Transient union against Marcus Antoninus. In civil dissensions the weaker faction endeavoured to strengthen its interest by entering into secret connections with the governors of the frontier provinces. Every quarrel among the Germans was fomented by the intrigues of Rome, and every plan of union and public good was defeated by the stronger bias of private jealousy and interest.81 The general conspiracy which terrified the Romans under the reign of Marcus Antoninus comprehended almost all the nations of Germany, and even Sarmatia, from the mouth of the Rhine to that of the Danube.82 It is impossible for us to determine whether this hasty confederation was formed by necessity, by reason, or by passion; but we may rest assured that the barbarians were neither allured by the indolence nor provoked by the ambition of the Roman monarch. This dangerous invasion required all the firmness and vigilance of Marcus. He fixed generals of ability in the several stations of attack, and assumed in person the conduct of the most important province on the Upper Danube. After a long and doubtful conflict, the spirit of the barbarians was subdued. The Quadi and the Marcomanni, 83 who had taken the lead in the war, were the most severely punished in its catastrophe. They were commanded to retire five miles 84 from their own banks of the Danube, and to deliver up the flower of the youth, who were immediately sent into Britain, a remote island, where they might be secure as hostages and useful as soldiers.85 On the frequent rebellions of the Quadi and Marcomanni, the irritated emperor resolved to reduce their country into the form of a province. His designs were disappointed by death. This formidable league, however, the only one that appears in the 81 Many traces of this policy may be discovered in Tacitus and Dion; and many more may be inferred from the principles of human nature. 82 Hist. August. p. 31. [Capitol. M. Ant. Phil. c. 22.] Ammian. Marcellin. 1. xxxi. c. 5. Aurel. Victor. [de Cæsar. c. 16.] The emperor Marcus was reduced to sell the rich furniture of the palace, and to enlist slaves and robbers. 83 The Marcomanni, a colony who, from the banks of the Rhine, occupied Bohemia and Moravia, had once erected a great and formidable monarchy under their king Maroboduus. See Strabo, 1. vii. [p. 290.] Vell. Pat. ii. 108. Tacit. Annal. ii. 63.a 84 Mr. Wotton (History of Rome, p. 166) increases the prohibition to ten times the distance. His reasoning is specious, but not conclusive. Five miles were sufficient for a fortified barrier. Dion, 1. lxxi. [c. 11, sqq.] and lxxii. [c. 2.] 85 The name Marc-o-manni, the March-men or borderers, appears to have been given to different tribes on the different marches or confines of Germany, and not to have been the name of one and the same people. Since there were Marcomanni in the army of Ariovistus on the Rhine (Cæs. Bell, Gall. i. c. 51), it was inferred, as Gibbon has stated in his note, that the Marco manni of Maroboduus were a colony from the Marcomanni on the Rhine; but there may have been no connection between them, the Marcomanni of Ariovistus being the Marchmen of the Gallic march, and the Marcomanni of Maroboduus being the Marchmen of the Rhæto-Pannonian march. See Latham, The Germania of Tacitus, Proleg. p. liii. seq.-S. two first centuries of the Imperial history, was entirely dissipated without leaving any traces behind in Germany. German In the course of this introductory chapter we have confined ourselves to the general outlines of the manners of Germany, without Distineattempting to describe or to distinguish the various tribes tion of the which filled that great country in the time of Cæsar, of tribes. Tacitus, or of Ptolemy. As the ancient, or as new tribes successively present themselves in the series of this history, we shall concisely mention their origin, their situation, and their particular character. Modern nations are fixed and permanent societies, connected among themselves by laws and government, bound to their native soil by arts and agriculture. The German tribes were voluntary and fluctuating associations of soldiers, almost of savages. The same territory often changed its inhabitants in the tide of conquest and emigration. The same communities, uniting in a plan of defence or invasion, bestowed a new title on their new confederacy. The dissolution of an ancient confederacy restored to the independent tribes their peculiar but long-forgotten appellation. A victorious state often communicated its own name to a vanquished people. Sometimes crowds of volunteers flocked from all parts to the standard of a favourite leader; his camp became their country, and some circumstance of the enterprise soon gave a common denomination to the mixed multitude. The distinctions of the ferocious invaders were perpetually varied by themselves, and confounded by the astonished subjects of the Roman empire.86 Numbers. Wars and the administration of public affairs are the principal subjects of history; but the number of persons interested in these busy scenes is very different, according to the different condition of mankind. In great monarchies millions of obedient subjects pursue their useful occupations in peace and obscurity. The attention of the writer, as well as of the reader, is solely confined to a court, a capital, a regular army, and the districts which happen to be the occasional scene of military operations. But a state of freedom and barbarism, the season of civil commotions, or the situation of petty republics,87 raises almost every member of the com 86 See an excellent dissertation on the origin and migrations of nations, in the Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions, tom. xviii. p. 48-71. It is seldom that the antiquarian and the philosopher are so happily blended. 87 Should we suspect that Athens contained only 21,000 citizens, and Sparta no more than 39,000? See Hume and Wallace on the number of mankind in ancient and modern times." This number, though too positively stated, is probably not far wrong as an average estimate. On the subject of Athenian population, see St. Croix, Acad. des Inscrip. xlviii.; Böckh, Public Economy of Athens, i. 47, Eng. trans.; Fynes Clinton, Fasti Hellenici, vol. i. p. 381. The latter author estimates the citizens of Sparta at 33,000.-M. The irregular munity into action, and consequently into notice. divisions and the restless motions of the people of Germany dazzle our imagination, and seem to multiply their numbers. The profuse enumeration of kings and warriors, of armies and nations, inclines us to forget that the same objects are continually repeated under a variety of appellations, and that the most splendid appellations have been frequently lavished on the most inconsiderable objects. CHAPTER X. THE EMPERORS DECIUS, GALLUS, EMILIANUS, VALERIAN, AND GALLIENUSTHE GENERAL IRRUPTION OF THE BARBARIANS THE THIRTY TYRANTS. of the FROM the great secular games celebrated by Philip, to the death of the emperor Gallienus, there elapsed twenty years of shame The nature and misfortune. During that calamitous period, every subject. instant of time was marked, every province of the Roman A.D. 248-268, world was afflicted, by barbarous invaders and military tyrants, and the ruined empire seemed to approach the last and fatal moment of its dissolution. The confusion of the times and the scarcity of authentic memorials oppose equal difficulties to the historian who attempts to preserve a clear and unbroken thread of narration. Surrounded with imperfect fragments, always concise, often obscure, and sometimes contradictory, he is reduced to collect, to compare, and to conjecture; and though he ought never to place his conjectures in the rank of facts, yet the knowledge of human nature, and of the sure operation of its fierce and unrestrained passions, might, on some occasions, supply the want of historical materials. The empe There is not, for instance, any difficulty in conceiving that the successive murders of so many emperors had loosened all the ties of allegiance between the prince and people; that ror Philip. all the generals of Philip were disposed to imitate the example of their master; and that the caprice of armies long since habituated to frequent and violent revolutions might every day raise to the throne the most obscure of their fellow-soldiers. History can only add that the rebellion against the emperor Philip broke out in the summer of the year two hundred and forty-nine, among the legions of Mæsia, and that a subaltern officer,' named Marinus, was the object of their seditious choice. Philip was alarmed. He dreaded lest the treason of the Mæsian army should prove the first spark of a general conflagration. Distracted with the consciousness of his guilt and of his danger, he communicated the intelligence to the senate. A gloomy silence prevailed, the effect of fear, and perhaps of disaffec- Services, tion, till at length Decius, one of the assembly, assuming a tory, and spirit worthy of his noble extraction, ventured to discover the empe more intrepidity than the emperor seemed to possess. He revolt, vic reign of ror Decius, A.D. 249. The expression used by Zosimus and Zonaras may signify that Marinus commanded a century, a cohort, or a legion. treated the whole business with contempt, as a hasty and inconsiderate tumult, and Philip's rival as a phantom of royalty, who in a very few days would be destroyed by the same inconstancy that had created him. The speedy completion of the prophecy inspired Philip with a just esteem for so able a counsellor, and Decius appeared to him the only person capable of restoring peace and discipline to an army whose tumultuous spirit did not immediately subside after the murder of Marinus. Decius, who long resisted his own nomination, seems to have insinuated the danger of presenting a leader of merit to the angry and apprehensive minds of the soldiers; and his prediction was again confirmed by the event. The legions of Mæsia forced their judge to become their accomplice. They left him only the alternative of death or the purple. His subsequent conduct, after that decisive measure, was unavoidable. He conducted or followed his army to the confines of Italy, whither Philip, collecting all his force to repel the formidable competitor whom he had raised up, advanced to meet him. The Imperial troops were superior in number; but the rebels formed an army of veterans, commanded by an able and experienced leader. Philip was either killed in the battle or put to death a few days afterwards at Verona. His son and associate in the empire was massacred at Rome by the Prætorian guards; and the victorious Decius, with more favourable circumstances than the ambition of that age can usually plead, was universally acknowledged by the senate and provinces. It is reported that, immediately after his reluctant acceptance of the title of Augustus, he had assured Philip by a private message of his innocence and loyalty, solemnly protesting that, on his arrival in Italy, he would resign the Imperial ornaments, and return to the condition of an obedient subject. His professions might be sincere; but in the situation where fortune had placed him, it was scarcely possible that he could either forgive or be forgiven.3 The emperor Decius had employed a few months in the works of peace and the administration of justice, when he was summoned to the banks of the Danube by the invasion of the GOTHS. This is the first considerable occasion in which history mentions that great people, who afterwards broke the Roman power, sacked the Capitol, and reigned in Gaul, Spain, and Italy. Marches against the Goths, A.D. 250. 2 His birth at Bubalia, a little village in Pannonia [near Sirmium-S.] (Eutrop. ix. [c. 4] Victor. in Casarib. [c. 29.] et Epitom. [c. 29]), seems to contradict, unless it was merely accidental, his supposed descent from the Decii. Six hundred years had bestowed nobility on the Decii: but at the commencement of that period they were only Plebeians of merit, and among the first who shared the consulship with the haughty Patricians. Plebeia Deciorum animæ, &c. Juvenal, Sat. viii. 254. See the spirited speech of Decius, in Livy, x. 7, 8. 3 Zosimus, 1. i. [c. 22] p. 20. Zonaras, 1. xii. [c. 19] p. 625, edit. Par. [p. 584, edit. Bonn]. |