In Cyrene they massacred 220,000 Greeks; in Cyprus, 240,000; in Egypt, a very great multitude. Many of these unhappy victims were sawed asunder, according to a precedent to which David had given the sanction of his example. The victorious Jews devoured the flesh, licked up the blood, and twisted the entrails like a girdle round their bodies. See Dion Cassius, l. lxviii. p. 1145 [c. 32].
Without repeating the well-known narratives of Josephus, we may learn from Dion (l. lxix. p. 1162 [c. 14]) that in Hadrian’s war 580,000 Jews were cut off by the sword, besides an infinite number which perished by famine, by disease, and by fire.
For the sect of the Zealots, see Basnage, Histoire des Juifs, l. i. c. 17, for the characters of the Messiah, according to the Rabbis, l. v. c. 11, 12, 13, for the actions of Barchochebas, l. vii. c. 12.
It is to Modestinus, a Roman lawyer (l. vl. regular.), that we are indebted for a distinct knowledge of the Edict of Antoninus. See Casaubon ad Hist. August. p. 27.
See Basnage, Histoire des Juifs, l.iii. c. 2, 3. The office of Patriarch was suppressed by Theodosius the younger.
We need only mention the purim, or deliverance of the Jews from the rage of Haman, which, till the reign of Theodosius, was celebrated with insolent triumph and riotous intemperance. Basnage, Hist. des Juifs, l. vi. c. 17, l. viii. c. 6.
According to the false Josephus, Tsepho, the grandson of Esau, conducted into Italy the army of Æneas, king of Carthage. Another colony of Idumæans, flying from the sword of David, took refuge in the dominions of Romulus. For these, or for other reasons of equal weight, the name of Edom was applied by the Jews to the Roman empire.
From the arguments of Celsus, as they are represented and refuted by Origen (l. v. p. 247-259 [p. 1276, sqq. ]), we may clearly discover the distinction that was made between the Jewish people and the Christian sect. See in the Dialogue of Minucius Felix (c. 5, 6) a fair and not inelegant description of the popular sentiments, with regard to the desertion of the established worship.
Cur nullas aras habent? templa nulla? nulla nota simulacra? . . . Unde autem, vel quis ille, aut ubi, Deus unicus, solitarius, destitutus? Minucius Felix, c. 10. The Pagan interlocutor goes on to make a distinction in favour of the Jews, who had once a temple, altars, victims, c.
It is difficult (says Plato) to attain, and dangerous to publish, the knowledge of the true God. See the Théologie des Philosophes, in the Abbé d’Olivet’s French translation of Tully de Naturâ Deorum, tom. i. p. 275.
The author of the Philopatris [a much later work; cp. vol. ii. App. 10, ad init.] perpetually treats the Christians as a company of dreaming enthusiasts, δαιμόνιοι αίθἑριοι αίθεροβατον̂ντες ἀεροβατον̂ντες, c., and in one place manifestly alludes to the vision, in which St. Paul was transported to the third heaven. In another place, Triephon, who personates a Christian, after deriding the Gods of Paganism, proposes a mysterious oath,
Άριθμέειν με διδάσκεις (is the profane answer of Critias) καὶ δρκος ὴ ὰριθμητική οὐκ ο[Editor: illegible character]δα γὰρ τί λέγεις· ἒν τρία, τρία ἒν!
According to Justin Martyr (Apolog. Major, c. 70-85), the dæmon, who had gained some imperfect knowledge of the prophecies, purposely contrived this resemblance, which might deter, though by different means, both the people and the philosophers from embracing the faith of Christ.
In the first and second books of Origen, Celsus treats the birth and character of our Saviour with the most impious contempt. The orator Libanius praises Porphyry and Julian for confuting the folly of a sect which styled a dead man of Palestine God, and the Son of God. Socrates, Hist. Ecclesiast. iii. 23.
The emperor Trajan refused to incorporate a company of 150 firemen, for the use of the city of Nicomedia. He disliked all associations. See Plin. Epist. x. 42, 43.
The proconsul Pliny had published a general edict against unlawful meetings. The prudence of the Christians suspended their Agapæ; but it was impossible for them to omit the exercise of public worship.
As the prophecies of the Antichrist, approaching conflagration, c., provoked those Pagans whom they did not convert, they were mentioned with caution and reserve; and the Montanists were censured for disclosing too freely the dangerous secret. See Mosheim, p. 413.
Neque enim dubitabam, quodcunque esset quod faterentur (such are the words of Pliny), pervicaciam certe et inflexibilem obstinationem debere puniri.
See Mosheim’s Ecclesiastical History, vol. i. p. 101, and Spanheim, Remarques sur les Césars de Julien, p. 468, c.
See Justin Martyr, Apolog. i. 35 [c. 26, sqq. ], ii. 14 [12]. Athenagoras in Legation. c. 27. Tertullian, Apolog. c. 7, 8, 9. Minucius Felix, c. 9, 10, 30, 31. The last of these writers relates the accusation in the most elegant and circumstantial manner. The answer of Tertullian is the boldest and most vigorous.
In the persecution of Lyons, some Gentile slaves were compelled, by the fear of tortures, to accuse their Christian master. The church of Lyons, writing to their brethren of Asia, treat the horrid charge with proper indignation and contempt. Euseb. Hist. Eccles. v. 1.
See Justin Martyr, Apolog. i. 35 [26]. Irenæus adv. Hæres. i. 24. Clemens Alexandrin., Stromat. l. iii. p. 438 [ed. Paris; ed. Migne, vol. 6, p. 1136]. Euseb. iv. 8. It would be tedious and disgusting to relate all that the succeeding writers have imagined, all that Epiphanius has received, and all that Tillemont has copied. M. de Beausobre (Hist. du Manichéisme, l. ix. c. 8, 9) has exposed, with great spirit, the disingenuous arts of Augustin and Pope Leo I.
When Tertullian became a Montanist, he aspersed the morals of the church which he had so resolutely defended. “Sed majoris est Agape, quia per hanc adolescentes tui cum sororibus dormiunt, appendices scilicet gulæ lascivia et luxuria.” De Jejuniis, c. 17. The 35th canon of the council of Illiberis provides against the scandals which too often polluted the vigils of the church, and disgraced the Christian name in the eyes of unbelievers.
Tertullian (Apolog. c. 2) expatiates on the fair and honourable testimony of Pliny, with much reason, and some declamation.
In the various compilation of the Augustan History (a part of which was composed under the reign of Constantine), there are not six lines which relate to the Christians; nor has the diligence of Xiphilin discovered their name in the large history of Dion Cassius.
An obscure passage of Suetonius (in Claud. c. 25) may seem to offer a proof how strangely the Jews and Christians of Rome were confounded with each other.
See in the xviiith and xxvth chapters of the Acts of the Apostles, the behaviour of Gallio, proconsul of Achaia, and of Festus, procurator of Judæa.
In the time of Tertullian and Clemens of Alexandria, the glory of martyrdom was confined to St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. James. It was gradually bestowed on the rest of the apostles, by the more recent Greeks, who prudently selected for the theatre of their preaching and sufferings, some remote country beyond the limits of the Roman empire. See Mosheim, p. 81, and Tillemont, Mémoires Ecclésiastiques, tom. i. part iii.
Tacit. Annal. xv. 38-44. Sueton. in Neron. c. 38. Dion Cassius, l. lxii. p. 1014 [c. 16]. Orosius, vii. 7
The price of wheat (probably of the modius ) was reduced as low as terni nummi; which would be equivalent to about fifteen shillings the English quarter.
We may observe, that the rumour is mentioned by Tacitus with a very becoming distrust and hesitation, whilst it is greedily transcribed by Suetonius, and solemnly confirmed by Dion.
This testimony is alone sufficient to expose the anachronism of the Jews, who place the birth of Christ near a century sooner (Basnage, Histoire des Juifs, l. v. c. 14, 15). We may learn from Josephus (Antiquitat. xviii. 3), that the procuratorship of Pilate corresponded with the last ten years of Tiberius, ad 27-37. As to the particular time of the death of Christ, a very early tradition fixed it to the 25th of March, ad 29, under the consulship of the two Gemini (Tertullian adv. Judæos, c. 8). This date, which is adopted by Pagi, cardinal Noris, and Le Clerc, seems at least as probable as the vulgar era, which is placed (I know not from what conjectures) four years later. [See above, vol. ii. p. 333, n. 158.]
Odio humani generis convicti. These words may either signify the hatred of mankind towards the Christians, or the hatred of the Christians towards mankind. I have preferred the latter sense, as the most agreeable to the style of Tacitus, and to the popular error, of which a precept of the Gospel (see Luke xiv. 26) had been, perhaps, the innocent occasion. My interpretation is justified by the authority of Lipsius; of the Italian, the French, and the English translators of Tacitus; of Mosheim (p. 102), of Le Clerc (Historia Ecclesiast. p. 427), of Dr. Lardner (Testimonies, vol. i. p. 345), and of the bishop of Gloucester (Divine Legation, vol. iii. p. 38). But as the word convicti does not unite very happily with the rest of the sentence, James Gronovius has preferred the reading of conjuncti, which is authorised by the valuable MS. of Florence. [The interpretation adopted by Gibbon is certainly correct, but there is no reason to question the reading convicti. ]
Tacit. Annal. xv. 44.
Nardini Roma Antica, p. 487. Donatus de Româ Antiquâ, l. iii. p. 449.
Sueton. in Nerone, c. 16. The epithet of malefica, which some sagacious commentators have translated magical, is considered by the more rational Mosheim as only synonymous to the exitiabilis of Tacitus.
The passage concerning Jesus Christ, which was inserted into the text of Josephus between the time of Origen and that of Eusebius, may furnish an example of no vulgar forgery. The accomplishment of the prophecies, the virtues, miracles, and resurrection of Jesus are distinctly related. Josephus acknowledges that he was the Messiah, and hesitates whether he should call him a man. If any doubt can still remain concerning this celebrated passage, the reader may examine the pointed objections of Le Fevre (Havercamp. Joseph. tom. ii. p. 267-273), the laboured answers of Daubuz (p. 187-232), and the masterly reply (Bibliothèque Ancienne et Moderne, tom. vii. p. 237-288) of an anonymous critic, whom I believe to have been the learned Abbé de Longuerue. [Most unluckily book xviii. of the Antiquities, in which the passage occurs (c. 3, 3), is not contained in the Palatinus, the best MS. of the work. It has found defenders in recent times, and Ewald has given reasons for regarding it as not entirely spurious but tainted with interpolations. There is another noteworthy passage in xx. 9, 1, about the death of St. James, “brother of Jesus, called the Christ.”]
See the lives of Tacitus, by Lipsius and the Abbé de la Bléterie, Dictionnaire de Bayle à l’article Tacite, and Fabricius, Biblioth. Latin. tom. ii. p. 386, edit. Ernest.
Principatum Divi Nervæ et imperium Trajani, uberiorem securioremque materiam senectuti seposui. Tacit. Hist. i. [1].
See Tacit. Annal. ii. 61, iv. 4.
The player’s name was Aliturus. Through the same channel, Josephus (De Vitâ suâ, c. 3), about two years before, had obtained the pardon and release of some Jewish priests, who were prisoners at Rome.
The learned Dr. Lardner (Jewish and Heathen Testimonies, vol. ii. p. 102, 103) has proved that the name of Galilæans was a very ancient and, perhaps, the primitive appellation of the Christians.
Joseph. Antiquitat. xviii. 1, 2. Tillemont, Ruine des Juifs, p. 742. The sons of Judas were crucified in the time of Claudius. His grandson Eleazar, after Jerusalem was taken, defended a strong fortress with 960 of his most desperate followers. When the battering-ram had made a breach, they turned their swords against their wives, their children, and at length against their own breasts. They died to the last man.
See Dodwell. Paucitat. Mart. l. xiii. The Spanish Inscription in Gruter, p. 238, No. 9, is a manifest and acknowledged forgery, contrived by that noted impostor Cyriacus of Ancona, to flatter the pride and prejudices of the Spaniards. See Ferreras, Histoire d’Espagne, tom. i. p. 192. [Gibbon’s conjecture is not happy, and need not be considered seriously.]
The Capitol was burnt during the civil war between Vitellius and Vespasian, the 19th of December, ad 69. On the 10th of August, ad 70, the Temple of Jerusalem was destroyed by the hands of the Jews themselves, rather than by those of the Romans.
The new Capitol was dedicated by Domitian. Sueton. in Domitian. c. 5. Plutarch in Poplicola, tom. i. p. 230, edit. Bryan. The gilding alone cost 12,000 talents (above two millions and a half). It was the opinion of Martial (l. ix. Epigram 3) that, if the emperor had called in his debts, Jupiter himself, even though he had made a general auction of Olympus, would have been unable to pay two shillings in the pound.
With regard to the tribute, see Dion Cassius, l. lxvi. p. 1082 [c. 7], with Reimarus’s notes. Spanheim, de Usû Numismatum, tom. ii. p. 571, and Basnage, Histoire des Juifs, l. vii. c. 2.
Suetonius (in Domitian. c. 12) had seen an old man of ninety publicly examined before the procurator’s tribunal. This is what Martial calls, Mentula tributis damnata.
This appellation was at first understood in the most obvious sense, and it was supposed that the brothers of Jesus were the lawful issue of Joseph and of Mary. A devout respect for the virginity of the Mother of God suggested to the Gnostics, and afterwards to the orthodox Greeks, the expedient of bestowing a second wife on Joseph. The Latins (from the time of Jerome) improved on that hint, asserted the perpetual celibacy of Joseph, and justified, by many similar examples, the new interpretation that Jude, as well as Simon and James, who are styled the brothers of Jesus Christ, were only his first cousins. See Tillemont, Mém. Ecclésiast. tom. i. part iii., and Beausobre, Hist. Critique du Manichéisme, l. ii. c. 2.
Thirty-nine πλέθρα, squares of an hundred feet each, which, if strictly computed, would scarcely amount to nine acres. But the probability of circumstances, the practice of other Greek writers, and the authority of M. de Valois inclined me to believe that the πλέθρον is used to express the Roman jugerum.
Eusebius, iii. 20. The story is taken from Hegesippus.
See the death and character of Sabinus in Tacitus (Hist. iii. 74, 75). Sabinus was the elder brother, and, till the accession of Vespasian, had been considered as the principal support of the Flavian family.
Flavium Clementem patruelem suum contemptissimæ inertæi . . . extenuissimâ suspicione interemit. Sueton. in Domitian. c. 15.
The isle of Pandataria, according to Dion. Bruttius Præsens (apud Euseb. iii. 18) banishes her to that of Pontia, which was not far distant from the other. That difference, and a mistake, either of Eusebius or of his transcribers, have given occasion to suppose two Domitillas, the wife and the niece of Clemens. See Tillemont, Mémoires Ecclésiastiques, tom. ii. p. 224.
Dion, l. lxvii. p. 1112 [c. 14]. If the Bruttius Præsens, from whom it is probable that he collected, this account, was the correspondent of Pliny (Epistol. vii. 3), we may consider him as a contemporary writer.
Suet. in Domit. c. 17. Philostratus in Vit. Apollon, l. viii.
Dion, l. lxviii. p. 1118 [c. 1]. Plin. Epistol. iv. 22.
Plin. Epistol. x. 97. The learned Mosheim expresses himself (p. 147, 232) with the highest approbation of Pliny’s moderate and candid temper. Notwithstanding Dr. Lardner’s suspicions (see Jewish and Heathen Testimonies, vol. ii. p. 46), I am unable to discover any bigotry in his language or proceedings.
Plin. Epist. v. 8. He pleaded his first cause ad 81: the year after the famous eruptions of Mount Vesuvius, in which his uncle lost his life.
Plin. Epist. x. 98. [Tillemont’s date, 104; Mommsen’s, 112.] Tertullian (Apolog. c. 5) considers this rescript as a relaxation of the ancient penal laws, “quas Trajanus ex parte frustratus est”; and yet Tertullian, in another part of his Apology, exposes the inconsistency of prohibiting inquiries and enjoining punishments.
Eusebius (Hist. Ecclesiast. l. iv. c. 9) has preserved the edict of Hadrian. He has likewise (c. 13) given us one still more favourable under the name of Antoninus; the authenticity of which is not so universally allowed. [See Appendix 1.] The second Apology of Justin contains some curious particulars relative to the accusations of Christians.
See Tertullian (Apolog. c. 40). The acts of the martyrdom of Polycarp exhibit a lively picture of these tumults, which were usually fomented by the malice of the Jews.
These regulations are inserted in the above-mentioned edicts of Hadrian and Pius. See the apology of Melito (apud Euseb. l. iv. c. 26).
See the rescript of Trajan, and the conduct of Pliny. The most authentic acts of the martyrs abound in these exhortations.
In particular, see Tertullian (Apolog. c. 2, 3) and Lactantius (Institut. Divin. v. 9). Their reasonings are almost the same; but we may discover that one of these apologists had been a lawyer and the other a rhetorician.
See two instances of this kind of torture in the Acta Sincera Martyrum published by Ruinart, p. 160, 399. Jerome, in his Legend of Paul the Hermit, tells a strange story of a young man, who was chained naked on a bed of flowers, and assaulted by a beautiful and wanton courtesan. He quelled the rising temptation by biting off his tongue.
The conversion of his wife provoked Claudius Herminianus, governor of Cappadocia, to treat the Christians with uncommon severity. Tertullian ad Scapulam, c. 3.
Tertullian, in his epistle to the governor of Africa, mentions several remarkable instances of lenity and forbearance which had happened within his knowledge.
Neque enim in universum aliquid quod quasi certam formam habeat constitui potest: an expression of Trajan which gave a very great latitude to the governors of provinces.
In metalla damnamur, in insulas relegamur. Tertullian, Apolog. c. 12. The mines of Numidia contained nine bishops, with a proportionable number of their clergy and people, to whom Cyprian addressed a pious epistle of praise and comfort. See Cyprian, Epistol. 76, 77.
Though we cannot receive with entire confidence either the epistles or the acts of Ignatius (they may be found in the 2d volume of the Apostolic Fathers), yet we may quote that bishop of Antioch as one of those exemplary martyrs. He was sent in chains to Rome as a public spectacle; and, when he arrived at Troas, he received the pleasing intelligence that the persecution of Antioch was already at an end. [The Acts are certainly spurious; the Epistles are doubtless genuine, though some German critics still question Lightfoot’s conclusions. The question is closely connected with the origin of episcopacy which is assumed in the Letters. They are edited by Lightfoot in his “Apostolic Fathers.” Cp. vol. ii. Appendix 13.]
Among the martyrs of Lyons (Euseb. l. v. c. 1), the slave Blandina was distinguished by more exquisite tortures. Of the five martyrs so much celebrated in the acts of Felicitas and Perpetua, two were of a servile, and two others of a very mean, condition. [Acts of the Martyrdom of Perp. and Felic., Harris and Gifford, 1890.]
Origen. advers. Celsum. l. iii. p. 116 [p. 929]. His words deserve to be transcribed. “Ὀλίγοι κατὰ καιροὺς, καὶ σϕόδρα εὐαρίθμητοι περὶ [ leg. ὑπὲρ] τω̂ν Χριστιανω̂ν θεοσεβείας τεθνήκασι.”
If we recollect that all the plebeians of Rome were not Christians, and that all the Christians were not saints and martyrs, we may judge with how much safety religious honours can be ascribed to bones or urns indiscriminately taken from the public burial-place. After ten centuries of a very free and open trade, some suspicions have arisen among the more learned Catholics. They now require, as a proof of sanctity and martyrdom, the letters B. M., a vial full of red liquor, supposed to be blood, or the figure of a palm tree. But the two former signs are of little weight, and with regard to the last it is observed by the critics, 1. That the figure, as it is called, of a palm is perhaps a cypress, and perhaps only a stop, the flourish of a comma, used in the monumental inscriptions. 2. That the palm was the symbol of victory among the Pagans. 3. That among the Christians it served as the emblem, not only of martyrdom, but in general of a joyful resurrection. See the epistle of P. Mabillon, on the worship of unknown saints, and Muratori sopra le Antichità Italiane, Dissertat. lviii.
As a specimen of these legends, we may be satisfied with 10,000 Christian soldiers crucified in one day, either by Trajan or Hadrian, on Mount Ararat. See Baronius ad Martyrologium Romanum; Tillemont, Mém. Ecclésiast. tom. ii. part ii. p. 438; and Geddes’s Miscellanies, vol. ii. p. 203. The abbreviation of Mil. which may signify either soldiers or thousands is said to have occasioned some extraordinary mistakes.
Dionysius ap. Euseb. l. vi. c. 41. One of the seventeen was likewise accused of robbery [falsely].
The letters of Cyprian exhibit a very curious and original picture both of the man and of the times. See likewise the two lives of Cyprian, composed with equal accuracy, though with very different views; the one by Le Clerc (Bibliothèque Universelle, tom. xii. p. 208-378), the other by Tillemont, Mémoires Ecclésiastiques, tom. iv. part i. p. 76-459. [His name was Thascius Cæcilius Cyprianus. The best ed. of his works is that of Hartel in the Vienna Corpus Script. eccl. Lat.]
See the polite but severe epistle of the clergy of Rome to the bishop of Carthage (Cyprian, Epist. 8, 9). Pontius labours with the greatest care and diligence to justify his master against the general censure.
In particular those of Dionysius of Alexandria and Gregory Thaumaturgus of Neo-Cæsarea. See Euseb. Hist. Ecclesiast. l. vi. c. 40, and Mémoires de Tillemont, tom. iv. part ii. p. 685.
See Cyprian, Epist. 16, and his life by Pontius. [Cp. Epp. 7, 12, 14, 43.]
We have an original life of Cyprian by the deacon Pontius, the conpanion of his exile, and the spectator of his death; and we likewise possess the ancient proconsular acts of his martyrdom. These two relations are consistent with each other and with probability; and, what is somewhat remarkable, they are both unsullied by any miraculous circumstances.
It should seem that these were circular orders, sent at the same time to all the governors. Dionysius (ap. Euseb. l. vii. c. 11) relates the history of his own banishment from Alexandria almost in the same manner. But, as he escaped and survived the persecution, we must account him either more or less fortunate than Cyprian.
See Plin. Hist. Natur. v. 3. Cellarius, Geograph. Antiq. part iii. p. 96. Shaw’s Travels, p. 90; and for the adjacent country (which is terminated by Cape Bona, or the promontory of Mercury), l’Afrique de Marmol. tom. ii. p. 494. There are the remains of an aqueduct near Curubis, or Curbis, at present altered into Gurbes [Kurba; Korbes is Col. Iulia Karpis]; and Dr. Shaw read an inscription [C.I.L. 8, 980], which styles that city Colonia Fulvia [not Fulvia, but Iulia]. The deacon Pontius (in Vit. Cyprian. c. 12) calls it “Apricum et competentem locum, hospitium pro voluntate secretum, et quicquid apponi eis ante promissum est, qui regnum et justitiam Dei quærunt.”
See Cyprian, Epistol. 77. Edit. Fell.
Upon his conversion, he had sold those gardens for the benefit of the poor. The indulgence of God (most probably the liberality of some Christian friend) restored them to Cyprian. See Pontius, c. 15.
When Cyprian, a twelvemonth before, was sent into exile, he dreamt that he should be put to death the next day. The event made it necessary to explain that word as signifying a year. Pontius, c. 12.
[But cp. Ep. 83.]
Pontius (c. 15) acknowledges that Cyprian, with whom he supped, passed the night custodiâ delicatâ. The bishop exercised a last and very proper act of jurisdiction, by directing that the younger females who watched in the street should be removed from the dangers and temptations of a nocturnal crowd. Act. Proconsularia, c. 2.
See the original sentence in the Acts, c. 4, and in Pontius, c. 17. The latter expresses it in a more rhetorical manner.
Pontius, c. 19. M. de Tillemont (Mémoires, tom. iv. part i. p. 450, note 50) is not pleased with so positive an exclusion of any former martyrs of the episcopal rank.
Whatever opinion we may entertain of the character or principles of Thomas Becket, we must acknowledge that he suffered death with a constancy not unworthy of the primitive martyrs. See Lord Lyttelton’s History of Henry II. vol. ii. p. 592, c.
See, in particular, the treatise of Cyprian de Lapsis, p. 87-98, edit. Fell. The learning of Dodwell (Dissertat. Cyprianic. xii. xiii.) and the ingenuity of Middleton (Free Inquiry, p. 162, c.) have left scarcely anything to add concerning the merit, the honours, and the motives of the martyrs. [In the Decian persecution, many Christians had lapsed or denied their faith; cp. Cyprian Epp. 11, 34, 59, c. Afterwards the question arose as to their being received back into the church. Some were ready to receive them by indulgences from confessors and martyrs; but there was another party (strong at Rome) which strenuously opposed this policy. Cyprian took a moderate view, and the First Council of Carthage decided that the church could remit all such offences, but that the indulgences of martyrs were ineffectual. The leading representative of the rigorous view was Novatian. The controversy was a precursor of the great Donatist schism, which turned on the same question of church discipline; see c. xxi. Cp. below, n. 101 and n. 104.]
Cyprian. Epistol. 5, 6, 7, 22, 24, and de Unitat. Ecclesiæ. The number of pretended martyrs has been very much multiplied by the custom which was introduced of bestowing that honourable name on confessors.
Certatim gloriosa in certamina ruebatur; multoque avidius tum martyria gloriosis mortibus quærebantur, quam nunc Episcopatus pravis ambitionibus appetuntur. Sulpicius Severus, l. ii. He might have omitted the word nunc.
See Epist. ad Roman. c. 4, 5, ap. Patres Apostol. tom. ii. p. 27. It suited the purpose of Bishop Pearson (see Vindiciæ Ignatianæ, part ii. c. 9) to justify, by a profusion of examples and authorities, the sentiments of Ignatius.
The story of Polyeuctes, on which Corneille has founded a very beautiful tragedy, is one of the most celebrated, though not perhaps the most authentic, instances of this excessive zeal. We should observe that the 60th canon of the council of Illiberis refuses the title of martyrs to those who exposed themselves to death by publicly destroying the idols. [Polyeuctes is first mentioned in Gregory of Tours, Hist. Fr. vii. 6. His Acta are published by Aubé in Polyeucte dans l’histoire, 1882.]
See Epictetus, l. iv. c. 7 (though there is some doubt whether he alludes to the Christians), Marcus Antoninus de Rebus suis, l. xi. c. 3, Lucian. in Peregrin.
Tertullian ad Scapul. c. 5. The learned are divided between three persons of the same name, who were all proconsuls of Asia. I am inclined to ascribe this story to Antoninus Pius, who was afterwards emperor; and who may have governed Asia under the reign of Trajan.
Mosheim, de Rebus Christ. ante Constantin. p. 235.
See the Epistle of the Church at Smyrna, ap. Euseb. Hist. Eccles. l. iv. c. 15.
In the second apology of Justin, there is a particular and very curious instance of this legal delay. The same indulgence was granted to accused Christians in the persecution of Decius; and Cyprian (de Lapsis) expressly mentions the “Dies negantibus præstitutus.”
Tertullian considers flight from persecution as an imperfect, but very criminal apostacy, as an impious attempt to elude the will of God, c. c. He has written a treatise on this subject (see p. 536-544, edit. Rigalt.), which is filled with the wildest fanaticism and the most incoherent declamation. It is, however, somewhat remarkable that Tertullian did not suffer martyrdom himself.
The Libellatici, who are chiefly known by the writings of Cyprian, are described, with the utmost precision, in the copious commentary of Mosheim, p. 483-489.
Plin. Epistol. x. 97, Dionysius Alexandrin. ap. Euseb. l. vi. c. 41. Ad prima statim verba minantis inimici maximus fratrum numerus fidem suam prodidit; nec prostratus est persecutionis impetu, sed voluntario lapsu seipsum prostravit. Cyprian. Opera, p. 89. Among these deserters were many priests, and even bishops.
It was on this occasion that Cyprian wrote his treatise De Lapsis and many of his epistles. The controversy concerning the treatment of penitent apostates does not occur among the Christians of the preceding century. Shall we ascribe this to the superiority of their faith and courage or to our less intimate knowledge of their history?
See Mosheim, p. 97. Sulpicius Severus was the first author of this computation; though he seemed desirous of reserving the tenth and greatest persecution for the coming of the Antichrist.
The testimony given by Pontius Pilate is first mentioned by Justin. The successive improvements which the story has acquired (as it passed through the hands of Tertullian, Eusebius, Epiphanius, Chrysostom, Orosius, Gregory of Tours, and the authors of the several editions of the acts of Pilate) are very fairly stated by Dom. Calmet, Dissertat. sur l’Ecriture, tom. iii. p. 651, c.
On this miracle, as it is commonly called, of the Thundering Legion, see the admirable criticism of Mr. Moyle, in his Works, vol. ii. p. 81-390.
Dion Cassius, or rather his abbreviator Xiphilin, l. lxxii. p. 1206 [4]. Mr. Moyle (p. 266) has explained the condition of the church under the reign of Commodus. [Cp. Görres, Jahrb. für protestantische Theologie X. 401 sqq. ]
Compare the life of Caracalla in the Augustan History with the epistle of Tertullian to Scapula. Dr. Jortin (Remarks on Ecclesiastical History, vol. ii. p. 5, c.) considers the cure of Severus by the means of holy oil, with a strong desire to convert it into a miracle. [Wirth dates Tertullian’s letter 21½ ad ]
Tertullian de Fugâ, c. 13. The present was made during the feast of the Saturnalia; and it is a matter of serious concern to Tertullian that the faithful should be confounded with the most infamous professions which purchased the connivance of the government.
Euseb. l. v. c. 23, 24. Mosheim, p. 435-447.
Judæos fieri sub gravi pœna vetuit. Idem etiam de Christianis sanxit. Hist. August. p. 70 [x. 17, 1]. [See A. Wirth, Quaestiones Severianae, 1888.]
Sulpicius Severus, l. ii. p. 384. This computation (allowing for a single exception) is confirmed by the history of Eusebius, and by the writings of Cyprian.
The antiquity of Christian churches is discussed by Tillemont (Mémoires Ecclésiastiques, tom. iii. part ii. p. 68-72), and by Mr. Moyle (vol. i. p. 378-398). The former refers the first construction of them to the peace of Alexander Severus; the latter to the peace of Gallienus.
See the Augustan History, p. 130 [xviii. 45, 7]. The emperor Alexander adopted their method of publicly proposing the names of those persons who were candidates for ordination. It is true that the honour of this practice is likewise attributed to the Jews.
Euseb. Hist. Ecclesiast. l. vi. c. 21. Hieronym. de Script. Eccles. c. 54. Mammæa was styled a holy and pious woman, both by the Christians and the Pagans. From the former, therefore, it was impossible that she should deserve that honourable epithet.
See the Augustan History, p. 123 [xviii. 29, 2]. Mosheim (p. 465) seems to refine too much on the domestic religion of Alexander. His design of building a public temple to Christ (Hist. August. p. 129, [ ib. 43, 6]) and the objection which was suggested either to him or in similar circumstances to Hadrian appear to have no other foundation than an improbable report, invented by the Christians and credulously adopted by an historian of the age of Constantine.
Euseb. l. vi. c. 28. It may be presumed that the success of the Christians had exasperated the increasing bigotry of the Pagans. Dion Cassius, who composed his history under the former reign, had most probably intended for the use of his master those counsels of persecution which he ascribes to a better age and to the favourite of Augustus. Concerning this oration of Mæcenas, or rather of Dion, I may refer to my own unbiassed opinion (vol. i. p. 86, Not. 25) and to the Abbé de la Bléterie (Mémoires de l’Académie, tom. xxiv. p. 303, tom. xxv. p. 432).
Orosius, l. vii. c. 19, mentions Origen as the object of Maximin’s resentment; and Firmilianus, a Cappadocian bishop of that age, gives a just and confined idea of this persecution (apud Cyprian. Epist. 75).
The mention of those princes who were publicly supposed to be Christians, as we find it in an epistle of Dionysius of Alexandria (ap. Euseb. l. vii. c. 10), evidently alludes to Philip and his family, and forms a contemporary evidence that such a report had prevailed; but the Egyptian bishop, who lived at an humble distance from the court of Rome, expresses himself with a becoming diffidence concerning the truth of the fact. The epistles of Origen (which were extant in the time of Eusebius, see l. vi. c. 36) would most probably decide this curious, rather than important, question.
Euseb. l. vi. c. 34. The story, as is usual, has been embellished by succeeding writers, and is confuted, with much superfluous learning, by Frederick Spanheim (Opera Varia, tom. ii. p. 400, c.).
Lactantius, de Mortibus Persecutorum, c. 3, 4. After celebrating the felicity and increase of the church, under a long succession of good princes, he adds, “Extitit post annos plurimos, execrabile animal, Decius, qui vexaret Ecclesiam.” [The object of Decius was to enforce universal observance of the national religion, and he was successful in inducing many Christians to concede external compliance to the pagan ceremonials, by sacrifice and sprinkling incense on the altars of the gods. Many Christians purchased libelli from the magistrates certifying that they were free from the imputation of Christianity, and were hence called libellatici. The chief sources are Cyprian’s Letters and his De Lapsis; fragments of Dionysius, Bishop of Alexandria, who hid himself during the persecution, in Eusebius, H. E., vi. 40-42; and the Vita of Gregory Thaumaturgus by Gregory of Nyssa.]
Euseb. l. vi. c. 39. Cyprian. Epistol. 55. The see of Rome remained vacant from the martyrdom of Fabianus, the 20th of January, ad 250, till the election of Cornelius, the 4th of June, ad 251. Decius had probably left Rome, since he was killed before the end of that year.
Euseb. l. vii. c. 10. Mosheim (p. 548) has very clearly shown that the Prefect Macrianus and the Egyptian Magus are one and the same person.
Eusebius (l. vii. c. 13) gives us a Greek version of this Latin edict, which seems to have been very concise. By another edict he directed that the Cæmeteria should be restored to the Christians.
Euseb. l. vii. c. 30. Lactantius de M. P. c. 6. Hieronym. in Chron. p. 177 [ad ann. 2290]. Orosius, l. vii. c. 23. Their language is in general so ambiguous and incorrect that we are at a loss to determine how far Aurelian had carried his intentions before he was assassinated. [He intended to rescind the edict of Gallienus.] Most of the moderns (except Dodwell, Dissertat. Cyprian. xi. 64) have seized the occasion of gaining a few extraordinary martyrs.
Paul was better pleased with the title of Ducenarius, than with that of bishop. The Ducenarius was an Imperial procurator, so called from his salary of two hundred Sestertia, or 1600 l. a year. (See Salmasius ad Hist. August. p. 124.) Some critics suppose that the bishop of Antioch had actually obtained such an office from Zenobia, while others consider it only as a figurative expression of his pomp and insolence.
Simony was not unknown in those times; and the clergy sometimes bought what they intended to sell. It appears that the bishopric of Carthage was purchased by a wealthy matron, named Lucilla, for her servant Majorinus. The price was 400 Folles. (Monument. Antiq. ad calcem Optati, p. 263.) Every Follis contained 125 pieces of silver, and the whole sum may be computed at about 2400 l.
If we are desirous of extenuating the vices of Paul, we must suspect the assembled bishops of the East of publishing the most malicious calumnies in circular epistles addressed to all the churches of the empire (ap. Euseb. l. vii. c. 30).
His heresy (like those of Noetus and Sabellius, in the same century) tended to confound the mysterious distinction of the divine persons. See Mosheim, p. 702, c.
Euseb. Hist. Ecclesiast. l. vii. c. 30. We are entirely indebted to him for the curious story of Paul of Samosata.
The era of Martyrs, which is still in use among the Copts and the Abyssinians, must be reckoned from the 29th of August, ad 284; as the beginning of the Egyptian year was nineteen days earlier than the real accession of Diocletian. See Dissertation Préliminaire à l’Art de vérifier les Dates.
The expression of Lactantius (de M. P. c. 15), “sacrificio pollui coegit,” implies their antecedent conversion to the faith; but does not seem to justify the assertion of Mosheim (p. 912) that they had been privately baptized.
M. de Tillemont (Mémoires Ecclésiastiques, tom. v. part i. p. 11, 12) has quoted, from the Spicilegium of Dom. Luc d’Acheri [iii. 297], a very curious instruction which Bishop Theonas composed for the use of Lucian.
Lactantius de M. P. c. 10.
Eusebius, Hist. Ecclesiast. l. viii. c. i. The reader who consults the original will not accuse me of heightening the picture. Eusebius was about sixteen years of age at the accession of the emperor Diocletian.
We might quote, among a great number of instances, the mysterious worship of Mithras, and the Taurobolia; the latter of which became fashionable in the time of the Antonines (see a Dissertation of M. de Boze, in the Mémoires de l’Académie des Inscriptions, tom. ii. p. 443). The romance of Apuleius is as full of devotion as of satire.
The impostor Alexander very strongly recommended the oracle of Trophonius at Mallos, and those of Apollo at Claros and Miletus (Lucian, tom. ii. p. 236, edit. Reitz). The last of these, whose singular history would furnish a very curious episode, was consulted by Diocletian before he published his edicts of persecution (Lactantius, de M. P. c. 11).
Besides the ancient stories of Pythagoras and Aristeas, the cures performed at the shrine of Æsculapius and the fables related of Apollonius of Tyana were frequently opposed to the miracles of Christ; though I agree with Dr. Lardner (see Testimonies, vol. iii. p. 253, 352) that, when Philostratus composed the life of Apollonius, he had no such intention.
It is seriously to be lamented that the Christian fathers, by acknowledging the supernatural or, as they deem it, the infernal part of Paganism, destroy with their own hands the great advantage which we might otherwise derive from the liberal concessions of our adversaries.
Julian (p. 301, edit. Spanheim) expresses a pious joy that the providence of the gods had extinguished the impious sects, and for the most part destroyed the books of the Pyrrhonians and Epicureans, which had been very numerous, since Epicurus himself composed no less than 300 volumes. See Diogenes Laertius, l. x. c. 26.
Cumque alios audiam mussitare indignanter, et dicere oportere statui per Senatum, aboleantur ut hæc scripta, quibus Christiana Religio comprobetur et vetustatis opprimatur auctoritas. Arnobius adversus Gentes, l. iii. p. 103, 104. He adds very properly, Erroris convincite Ciceronem . . . nam intercipere scripta, et publicatam velle submergere lectionem, non est Deum [Deos] defendere sed veritatis testificationem timere.
Lactantius (Divin. Institut. l. v. c. 2, 3) gives a very clear and spirited account of two of these philosophic adversaries of the faith. The large treatise of Porphyry against the Christians consisted of thirty books, and was composed in Sicily about the year 270.
See Socrates, Hist. Ecclesiast. l. i. c. 9, and Codex Justinian. l. i. tit. l. i. 3.
Eusebius, l. viii. c. 4. c. 17. He limits the number of military martyrs, by a remarkable expression (σπανίως τούτων ε[Editor: illegible character]ς που καὶ δεύτερος), of which neither his Latin nor French translations have rendered the energy. Notwithstanding the authority of Eusebius, and the silence of Lactantius, Ambrose, Sulpicius, Orosius, c., it has been long believed that the Thebæan legion, consisting of 6000 Christians, suffered martyrdom, by the order of Maximian, in the valley of the Pennine Alps. The story was first published about the middle of the fifth century by Eucherius, bishop of Lyons, who received it from certain persons, who received it from Isaac, bishop of Geneva, who is said to have received it from Theodore, bishop of Octodurum. The abbey of St. Maurice still subsists, a rich monument of the credulity of Sigismund, king of Burgundy. See an excellent Dissertation in the xxxvith volume of the Bibliothèque Raisonnée, p. 427-454.
See the Acta Sincera, p. 299. The accounts of his martyrdom and of that of Marcellus bear every mark of truth and authenticity.
Acta Sincera, p. 302.
De M. P. c. 11. Lactantius (or whoever was the author of this little treatise) was, at that time, an inhabitant of Nicomedia; but it seems difficult to conceive how he could acquire so accurate a knowledge of what passed in the Imperial cabinet. [Cp. vol. ii. Appendix 10 ad init.]
The only circumstance which we can discover is the devotion and jealousy of the mother of Galerius. She is described by Lactantius as Deorum montium cultrix; mulier admodum superstitiosa. She had a great influence over her son, and was offended by the disregard of some of her Christian servants.
The worship and festival of the God Terminus are elegantly illustrated by M de Boze, Mém. de l’Académie des Inscriptions, tom. i. p. 50.
In our only MS. of Lactantius, we read profectus; but reason and the authority of all the critics allow us, instead of that word, which destroys the sense of the passage, to substitue præfectus.
Lactantius de M. P. c. 12, gives a very lively picture of the destruction of the church.
Mosheim (p. 922-926), from many scattered passages of Lactantius and Eusebius, has collected a very just and accurate notion of this edict; though he sometimes deviates into conjecture and refinement.
Many ages afterwards, Edward I. practised with great success the same mode of persecution against the clergy of England. See Hume’s History of England, vol. ii. p. 300, last 4to edition.
Lactantius only calls him quidam, etsi non recte, magno tamen animo, c. c. 12. Eusebius (l. viii. c. 5) adorns him with secular honours. Neither have condescended to mention his name; but the Greeks celebrate his memory under that of John. See Tillemont, Mémoires Ecclésiastiques, tom. v. part ii. p. 320.
Lactantius de M. P. c. 13, 14. Potentissimi quondam Eunuchi necati, per quos Palatium et ipse constabat. Eusebius (l. viii. c 6) mentions the cruel extortions of the eunuchs, Gorgonius and Dorotheus, and of Anthimus, bishop of Nicomedia; and both those writers describe, in a vague but tragical manner, the horrid scenes which were acted even in the Imperial presence.
See Lactantius, Eusebius, and Constantine, ad Cœtum Sanctorum, c. 25. Eusebius confesses his ignorance of the cause of the fire.
Tillemont, Mémoires Ecclésiast. tom. v. part i. p. 43.
See the Acta Sincera of Ruinart, p. 353; those of Felix of Thibara, or Tibiur, appear much less corrupted than in the other editions, which afford a lively specimen of legendary licence.
See the first book of Optatus of Milevis against the Donatists at Paris, 1700 [ leg. 1702], edit. Dupin. He lived under the reign of Valens.
The ancient monuments, published at the end of Optatus, p. 261, c., describe, in a very circumstantial manner, the proceedings of the governors in the destruction of churches. They made a minute inventory of the plate, c., which they found in them. That of the Church of Cirta, in Numidia, is still extant. It consisted of two chalices of gold, and six of silver; six urns, one kettle, seven lamps, all likewise of silver; besides a large quantity of brass utensils, and wearing apparel.
Lactantius (Institut. Divin. v. 11) confines the calamity to the conventiculum, with its congregation. Eusebius (viii. 11) extends it to a whole city, and introduces something very like a regular siege. His ancient Latin translator, Rufinus, adds the important circumstance of the permission given to the inhabitants of retiring from thence. As Phrygia reached to the confines of Isauria, it is possible that the restless temper of those independent Barbarians may have contributed to this misfortune.
Eusebius, l. viii. c. 6. M. de Valois (with some probability) thinks that he has discovered the Syrian rebellion in an oration of Libanius; and that it was a rash attempt of the tribune Eugenius, who with only five hundred men seized Antioch, and might perhaps allure the Christians by the promise of religious toleration. From Eusebius (l. ix. c. 8), as well as from Moses of Chorene (Hist. Armen. l. ii. c. 77, c.), it may be inferred that Christianity was already introduced into Armenia. [See Appendix 13.]
See Mosheim, p. 938; the text of Eusebius very plainly shows that the governors, whose powers were enlarged, not restrained, by the new laws, could punish with death the most obstinate Christians, as an example to their brethren. [For 4th edict, see Euseb. Mart. Pal. c. 3.]
Athanasius, p. 833, ap. Tillemont, Mém. Ecclésiast. tom. v. part i. p. 90.
Eusebius, l. viii. c. 13. Lactantius de M. P. c. 15. Dodwell (Dissertat. Cyprian. xi. 75) represents them as inconsistent with each other. But the former evidently speaks of Constantius in the station of Cæsar, and the latter of the same prince in the rank of Augustus. [On the religious policy of Constantius, see papers of Görres in Zeitschrift für wiss. Theologie, vol. 31, 1888, p. 72 sqq. and 33, 1890, p. 469 sqq. ]
Datianus is mentioned in Gruter’s Inscriptions, as having determined the limits between the territories of Pax Julia, and those of Ebora, both cities in the southern part of Lusitania. [This inscription is not genuine. See No. 17 of the False Inscriptions at end of C.I.L., vol. 2.] If we recollect the neighbourhood of those places to Cape St. Vincent, we may suspect that the celebrated deacon and martyr of that name has been inaccurately assigned by Prudentius, c., to Saragossa, or Valentia. See the pompous history of his sufferings, in the Mémoires de Tillemont, tom. v. part ii. p. 58-85. Some critics are of opinion that the department of Constantius, as Cæsar, did not include Spain, which still continued under the immediate jurisdiction of Maximian. [See vol. ii. p. 149-150.]
Eusebius, l. viii. c. 11. Gruter, Inscript. p. 1171. No. 18. Rufinus has mistaken the office of Adauctus, as well as the place of his martyrdom.
Eusebius, l. viii. c. 14. But, as Maxentius was vanquished by Constantine, it suited the purpose of Lactantius to place his death among those of the persecutors. [On toleration of Maxentius see Görres, Z. f. wiss. Theol. 33, p. 206.]
The epitaph of Marcellus is to be found in Gruter, Inscrip. p. 1172, No. 3, and it contains all that we know of his history. Marcellinus and Marcellus, whose names follow in the list of popes, are supposed by many critics to be different persons; but the learned Abbé de Longuerue was convinced that they were one and the same.
We may observe, that Damasus was made bishop of Rome, ad 366. [Cp. App. 2.]
Optatus contr. Donatist. l. i. c. 17, 18.
The Acts of the Passion of St. Boniface, which abound in miracles and declamation, are published by Ruinart (p. 283-291) both in Greek and Latin, from the authority of very ancient manuscripts.
During the four first centuries there exist few traces of either bishops or bishoprics in the western Illyricum. It has been thought probable that the primate of Milan extended his jurisdiction over Sirmium, the capital of that great province. See the Geographia Sacra of Charles de St. Paul, p. 68-76, with the observations of Lucas Holstenius.
The eighth book of Eusebius, as well as the supplement concerning the martyrs of Palestine, principally relate to the persecution of Galerius and Maximin. The general lamentations with which Lactantius opens the fifth book of his Divine Institutions allude to their cruelty.
Eusebius (l. viii. c. 17) has given us a Greek version, and Lactantius (de M. P. c. 34) the Latin original, of this memorable edict. Neither of these writers seems to recollect how directly it contradicts whatever they have just affirmed of the remorse and repentance of Galerius.
Eusebius, l. ix. c. 1. He inserts the epistle of the prefect.
See Eusebius, l. viii. c. 14, l. ix. c. 2-8. Lactantius de M. P. c. 36. These writers agree in representing the arts of Maximin; but the former relates the execution of several martyrs, while the latter expressly affirms, occidi servos Dei vetuit. [For Maximin’s persecutions, cp. Görres, Brieger’s Z. f. Kirchengesch. xi. 333 sqq. ]
A few days before his death, he published a very ample edict of toleration, in which he imputes all the severities which the Christians suffered to the judges and governors, who had misunderstood his intentions. See the Edict. in Eusebius, l. ix. c. 10. [Summer, 313 ad ]
Such is the fair deduction from two remarkable passages in Eusebius, [H. E.] l. viii. c. 2, and de Martyr. Palestin. c. 12. The prudence of the historian has exposed his own character to censure and suspicion. It is well known that he himself had been thrown into prison; and it was suggested that he had purchased his deliverance by some dishonourable compliance. The reproach was urged in his lifetime, and even in his presence, at the council of Tyre. See Tillemont, Mémoires Ecclésiastiques, tom. viii. part i. p. 67. [Milman admits that the authority of Eusebius is “loose” and “by no means scrupulous.”]
The ancient, and perhaps authentic, account of the sufferings of Tarachus and his companions (Acta Sincera, Ruinart, p. 419-448) is filled with strong expressions of resentment and contempt, which could not fail of irritating the magistrate. The behaviour of Ædesius to Hierocles, prefect of Egypt, was still more extraordinary, λόγοις τε καὶ ἔργοις τὸν δικαστὴν . . . περιβαλών. Euseb. de Martyr. Palestin. c. 5.
Euseb. de Martyr. Palestin. c. 13.
Augustin. Collat. Carthagin. Dei, iii. c. 13, ap. Tillemont, Mémoires Ecclésiastiques, tom. v. part i. p. 46. The controversy with the Donatists has reflected some, though perhaps a partial, light on the history of the African church.
Eusebius de Martyr. Palestin. c. 13. He closes his narration by assuring us that these were the martyrdoms inflicted in Palestine during the whole course of the persecution. The fifth chapter of his eighth book, which relates to the province of Thebais in Egypt, may seem to contradict our moderate computation; but it will only lead us to admire the artful management of the historian. Choosing for the scene of the most exquisite cruelty the most remote and sequestered country of the Roman empire, he relates that in Thebais from ten to one hundred persons had frequently suffered martyrdom in the same day. But when he proceeds to mention his own journey into Egypt, his language insensibly becomes more cautious and moderate. Instead of a large, but definite number, he speaks of many Christians (πλείους), and most artfully selects two ambiguous words (ιστορησαμεν, and υπομειναντας), which may signify either what he had seen or what he had heard; either the expectation or the execution of the punishment. Having thus provided a secure evasion, he commits the equivocal passage to his readers and translators; justly conceiving that their piety would induce them to prefer the most favourable sense. There was perhaps some malice in the remark of Theodorus Metochita, that all who, like Eusebius, had been conversant with the Egyptians delighted in an obscure and intricate style. (See Valesius ad loc.)
When Palestine was divided into three, the prefecture of the East contained forty-eight provinces. As the ancient distinctions of nations were long since abolished, the Romans distributed the provinces according to a general proportion of their extent and opulence. [Cp. Appendix 6.]
Ut gloriari possint nullum se innocentium peremisse, nam et ipse audivi aliquos gloriantes, quia administratio sua in hâc parte fuerit incruenta. Lactant. Institut. Divin. v. 11.
Grot. Annal. de Rebus Belgicis, l. i. p. 12, edit. fol.
Fra Paolo (Istoria del Concilio Tridentino, l. iii.) reduces the number of Belgic martyrs to 50,000. In learning and moderation, Fra Paolo was not inferior to Grotius. The priority of time gives some advantage to the evidence of the former, which he loses on the other hand by the distance of Venice from the Netherlands.
Polybius, l. iv. p. 423, edit. Casaubon [c. 45]. He observes that the peace of the Byzantines was frequently disturbed, and the extent of their territory contracted, by the inroads of the wild Thracians.
The navigator Byzas, who was styled the son of Neptune, founded the city 656 [ leg. 657] years before the Christian era. His followers were drawn from Argos and Megara. Byzantium was afterwards rebuilt and fortified by the Spartan general Pausanias. See Scaliger Animadvers. ad Euseb. p. 81. Ducange, Constantinopolis, l. i. part i. cap. 15, 16. With regard to the wars of the Byzantines against Philip, the Gauls, and the kings of Bithynia, we should trust none but the ancient writers who lived before the greatness of the Imperial city had excited a spirit of flattery and fiction.
The Bosphorus has been very minutely described by Dionysius of Byzantium, who lived in the time of Domitian (Hudson, Geograph. Minor. tom. iii.), and by Gilles or Gyllius, a French traveller of the XVIth century. Tournefort (Lettre XV.) seems to have used his own eyes and the learning of Gyllius.
There are very few conjectures so happy as that of Le Clerc (Bibliothèque Universelle, tom. i. p. 148), who supposes that the harpies were only locusts. The Syriac or Phœnician name of those insects, their noisy flight, the stench and devastation which they occasion, and the north wind which drives them into the sea, all contribute to form this striking resemblance.
The residence of Amycus was in Asia, between the old and the new castles, at a place called Laurus Insana. That of Phineus was in Europe, near the village of Mauromole and the Black Sea. See Gyllius de Bosph. l. ii. c. 23. Tournefort, Lettre XV.
The deception was occasioned by several pointed rocks, alternately covered and abandoned by the waves. At present there are two small islands, one towards either shore: that of Europe is distinguished by the column of Pompey.
The ancients computed one hundred and twenty stadia, or fifteen Roman miles. They measured only from the new castles, but they carried the straits as far as the town of Chalcedon.
Ducas, Hist. c. 34. Leunclavius, Hist. Turcica Mussulmanica, l. xv. p. 577. Under the Greek empire these castles were used as state prisons, under the tremendous name of Lethe, or towers of oblivion.
Darius engraved in Greek and Assyrian letters on two marble columns the names of his subject nations, and the amazing numbers of his land and sea forces. The Byzantines afterwards transported these columns into the city, and used them for the altars of their tutelar deities. Herodotus, l. iv. c. 87.
Namque artissimo inter Europam Asiamque divortio Byzantium in extremâ Europâ posuere Græci, quibus, Pythium Apollinem consulentibus ubi conderent urbem, redditum oraculum est, quærerent sedem cæcorum terris adversam. Eâ ambage Chalcedonii monstrabantur, quod priores illuc advecti prævisâ locorum utilitate pejora legissent. Tacit. Annal. xii. 62.
Strabo, l. x. p. 492. Most of the antlers are now broken off; or, to speak less figuratively, most of the recesses of the harbour are filled up. See Gyllius de Bosphoro Thracio, l. i. c. 5.
[It flowed into the Propontis. See Plan.]
Procopius de Ædificiis, l. i. c. 5. His description is confirmed by modern travellers. See Thévenot, part i. l. i. c. 15. Tournefort, Lettre XII. Niebuhr, Voyage d’Arabie, p. 22. [The description of Himerius is rhetorical, or. 16.]
See Ducange, C. P. l. i. part i. c. 16, and his Observations sur Villehardouin, p. 289. The chain was drawn from the Acropolis near the modern Kiosk to the tower of Galata, and was supported at convenient distances by large wooden piles.
Thévenot (Voyages au Levant, part i. l. i. c. 14) contracts the measure to 125 small Greek miles. Belon (Observations, l. ii. c. 1) gives a good description of the Propontis, but contents himself with the vague expression of one day and one night’s sail. When Sandys (Travels, p. 21) talks of 150 furlongs in length as well as breadth, we can only suppose some mistake of the press in the text of that judicious traveller.
See an admirable dissertation of M. d’Anville upon the Hellespont or Dardanelles, in the Mémoires de l’Académie des Inscriptions, tom. xxviii. p. 318-346. Yet even that ingenious geographer is too fond of supposing new and perhaps imaginary measures, for the purpose of rendering ancient writers as accurate as himself. The stadia employed by Herodotus in the description of the Euxine, the Bosphorus, c. (l. iv. c. 85), must undoubtedly be all of the same species; but it seems impossible to reconcile them either with truth or with each other. [Length of Hellespont about 40 miles, breadth 1 mile.]
The oblique distance between Sestus and Abydus was thirty stadia. The improbable tale of Hero and Leander is exposed by M. Mahudel, but is defended on the authority of poets and medals by M. de la Nauze. See the Académie des Inscriptions, tom. vii. Hist. p. 74. Mém. p. 240.
See the seventh book of Herodotus, who has erected an elegant trophy to his own fame and to that of his country. The review appears to have been made with tolerable accuracy; but the vanity, first of the Persians and afterwards of the Greeks, was interested to magnify the armament and the victory. I should much doubt whether the invaders have ever outnumbered the men of any country which they attacked.
See Wood’s observations on Homer, p. 320. I have, with pleasure, selected this remark from an author who in general seems to have disappointed the expectation of the public as a critic, and still more as a traveller. He had visited the banks of the Hellespont; he had read Strabo; he ought to have consulted the Roman itineraries; how was it possible for him to confound Ilium and Alexandria Troas (Observations, p. 340, 341), two cities which were sixteen miles distant from each other?
Demetrius of Scepsis wrote sixty books on thirty lines of Homer’s Catalogue. The XIIIth Book of Strabo is sufficient for our curiosity.
Strabo, l. xiii. p. 595. The disposition of the ships which were drawn up on dry land, and the posts of Ajax and Achilles, are very clearly described by Homer. See Iliad ix. [ leg. viii.] 220.
Zosim. l. ii. p. 105 [c. 30]. Sozomen, l. ii. c. 3. Theophanes, p. 18. Nicephorus Callistus, l. vii. p. 48. Zonaras, tom. ii. l. xiii. p. 6 [3]. Zosimus places the new city between Ilium and Alexandria, but this apparent difference may be reconciled by the large extent of its circumference. [There is some doubt about the text of Zosimus, see Mendelssohn ad. loc.] Before the foundation of Constantinople, Thessalonica is mentioned by Cedrenus (p. 283) [i. 496, Bonn], and Sardica by Zonaras, as the intended capital. [Cp. also Anon. Continuator of Dion (prob. Peter the Patrician), Müller, F. H. G. 4, 199.] They both suppose, with very little probability, that the emperor, if he had not been prevented by a prodigy, would have repeated the mistake of the blind Chalcedonians.
Pocock’s Description of the East, vol. ii. part ii. p. 127. His plan of the seven hills is clear and accurate. That traveller is seldom so satisfactory.
See Belon, Observations, c. 72-76. Among a variety of different species, the Pelamides, a sort of Thunnies, were the most celebrated. We may learn from Polybius, Strabo, and Tacitus that the profits of the fishery constituted the principal revenue of Byzantium.
See the eloquent description of Busbequius, epistol. i. p. 64, Est in Europa; habet in conspectu Asiam, Ægyptum, Africamque a dextrâ: quæ tametsi contiguæ non sunt, maris tamen navigandique commoditate veluti junguntur. A sinistra vero Pontus est Euxinus, c.
Datur hæc venia antiquitati, ut, miscendo humana divinis, primordia urbium augustiora faciat, T. Liv. in proem.
He says in one of his laws, pro commoditate Urbis quam æterno nomine, jubente Deo, donavimus. Cod. Theodos. l. xiii. tit. v. leg. 7.
The Greeks, Theophanes, Cedrenus, and the author of the Alexandrian Chronicle, confine themselves to vague and general expressions. For a more particular account of the vision, we are obliged to have recourse to such Latin writers as William of Malmesbury. See Ducange, C. P. l. i. p. 24, 25.
See Plutarch in Romul. tom. i. p. 49, edit. Bryan. Among other ceremonies, a large hole, which had been dug for that purpose, was filled up with handfuls of earth, which each of the settlers brought from the place of his birth, and thus adopted his new country.
Philostorgius, l. ii. c. 9. This incident, though borrowed from a suspected writer, is characteristic and probable.
See in the Mémoires de l’Académie, tom. xxxv. p. 747-758, a dissertation of M. d’Anville on the extent of Constantinople. He takes the plan inserted in the Imperium Orientale of Banduri as the most complete; but by a series of very nice observations, he reduces the extravagant proportion of the scale, and instead of 9500, determines the circumference of the city as consisting of about 7800 French toises.
Codinus Antiquitat. Const. p. 12. He assigns the church of St. Antony as the boundary on the side of the harbour. It is mentioned in Ducange, l. iv. c. 6; but I have tried, without success, to discover the exact place where it was situated. [The Monastery of St. Antony, Kauleas, near the Neôrion (see Plan). The two hills outside Constantine’s wall are v. and vi.; and the space between the wall and that of Theodosius was never included in the Regions of the city, but was called exokionion and was divided into seven quarters ( deuteron, triton, c. ), except Blachernæ, which formed Region xiv. See Plan, and Mordtmann, Esquisse top. de Constantinople, p. 2.]
The new wall of Theodosius was constructed in the year 413. In 447 it was thrown down by an earthquake, and rebuilt in three months by the diligence of the prefect Cyrus. The suburb of the Blachernæ was first taken into the city in the reign of Heraclius. Ducange Const. l. i. c. 10, 11. [The triple defence of Theodosius ii. can be clearly traced: (1) inner wall of Anthemius; (2) the outer wall of Cyrus; (3) a ditch and counterscarp, representing a third wall (Mordtmann, ib. p. 11).]
The measurement is expressed in the Notitia by 14,075 feet. It is reasonable to suppose that these were Greek feet; the proportion of which has been ingeniously determined by M. d’Anville. He compares the 180 feet with the 78 Hashemite cubits which in different writers are assigned for the height of St. Sophia. Each of these cubits was equal to 27 French inches.
The accurate Thévenot (l. i. c. 15) walked in one hour and three quarters round two of the sides of the triangle, from the Kiosk of the Seraglio to the seven towers. D’Anville examines with care, and receives with confidence, this decisive testimony, which gives a circumference of ten or twelve miles. The extravagant computation of Tournefort (Lettre XI.) of thirty-four or thirty miles, without including Scutari, is a strange departure from his usual character.
The scyæ, or fig-trees, formed the thirteenth region, and were very much embellished by Justinian. It has since borne the names of Pera and Galata. The etymology of the former is obvious; that of the latter is unknown. See Ducange Const. l. i. c. 22, and Gyllius de Byzant. l. iv. c. 10. [It seems probable that Galata was the quarter of Celtic mercenaries in 3rd century bc , and hence, like the country of Galatia, derived its name.]
One hundred and eleven stadia, which may be translated into modern Greek miles each of seven stadia, or 660, sometimes only 600, French toises. See d’Anville, Mesures Itinéraires, p. 53.
When the ancient texts which describe the size of Babylon and Thebes are settled, the exaggerations reduced, and the measures ascertained, we find that those famous cities filled the great but not incredible circumference of about twenty-five or thirty miles. Compare d’Anville, Mém. de l’Acad. tom. xxxviii. p. 235, with his Description de l’Egypte, p. 201, 202.
If we divide Constantinople and Paris into equal squares of 50 French toises, the former contains 850, and the latter 1160, of those divisions.
Six hundred centenaries, or sixty thousand pounds weight of gold. This sum is taken from Codinus Antiquit. Const. p. 11; but, unless that contemptible author had derived his information from some purer sources, he would probably have been unacquainted with so obsolete a mode of reckoning.
For the forests of the Black Sea, consult Tournefort, Lettre XVI.; for the marble quarries of Proconnesus, see Strabo, l. xiii. p. 588. The latter had already furnished the materials of the stately buildings of Cyzicus.
See the Codex Theodos. l. xiii. tit. iv. leg. 1. This law is dated in the year 334, and was addressed to the prefect of Italy, whose jurisdiction extended over Africa. The commentary of Godefroy on the whole title well deserves to be consulted.
Constantinopolis dedicatur pœne omnium urbium nuditate. Hieronym. Chron. p. 181. See Codinus, p. 8, 9. The author of the Antiquitat. Const. l. iii. (apud Banduri Imp. Orient. tom. i. p. 41), enumerates Rome, Sicily, Antioch, Athens, and a long list of other cities. The provinces of Greece and Asia Minor may be supposed to have yielded the richest booty.
Hist. Compend. p. 369 [i. 648, Bonn]. He describes the statue, or rather bust, of Homer with a degree of taste which plainly indicates that Cedrenus copied the style of a more fortunate age.
Zosim. l. ii. p. 106 [c. 30]. Chron. Alexandrin. vel Paschal, p. 284 [528, Bonn]. Ducange Const. l. i. c. 24. Even the last of those writers seems to confound the Forum of Constantine with the Augusteum, or court of the palace. I am not satisfied whether I have properly distinguished what belongs to the one and the other. [See App. 4.]
The most tolerable account of this column is given by Pocock. Description of the East, vol. ii. part ii. p. 131. But it is still in many instances perplexed and unsatisfactory.
Ducange Const. l. i. c. 24, p. 76, and his notes ad Alexiad. p. 382. The statue of Constantine or Apollo was thrown down under the reign of Alexis Comnenus.
Tournefort (Lettre XII.) computes the Atmeidan at four hundred paces. If he means geometrical paces of five feet each, it was three hundred toises in length, about forty more than the great Circus of Rome. See d’Anville, Mesures Itinéraires, p. 73. [According to the measurements of M. Paspatês the length was 320 yards long, 79 yards broad.]
The guardians of the most holy relics would rejoice if they were able to produce such a chain of evidence as may be alleged on this occasion. See Banduri ad Antiquitat. Const. p. 668. Gyllius de Byzant. l. ii. c. 13. 1. The original consecration of the tripod and pillar in the temple of Delphi may be proved from Herodotus and Pausanias. 2. The Pagan Zosimus agrees with the three ecclesiastical historians, Eusebius, Socrates, and Sozomen, that the sacred ornaments of the temple of Delphi were removed to Constantinople by the order of Constantine; and among these the serpentine pillar of the Hippodrome is particularly mentioned. 3. All the European travellers who have visited Constantinople, from Buondelmonte to Pocock, describe it in the same place, and almost in the same manner; the differences between them are occasioned only by the injuries which it has sustained from the Turks. Mahomet the Second broke the under-jaw of one of the serpents with a stroke of his battle-axe. Thévenot, l. i. c. 17. [Zosimus mentions only a tripod of Apollo with a statue of the god on it (ii. 31), but not the serpent coils, and therefore (so Mendelssohn) not the Platæan dedication.]
The Latin name Cochlea was adopted by the Greeks, and very frequently occurs in the Byzantine history. Ducange Const. l. ii. c. i. p. 104.
There are three topographical points which indicate the situation of the palace. 1. The staircase, which connected it with the Hippodrome or Atmeidan. 2. A small artificial port on the Propontis, from whence there was an easy ascent, by a flight of marble steps, to the gardens of the palace. 3. The Augusteum was a spacious court, one side of which was occupied by the front of the palace, and another by the church of St. Sophia. [See App. 4.]
Zeuxippus was an epithet of Jupiter, and the baths were a part of old Byzantium. The difficulty of assigning their true situation has not been felt by Ducange. History seems to connect them with St. Sophia and the palace; but the original plan, inserted in Banduri, places them on the other side of the city, near the harbour. [They were close to the Palace and Hippodrome, on south side of the Augusteum, see App. 4.] For their beauties, see Chron. Paschal. p. 285, and Gyllius de Byzant. l. ii. c. 7. Christodorus (see Antiquitat. Const. l. vii.) composed inscriptions in verse for each of the statues. He was a Theban poet in genius as well as in birth:
Bœotum in crasso jurares aëre natum.
See the Notitia. Rome only reckoned 1780 large houses, domus; but the word must have had a more dignified signification. No insulæ are mentioned at Constantinople. The old capital consisted of 424 streets, the new of 322.
Liutprand, Legatio ad Imp. Nicephorum, p. 153 [c. 62]. The modern Greeks have strangely disfigured the antiquities of Constantinople. We might excuse the errors of the Turkish or Arabian writers; but it is somewhat astonishing that the Greeks, who had access to the authentic materials preserved in their own language, should prefer fiction to truth and loose tradition to genuine history. In a single page of Codinus we may detect twelve unpardonable mistakes: the reconciliation of Severus and Niger, the marriage of their son and daughter, the siege of Byzantium by the Macedonians, the invasion of the Gauls, which recalled Severus to Rome, the sixty years which elapsed from his death to the foundation of Constantinople, c.
Montesquieu, Grandeur et Décadence des Romains, c. 17.
Themist. Orat. iii. p. 48. edit Hardouin. Sozomen. l. ii. c. 3. Zosim. l. ii. p. 107 [32]. Anonym. Valesian. p. 715 [§ 30]. If we could credit Codinus (p. 10), Constantine built houses for the senators on the exact model of their Roman palaces, and gratified them, as well as himself, with the pleasure of an agreeable surprise; but the whole story is full of fictions and inconsistencies.
The law by which the younger Theodosius, in the year 438, abolished this tenure may be found among the Novellæ of that emperor at the end of the Theodosian Code, tom. vi. nov. 12. M. de Tillemont (Hist. des Empereurs, tom. iv. p. 371), has evidently mistaken the nature of these estates. With a grant from the Imperial demesnes, the same condition was accepted as a favour which would justly have been deemed a hardship, if it had been imposed upon private property.
The passages of Zosimus, of Eunapius, of Sozomen, and of Agathias, which relate to the increase of buildings and inhabitants at Constantinople, are collected and connected by Gyllius de Byzant. l. i. c. 3. Sidonius Apollinaris (in Panegyr. Anthem. 56, p. 290, edit. Sirmond) describes the moles that were pushed forwards into the sea; they consisted of the famous Puzzolan sand, which hardens in the water.
Sozomen, l. ii. c. 3, Philostorg. l. ii. c. 9, Codin. Antiq. Const. p. 8. It appears by Socrates, l. ii. c. 13, that the daily allowances of the city consisted of eight myriads of σίτου, which we may either translate with Valesius by the words modii of corn or consider as expressive of the number of loaves of bread. [Cp. also Zosimus, ii. 32; Photius, p. 475, a. 39, ed. Bekker; Codinus, de or cp. p. 16, 4, ed. Bekk. (ἄρτους ὴμερησίους). We must understand loaves, not modii (nor medimni, as Finlay thought; 1 med. = 6 mod.). See E. Gebhardt, das Verpflegungswesen von Rom und Constantinopel, 1881.]
See Cod. Theodos. l. xiii. and xiv. [16] and Cod. Justinian. Edict. xii. tom. ii. p. 648, edit. Genev. See the beautiful complaint of Rome in the poem of Claudian de Bell. Gildonico, ver. 46-64.
[Cp. also Libanius περὶ τω̂ν ὶερ. 184, ed. Reiske; Themistius, Or. 4, p. 52. C.I.L., i. p. 394.]
The regions of Constantinople are mentioned in the code of Justinian, and particularly described in the Notitia of the younger Theodosius; but, as the four last of them are not included within the wall of Constantine, it may be doubted whether this division of the city should be referred to the founder.
Senatum constituit secundi ordinis; Claros vocavit. Anon. Valesian. p. 715 [§ 30]. The senators of old Rome were styled Clarissimi. See a curious not eof Valesius ad Ammian. Marcellin. xxii. 9. From the 11th epistle of Julian, it should seem that the place of senator was considered as a burthen rather than as an honour; but the Abbé de la Bléterie (Vie de Jovien, t. ii. p. 371) has shewn that this epistle could not relate to Constantinople. Might we not read, instead of the celebrated name of Βυζαντίοις, the obscure but more probable word Βισανθήνοις? Bisanthe or Rhœdestus, now Rhodosto, was a small maritime city of Thrace. See Stephan. Byz. de Urbibus, p. 225, and Cellar Geograph. tom. i. p. 849. [Certain gold medallions with Emperor standing and the legend Senatus, on the reverse, have been shown to refer to the foundation of the new senate (Kenner, Wiener numism. Zeit., 3, 117). Hertlein, p. 491, keeps Βυζαντίοις but notices Gibbon’s conjecture.]
Cod. Theodos. l. xiv. 13. The Commentary of Godefroy (t. v. p. 220) is long, but perplexed; nor indeed is it easy to ascertain in what the Jus Italicum could consist, after the freedom of the city had been communicated to the whole empire. [Jus Italicum gave exemption from tributum or landtax, — an exemption which Italy herself had recently lost.]
Julian (Orat. i. p. 8) celebrates Constantinople as not less superior to all other cities than she was inferior to Rome itself. His learned commentator (Spanheim, p. 75, 76), justifies this language by several parallel and contemporary instances. Zosimus, as well as Socrates and Sozomen, flourished after the division of the empire between the two sons of Theodosius, which established a perfect equality between the old and the new capital.
Codinus (Antiquitat. p. 8), affirms that the foundations of Constantinople were laid in the year of the world 5837 ( ad 329), on the 26th of September, and that the city was dedicated the 11th of May 5838 ( ad 330). He connects these dates with several characteristic epochs, but they contradict each other; the authority of Codinus is of little weight, and the space which he assigns must appear insufficient. The term of ten years is given us by Julian (Orat. i. p. 8), and Spanheim labours to establish the truth of it (p. 69-75), by the help of two passages from Themistius (Orat. iv. p. 58), and of Philostrogius (l. ii. c. 9), which form a period from the year 324 to the year 334. Modern critics are divided concerning this point of chronology, and their different sentiments are very accurately discussed by Tillemont, Hist. des Empereurs, tom. iv. p. 619-625. [The date of dedication, 11th May 330, is certain, see Idatius, Descr. Consul., Chron. Pasch. p. 285, Hesychius, F.H.G. 4, p. 154, cp. Malalas, p. 322, Cedren. i. p. 497. The foundation of the Western Wall was laid Nov. 4, 326, acc. to Anon. Band. i. 3.]
Themistius, Orat. iii. p. 47. Zosim. l. ii. p. 108. Constantine himself, in one of his laws (Cod. Theod. l. xv. tit. 1), betrays his impatience.
Cedrenus and Zonaras, faithful to the mode of superstition which prevailed in their own times, assure us that Constantinople was consecrated to the Virgin Mother of God.
The earliest and most complete account of this extraordinary ceremony may be found in the Alexandrian Chronicle, p. 285 [Chr. Pasch. p. 529-30]. Tillemont, and the other friends of Constantine, who are offended with the air of Paganism which seems unworthy of a Christian Prince, had a right to consider it as doubtful, but they were not authorised to omit the mention of it.
Sozomen, l. ii. c. 2. Ducange, C. P. l. i. c. 6. Velut ipsius Romæ filiam, is the expression of Augustin. de Civitat. Dei, l. v. c. 25.
Eutropius, l. x. c. 8. Julian. Orat. i. p. 8. Ducange, C. P. l. i. c. 5. The name of Constantinople is extant on the medals of Constantine.
The lively Fontenelle (Dialogues des Morts, xii.) affects to deride the vanity of human ambition, and seems to triumph in the disappointment of Constantine, whose immortal name is now lost in the vulgar appellation of Istambol, a Turkish corruption of είς τὴν πόλιν. Yet the original name is still preserved, 1. By the nations of Europe. 2. By the modern Greeks. 3. By the Arabs, whose writings are diffused over the wide extent of their conquests in Asia and Africa. See d’Herbelot Bibliothéque Orientale, p. 275. 4. By the more learned Turks, and by the emperor himself in his public mandates. Cantemir’s History of [Growth and Decay of] the Othman [Ottoman] Empire, p. 51 [Eng. Tr., 1734].
The Theodosian code was promulgated ad 438. See the Prolegomena of Godefroy, c. i. p. 185.
Pancirolus, in his elaborate Commentary, assigns to the Notitia a date almost similar to that of the Theodosian code: but his proofs, or rather conjectures, are extremely feeble. I should be rather inclined to place this useful work between the final division of the empire ( ad 395), and the successful invasion of Gaul by the Barbarians ( ad 407). See Histoire des anciens Peuples de l’Europe, tom. vii. p. 40. [Cp. App. 6.]
Scilicet externæ superbiæ sueto, non inerat notitia nostri (perhaps nostræ ); apud quos vis Imperii valet, inania transmittuntur. Tacit. Annal. xv. 31. The gradation from the style of freedom and simplicity to that of form and servitude may be traced in the Epistles of Cicero, of Pliny, and of Symmachus.
The emperor Gratian, after confirming a law of precedency published by Valentinian, the father of his Divinity, thus continues: Siquis igitur indebitum sibi locum usurpaverit, nulla se ignoratione defendat; sitque plane sacrilegii reus, qui divina præcepta neglexerit. Cod. Theod. l. vi. tit. v. leg. 2.
Consult the Notitia Dignitatum, at the end of the Theodosian Code, tom. vi. p. 316.
Pancirolus ad Notitiam utriusque Imperii, p. 39. But his explanations are obscure, and he does not sufficiently distinguish the painted emblems from the effective ensigns of office.
In the Pandects, which may be referred to the reigns of the Antonines, Clarissimus is the ordinary and legal title of a senator. [Another important title is that of vir consularis (origin uncertain). All clarrissimi who were admitted into the senate had this rank, which must be carefully distinguished from consularis in the old sense of ex-consul. Some provincial governorships could only be held by consulares; hence the Consularis of — c.]
Pancirol. p. 12-17. I have not taken any notice of the two inferior ranks, Perfectissimus and Egregius, which were given to many persons who were not raised to the senatorial dignity. [For example, the urban prefect was perfectissimus; likewise the governors of dioceses under Diocletian and Constantine. But, as these and lesser officials were promoted to senatorial rank, they became clarissimi or spectabiles. The rank of egregius is not found after Constantine; that of perfectissimus lingered longer and was still borne by the governor of Dalmatia in the early years of the fifth century.]
Cod. Theodos. l. vi. tit. vi. The rules of precedency are ascertained with the most minute accuracy by the emperors and illustrated with equal prolixity by their learned interpreter.
Cod. Theodos. l. vi. tit. xxii.
Ausonius (in Gratiarum Actione) basely expatiates on this unworthy topic, which is managed by Mamertinus (Panegyr. Vet. xi. 16, 19) with somewhat more freedom and ingenuity.
Cum de Consulibus in annum creandis solus mecum volutarem . . . te Consulem et designavi, et declaravi, et priorem nuncupavi; are some of the expressions employed by the emperor Gratian to his preceptor the poet Ausonius.
Montfaucon has represented some of these tablets or diptychs; see Supplément à l’Antiquité expliquée, tom. iii. p. 220.
From the reign of Carus to the sixth consulship of Honorius, there was an interval of one hundred and twenty years, during which the emperors were always absent from Rome on the first day of January. See the Chronologie de Tillemont, tom. iii. iv. and v.
See Claudian in Cons. Prob. et Olybrii, 178, c., and in iv. Cons. Honorii, 585, c.; though in the latter it is not easy to separate the ornaments of the emperor from those of the consul. Ausonius received, from the liberality of Gratian, a vestis palmata, or robe of state, in which the figure of the emperor Constantius was embroidered.
— strictasque procul radiare secures.
See Valesius ad Ammian. Marcellin. l. xxii. c. 7.
Celebrant quidem solemnes istos dies, omnes ubique urbes quæ sub legibus agunt; et Roma de more, et Constantinopolis de imitatione, et Antiochia pro luxu, et discincta Carthago, et domus fluminis Alexandria sed Treviri Principis beneficio. Ausonius in Grat. Actione.
Claudian (in Cons. Mall. Theodori, 279-331) describes, in a lively and fanciful manner, the various games of the circus, the theatre, and the amphitheatre, exhibited by the new consul. The sanguinary combats of gladiators had already been prohibited.
Procopius in Hist. Arcana, c. 26. [20 centenaria = 2000 (not 4000) lbs. of gold.]
In Consulatu honos sine labore suscipitur (Mamertin. in Panegyr. Vet. xi. 2). This exalted idea of the consulship is borrowed from an Oration (iii. p. 107) pronounced by Julian in the servile court of Constantius. See the Abbé de la Bléterie (Mémoires de l’Académie, tom. xxiv. p. 289), who delights to pursue the vestiges of the old constitution, and who sometimes finds them in his copious fancy. [Before the end of the fourth century, the arrangement was made that one consul was appointed by the Western, the other by the Eastern, emperor.]
Intermarriages between the Patricians and Plebeians were prohibited by the laws of the XII. Tables; and the uniform operations of human nature may attest that the custom survived the law. See in Livy (lv. 1-6), the pride of family urged by the consul, and the rights of mankind asserted by the tribune Canuleius.
See the animated pictures drawn by Sallust, in the Jugurthine war, of the pride of the nobles, and even of the virtuous Metellus, who was unable to brook the idea that the honour of the consulship should be bestowed on the obscure merit of his lieutenant Marius (c. 64). Two hundred years before, the race of the Metelli themselves were confounded among the Plebeians of Rome; and from the etymology of their name of Cæcilius, there is reason to believe that those haughty nobles derived their origin from a sutler.
In the year of Rome 800, very few remained not only of the old Patrician families, but even of those which had been created by Cæsar and Augustus (Tacit. Annal. xi. 25). The family of Scaurus (a branch of the Patrician Æmilii) was degraded so low that his father, who exercised the trade of a charcoal merchant, left him only ten slaves, and somewhat less than three hundred pounds sterling (Valerius Maximus, l. iv. c. 4, n. 11, Aurel. Victor in Scauro). The family was saved from oblivion by the merit of the son.
Tacit. Annal. xi. 25, Dion Cassius, l. iii. p. 693 [c. 42]. The virtues of Agricola, who was created a Patrician by the emperor Vespasian, reflected honour on that ancient order; but his ancestors had not any claim beyond an equestrian nobility.
This failure would have been almost impossible, if it were true, as Casaubon compels Aurelius Victor to affirm (ad Sueton. in Cæsar. c. 42. See Hist. August. p. 203 [-c. 3], and Casaubon. Comment. p. 220), that Vespasian created at once a thousand Patrician families. But this extravagant number is too much even for the whole senatorial order, unless we should include all the Roman knights who were distinguished by the permission of wearing the laticlave.
Zosimus, l. ii. p. 118 [c. 40]; and Godefroy ad Cod. Theodos. l. vi. tit. vi. [These Patricians had precedence of all dignitaries except the consuls in office. But they were hardly regarded as adoptive fathers of the emperor.]
[It is probable that the Cæsars had Prætorian prefects as well as the Augusti; but there is not evidence that there were 4 prefects regularly under Constantine. See App. 1 and 10.]
Zosimus, l. ii. p. 109, 110 [c. 33]. If we had not fortunately possessed this satisfactory account of the division of the power and provinces of the Prætorian prefects, we should frequently have been perplexed amidst the copious details of the Code, and the circumstantial minuteness of the Notitia.
[By Constantine; not entirely by Diocletian. The only duty which still connected them with the army was that of providing the supplies for the soldiers; and this was a consequence of their financial functions.]
[The prefect was head of the office for the collection of inland revenue. The emperor only intervened when the ordinary taxes were insufficient or a remission of arrears was expedient.]
[Whom they practically appointed.]
See a law of Constantine himself. A præfectis autem prætorio provocare non sinimus. Cod. Justinian. l. vii. tit. lxii. leg. 19. Charisius, a lawyer of the time of Constantine (Heinec. Hist. Juris Romani, p. 349), who admits this law as a fundamental principle of jurisprudence, compares the Prætorian prefects to the masters of the horse of the ancient dictators. Pandect. l. i. tit. xi.
When Justinian, in the exhausted condition of the empire, instituted a Prætorian prefect for Africa, he allowed him a salary of one hundred pounds of gold. Cod. Justinian. l. i. tit. xxvii. leg. 1.
For this, and the other dignities of the empire, it may be sufficient to refer to the ample commentaries of Pancirolus and Godefroy, who have diligently collected and accurately digested in their proper order all the legal and historical materials. From those authors Dr. Howell (History of the World, vol. ii. p. 24-77) has deduced a very distinct abridgment of the state of the Roman empire.
Tacit. Annal. vi. 11. Euseb. in Chron. p. 155. Dion Cassius, in the oration of Mæcenas (l. lii. p. 675 [21]), describes the prerogatives of the prefect of the city as they were established in his own time.
The fame of Messalla has been scarcely equal to his merit. In the earliest youth he was recommended by Cicero to the friendship of Brutus. He followed the standard of the republic till it was broken in the fields of Philippi: he then accepted and deserved the favour of the most moderate of the conquerors; and uniformly asserted his freedom and dignity in the court of Augustus. The triumph of Messalla was justified by the conquest of Aquitain. As an orator he disputed the palm of eloquence with Cicero himself. Messalla cultivated every muse, and was the patron of every man of genius. He spent his evenings in philosophic conversation with Horace; assumed his place at table between Delia and Tibullus; and amused his leisure by encouraging the poetical talents of young Ovid.
Incivilem esse potestatem contestans, says the translator of Eusebius. Tacitus expresses the same idea in other words: quasi nescius exercendi.
See Lipsius, Excursus D. ad 1 lib. Tacit. Annal.
Heineccii Element. Juris Civilis secund. ordinem Pandect. tom. i. p. 70. See likewise Spanheim de Usu Numismatum, tom. ii. dissertat. x. p. 219. In the year 450, Marcian published a law that three citizens should be annually created Prætors of Constantinople by the choice of the senate, but with their own consent. Cod. Justinian. l. i. tit. xxxix. leg. 2.
Quidquid igitur intra urbem admittitur, ad P. U. videtur pertinere; sed et siquid intra centesimum milliarium. Ulpian in Pandect. l. i. tit. xiii. n. 1. He proceeds to enumerate the various offices of the prefect, who, in the code of Justinian (l. i. tit. xxxix. leg. 3), is declared to precede and command all city magistrates, sine injuriâ ac detrimento honoris alieni.
Besides our usual guides, we may observe that Felix Cantelorius has written a separate treatise, De Præfecto Urbis; and that many curious details concerning the police of Rome and Constantinople are contained in the fourteenth book of the Theodosian Code. [E. Léotard, De præf. urbana quarto p. C. sæculo. 1873.]
Eunapius affirms that the proconsul of Asia was independent of the prefect; which must, however, be understood with some allowance: the jurisdiction of the vice-prefect he most assuredly disclaimed. Pancirolus, p. 161. [The proconsuls of Asia and Africa had precedence of all the other provincial governors, and were subordinate neither to the vicars of Asia and Africa, nor to the Prætorian prefects. (Theodosius I. gave the proconsul of Asia the position of vicar over the Islands and the Hellespont.) The proconsul of Achaia was subordinate to the prefect of Illyricum, but not to the vicar of Macedonia. All three were appointed by the emperor without the intervention of the Prætorian prefect.]
The proconsul of Africa had four hundred apparitors; and they all received large salaries, either from the treasury or the province. See Pancirol. p. 26, and Cod. Justinian. l. xii. tit. lvi. lvii. [The comes orientis seems to be a survival of the diocesan counts who were instituted by Constantine (c. ad 327) to control and check the vicarii, of whom they had precedence. The institution seems not to have survived its author, except in the case of Oriens Aegyptus et Mesopotamia, where the vicar appears in 331 ad (Cod. Theod. i. 16, 6) with the title of count; perhaps the distinction was due (as Schiller has suggested) to the fact that Egypt was part of his province. Sometime between 365 and 386 the administration of Egypt was taken from him, and that country became a separate diocese.]
[Dacia, from Constantine forward, had no vicar but was directly under the Prætorian prefect of Italia et Illyricum, or Illyricum. See Appendix 10.]
In Italy there was likewise the Vicar of Rome. It has been much disputed, whether his jurisdiction measured one hundred miles from the city, or whether it stretched over the ten southern provinces of Italy. [He was vicar of the Prætorian prefect of Italy, not of the præfectus urbis, and he administered the ten provinces, of which the revenue went to Rome. The rest of Italy, under the vicarius Italiæ, was distinguished as annonaria. ]
Among the works of the celebrated Ulpian, there was one in ten books concerning the office of a proconsul, whose duties in the most essential articles were the same as those of an ordinary governor of a province.
The presidents, or consulars, could impose only two ounces; the vice-prefects, three; the proconsuls, count of the East, and prefect of Egypt, six. See Heineccii Jur. Civil. tom. i. p. 75. Pandect. l. xlviii. tit. xix. n. 8. Cod. Justinian. l. i. tit. liv. leg. 4, 6. [The name praesides came in when Gallienus excluded senators from governorships of Imperial provinces and appointed knights. The title correctores was first used in Italy. Cp. above, vol. ii., Appendix 6.]
Ut nulli patriæ suæ administratio sine speciali principis permissu permittatur. Cod. Justinian. l. i. tit. xli. This law was first enacted by the emperor Marcus, after the rebellion of Cassius (Dion. l. lxxi.). The same regulation is observed in China, with equal strictness and with equal effect.
Pandect. l. xxiii. tit. ii. n. 38, 57, 63.
In jure continetur, ne quis in administratione constitutus aliquid compararet. Cod. Theod. l. viii. tit. xv. leg. 1. This maxim of common law was enforced by a series of edicts (see the remainder of the title) from Constantine to Justin. From this prohibition, which is extended to the meanest offices of the governor, they except only clothes and provisions. The purchase within five years may be recovered; after which, on information, it devolves to the treasury.
Cessent rapaces jam nunc officialium manus; cessent, inquam; nam si moniti non cessaverint, gladiis præcidentur, c. Cod. Theod. l. i. tit. vii. leg. 1. Zeno enacted that all governors should remain in the province, to answer any accusations, fifty days after the expiration of their power. Cod. Justinian. l. ii. tit. xlix. leg. 1.
Summâ igitur ope, et alacri studio has leges nostras accipite; et vos metipsos sic eruditos ostendite, ut spes vos pulcherrima foveat; toto legitimo opere perfecto, posse etiam nostram rempublicam in partibus ejus vobis credendis gubernari. Justinian. in proem. Institutionum.
The splendour of the school of Berytus, which preserved in the East the language and jurisprudence of the Romans, may be computed to have lasted from the third to the middle of the sixth century. Heinecc. Jur. Rom. Hist. p. 351-356.
As in a former period I have traced the civil and military promotion of Pertinax, I shall here insert the civil honours of Mallius Theodorus. 1. He was distinguished by his eloquence, while he pleaded as an advocate in the court of the Prætorian prefect. 2. He governed one of the provinces of Africa, either as president or consular, and deserved, by his administration, the honour of a brass statue. 3. He was appointed vicar, or vice-prefect, of Macedonia. 4. Quæstor. 5. Count of the sacred largesses. 6. Prætorian prefect of the Gauls; whilst he might yet be represented as a young man. 7. After a retreat, perhaps a disgrace, of many years, which Mallius (confounded by some critics with the poet Manilius, see Fabricius Bibliothec. Latin. Edit. Ernest. tom. i. c. 18, p. 501) employed in the study of the Grecian philosophy, he was named Prætorian prefect of Italy, in the year 397. 8. While he still exercised that great office, he was created, in the year 399, consul for the West; and his name, on account of the infamy of his colleague, the eunuch Eutropius, often stands alone in the Fasti. 9. In the year 408, Mallius was appointed a second time Prætorian prefect of Italy. Even in the venal panegyric of Claudian, we may discover the merit of Mallius Theodorus, who, by a rare felicity, was the intimate friend both of Symmachus and of St. Augustin. See Tillemont, Hist. des Emp. tom. v. p. 1110-1114. [Inscriptions supply us with more illustrations of official careers under the Constantinian monarchy. The career of Caelius Saturninus (C.I.L. 6, 1704) occasioned an important study by Mommsen in the Memorie d. Institut. d. corr. arch. ii. 299; and that of L. Aradius Valerius Proculus is recorded fully in C.I.L. 6. 1690 and 1691. Proculus began his career apparently as one of the legati subordinate to the proconsul of Africa (this is Mommsen’s explanation of legato pro præt. prov. Numidiae ). He was then sent to Gallicia to revise the taxation (as peraequator census ); after which he became governor successively of Byzacena; Europe and Thrace (temporarily combined); and Sicily; then proconsul of Africa. He finally attained to the Prætorian prefecture and the prefecture of the city of Rome. We know from other sources that he was præf. urbi in 337, and ordinary consul in 340 ad The career constantly began with the post of advocatus fisci (Caelius Saturninus is an instance) or of advocate in the ordinary law-courts.]
Mamertinus in Panegyr. Vet. xi. 20. Asterius apud Photium, p. 1500.
The curious passage of Ammianus (l. xxx. c. 4), in which he paints the manners of contemporary lawyers, affords a strange mixture of sound sense, false rhetoric, and extravagant satire. Godefroy (Prolegom. ad Cod. Theod. c. i. p. 185) supports the historian by similar complaints and authentic facts. In the fourth century, many camels might have been laden with law-books. Eunapius in Vet. Edesii, p. 72. [The advocate (also called iuris peritus and scholasticus ) in the new Monarchy takes the place which under the Principate was filled by the iuris consultus, from whom the old advocatus was carefully distinguished.]
See a very splendid example in the Life of Agricola, particularly c. 20, 21. The lieutenant of Britain was entrusted with the same powers which Cicero, proconsul of Cilicia, had exercised in the name of the senate and people.
The Abbé Dubos, who has examined with accuracy (see Hist. de la Monarchie Françoise, tom. i. p. 41-100, edit. 1742) the institutions of Augustus and of Constantine, observes that, if Otho had been put to death the day before he executed his conspiracy, Otho would now appear in history as innocent as Corbulo.
Zosimus, l. ii. p. 110 [33]. Before the end of the reign of Constantius, the magistri militum were already increased to four. See Valesius ad Ammian. l. xvi. c. 7. [We first meet magistri militum about 315 (Cod. Theod. ii. i. 1). The titles mag. ped. and mag. eq. survived in the West, but were superseded in the East by the titles mag. utriusque militiae or mag. eq. et ped. The masters who were in attendance at the Imperial court were distinguished from those stationed on the frontiers by the addition in praesenti. For the increase of the number of magistri between Constantius and the time of the Notitia cf. Ammianus, xxvi. 5, and Zosimus, iv. 27.]
Though the military counts and dukes are frequently mentioned, both in history and the codes, we must have recourse to the Notitia for the exact knowledge of their number and stations. For the institution, rank, privileges, c., of the counts in general, see Cod. Theod. l. vi. tit. xii.-xx., with the Commentary of Godefroy. [As a rule the sphere of the dux or comes corresponded to that of the praeses or civil governor of a province, but in some cases was larger, as in that of the dux Libyarum. ]
[Derived from the comites who attended the Princeps when he visited the provinces.]
Zosimus, l. ii. p. 111. The distinction between the two classes of Roman troops is very darkly expressed in the historians, the laws, and the Notitia. Consult, however, the copious paratitlon, or abstract, which Godefroy has drawn up of the seventh book, de Re Militari, of the Theodosian Code, l. vii. tit. i. leg. 18, l. viii. tit. i. leg. 10. [Gibbon uses “Palatines” as equivalent to Palatines and Comitatenses — an erroneous use. See Appendix 7.]
Ferox erat in suos miles et rapax, ignavus vero in hostes et fractus. Ammian. l. xxii. c. 4. He observes that they loved downy beds and houses of marble; and that their cups were heavier than their swords.
Cod. Theod. l. vii. tit. i. leg. 1, tit. xii. leg. 1. See Howell’s Hist. of the World, vol. ii. p. 19. That learned historian, who is not sufficiently known, labours to justify the character and policy of Constantine.
Ammian. l. xix. c. 2. He observes (c. 5), that the desperate sallies of two Gallic legions were like an handful of water thrown on a great conflagration.
Pancirolus ad Notitiam, p. 96. Mémoires de l’Académie des Inscriptions, tom. xxv. p. 491. [This is partly true, but not altogether. See Appendix 7. The Notitia gives 62 legions in the West, 70 in the East — Gibbon’s 132.]
Romana acies unius prope formæ erat et hominum et armorum genere. — Regia acies varia magis multis gentibus dissimilitudine armorum auxiliorumque erat. T. Liv. l. xxxvii. c. 39, 40. Flaminius, even before the event, had compared the army of Antiochus to a supper, in which the flesh of one vile animal was diversified by the skill of the cooks. See the life of Flaminius in Plutarch.
Agathias, l. v. p. 157, edit. Louvre [P. 305, ed. Bonn. ad 558. This was the estimate on paper; the actual strength 150,000. For an estimate by Mommsen, see Appendix 7. The number of frontier garrisons, in the Notitia, is 305, not 583.]
Valentinian (Cod. Theodos. l. vii. tit. xiii. leg. 3) fixes the standard at five feet seven inches, about five feet four inches and a half English measure. It had formerly been five feet ten inches, and in the best corps six Roman feet. Sed tunc erat amplior multitudo, et plures sequebantur militiam armatam. Vegetius de Re Militari, l. i. c. 5.
See the two titles, De Veteranis and De Filiis Veteranorum, in the seventh book of the Theodosian Code. The age at which their military service was required varied from twenty-five to sixteen. If the sons of the veterans appeared with a horse, they had a right to serve in the cavalry; two horses gave them some valuable privileges.
Cod. Theod. l. vii. tit. xiii. leg. 7. According to the historian Socrates (see Godefroy ad. loc.), the same emperor Valens sometimes required eighty pieces of gold for a recruit. In the following law it is faintly expressed that slaves shall not be admitted inter optimas lectissimorum militum turmas.
The person and property of a Roman knight, who had mutilated his two sons, were sold by public auction by the order of Augustus (Sueton. in August. c. 27). The moderation of that artful usurper proves that this example of severity was justified by the spirit of the times. Ammianus makes a distinction between the effeminate Italians and the hardy Gauls (l. xv. c. 12). Yet only fifteen years afterwards, Valentinian, in a law addressed to the prefect of Gaul, is obliged to enact that these cowardly deserters shall be burnt alive (Cod. Theod. l. vii. tit. xiii. leg. 5). Their numbers in Illyricum were so considerable that the province complained of a scarcity of recruits (id. leg. 10).
They were called Murci. Murcidus is found in Plautus and Festus, to denote a lazy and cowardly person, who, according to Arnobius and Augustin, was under the immediate protection of the goddess Murcia. From this particular instance of cowardice, murcare is used as synonymous to mutilare, by the writers of the middle Latinity. See Lindenbrogius, and Valesius ad Ammian. Marcellin. l. xv. c. 12.
Malarichus — adhibitis Francis quorum eâ tempestate in palatio multitudo florebat, erectius jam loquebatur tumultuabaturque. Ammian. l. xv. c. 5.
Barbaros omnium primus, ad usque fasces auxerat et trabeas consulares. Ammian. l. xx. c. 10. Eusebius (in Vit. Constantin. l. iv. c. 7) and Aurelius Victor seem to confirm the truth of this assertion; yet in the thirty-two consular Fasti of the reign of Constantine I cannot discover the name of a single Barbarian. I should therefore interpret the liberality of that prince, as relative to the ornaments, rather than to the office, of the consulship.
Cod. Theod. l. vi. tit. 8.
By a very singular metaphor, borrowed from the military character of the first emperors, the steward of their household was styled the count of their camp (comes castrensis). Cassiodorius very seriously represents to him that his own fame, and that of the empire, must depend on the opinion which foreign ambassadors may conceive of the plenty and magnificence of the royal table (Variar. l. vi. epistol. 9).
Gutherius (de Officiis Domûs Augustæ, l. ii. c. 20, l. iii.) has very accurately explained the functions of the master of the offices and the constitution of his subordinate scrinia. But he vainly attempts, on the most doubtful authority, to deduce from the time of the Antonines, or even of Nero, the origin of a magistrate who cannot be found in history before the reign of Constantine. [His importance — if not his origin — probably dated from the reign of Constantine, and gradually developed during the fourth century. The original title was tribunus et mag. off. (Cod. Theod. ii. 9. 1), which further obscures the origin.]
[ Scr. dispositionum, of which one duty was to make dispositions in case of an Imperial journey.]
[It should not be overlooked that the mag. off. was head of the school of agentes in rebus; see below, note 170.]
Tacitus (Annal. xi. 22) says that the first quæstors were elected by the people, sixty-four years after the foundation of the republic; but he is of opinion that they had, long before that period, been annually appointed by the consuls, and even by the kings. But this obscure point of antiquity is contested by other writers. [Mommsen (Staatsrecht, 2, p. 525) thinks that the quæstorship originated simultaneously with the consulship.]
Tacitus (Annal. xi. 22) seems to consider twenty [fixed by Sulla] as the highest number of quæstors; and Dion. (l. xliii. p. 374 [c. 47; cp. 51]) insinuates that, if the dictator Cæsar once created forty, it was only to facilitate the payment of an immense debt of gratitude. Yet the augmentation which he made of prætors subsisted under the succeeding reigns.
Sueton. in August. c. 65, and Torrent. ad loc. Dion. Cas. p. 755.
The youth and inexperience of the quæstors, who entered on that important office in their twenty-fifth year (Lips. Excurs. ad Tacit. l. iii. D.), engaged Augustus to remove them from the management of the treasury; and, though they were restored by Claudius, they seem to have been finally dismissed by Nero (Tacit. Annal. xxii. 29. Sueton. in Aug. c. 36, in Claud. c. 24, Dion. p. 696 [liii. 2], 961 [lx. 24], c.; Plin. Epistol. x. 20, et alib.). In the provinces of the Imperial division, the place of the quæstors was more ably supplied by the procurators (Dion. Cass. p. 707 [liii. 15]; Tacit. in Vit. Agricol. c. 15); or, as they were afterwards called, rationales (Hist. August. p. 130 [xviii. 45, 46]). But in the provinces of the senate we may still discover a series of quæstors till the reign of Marcus Antoninus (see the Inscriptions of Gruter, the Epistles of Pliny, and a decisive fact in the Augustan history, p. 64). From Ulpian we may learn (Pandect. l. i. tit. 13) that, under the government of the house of Severus, their provincial administration was abolished; and in the subsequent troubles the annual or triennial elections of quæstors must have naturally ceased. [The quæstorship continued to exist under the Constantinian monarchy, but it became virtually a municipal office at Rome, and the quæstors were no longer “commended” by the Emperor, but were entirely appointed by the Senate. Their chief function was to defray the cost of games.]
Cum patris nomine et epistolas ipse dictaret, et edicta conscriberet, orationesque in senatu recitaret, etiam quæstoris vice. Sueton. in Tit. c. 6. The office must have acquired new dignity, which was occasionally executed by the heir-apparent of the empire. Trajan entrusted the same care to Hadrian, his quæstor and cousin. See Dodwell, Prælection. Cambden. x. xi. p. 362-394. [It is not at all likely that the quæstor of the new Monarchy can be derived from the quæstor who read the orations of Augustus in the Senate. Mommsen proposes (Ephem. Epig. 5, 625 ff.) to derive him from the vicarius a consiliis sacris, the president (as he believes) of the consistorium. In any case he was probably instituted by Constantine (Zos. v. 32). As a rule, he had precedence of the master of offices. Observe that to both these officials were diverted functions which formerly belonged to the Præt. prefect. The quæstor took his place in the consistorium (cp. App. 5), while the master of offices superseded him as commander of the palace guards.]
Claudian in Consulat. Mall. Theodor. 33. See likewise Symmachus (Epistol. i. 17 [= 23, ed. Seeck]) and Cassiodorius (Variar. vi. 5).
Cod. Theod. lv. i. tit. 30. Cod. Justinian. l. xii. tit. 24. [The sacred largesses corresponds to the fiscus of the principate. The title comes sacrarum largitionum came into use about the middle of the fourth century; under Constantine he was called rationalis summœ rei (C.I.L. 6, 1145), and had the rank of a count of the first order. At first a perfectissimus, he finally became an illustris. ]
In the departments of the two counts of the treasury, the Eastern part of the Notitia happens to be very defective. It may be observed that we had a treasury-chest in London, and a gyneceum or manufacture [of wool] at Winchester. But Britain was not thought worthy either of a mint or of an arsenal. Gaul alone possessed three of the former, and eight of the latter.
Cod. Theod. l. vi. tit. xxx. leg. 2, and Godefroy ad loc. [With Diocletian there ceased to be any real distinction between the fiscus and the res privata, but the double treasury was maintained. Under Diocletian the title was magister; Constantine changed it to rationalis rei privatae; subsequently this minister is called comes largitionum privatarum. ]
Strabon. Geograph. l. xii. p. 809. The other temple of Comana, in Pontus, was a colony from that of Cappadocia, l. xii. p. 825. The president Des Brosses (see his Saluste, tom. ii. p. 21) conjectures that the deity adored in both Comanas was Beltis, the Venus of the East, the goddess of generation; a very different being indeed from the goddess of war.
Cod. Theod. l. x. tit. vi. de Grege Dominico. Godefroy has collected every circumstance of antiquity relative to the Cappadocian horses. One of the finest breeds, the Palmatian, was the forfeiture of a rebel, whose estate lay about sixteen miles from Tyana, near the great road between Constantinople and Antioch.
Justinian (Novell. 30 [44, ed. Zachariä]) subjected the province of the count of Cappadocia to the immediate authority of the favourite eunuch who presided over the sacred bed-chamber. [The divina domus Cappadociae is placed under the praep. sacri cubiculi in the Notitia orientis, x.]
Cod. Theod. l. vi. tit. leg. 4, c.
Pancirolus, p. 102, 136. The appearance of these military domestics is described in the Latin poem of Corippus, de Laudibus Justin. l. iii. 157-179, p. 419, 420 of the Appendix Hist. Byzantin. Rom. 1777. [See Appendix 8.]
Ammianus Marcellinus, who served so many years, obtained only the rank of a Protector. The first ten among these honourable soldiers were Clarissimi.
Xenophon, Cyropæd. l. viii. Brisson, de Regno Persico, l. i. No. 190, p. 264. The emperors adopted with pleasure this Persian metaphor. [Originally, like the frumentarii, superintendents of the supplies of public corn, the agentes in rebus acted as secret police and became so much detested that Diocletian abolished them. They were revived as a military schola, and employed in the same way as confidential agents.]
For the Agentes in Rebus, see Ammian. l. xv. c. 3, l. xvi. c. 5, l. xxii. c. 7, with the curious annotations of Valesius. Cod. Theod. l. vi. t. xxvii., xxviii., xxix. Among the passages collected in the Commentary of Godefroy, the most remarkable one is from Libanius, in his discourse concerning the death of Julian.
The Pandects (l. xlviii. tit. xviii.) contain the sentiments of the most celebrated civilians on the subject of torture. They strictly confine it to slaves; and Ulpian himself is ready to acknowledge that Res est fragilis, et periculosa, et quæ veritatem fallat.
In the conspiracy of Piso against Nero, Epicharis (libertina mulier) was the only person tortured; the rest were intacti tormentis. It would be superfluous to add a weaker, and it would be difficult to find a stronger, example. Tacit. Annal. xv. 57.
Dicendum . . . de institutis Atheniensium, Rhodiorum, doctissimorum hominum, apud quos etiam (id quod acerbissimum est)liberi civesque torquentur. Cicero. Partit. Orat. c. 34. We may learn from the trial of Philotas the practice of the Macedonians (Diodor. Sicul. l. xvii. p. 604. Q. Curt. l. vi. c. 11).
Heineccius (Element. Jur. Civil. part vii. p. 81) has collected these exemptions into one view.
This definition of the sage Ulpian (Pandect. l. xlviii. tit. iv.) seems to have been adapted to the court of Caracalla rather than to that of Alexander Severus. See the Codes of Theodosius and Justinian ad leg. Juliam majestatis.
Arcadius Charisius is the oldest lawyer quoted in the Pandects to justify the universal practice of torture in all cases of treason; but this maxim of tyranny, which is admitted by Ammianus (l. xix. c. 12) with the most respectful terror, is enforced by several laws of the successors of Constantine. See Cod. Theod. l. ix. tit. xxxv. In majestatis crimine omnibus æqua est conditio.
Montesquieu, Esprit des Loix, l. xii. c. 13.
Mr. Hume (Essays, vol. i. p. 389) has seen this important truth, with some degree of perplexity.
The cycle of indictions, which may be traced as high as the reign of Constantius, or perhaps of his father Constantine, is still employed by the papal court: but the commencement of the year has been very reasonably altered to the first of January. See l’Art de vérifier les Dates, p. xi.; and Dictionnaire Raison. de la Diplomatique, tom. ii. p. 25; two accurate treatises, which come from the workshop of the Benedictines. [A fifteen-yearly valuation of property, for purposes of taxation, was as old as Hadrian (Mommsen, Staatsrecht, ii. 975). The financial year or “indiction” ran from 1st Sept. to 31st Aug., and thus included unequal parts of two calendar years; as a mode of chronology, it came into general use in the course of the fifth century. On this system 312-13 ad was regarded as the first year of the first fifteen-year cycle. Accordingly, if we wish to determine the indiction corresponding to any year, we subtract 312 and divide the difference by 15; the remainder is the indiction to which the first eight months of the given year (and the last four of the preceding year) belong. Take 700 ad : (700-312) ÷ 15 = 25 with a remainder of 13; therefore 1st Sept. 699 ad to 31st Aug. 700 ad is a 13th indiction. (If there is no remainder, the indiction is 15.) It is clear that the converse process requires a knowledge of the approximate period in terms of Anni Domini. Thus, if we know the date of the reign of Justinian ii., we may determine the indiction, say, of the first year in that reign, and so reckon which year corresponds to Ind. 13. — In the twelfth century this usage changed; the period of fifteen years was called the indiction; and the Birth of Christ was adopted as the starting-point. A year was known as the first, second, c., year of such and such an indiction. — It is also to be observed that in Egypt (under the empire) the indictional year did not begin on 1st Sept. or any fixed date, but varied from year to year. This has been shown by Wilcken ( Hermes, 19, 293 sqq. ), whereas it had been formerly thought (by Hartel) that the Egyptian ind. began on some day between 11th and 15th June.]
The first twenty-eight titles of the eleventh book of the Theodosian Code are filled with the circumstantial regulations on the important subject of tributes; but they suppose a clearer knowledge of fundamental principles than it is at present in our power to attain.
The title concerning the Decurions (l. xii. tit. i.) is the most ample in the whole Theodosian Code; since it contains not less than one hundred and ninety-two distinct laws to ascertain the duties and privileges of that useful order of citizens.
Habemus enim et hominum numerum qui delati sunt, et agrûm modum. Eumenius in Panegyr. Vet. viii. 6. See Cod. Theod. l. xiii. tit. x., xi., with Godefroy’s Commentary.
Siquis sacrilegâ vitem falce succiderit, aut feracium ramorum fœtus hebetaverit, quo declinet fidem censuum, et mentiatur callide paupertatis ingenium, mox detectus capitale subibit exitium, et bona ejus in fisci jura migrabunt. Cod. Theod. l. xiii. tit. xi. leg. 1. Although this law is not without its studied obscurity, it is, however, clear enough to prove the minuteness of the inquisition, and the disproportion of the penalty.
The astonishment of Pliny would have ceased. Equidem mirror P. R. victis gentibus argentum semper imperitasse non aurum. Hist. Natur. xxxiii. 15.
Some precautions were taken (see Cod. Theod. l. xi. tit. ii. and Cod. Justinian. l. x. tit. xxvii. leg. 1, 2, 3) to restrain the magistrates from the abuse of their authority, either in the exaction or in the purchase of corn: but those who had learning enough to read the orations of Cicero against Verres (iii. de Frumento) might instruct themselves in all the various arts of oppression, with regard to the weight, the price the quality, and the carriage. The avarice of an unlettered governor would supply the ignorance of precept or precedent.
Cod. Theod. l. xi. tit. xxviii. leg. 2, published the 24th of March, ad 395, by the emperor Honorius, only two months after the death of his father Theodosius. He speaks of 528,042 Roman jugera, which I have reduced to the English measure. The jugerum contained 28,800 square Roman feet.
Godefroy (Cod. Theod. tom. vi. p. 116) argues with weight and learning on the subject of the capitation; but, while he explains the caput as a share or measure of property, he too absolutely excludes the idea of a personal assessment. [The old land tax or tributum (so called in imperial provinces; stipendium in senatorial) now became the capitatio terrena (or iugatio ), and the assessment was made on a valuation, not of the produce, but of the capital. In the Eastern part of the empire, property was divided into a number of unities which paid the same tax, and consequently differed in size according to the value of the land. (Seven classes of land were distinguished: 1, wine-producing; 2, 3, oil-producing; 4, 5, 6, arable; 7, pasture.) The unity or iugum was valued at 1000 solidi, and might be made up of land of different classes. Under Diocletian this tax was paid in kind, though assessed in money ( annonae, measures of corn, and capita, units of hay, c., being equated with money-values), but after Constantine’s monetary reforms the payment could be made in coin. Landed proprietors had, besides this tax, to supply rations for the support of the government officials and the army. The cap. terrena must be distinguished from the cap. humana or poll-tax, which is very obscure, but possibly fell on the coloni, as it certainly did on widows and orphans (so Schiller). Compare Mommsen’s article in Hermes, 3, 429 sqq.; Schiller, R.G. ii. 68 sqq. ]
Quid profuerit ( Julianus ) anhelantibus extremâ penuriâ Gallis, hinc maxime claret, quod primitus partes eas ingressus, pro capitibus singulis tributi nomine vicenos quinos aureos reperit flagitari; discedens vero septenos tantum munera universa complentes. Ammian. l. xvi. c. 5. [The caput is the iugum. ]
In the calculation of any sum of money under Constantine and his successors, we need only refer to the excellent discourse of Mr. Greaves on the Denarius for the proof of the following principles: 1. That the ancient and modern Roman pound, containing 5256 grains of Troy weight, is about one-twelfth lighter than the English pound, which is composed of 5760 of the same grains. 2. That the pound of gold, which had once been divided into forty-eight aurei, was at this time coined into seventy-two smaller pieces of the same denomination. 3. That five of these aurei were the legal tender for a pound of silver, and that consequently the pound of gold was exchanged for fourteen pounds eight ounces of silver according to the Roman, or about thirteen pounds according to the English, weight. 4. That the English pound of silver is coined into sixty-two shillings. From these elements we may compute the Roman pound of gold, the usual method of reckoning large sums, at forty pounds sterling; and we may fix the currency of the aureus at somewhat more than eleven shillings. [Before Diocletian 70 aurei were struck from a pound of gold. Diocletian raised the value of the aureus from 1/70 to 1/60, and Constantine reduced it again, but to 1/72. This new Constantinian aureus was also called Solidus (whence Ital. soldo, French sou ). Schiller has shown that from 307 to 323 there was a transitional period in which the 1/72 lb. aureus was struck in the West, but not in the East. Röm. Gesch. ii. p. 222.]
The reputation of Father Sirmond led me to expect more satisfaction than I have found in his note (p. 144) on this remarkable passage. The words, suo vel suorum nomine, betray the perplexity of the commentator.
This assertion, however formidable it may seem, is founded on the original registers of births, deaths, and marriages, collected by public authority, and now deposited in the Contrôle Général at Paris. The annual average of births throughout the whole kingdom, taken in five years (from 1770 to 1774 (both inclusive), is 479,649 boys and 449,269 girls, in all 928,918 children. The province of French Hainault alone furnishes 9906 births: and we are assured, by an actual enumeration of the people, annually repeated from the year 1773 to the year 1776, that, upon an average, Hainault contains 257,097 inhabitants. By the rules of fair analogy, we might infer that the ordinary proportion of annual births to the whole people, is about 1 to 26; and that the kingdom of France contains 24,151,868 persons of both sexes and of every age. If we content ourselves with the more moderate proportion of 1 to 25, the whole population will amount to 23,222,950. From the diligent researches of the French government (which are not unworthy of our own imitation), we may hope to obtain a still greater degree of certainty on this important subject.
Cod. Theod. l. v. tit. ix., x., xi. Cod. Justinian. l. xi. tit. lxiii. Coloni appellantur qui conditionem debent genitali solo, propter agriculturam sub dominio possessorum. Augustin. de Civitate Dei, l. x. c. 1.
The ancient jurisdiction of ( Augustodunum ) Autun in Burgundy, the capital of the Ædui, comprehended the adjacent territory of ( Noviodunum ) Nevers. See d’Anville, Notice de l’ancienne Gaule, p. 491. The two dioceses of Autun and Nevers are now composed, the former of 610, and the latter of 160, parishes. The registers of births, taken during eleven years, in 476 parishes of the same province of Burgundy, and multiplied by the moderate proportion of 25 (see Messance, Recherches sur la Population, p. 142), may authorise us to assign an average number of 656 persons for each parish, which being again multiplied by the 770 parishes of the diocese of Nevers and Autun will produce the sum of 505,120 persons for the extent of country which was once possessed by the Ædui.
We might derive an additional supply of 301,750 inhabitants from the dioceses of Châlons ( Cabillonum ) and of Macon ( Matisco ); since they contain, the one 200, and the other 260, parishes. This accession of territory might be justified by very specious reasons. 1. Châlons and Macon were undoubtedly within the original jurisdiction of the Ædui (see d’Anville, Notice, p. 187, 443). 2. In the Notitia of Gaul, they are enumerated not as Civitates, but merely as Castra. 3. They do not appear to have been episcopal seats before the fifth and sixth centuries. Yet there is a passage in Eumenius (Panegyr. Vet. viii. 7) which very forcibly deters me from extending the territory of the Ædui, in the reign of Constantine, along the beautiful banks of the navigable Sâone.
Eumenius in Panegyr. Vet. viii. 11. [The land of the Ædui contained 32,000 capita of land, which the discharge of 7000 reduced to 25,000. The passage of Eumenius was first explained rightly by Savigny. Smith (ed. of Gibbon, ii. 341) has a good note on the errors of Gibbon’s computation.]
L’Abbé du Bos, Hist. Critique de la M. F. tom. i. p. 121.
[Gibbon does not take into account the other taxes in the empire.]
See Cod. Theod. l. xiii. tit. i. and iv.
Zosimus, l. ii. p. 115 [c. 38]. There is probably as much passion and prejudice in the attack of Zosimus as in the elaborate defence of the memory of Constantine by the zealous Dr. Howell. Hist. of the World, vol. ii. p 20. [The lustralis collatio was also called chrysargyron.]
Cod. Theod. l. xi. tit. vii. leg. 3.
See Lipsius de Magnitud. Romana, l. ii. c. 9. The Tarragonese Spain presented the emperor Claudius with a crown of gold of seven, and Gaul with another of nine, hundred pounds’ weight. I have followed the rational emendation of Lipsius.
Cod. Theod. l. xii. tit. xiii. The senators were supposed to be exempt from the Aurum Coronarium; but the Auri Oblatio, which was required at their hands, was precisely of the same nature. [The amount mentioned in the text was that paid on the Decennalia of Valentinian ii. (Symmachus, Relat. 13, 3). The senators had also to pay a regular tax, the follis, paid by the emperor himself as a senator, which did not free him from the land-tax, if he were a proprietor. The follis was of three grades: 8, 4, and 2 pounds of gold.]
The great Theodosius, in his judicious advice to his son (Claudian in iv. Consulat. Honorii, 214, c.), distinguishes the station of a Roman prince from that of a Parthian monarch. Virtue was necessary for the one; birth might suffice for the other. [In connection with Constantine’s finance, it should be observed that the oppressiveness of taxation in the latter part of his reign, as noticed by Zosimus, ii. 38, was probably caused in a great measure by the enormous expenses connected with the foundation of his new city (cp. Schiller, ii. 226). We must notice too the immunities from taxation which he allowed to certain favoured classes and communities; e.g., to physicians and professors, Cod. Theod. 13, 4, 1; Athens received supplies of corn, Julian. Or. i. 10.]
On ne se trompera point sur Constantin, en croyant tout le mal qu’en dit Eusèbe, et tout le bien qu’en dit Zosime. Fleury, Hist. Ecclésiastique, t. iii. p. 233. Eusebius and Zosimus form indeed the two extremes of flattery and invective. The intermediate shades are expressed by those writers whose character or situation variously tempered the influence of their religious zeal.
The virtues of Constantine are collected for the most part from Eutropius and the younger Victor, two sincere Pagans, who wrote after the extinction of his family. Even Zosimus and the emperor Julian acknowledge his personal courage and military achievements.
See Eutropius, x. 6. In primo Imperii tempore optimis principibus, ultimo mediis comparandus. From the ancient Greek version of Pæanius (edit. Havercamp. p. 697), I am inclined to suspect that Eutropius had originally written vix mediis; and that the offensive monosyllable was dropped by the wilful inadvertency of transcribers. Aurelius Victor [Epit. 41] expresses the general opinion by a vulgar and indeed obscure proverb: Trachala decem annis præstantissimus; duodecim sequentibus latro; decem novissimis pupillus ob immodicas profusiones.