Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/800

Rh 770 ROME [HISTORY. The Easteni frontier. Condi- tion of the pro- vinces. Spre.-td of the muni- cipal system ; of the Roman fran- chise ; of Ro- man law civiliza- tion. Symp- toms of lecline. The empire from 180-284 which were gathering unnoticed in the distant regions beyond the limits of the " Roman peace." In the East Rome and Parthia still faced each other upon the banks of the Euphrates, and contended, now by arms now by diplomacy, for supremacy in the debateable land of Armenia. Trajan's momentary acquisitions were aband- oned by Hadrian, and on this side of the empire the first changes of importance on the frontier belong to the reign of Septimius Severus. 1 Within the frontiers the levelling and unifying process commenced by Augustus had steadily proceeded. A tolerably uniform provincial system covered the whole area of the empire. The client states had one by one been reconstituted as provinces, and even the government of Italy had been in many respects assimilated to the provincial type. The municipal system had spread widely ; the period from Vespasian to Aurelius witnessed the elevation to municipal rank of an immense number of communities, not only in the old provinces of the West, in Africa, Spain, and Gaul, but in the newer provinces of the North, and along the line of the northern frontier ; and everywhere under the influence of the central imperial authority there was an increasing uniformity in the form of the local constitutions, framed and granted as they all were by imperial edict. 2 Throughout the empire again the extension of the Roman franchise was preparing the way for the final act by which Caracalla assimilated the legal status of all free-born inhabitants of the empire, 3 and in the west and north this was preceded and accompanied by the complete Romanizing of the people in language and civilization. Moreover, the empire, that was thus becom- ing one in its administrative system, its laws, and its civilization, had as yet continued to enjoy peace and order. The burdens of military service fell on the frontier pro- vinces, and only the echoes of the border wars reached the Mediterranean territories. Yet, in spite of the internal tranquillity and the good government which have made the age of the Antonines famous, we can detect signs of weak- ness. Though the evils of excessive centralization were hardly felt while the central authority was wielded by vigorous rulers, yet even under Trajan, Hadrian, and the Antonines we notice a ailure of strength in the empire as a whole, and a corresponding increase of pres- sure on the imperial government itself. The reforms of Augustus had given free. play to powers still fresh and vigorous. The ceaseless labours of Hadrian were directed mainly to the careful husbanding of such strength as still remained, or to attempts at reviving it by the sheer force of imperial authority. Among the symptoms of incipient decline which not the most heroic efforts of the government could entirely remove were the growing depopulation especially of the central districts of the empire, the con- stant financial difficulties, the deterioration in character of the local governments in the provincial communities, 4 and the increasing reluctance exhibited by all classes to under- take the now onerous burden of municipal office. Lastly, the irruption of the Marcomanni, and the revolt of Avidius Cassius (174-175) in the Eastern provinces, anticipated the two most serious of the dangers which ultimately proved fatal to the empire. Marcus Aurelius died in 180, and his death was followed by a century of war and disorder, during which nothing but the stern rule of soldier emperors, such as Septimius Severus, Decius, Claudius, Aurelian, and Probus saved the empire from dissolution. The want of any legal security 1 Mommsen, v. 409. tanae"; C. I. L., ii. 1963, 4; Bruns, Fontes Juris Romani, 130 (Berlin, 1879). 3 Dio, Ixxvii. 9 (211-217 A.D.). 4 Pliny, Epp. ad Trajanum. For the "curatores" and "correc- tores " appointed in the 2d century, see Marquardt, i. 487 and notes. for the orderly transmission of the imperial power had been partially supplied during the 2d century by the practice of adoption. But throughout the 3d century the Roman Intern world witnessed a series of desperate conflicts between 'lessen rival generals put forward by their respective legions as M0ns> claimants for the imperial purple. Between the death of Severus in 211 and the accession of Diocletian in 284, no fewer than twenty-three emperors sat in the seat of Augustus, and of these all but three died violent deaths at the hands of a mutinous soldiery or by the orders of a successful rival. Of the remaining three, Decius fell in battle against the Goths, Valerian died a prisoner in the far East, and Claudius was among the victims of the chronic pestilence which added to the miseries of the time. The "tyrants," as the unsuccessful pretenders to the imperial The purple were styled, reappear with almost unfailing regu- larity in each reign. The claims of Septimius Severus himself, the first and ablest of the soldier emperors, were disputed by Clodius Albinus in the West, and by Pescen- nius Niger in the East, and at the bloody battle of Lug- dunum and the sack of Byzantium rival Roman forces, for the first time since the accession of Vespasian, exhausted each other in civil war. 5 In 237-238 six emperors perished in the course of a few months. It was, however, during the reign of Gallienus (260-2 C'-J) that the evil reached its Reigi height. The central authority was paralysed ; the bar- **^ barians were pouring in from the North; the Parthian s " were threatening to overrun the Eastern provinces; and the legions on the frontiers were left to repel the enemies of Rome as best they could. A hundred ties bound them closely to the districts in which they were stationed; their permanent camps had grown into towns, they had families and farms; the unarmed provincials looked to them as their natural protectors, and were attached to them by bonds of intermarriage and by long intercourse. Now that they found themselves left to repel by their own efforts the invaders from without, they reasonably enough claimed the right to ignore the central authority which was powerless to aid them, and to choose for themselves " imperatores " whom they knew and trusted. The first T y ra of these provincial empires was that established by in " Postumus in Gaul (259-272), and long maintained by his successors Victorinus and Tetricus. 6 Their authority was acknowledged, not only in Gaul and by the troops on the Rhine, but by the legions of Britain and Spain ; and under Postumus at any rate (259-269) the existence of the Gallic empire was justified by the repulse of the barbarians and by the restoration of peace and security to the provinces of Gaul. On the Danube, in Greece, and in Asia Minor none of the " pretenders " enjoyed more than a passing success. It was otherwise in the far East, where the Syrian Odsenathus, prince of Palmyra, 7 though Oda officially only the governor of the East (dux Orientis) * lm ^ under Gallienus, drove the Persians out of Asia Minor at p and Syria, recovered Mesopotamia, and ruled Syria,, u yr i Arabia, Armenia, Cappadocia, and Cilicia with all the independence of a sovereign. Odaenathus was murdered in 266. His young son Vaballathus succeeded him in his titles, but the real power was vested in his widow Zenobia, under whom not only the greater part of Asia Minor but even the province of Egypt was forcibly added to the dominions governed in the name of Gallienus by the Palmyrene prince. Gallienus was murdered at Milan in 268, and the R* 8 remaining sixteen years of this period were marked by the restoration of unity to the distracted empire. Palmyra Au , was destroyed and Zenobia led a prisoner to Rome by 273 8 Gibbon, i. chap. v. ; Schiller, Gesch. d. Kaiserze.it, i. (2) (560. 6 Gibbon, i. chap. x. ; Mommsen, v. 149 ; Schiller, i. (2) 827. 7 Gibbon, i. chap, x.; Mommsen, v. 433 ; cf. PALMYRA.
 * Marquardt, i. 464 sq. ; cf. esp., the "leges Salpensanae et Malaci-