The End of the Ancient World

Ferdinand Lot

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136202407
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Originally published between 1920-70,The History of Civilization was a landmark in early twentieth century publishing. It was published at a formative time within the social sciences, and during a period of decisive historical discovery. The aim of the general editor, C.K. Ogden, was to summarize the most up to date findings and theories of historians, anthropologists, archaeologists and sociologists. This reprinted material is available as a set or in the following groupings:
* Prehistory and Historical Ethnography
Set of 12: 0-415-15611-4: £800.00
* Greek Civilization
Set of 7: 0-415-15612-2: £450.00
* Roman Civilization
Set of 6: 0-415-15613-0: £400.00
* Eastern Civilizations
Set of 10: 0-415-15614-9: £650.00
* Judaeo-Christian Civilization
Set of 4: 0-415-15615-7: £250.00
* European Civilization
Set of 11: 0-415-15616-5: £700.00

PART I

THE CRISIS OF THE THIRD CENTURY AND THE RESTORATION OF THE EMPIRE

CHAPTER I

THE POLITICAL CRISIS OF THE THIRD CENTURY

THE power of the Roman Emperor, among the most absolute which the world has ever known, was nevertheless not monarchical in essence.¹ The Princeps is all-powerful, not because he is considered as descended from the gods, like the monarchs of the East and the kings of certain Germanic peoples ; but rather because he embodies in his person the Respublica, the authority of the Roman people, which is absolute. Accordingly his power is not a personal power, still less is it hereditary ; it is delegated. His power depends first and foremost on armed force. The Emperor is he who possesses, by delegation, the command of the army, which like all real command is absolute. This command is called the imperium. During the republican period many persons held the imperium. These were the commanders-in-chief, the proconsuls. They were imperatores, but only for the duration of the campaign. On the day after the triumph, this absolute power expired. The establishment of the Empire consisted in limiting the number of those on whom the imperium was conferred to one man, and in conferring upon him this office for life.

In its essence, the Empire remains none the less a magistracy. The idea of the sovereignty of the State continues in theory to be associated with the Emperor, who is the embodiment of the Respublica. If he receives the title of Augustus, that is holy and sacred, he does so no doubt because he is the living symbol of the Dea Roma. At his death, it is decided whether he should be deified, or canonized as we should say, whether his numen or genius shall receive divine honours.

Does the proconsular imperium contain only this military side ? Has it not also a civil side, one of jurisdiction ? It is a disputed question.¹ It seems obvious that the imperium, although it forms the strong and stable element of the power of the Princeps, is not sufficient to give his authority plenary jurisdiction, for the reason that the proconsular power could be exercised only outside Rome (until Septimius Severus’ time) and Italy. The Emperor also causes the tribunicia potestas to be assigned to him for life, and this confers on him the right of “ intercessio ” or general protection of the Roman people and renders his person sacred and inviolable. But he only assumes this power after the former, which is obviously fundamental.²

Other functions were able to gather round this nucleus : the Emperor is pontifex maximus, censor, princeps Senatus ; from time to time he takes the consulship, but these titles do not procure him any important increase of his power. Possibly from the time of Vespasian, the whole collection of rights constituting the imperial power was handed over en bloc by a senatus-consultum, which was likewise a law (the lex regia) acclaimed on the Campus Martius. This law confers the imperium, but not the tribunicia potestas.

The imperial magistracy does not aim at substituting monarchy for the republic. In the beginning the Empire appears as a measure of expediency.³ A permanent dictatorship, for the remedying of the social and political upheavals which threaten the existence of the Roman Republic, is entrusted to the first citizen of the state : that is the meaning of “ princeps ”. But the legal organs of the state, the Senate and the comitia, persist at the beginning of the Empire. Legislative power is not the exclusive function of the Emperor ; he can initiate laws, but only in the same way as any other magistrate, and when his “ constitutions ” or acta come to have the force of law, they will probably be legally based on the tribunicia potestas with which he is invested.

Nor, at the beginning of the principate, has the Emperor any real functionaries at the centre of Empire ; up to the time of Hadrian he draws from amongst the circle of his “ friends ” the members of a council such as every head of State must have.

But the old machinery continues. The comitia having died of old age, the administration and the treasury as well as legislation are gathered in the hands of the Senate.¹

Had the whole of the territory continued to be governed by the latter, the Empire would have been an aristocracy with a military dictator at its head. But this was by no means the case. The Emperor’s position went on growing at the expense of the Senate’s. In actual fact, the Emperor not only commanded the army and made war and peace, but also took into his hands the power of the whole State and set up an administration of his own. This was because from the beginning the Princeps and the Senate partitioned the provinces amongst themselves. To administer those which he kept for himself, the Emperor had perforce to have his governors and his treasury (his fiscus, opposed to the aeravium) ; and as the army was at his disposal, he made continual encroachments on all the spheres of activity left to the Senate.²

We need not retrace the slow but continuous evolution whereby the principate was transformed into a monarchy or quasi-monarchy.³ In the third century this evolution was still far from complete. Under the principate of quite a young man Alexander Severus (March 12th, 222—February-March, 235) it seemed as though the Senate were going to recover its supremacy in the Roman State. It provided the Regency Council and helped the mother-Empress Mammaea. After reaching his majority, Alexander did nothing without the advice of the Senate ; he handed over to it the election of his principal functionaries, the Prætorian and Urban Prefects and the governors for the proconsular provinces ; often he asked it for candidates for all the other provinces. In Rome he assigned to the Prefect a committee of fourteen consulars whose task it was to help him in trying cases and to supervise each a “ regio ” of the town. He gave the Prætorian Prefects senatorial rank, so that a Roman Senator might be tried by none but his peers. He sent out no rescript, issued no Constitution without taking the advice of his council in which Senators predominated. He nominated the Consuls himself, but had them designated by the Senate. He diminished the authority of the imperial procurators and submitted their election to popular approval ; he restored the aerarium by the side of the fiscus. Nothing disturbed the concord of the two powers reunited in this new form of government, which Herodian calls aristocracy (VI, 1.) The idea of the senatorial Empire was almost realized ; some even dreamed of restoring the Republic, and these hopes are to be found even in the speeches which Dio Cassius attributes to Maecenas and Augustus.¹

It is precisely at the end of this reign that, with the assassination of Alexander Severus and of his mother, there broke out the formidable crisis which nearly shattered the Roman world to fragments and brought its civilization, still so brilliant at the beginning of the third century, to an end.

Here we see in full light and without any concealment the fundamental vice of the Empire. The Roman Empire, despite appearances, has no constitution. It rests on force only, a brute force let loose by the lowest appetites.²

Who confers this absolute power of the first citizen which gathers up in itself the majestas of the Roman people ? It rests on no solid legal basis. Who designates the military dictator, or the imperator ? The Senate, above all the army, the warrior force of the Roman people, at the dictation of circumstances, for the common good. But after the separation between the army and the Roman people, the former continues to play a preponderating rôle in the choice of the Ruler of the State. It seems that the Emperor’s power has full legality only when the Princeps has obtained the support of both the army and the Senate. But to which of these two powers does the lawful initiative belong ? No one knows.³ Designation by the Senate might be more reassuring but it is not more legitimate. In actual fact, it is the army which designates the Emperor, because force is in its hands. It sometimes happened that it begged the Senate to make the choice, but this request always concealed a command or a trap.

During the ancient period of the history of Rome, the army was a small concentrated force : it could spontaneously designate the man to whom it looked for salvation. But since the first century B.C., since the first institution of a permanent paid force, there is no longer one army but several armies. The Emperor is the chief who leads them and to whom they look for victory and booty. When there is one chief only, the Emperor, the army is scattered, the legions (the 24th, 30th, 32nd, etc.) are encamped on the frontiers of the Empire, on the Rhine, the Danube, the Euphrates. This removal from Rome and Italy at first leaves the imperial guard, consisting of the nine, afterwards ten, Prætorian cohorts encamped outside Rome, in a privileged position. Nevertheless from the second half of the first century we see the frontier legions taking part in the election of the Emperor ; from the end of the second century this even becomes the rule, the power of the Prætorian soldiers having been broken by Septi-mius Severus (193-211).

The motives which induced the army, or rather the armies, to intervene were not of a very high order ; the Emperor is made or unmade for money or from caprice. Sometimes the legions raise to imperial rank a man with no military ability, if he happens to be rich, e.g., Didius Julianus. Then they weary of him and kill him. They also kill the Emperor if he is too strict in the matter of discipline. They kill him from caprice or for the pleasure of killing, sometimes even from some plausible motive, as when the man appointed is incapable of conquering the barbarians. Naturally these armies fought with each other, each claiming to impose on the rest the man of its ohoice. In the third century these armies do not always even need to be roused by ambitious individuals. Their rising appears spontaneous ; suddenly an army will offer supreme power to men who tremble to accept it. To be elected Emperor, during the half-century which follows Alexander Severus, is a tragic fate. Those elected, such as Gordian, Decius, Saturninus Tetricus, accept the principate as a decree of death. The disease which has continually afflicted the Roman world during the first two centuries of the Empire and even from the time of Marius and Sulla rises to fever pitch. There is no longer a Roman people. The Senate is only a shadow ; the representative of the Respublica, the head of the State, all-powerful and formidable despot though he be, is the humble slave of a hundred-headed monster, of a Caliban without ideals, faith or law, of the so-called Roman army. And the history of the Empire is and will be only a series of pronunciamentos.

The man who for half-a-century delayed the catastrophe, Septimius Severus, laid aside all hypocrisy ; he would have no play-acting like his predecessors. His precept to his sons, on his death-bed in Britain, was, we are told, “make the soldiers rich and don’t trouble about the rest”. Caracalla acted in conformity with this cynical advice.¹

It would not be possible here to retrace the history of the so-called period of the Thirty Tyrants. The following is merely a picture of the Empire as it was at the moment when a few rude soldiers succeeded in stemming the tide of anarchy.

The licentiousness of the armies coincided with a renewal of activity by the barbarians on the Rhine and the Danube. In Mœsia the Goths crossed the Danube. The Emperor Decius was beaten and slain (November, 251) ; even his body could not be found. In the East the danger was still more serious. The old Parthian monarchy, so long deadly to the Greeks and Romans, had just fallen. A new Persian Empire was set up in 226–227 by Ardashir. The Arsacids had kept some tinge of Hellenism ; in religion they were indifferent. With the Persians one religion triumphed, Mazdaism, upheld and propagated by a powerful priestly organization, that of the Magi.

The Persians were fanatics. In the countries which they reduced they razed the temples to the ground and imposed the Mazdean religion ; thus they acted in Armenia when Sapor (Shapûr) got possession of it. Parseeism was incompatible with Græco-Hellenistic culture. They were two civilizations which challenged each other. The clash between them was very violent, and disastrous to the Romans. The Emperor Valerian was made prisoner (260) by the Persian King Sapor, who is said to have inflicted the most humiliating treatment on him, using him as his footstool for mounting his horse. A gigantic bas-relief at Nakeh-Rousten near Persepolis shows Valerian kneeling before the Persian King, who is on horseback. Legend has it, that at the prisoner’s death his skin, after being tanned, dyed red and stuffed, hung for several centuries in a Persian temple.¹

Gallienus, Valerian’s son and successor, was incapable of ransoming or of delivering his father. All that he could do was to entrust the military forces and give the title of dux, later of imperator (but not of Augustus) to Septimius Odaenathus, who was of Arab origin and all-powerful in the oasis of Palmyra, half-way between Syria and the Euphrates. Odaena-thus succeeded in curbing the enemy with Syrian and Arab troops, armed in the Roman fashion.²

This Gallienus, under whom thirty tyrants—in reality eighteen candidates for the purple—tore the Empire asunder, has a very evil reputation. But we must not forget that we only know of him from a late and hostile source, the so-called Trebonius Pollio. It is a fact that under his principate the revolt broke out which split the Empire into twenty fragments. As these revolts were simultaneous, Gallienus succeeded in keeping Italy only. Pannonia elected successively Ingenuus, Regalianus, and Aureolus ; Egypt, Macrianus and Æmilianus ; Greece, Valens ; Thessaly, Piso ; Isauria, Trebellianus; Africa; Celsus. The Gauls for nearly twenty years (257-274) obeyed Emperors of their own, Posthumus, Victorinus, Tetricus.

We see here signs of a particularism which was, if not national, at least provincial. None of these Emperors really had the intention of breaking away from Rome and setting up a separate State. Except in Palmyra under Zenobia there was no separatism. All or nearly all fought the barbarians, as for example Posthumus, who after beating the Franks, struck coins with the inscription “ salus provinciarum ”. But had this position continued long, the Empire would have broken up into six, eight or ten parts. At the head of each province or group of provinces an Emperor would have ruled who would have been too weak to triumph over the others. In the long run, provincia...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part One The Crisis of the Third Century and the Restoration of the Empire
• II. The Restoration of the Roman World
• III. The Roman Empire and the Church in the Fourth Century
• IV. Economic Retrogression of the Roman World
• V. The Constantinian Monarchy, Its Nature. Reforms and Services
• VI. The Caste System
• VII. The Large Estate Versus the State and the Weak : The Patronage System
• VIII. The Decay and End of Ancient Art
• IX. The Decadence of Literature ; The Disappearance of Ancient Philosophy and Science
• X. The Corruption of Public Spirit
• Part Two The Downfall
• II. The Roman Empire in the West from 395 to 476
• III. The Roman Empire in the East from 395 to 618
• Part Three After the Downfall
• II. The Persistence of Roman Political Institutions in the West : The Problem of the Disappearance of the Empire
• III. The Return of the Empire : Justinian and the “Reconquista”
• IV. The Failure of Justinian's Work
• V. Visigothic Spain
• VI. The Lombard State
• VII. The Papacy and Italy from the Middle of the Sixth to the Middle of the Eighth Century (554-753)
• VIII. The Seizure of Gaul by the Franks
• XI. The Descendants of Clovis
• X. The Decay and End of the Merovingians
• XI. The Merovingian Monarchy : Institutions
• XII. Economic Life
• XIII. Intellectual and Artistic Life : Education
• XIV. Religious Life
• XV. Lay Society
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Notes
• Index