east enjoyed a profound tranquillity during forty years; and the treaty between the rival monarchies was strictly observed till the death of Tiridates; when a new generation, animated with different views and different passions, succeeded to the government of the world; and the grandson of Narses undertook a long and memorable war against the princes of the house of Constantine.

The arduous work of rescuing the distressed empire from tyrants and barbarians had now been completely achieved by a succession of Illyrian peasants. As soon as Diocletian entered into the twentieth year of his reign, he celebrated that memorable era, as well as the success of his arms, by the pomp of a Roman triumph.* Maximian, the equal partner of his power, was his only companion in the glory of that day. The two Cæsars had fought and conquered; but the merit of their exploits was ascribed, according to the rigour of ancient maxims, to the auspicious influence of their fathers and emperors. The triumph of Diocletian and Maximian was less magnificent, perhaps, than those of Aurelian and Probus, but it was dignified by several circumstances of superior fame and good fortune. Africa and Britain, the Rhine, the Danube, and the Nile, furnished their respective trophies; but the most distinguished ornament was of a more singular nature, a Persian victory followed by an important conquest. The representations of rivers, mountains, and provinces, were carried before the imperial car. The images of the captive wives, the sisters, and the children, of the great king, afforded a new and grateful spectacle to the vanity of the people. In the eyes of posterity this triumph is remarkable, by a distinction of a less honourable kind. It was the last that Rome

ever beheld. Soon after this period, the emperors ceased to vanquish, and Rome ceased to be the capital of the empire.

The spot on which Rome was founded, had been consementions the Iberian article of the treaty. * Euseb. in Chron. Pagi ad annum. Till the discovery of the treatise de Mortibus Persecutorum, it was not certain that the triumph and the Vicennalia were celebrated at the same time. At the time of the Vicennalia, Galerius seems to have kept his station on the Danube. See Lactant. de M. P. c. 38. Clinton makes them two different ceremonies; the triumph in A.D. 302, and the Vicennalia on November 20, A.D. 303. Diocletian and Galerius passed the winter of 302 together at Nicomedia. Eutropius (9, 27) mentions them as a part of the

The

crated by ancient ceremonies and imaginary miracles. presence of some god, or the memory of some hero, seemed to animate every part of the city, and the empire of the world had been promised to the Capitol.*

The native Romans felt and confessed the power of this agreeable illusion. It was derived from their ancestors, had grown up with their earliest habits of life, and was protected, in some measure, by the opinion of political utility. The form and the seat of government were intimately blended together, nor was it esteemed possible to transport the one without destroying the other. But the sovereignty of the capital was gradually annihilated in the extent of conquest; the provinces rose to the same level, and the vanquished nations acquired the name and privileges, without imbibing the partial affections, of Romans. During a long period, however, the remains of the ancient constitution, and the influence of custom, preserved the dignity of Rome. The emperors, though perhaps of African or Illyrian extraction, respected their adopted country, as the seat of their power, and the centre of their extensive dominions. The emergencies of war very frequently required their presence on the frontiers; but Diocletian and Maximian were the first Roman princes who fixed, in time of peace, their ordinary residence in the provinces; and their conduct, however it might be suggested by private motives, was justified by very specious considerations of policy. The court of the emperor of the west was, for the most part, established at Milan, whose situation, at the foot of the Alps, appeared far more convenient than that of Rome, for the important purpose of watching the motions of the barbarians of Germany. Milan soon assumed the splendour of an imperial city. The houses are described as numerous and well-built; the manners of the people as polished and liberal. A circus, a theatre, a mint, a palace, baths, which bore the name of triumph. As the persons had been restored to Narses, nothing more than their images could be exhibited. * Livy gives us a speech of Camillus on that subject (5, 51-55), full of eloquence and sensibility, in opposition to a design of removing the seat of government from Rome to the neighbouring city of Veii. Julius Cæsar was reproached with the intention of removing the empire to Ilium or Alexandria. See Sueton. in Cæsar, c. 79. According to the ingenious conjecture of Le Fevre and Dacier, the third ode of the third book of Horace was intended to divert Augustus from the execution of a similar design.

452

RISE OF MILAN AND NICOMEDIA. [CH. XIII.

their founder Maximian; porticoes adorned with_statues, and a double circumference of walls, contributed to the beauty of the Lew capital; nor did it seem oppressed even by the proximity of Rome.* To rival the majesty of Rome was the ambition likewise of Diocletian, who employed his leisure, and the wealth of the east, in the embellishment of Nicomedia, a city placed on the verge of Europe and Asia, almost at an equal distance between the Danube and the Euphrates. By the taste of the monarch, and at the experse of the people, Nicomedia acquired, in the space of a few years, a degree of magnificence which might appear to have required the labour of ages; and became inferior only to Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch, in extent or populousness. The life of Diocletian and Maximian was a life of action, and a considerable portion of it was spent in camps, or in their long and frequent marches; but whenever the public business allowed them any relaxation, they seem to have retired with pleasure to their favourite residences of Nicomedia and Milan. Till Diocletian, in the twentieth year of his reign, celebrated his Roman triumph, it is extremely doubtful whether he ever visited the ancient capital of the empire. Even on that memorable occasion his stay did not exceed two months. Disgusted with the licentious familiarity of the people, he quitted Rome with precipitation, thirteen days before it was expected that he should have appeared in the senate, invested with the ensigns of the consular dignity.‡

See Aurelius Victor, who likewise mentions the buildings erected by Maximian at Carthage, probably during the Moorish war. We shall insert some verses of Ausonius de Clar. Urb. 5.

Et Mediolani mira omnia; copia rerum; Innumeræ cultæque domus; facunda virorum Ingenia, et mores læti, tum duplice muro Amplificata loci species; populique voluptas Circus; et inclusi moles cuneata Theatri. Templa, Palatinæque arces, opulensque Moneta, Et Regio Herculei celebri sub honore lavacri. Cunctaque, marmoreis ornata Perystyla signis; Moniaque in valli formam circumdata labro, Omnia quæ magnis operum velut æmula formis Excellunt: nec juncta premit vicinia Romæ. Lactant. de M. P. c. 17. Libanius, Orat. 8, p. 203.

+ Lactant

de M. P. c. 17. On a similar occasion Ammianus mentions the dicaci

tas plebis, as not very agreeable to an imperial ear. (See lib. 16, c. 10).

The dislike expressed by Diocletian towards Rome and Roman freedom, was not the effect of momentary caprice, but the result of the most artful policy. That crafty prince had framed a new system of imperial government, which was afterwards completed by the family of Constantine; and as the image of the old constitution was religiously preserved in the senate, he resolved to deprive that order of its small remains of power and consideration. We may recollect, about eight years before the elevation of Diocletian, the transient greatness, and the ambitious hopes, of the Roman senate. As long as that enthusiasm prevailed, many of the nobles imprudently displayed their zeal in the cause of freedom; and after the successors of Probus had withdrawn their countenance from the republican party, the senators were unable to disguise their impotent resentment. As the sovereign of Italy, Maximian was intrusted with the care of extinguishing this troublesome, rather than dangerous spirit, and the task was perfectly suited to his cruel temper. The most illustrious members of the senate, whom Diocletian always affected to esteem, were involved, by his colleague, in the accusation of imaginary plots; and the possession of an elegant villa, or a well-cultivated estate, was interpreted as a convincing evidence of guilt.* The camp of the prætorians, which had so long oppressed, began to protect the majesty of Rome; and as those haughty troops were conscious of the decline of their power, they were naturally disposed to unite their strength with the authority of the senate. By the prudent measures of Diocletian, the numbers of the prætorians were insensibly reduced, their privileges abolished,† and their place supplied by two faithful legions of Illyricum, who, under the new titles of Jovians and Herculians, were appointed to perform the service of the imperial guards. But the most fatal,

* Lactantius accuses Maximian of destroying fictis criminationibus lumina senatus. (De M. P. c. 8.) Aurelius Victor speaks very doubtfully of the faith of Diocletian towards his friends. + Truncatæ vires urbis, imminuto prætoriarum cohortium, atque in armis vulgi numero. Aurelius Victor. Lactantus attributes to Galerius the prosecution of the same plan (c. 26). They were old corps stationed at Illyricum; and according to the ancient establishment, they each consisted of six thousand men. They had acquired much repu tation by the use of the plumbata, or darts loaded with lead. Each

though secret, wound, which the senate received from the hands of Diocletian and Maximian, was inflicted by the inevitable operation of their absence. As long as the emperors resided at Rome, that assembly might be oppressed, but it could scarcely be neglected. The successors of Augustus exercised the power of dictating whatever laws their wisdom o caprice might suggest; but those laws were ratified by the sanction of the senate. The model of ancient freedom was preserved in its deliberations and decrees; and wise princes, who respected the prejudices of the Roman people, were, in some measure, obliged to assume the language and behaviour suitable to the general and first magistrate of the republic. In the armies and in the provinces, they displayed the dignity of monarchs; and when they fixed their residence at a distance from the capital, they for ever laid aside the dissimulation which Augustus had recommended to his successors. In the exercise of the legislative as well as the executive power, the sovereign advised with his ministers, instead of consulting the great council of the nation. The name of the senate was mentioned with honour till the last period of the empire; the vanity of its members was still flattered with honorary distinctions; but the assembly which had so long been the source, and so long the instrument of power, was respectfully suffered to sink into oblivion. The senate of Rome, losing all connexion with the imperial court, and the actual constitution, was left a venerable but useless monument of antiquity on the Capitoline hill.

When the Roman princes had lost sight of the senate. and of their ancient chapel, they easily forgot the origin and nature of their legal power. The civil offices of consul, of proconsul, of censor, and of tribune, by the union of which it had been formed, betrayed to the people its republican extraction. Those modest titles were laid aside; and if they still distinguished their high station by the appellation of Emperor, or Imperator, that word was understood in

soldier carried five of these, which he darted from a considerable distance with great strength and dexterity. See Vegetius, 1, 17. * See the Theodosian code, lib. 6, tit. 2, with Godefroy's commentary. See the twelfth dissertatlon in Spanheim's excellent work, de Usu Numismatum. From medals, inscriptions, and historians, he