paid by Rome, gave the rights of citizenship to the former, thus equalising all and unifying the empire. His brutal personality has no further interest for us any more than that of his fifteen successors, nearly all of whom came by a violent death, generally at the hands of the soldiers who had set them up. For them the dreary Augustan History, or its vivid condensation by Gibbon, must suffice, with our own articles on Heliogabalus, Severus, the three Gordians, Decius, Gallus, and Gallienus. They left the Roman empire weak at every frontier, exposed to the Franks on the Rhine and the Goths on the Danube. The former ravaged Gaul and Spain, the latter Asia Minor and Greece, while the Persians, relieved of the Parthian yoke, had again become a formidable power in the east. In Rome and throughout Italy anarchy and distress prevailed till a temporary revival was brought about by the Illyrian emperors-Claudius (268-270) driving back the Goths, and the yet abler Aurelian (270-275), by his victories over Goths and Germans and his successes in the east and west, restoring the lustre of the Roman arms, and, for a brief space, the unity of the empire.

Diocletian (284–305), also an Illyrian, the next great name on the imperial roll, introduced a system of safeguards against dissolution within and aggression from without. He assumed the most capable colleague he could find to share with him the government of the empire. This was Maximian, who, like himself, took the title of Augustus. He further reinforced this dual control by associating with him Galerius and Constantius, able generals, like Maximian, whom he proclaimed as Casares, below the two Augusti in rank, but with the right of succession to these. He himself had Thrace, Egypt, and Asia under him; to Maximian he gave Italy and Africa, to Constantius Gaul, Spain, and Britain, to Galerius the Danubian provinces. Thus internal sedition was suppressed within the empire, and, this distraction removed, the frontier fortifications could be perfected. The Rhine, the Danube, and the Persian boundary were garrisoned at frequent intervals and the barbarians kept in check, while all temptation of the soldiers to sedition was overawed by the repressive measures at the command of the four rulers acting in concert. Rome now ceased to be the one capital. If she remained a capital, it was as the seat of a nominal senate. The Augusti and Cæsares lived at their headquarters, Diocletian at Nicomedia, Maximian at Milan, Constantius at Treves, Galerius at Sirmium. This was a momentous departure from the tradition by which the emperors had claimed to be but the supreme magistrates of the city and the chiefs of her armies. Rome indeed was less imperial than any town in which the emperor chose to live. The policy of keeping the soldiery estranged from the emperor's presence took the form of increased dignity in his demeanour and mode of life, the oriental magnificence introduced by Aurelian reaching extravagant lengths in Diocletian. He reorganised the services, civil and military, under new titles, which came to be more valued than the republican consul or senator, and typified the completely autocratic power he assumed. So long as he lived his system worked effectively; but after twenty-one years, and in breaking health, he abdicated publicly the power he felt incapable of wielding. His masterful personality no longer felt, rupture between Casares and Augusti ended in civil wars, till the son of the Cæsar Constantius, Constantine, who had himself become Cæsar of the army in Britain, overcame all rivalry, and in 323 ruled the empire single-handed. Christianity, since its rise under Augustus and its spread under Tiberius and the later emperors, had triumphed over the last attempt under Diocletian

793

to crush it by persecution, and the politic Constantine, adopting it as his own religion, made it also the state's. To the tottering imperial fabric it brought new strength, armed with which he proceeded to develop Diocletian's policy of rehabilitation. From Rome he transferred the seat of government to Byzantium, henceforth called Constantinople, commanding by its position the Greek and Asiatic worlds. Remodelling Rome's tradi tional institutions, he made a new senate, with a large infusion of Greeks, all of his own choosing; he instituted a new præfectus urbi, and founded in the 'Rome on the Bosporus an absolute monarchy. Reducing the number of soldiers under each general, he weakened the army's power to revolt by dividing it into two classes, one for the towns, the other for the frontiers. The same subdividing process he carried into the provinces, splitting them up into districts, which again he rearranged into thirteen larger ones, subject to four prefects, responsible in their turn to the emperor. Multiplying officials who owed everything to him, he made them the nucleus of a new nobility, to supersede the old, and to find their interest in perpetuating his power. These sagacious measures, coupled with the prestige of the new religion, reinforced the empire greatly; but the taxation required to keep it up proved an element of weakness. The costly court and the highly paid officials drained the treasury, which had to be replenished by exactions from the people, who met them from the proceeds of the land they tilled. The forays of barbarians, increasing in number and range, steadily reduced the means of these small holders, who thus, except in profound peace, could not satisfy the tax-gatherers. Farms disappeared, not to be replaced, and unproductive waste-lands encroached more and more within the frontier. The death of Constantine was the signal for civil war among the rival Cæsars, till Constantine's only surviving son, Constantius II. (351-363), succeeded in reuniting the empire under the same house. Not without misgiving he made a ‘Cæsar' of his cousin Julian and entrusted him with Gaul, where Julian's success was such as to rouse his jealousy. Constantius accordingly commanded his cousin's legions to start for Persia; but instead of complying they proclaimed Julian emperor and Augustus. Constantius died soon after, and an inevitable collision was averted. Julian (361-363) interests us more by his defence of the Rhine frontier and his Persian campaign than by his apostasy' from Christianity. He succeeded in staving off the barbarian inroads on the western provinces; but his diversion in favour of the 'creed outworn' did not survive his last encounter on the Tigris, where he was killed. Jovian, who succeeded him on the battlefield, outlived him a few months, and Valentinian I. (364-375), the next emperor, at the instance of the army which proclaimed him, took as colleague his brother Valens, whom he made emperor of the east. For ten years the dual government prevailed, and the barbarians were kept in check at the Rhine and Danube, but his death found Valens unequal to his post. The Goths, goaded by the Huns in their rear, had thrown themselves on the hospitality of their imperial neighbours, but were so harshly treated that they turned on them and killed Valens in battle (378). They threatened Constantinople, but the next emperor, Theodosius (379-395), made them his allies and even auxiliaries, so that he was able to keep on the throne his colleague of the west, the feeble Gratian. emperor was murdered (383) by Maximus, whom Theodosius recognised as Cæsar and left in command of Gaul, Spain, and Britain, till Maximus (386), worsted by Theodosius in his attempt on Italy and

That

Africa, was compelled to acknowledge Valentinian II. as emperor in the west (391). A few months afterwards Valentinian was murdered by Arbogast the Frank, who nominated in his place a creature of his own, Eugenius. Again Theodosius triumphed over the usurper; but after his great victory at Aquileia he died (395), leaving as emperors his two sons-Arcadius in the east and Honorius in the west.

The next eighty years are amongst the most dismal in the world's history. The provinces, drained to inanition by taxation levied for army and court, were further visited by intestine war and bar. barian inroads. At first the policy of conciliating the invader, and giving him military command and administrative office, succeeded. But gradually the barbarians established in the east began to aim at conquest in the west, and Alaric the Goth first occupied Illyricum, whence he ravaged Greece, to be driven out by the Vandal Stilicho, the able general of Honorius. Retaining Illyricum, he led his people en masse into Italy; but after his crushing defeat at Pollentia he again retreated before Stilicho. On the murder of that officer he returned and besieged and took Rome, which bought him out at a heavy price. Honorius, from his seat at Ravenna, could not be made to concede him the lands he wanted for his people and the post in the imperial army he claimed for himself, so Alaric again appeared before Rome, to accept the office of commander-in-chief under her improvised Augustus,' the prefect Attalus. This incapable ruler was displaced by Alaric, who resumed his negotiations with Honorius. These being again fruitless, he took and sacked the city, but died shortly after. His successor Ataulf drew off his people to Gaul, and (419) a succeeding king, Wallia, received formal permission from Honorius to settle in the southwest, where at Toulouse he founded the Visigothic dynasty. Spain, already divided between Vandals, Sueves, and Alans, was in like manner formally made over to those invaders by Honorius, whose authority at his death (423) was on the western continent merely nominal. His successor, Valentinian III. (423-455), witnessed the conquest of Africa by the Vandals and of Gaul and Italy by the Huns. The former, under Genseric, having taken Carthage, were recognised by Valentinian in their new African kingdom in 440; and the latter, the rulers, under Attila, of central and northern Europe, confronted the emperors of east and west alike as an independant power. Attila marched first on Gaul, but the Visigoths, since their conciliation by Honorius, were loyal enough to oppose him, and, commanded by Aetius, signally defeated the Huns at Châlons (451). Next year Attila invaded Lombardy, but got no further, and died (453). In that year Valentinian, the last representative of the house of Theodosius in the west, was murdered; but his nine successors have no claim on our attention here. The outstanding events in the history of Rome are now her siege and sack by Genseric (455), and the quarrel between the Emperor Orestes (a Pannonian) and the barbarian soldiery in Italy -the latter requesting and the former refusing a grant of a third of the lands. The soldiery defeated and killed Orestes, whose son Romulus Augustulus resigned the useless purple' in favour of their leader Odoacer (476). The empire of the west was gone, Italy was under a barbarian king, and Rome ceased to be the capital. Thenceforth the history of Rome is merged in that of Italy (q.v.), where will be found such outstanding events as the restoration to the city, or to the pope, of the lands rescued by Pepin (q.v.) from the Lombards, the taking of Rome in 1084 by the Emperor

Henry IV., the short rule of Rienzi (q.v.), the sack in 1527 by the Constable de Bourbon (q.v.), the Napoleonic invasion of 1796, the republic of 1849, and the re-establishment in 1870 of Rome as capital of Italy. The history of the Eastern Empire is given at BYZANTINE EMPIRE.

Rome Prehistoric, Regal, and Republican: Gilbert's Geschichte und Topographie der Stadt Rom im Altertum (1883-90); and the well-known works of Mommsen (Eng. trans. 1862-66), Peter, Nitzsch, Drumann, Schwegler, Duruy (Eng. trans. 1883-86), and Ihne, superseding in great part the epoch-making Niebuhr and the useful works of Arnold and Long. Rome Imperial: Mommsen's fifth volume (Eng. trans. 1887); Merivale; Gardthausen's Augustus und seine Zeit (first part 1891); Gibbon (embodying most of what is valuable in Tillemont); Hermann Schiller's Geschichte der Kaiserzeit; Von Reumont; Gaston Boissier's La Fin du Paganisme (2 vols. 1891); Bury's Later Roman Empire (1889); Hodgkin's Italy and her Invaders (1880–85); and Professor H. F. Pelham's able article in the Encyclopedia Britannica. There are useful smaller general histories of Rome by Schmitz, Liddell, Merivale, Gilman, and Pelham, as well as a serviceable abridgment of Mommsen. Two books of interest are Dyer's History of the City of Rome (2d ed. 1883) and A. Graf's Roma nella Memoria e nelle Immaginazioni del Medio Evo (1882-83). Rome Medieval: Gregorovius's Geschichte der Stadt Rom (also in an authorised Italian translation); Von Reumont; Ranke's History of the Popes; Sismondi, Abbatés L'Italia nel Medio Evo (1891); and the Ecclesiastical Histories of Baronius, Robertson, and Milman. Signor Villari's excellent article on 'Rome Medieval and Modern' in the Encyclopædia Britannica represents much original Neara, Westbury's Acté, Wiseman's Fabiola are works research. Becker's Gallus, Lockhart's Valerius, Graham's history and life. of fiction dealing learnedly and attractively with Roman

RELIGION. The religion of ancient Rome was in pedigree closely akin to the Greek, which accounts for the ease with which in later times the two religions became blended. Rome's earliest occupants, the Latins and the Sabines, had, like the Greeks themselves, a Pelasgic progeniture, and the greater number of her divinities were ultimately descended, through the Latin and Sabine, from Pelasgic originals. The Etruscan infusion into Roman nationality affected religion mainly on its external side, that of ceremonial. Among these Italian races-Latin, Sabine, Etruscan-religion took an Italian development, redolent of their racial and local characteristics, of which, as compared with the Greeks, lack of creative power was one; hence we miss in the Roman divine world that wealth of legend which makes the Greek so picturesque, while from the same cause the Roman divinities betray fewer of the failings by which those of Greece often sink to the human level. The Roman genius, with its practical and objective turn, determined the more observant spirit of its religious worship, which in its minute attention to detail, both in word and act, implied a graver, more reverential notion of deity. Sprung from shepherds and husbandmen of the simplest patriarchal type, the early Romans strike a rural and domestic note in their religion, worshipping especially the gods of nature, of field and forest, the bounteous protectors of flocks, or donors of harvests, like Faunus, Vertumnus, Saturn, Ops, and the gods who shielded the house and its inmates, gods of the family (Lares and Penates). This worship long retained in Rome the rural and household traits of its original inspiration, and far down in the history of the empire we find numer ous festivities antique as to observance and yearly as to recurrence, in the Saturnalia, Lupercalia, and such like. Side by side with her agricultural, pastoral, and household divinities Rome from the earliest times continued to worship the deities who protected her civic life-state-deities, like her