrat of Senatorial rank, Petronius Maximus, seized the throne. Within a few months, as invading Vandals from North Africa were again in Italy and approaching Rome, a mob in Rome killed the new emperor. The emperor in the east, Marcian, refused to help defend Rome from the Vandals. Rome in 455 was plundered for a second time in 45 years, and after nineteen days the Vandals sailed away with thousands of prisoners, including Valentinian's widow and his two daughters.
Power in the western half of the empire fell to the commander of what was left of west's armies. This was Ricimer, a German and an Aryan Christian, who, according to Roman law, could not become emperor. Ricimer became a hero by defeating the Vandals in a sea battle near
Corsica. He also defeated the Vandals on land near Agrigentum in Sicily. Ricimer became defacto emperor until his death in 472.
More political conflict was now to give the western half of the empire its final blow. The emperor of the eastern half of the empire sent a nephew, Julius Nepos, into the western half of the empire behind an army. A military commander in the west drove Nepos across the Adriatic to Illyricum and appointed his son, Romulus Augustus,14, as emperor. He was to be the last emperor in the western half of the empire. Nepos sent an Ostrogothic commander, Odoacer, and his army to the west. Odoacer overthrew Romulus and declared himself King of Italy in 476. Romulus was the last of Rome's emperors seated in the western half of the empire.
Germanic kingdoms by the year 523.
Meanwhile, the emperor in the east since 474, Flavius Zeno, was troubled by an Ostrogoth tribal chief, Theodoric, and he rid himself of Theodoric by sending him and his army to Italy against Theodoric's fellow Ostrogoth, Odoacer. Theodoric's army confronted Odoacer's army – Arian Christians against Arian Christians. Tribal cohesion was stronger among Theodoric's people than among Odoacer's, and during four years of fighting Theodoric wore down Odoacer's forces. During a truce the two leaders met. Odoacer and Theodoric agreed to divide the rule of Italy between them. It was another sharing of power that was not to succeed. At a banquet at the emperor's palace, Theodoric killed Odoacer, and Theodoric's troops killed all of Odoacer's relatives and cut down Odoacer's troops wherever they could find them.
Theodoric established himself as King of Italy – not as Rome's emperor. The family line of emperors in the western half of the empire had come to an end. The west was now to be dominated by Germans. Emperors in the east still ruled over Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine and Egypt, to be known as the Byzantine empire – Byzantium the former name of the city of Constantinople. The emperors at Constantinople saw themselves as the rightful heirs of a rule that dated back to Augustus Caesar. They saw themselves as the sole and legitimate rulers of the Roman Empire.
Independence and a Celtic Revival in Britannia
Roman military legions evacuated Britannia in the late 300s and early 400s, while the western half of the Roman empire was still standing but falling apart, the Visigoths pushing to Hispania and the Vandals into North Africa. In Roman-ruled Britain many had favored everything Roman. Townspeople spoke Latin, drank wine, wore the Roman toga and enjoyed Roman baths and dinner parties. But around two-thirds of the people lived outside of the towns, spoke no Latin and worshiped Celtic gods – in a country that was still half forest, shrub and marshy wasteland. And with the withdrawal of the Roman military, Celtic nationalism arose. Power passed to local, Celtic military leaders and Celtic aristocrats. These aristocrats supported a Celtic warrior named Vortigern (Vortiger, or Vortigen) – a Christian of Pelagian persuasion. Around the year 425 Vortigern began extending his influence, and he became the strongest force in Britain, ruling from Wales to the channel coast in the south. Pelagian Christians spread their influence, while orthodox Catholics in Britain held their ground and remained in contact with church leadership on the continent.
It was in the 400s that a tribe from Ireland called Scots, or
Scottie, with others from Ireland were migrating across water to what today is called
Wales and to the north of Hadrian's Wall, today called
Scotland. Vortigern defeated those Scots who attacked England from enclaves in Wales, and he battled the Picts, who attacked England from north of Hadrian's Wall.
For help against the Picts, Vortigern turned to Anglo-Saxons who had settled along England's east coast. He gave the Anglo-Saxons more land and a treaty, and for eight years the Anglo-Saxons fought the Picts according to their treaty obligations, and the Anglo-Saxons defeated the Pict invaders. Then negotiations over Vortigern's payment to the Anglo-Saxons broke down, and the Anglo-Saxons attacked Vortigern's army. The result was a terrible but indecisive battle at Aylesford
in 455 (the same year that Valeninian III was assassinated and Rome was sacked for a second time).
After the battle at Aylesford, the Anglo-Saxons continued a campaign of pillage and slaughter against the Celts. Then came the greatest series of Anglo-Saxon invasions of Britain to date, as Angles, Jutes and Saxons on Europe's continent were running from the Huns. Vortigern's power evaporated. But unlike the people in Gaul and Hispania (who were passive or accepted the presence of German authority) local Britons felt they had much at stake and vigorously resisted invasion.
War between the Britons and the invaders continued with the passing of years. Trade and markets broke down. Slaves escaped, and estates were left in ruin. Those towns that were too well-fortified for the invaders and had water became places of refuge while other towns declined with their supply of food. With England weakened by war, the Picts renewed their invasions southward across Hadrian's wall. And the Anglo-Saxons continued their forays westward, massacring and pillaging their way to the sea that separates Britain from
Ireland, while the Celtic Britons fled into the hills, or into Hispania, or across the channel to Gaul
ranks Convert to Roman Catholicism
By the late 400s, those Germans called Franks occupied an area in Gaul near the English Channel. Like the Visigoths and the Burgundians they had been federated into the Roman Empire. The Franks enjoyed singing about their past heroes, and they had many gods. They were ruled by a royal family that claimed descent from the gods. When their king died in 481, he was succeeded by his fifteen-year-old son: Clovis. When Clovis was twenty he moved with his army southward and west against other Franks, believing in himself and that he had the help of the gods. He won battles and extended his rule all the way to the river Seine, near what today is Paris. Then, intermittently, he fought more wars and enlarged his territory, assassinating, and plundering when he could, including Catholic churches.
Clovis' gains made him feared in neighboring kingdoms. An envoy that Clovis sent to the king of Burgundy told Clovis of the king's exceptionally attractive and graceful granddaughter – Clotilda. Clovis sent a representative to the king asking to marry Clotilda, and the king was afraid to refuse.
Clotilda was a believer in the Trinity and a Roman Catholic. A hundred years later, a Catholic historian, Gregory of Tours, would write that three years after Clovis and Clotilda had married, Frankish people fought a major battle near what today is Bonn, Germany, against invading Alemanni Germans. According to some modern historians, the Franks who fought the Alemanni Germans were led not by Clovis but by a king called Siegebert. At any rate, Gregory of Tours described Clovis' forces as suffering during the battle against the Alemanni and Clovis as calling on his gods for help. But no help was forthcoming. Then, according to Gregory, Clovis "lifted his eyes up to heaven" and, "moved to tears," said:
Jesus Christ, Clotilda proclaims you the living God. You are said to give aid to those in need and to grant victory to those who have hope in You.
According to Gregory, Clovis told Christ that if he helped him he would have himself baptized in his name, and the battle then turned in Clovis' favor and Clovis defeated the Alemanni. Jesus had apparently taken an interest in Clovis' expansions and had seen in Clovis an agent in his cause. Again Jesus, according to Gregory, had become a god of war, as with the pagan Constantine almost two hundred years before.
Clovis continued to war for more territory and extended his rule as far south as Switzerland, to what today is the city of Basel, on the Rhine River just inside Switzerland. Italy's king, Theodoric, who was the elder statesman among the German kings in western continental Europe, warned Clovis to expand no farther toward Italy and no closer to the kingdoms of those Germans to whom he, Theodoric, was patron.
Meanwhile, Christian evangelists had been finding converts among Clovis' Franks. The Franks had been impressed by Christianity's association with Roman civilization, and they had no theology that rivaled that of the Christians. But despite the victory that Gregory claimed that Jesus had given him, Clovis remained unconvinced in his choice of faiths. Clovis' family was divided in religion: Clotilda's uncle (the new king of Burgundy) was an Aryan Christian; one of Clovis' sisters was an Arian Christian and married to the Arian king Theodoric; a second sister was also Arian; and a third was pagan. Clovis, the story goes, consulted those closest to him: his warriors. Then, on Christmas day – more than two years after his purported victory near Bonn – Clovis and several of his warriors were baptized Catholics. And the conversion of Clovis' subjects was soon to follow.
Rule from Constantinople
The emperors at Constantinople still ruled over Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine and Egypt – areas tied together by trade as well as the imperial authority at Constantinople. The emperors at Constantinople saw themselves as the rightful heirs of a rule that dated back to Augustus Caesar. They saw themselves as the sole and legitimate ruler of the Roman Empire.
After the disintegration of the western half of the Roman Empire, Constantinople continued to trade with the coast of Gaul, the Iberian peninsula, Africa, India and China. Constantinople remained a prosperous city, populated by Romans, Greeks, Armenians, Syrians, Arabs, Asians and some Germans, all of them united by a common Roman citizenship and belief in Christ and the Trinity. Intermarriage among the different ethnicities was common, and by the 500s most people in Constantinople spoke Greek. A few spoke Latin, but Latin was declining and used chiefly on formal or official occasions. Prejudice was common only against those who could not speak Greek or who were not Catholic – the essentials, according to some in Constantinople, for civilization. Germans made up the majority of those in Constantinople's army, and some soldiers were Huns. Many Germans labored on lands just outside the city, and some worked in Constantinople at menial jobs or as slaves in rich households
As a Christian city, Constantinople had many churches, monasteries and convents. It had free hospitals for the sick, staffed by monks and nuns. It had alms houses for the needy and the old. It had free accommodations for the homeless and city-subsidized orphanages. And in times of need, rationing was often introduced to help the poor.
Many in Constantinople saw the world as had Augustine of Hippo: as a vale of tears in which one should not place trust or hope. But the people of Constantinople were generally enthusiastic about chariot racing. From early in the morning, young and old people and priests from all over Constantinople would begin to converge on the city's circus to view and gamble on the chariot races.
