Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/360

 302 Outlmes of Europe ait History Eighty emperors in ninety years Collapse of ancient civilization Diocletian ; the Roman Empire becomes an oriental des- potism (284- 305 A.D.) how degenerate the army became (p. 288), and it was chiefly from such a class as these military frontiersmen that the Roman Empire received eighty rulers in ninety years after the death of the son of Marcus Aurelius. In order to gain additional op- portunity for taxation, one of them gave Roman citizenship to all free men dwelling in any community ruled by Rome (212 a.d.). All distinction between Roman and non-Roman passed away. Citizenship however meant nothing which could better the situa- tion, as the troops tossed the scepter of Rome from one ignorant soldier-emperor to another. While tumult and fighting between rival emperors hastened economic decay and national bankruptcy, the affairs of the nation passed from bad to worse. For fifty years there was no public order. Life and property were nowhere safe. Turbu- lence, robbery, and murder were everywhere. While no Roman subject attempted to overthrow the Empire, and all men revered it as eternal, nevertheless in this tempest of anarchy during the third century a.d. the civilization of the ancient world suf- fered final collapse. The supremacy of mind and of scientific knowledge won by the Greeks in the third century B.C. yielded to the reign of ignorance and superstition in these social disasters of the third century A.D. The world which issued from these disasters toward 300 a.d. under Diocletian, was a totally different one from that which Augustus and the Roman Senate had ruled three centuries be- fore. When Diocletian succeeded in restoring order, he deprived the shadowy Senate of all power, except for the municipal gov- ernment of the city of Rome. The Roman Emperor thus became for the whole Roman world, what he had always been in Eg>'pt, an absolute monarch with none to limit his power. The State had been completely militarized and orientalized. With the un- limited power of the oriental despot the Emperor now assumed also its outward symbols — the diadem, the gorgeous robe em- broidered with pearls and precious stones, the throne and foot- stool, at which all who came into his presence must bow down