William Shakespeare - "The History of Troilus and Cressida"

Voltaire - "Zadig"

J. M. Barrie - "THE ADMIRABLE CRICHTON"

Rex Beach - "The Net"

The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

E >> Edward Gibbon >> The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire




[Footnote 21: Caracalla consecrated, in the temple of Serapis,
the sword with which, as he boasted, he had slain his brother
Geta. Dion, l. lxxvii p. 1307.]

[Footnote 22: Herodian, l. iv. p. 147. In every Roman camp there
was a small chapel near the head-quarters, in which the statues
of the tutelar deities were preserved and adored; and we may
remark that the eagles, and other military ensigns, were in the
first rank of these deities; an excellent institution, which
confirmed discipline by the sanction of religion. See Lipsius de
Militia Romana, iv. 5, v. 2.]

[Footnote 23: Herodian, l. iv. p. 148. Dion, l. lxxvii. p.
1289.]
[Footnote *: The account of this transaction, in a new passage of
Dion, varies in some degree from this statement. It adds that
the next morning, in the senate, Antoninus requested their
indulgence, not because he had killed his brother, but because he
was hoarse, and could not address them. Mai. Fragm. p. 228. -
M.]

[Footnote 24: Geta was placed among the gods. Sit divus, dum non
sit vivus said his brother. Hist. August. p. 91. Some marks of
Geta's consecration are still found upon medals.]

[Footnote !: The favorable judgment which history has given of
Geta is not founded solely on a feeling of pity; it is supported
by the testimony of contemporary historians: he was too fond of
the pleasures of the table, and showed great mistrust of his
brother; but he was humane, well instructed; he often endeavored
to mitigate the rigorous decrees of Severus and Caracalla. Herod
iv. 3. Spartian in Geta. - W.]

The crime went not unpunished. Neither business, nor
pleasure, nor flattery, could defend Caracalla from the stings of
a guilty conscience; and he confessed, in the anguish of a
tortured mind, that his disordered fancy often beheld the angry
forms of his father and his brother rising into life, to threaten
and upbraid him. ^25 The consciousness of his crime should have
induced him to convince mankind, by the virtues of his reign,
that the bloody deed had been the involuntary effect of fatal
necessity. But the repentance of Caracalla only prompted him to
remove from the world whatever could remind him of his guilt, or
recall the memory of his murdered brother. On his return from
the senate to the palace, he found his mother in the company of
several noble matrons, weeping over the untimely fate of her
younger son. The jealous emperor threatened them with instant
death; the sentence was executed against Fadilla, the last
remaining daughter of the emperor Marcus; ^* and even the
afflicted Julia was obliged to silence her lamentations, to
suppress her sighs, and to receive the assassin with smiles of
joy and approbation. It was computed that, under the vague
appellation of the friends of Geta, above twenty thousand persons
of both sexes suffered death. His guards and freedmen, the
ministers of his serious business, and the companions of his
looser hours, those who by his interest had been promoted to any
commands in the army or provinces, with the long connected chain
of their dependants, were included in the proscription; which
endeavored to reach every one who had maintained the smallest
correspondence with Geta, who lamented his death, or who even
mentioned his name. ^26 Helvius Pertinax, son to the prince of
that name, lost his life by an unseasonable witticism. ^27 It was
a sufficient crime of Thrasea Priscus to be descended from a
family in which the love of liberty seemed an hereditary quality.
^28 The particular causes of calumny and suspicion were at length
exhausted; and when a senator was accused of being a secret enemy
to the government, the emperor was satisfied with the general
proof that he was a man of property and virtue. From this
well-grounded principle he frequently drew the most bloody
inferences. ^!
[Footnote 25: Dion, l. lxxvii. p. 1307]

[Footnote *: The most valuable paragraph of dion, which the
industry of M. Manas recovered, relates to this daughter of
Marcus, executed by Caracalla. Her name, as appears from Fronto,
as well as from Dion, was Cornificia. When commanded to choose
the kind of death she was to suffer, she burst into womanish
tears; but remembering her father Marcus, she thus spoke: - "O my
hapless soul, (... animula,) now imprisoned in the body, burst
forth! be free! show them, however reluctant to believe it, that
thou art the daughter of Marcus." She then laid aside all her
ornaments, and preparing herself for death, ordered her veins to
be opened. Mai. Fragm. Vatican ii p. 220. - M.]
[Footnote 26: Dion, l. lxxvii. p. 1290. Herodian, l. iv. p. 150.

Dion (p. 2298) says, that the comic poets no longer durst employ
the name of Geta in their plays, and that the estates of those
who mentioned it in their testaments were confiscated.]

[Footnote 27: Caracalla had assumed the names of several
conquered nations; Pertinax observed, that the name of Geticus
(he had obtained some advantage over the Goths, or Getae) would
be a proper addition to Parthieus, Alemannicus, &c. Hist.
August. p. 89.]

[Footnote 28: Dion, l. lxxvii. p. 1291. He was probably
descended from Helvidius Priscus, and Thrasea Paetus, those
patriots, whose firm, but useless and unseasonable, virtue has
been immortalized by Tacitus.
Note: M. Guizot is indignant at this "cold" observation of
Gibbon on the noble character of Thrasea; but he admits that his
virtue was useless to the public, and unseasonable amidst the
vices of his age. - M.]
[Footnote !: Caracalla reproached all those who demanded no
favors of him. "It is clear that if you make me no requests, you
do not trust me; if you do not trust me, you suspect me; if you
suspect me, you fear me; if you fear me, you hate me." And
forthwith he condemned them as conspirators, a good specimen of
the sorites in a tyrant's logic. See Fragm. Vatican p. - M.]

Chapter VI: Death Of Severus, Tyranny Of Caracalla, Usurpation Of
Marcinus.

Part II.

The execution of so many innocent citizens was bewailed by
the secret tears of their friends and families. The death of
Papinian, the Praetorian Praefect, was lamented as a public
calamity. ^!! During the last seven years of Severus, he had
exercised the most important offices of the state, and, by his
salutary influence, guided the emperor's steps in the paths of
justice and moderation. In full assurance of his virtue and
abilities, Severus, on his death-bed, had conjured him to watch
over the prosperity and union of the Imperial family. ^29 The
honest labors of Papinian served only to inflame the hatred which
Caracalla had already conceived against his father's minister.
After the murder of Geta, the Praefect was commanded to exert the
powers of his skill and eloquence in a studied apology for that
atrocious deed. The philosophic Seneca had condescended to
compose a similar epistle to the senate, in the name of the son
and assassin of Agrippina. ^30 "That it was easier to commit than
to justify a parricide," was the glorious reply of Papinian; ^31
who did not hesitate between the loss of life and that of honor.
Such intrepid virtue, which had escaped pure and unsullied from
the intrigues courts, the habits of business, and the arts of his
profession, reflects more lustre on the memory of Papinian, than
all his great employments, his numerous writings, and the
superior reputation as a lawyer, which he has preserved through
every age of the Roman jurisprudence. ^32

[Footnote !!: Papinian was no longer Praetorian Praefect.
Caracalla had deprived him of that office immediately after the
death of Severus. Such is the statement of Dion; and the
testimony of Spartian, who gives Papinian the Praetorian
praefecture till his death, is of little weight opposed to that
of a senator then living at Rome. - W.]

[Footnote 29: It is said that Papinian was himself a relation of
the empress Julia.]

[Footnote 30: Tacit. Annal. xiv. 2.]
[Footnote 31: Hist. August. p. 88.]

[Footnote 32: With regard to Papinian, see Heineccius's Historia
Juris Roma ni, l. 330, &c.]

It had hitherto been the peculiar felicity of the Romans,
and in the worst of times the consolation, that the virtue of the
emperors was active, and their vice indolent. Augustus, Trajan,
Hadrian, and Marcus visited their extensive dominions in person,
and their progress was marked by acts of wisdom and beneficence.
The tyranny of Tiberius, Nero, and Domitian, who resided almost
constantly at Rome, or in the adjacent was confined to the
senatorial and equestrian orders. ^33 But Caracalla was the
common enemy of mankind. He left capital (and he never returned
to it) about a year after the murder of Geta. The rest of his
reign was spent in the several provinces of the empire,
particularly those of the East, and province was by turns the
scene of his rapine and cruelty. The senators, compelled by fear
to attend his capricious motions,were obliged to provide daily
entertainments at an immense expense, which he abandoned with
contempt to his guards; and to erect, in every city, magnificent
palaces and theatres, which he either disdained to visit, or
ordered immediately thrown down. The most wealthy families
ruined by partial fines and confiscations, and the great body of
his subjects oppressed by ingenious and aggravated taxes. ^34 In
the midst of peace, and upon the slightest provocation, he issued
his commands, at Alexandria, in Egypt for a general massacre.
From a secure post in the temple of Serapis, he viewed and
directed the slaughter of many thousand citizens, as well as
strangers, without distinguishing the number or the crime of the
sufferers; since as he coolly informed the senate, all the
Alexandrians, those who perished, and those who had escaped, were
alike guilty. ^35

[Footnote 33: Tiberius and Domitian never moved from the
neighborhood of Rome. Nero made a short journey into Greece.
"Et laudatorum Principum usus ex aequo, quamvis procul agentibus.

Saevi proximis ingruunt." Tacit. Hist. iv. 74.]

[Footnote 34: Dion, l. lxxvii. p. 1294.]

[Footnote 35: Dion, l. lxxvii. p. 1307. Herodian, l. iv. p. 158.

The former represents it as a cruel massacre, the latter as a
perfidious one too. It seems probable that the Alexandrians has
irritated the tyrant by their railleries, and perhaps by their
tumults.

Note: After these massacres, Caracalla also deprived the
Alexandrians of their spectacles and public feasts; he divided
the city into two parts by a wall with towers at intervals, to
prevent the peaceful communications of the citizens. Thus was
treated the unhappy Alexandria, says Dion, by the savage beast of
Ausonia. This, in fact, was the epithet which the oracle had
applied to him; it is said, indeed, that he was much pleased with
the name and often boasted of it. Dion, lxxvii. p. 1307. - G.]

The wise instructions of Severus never made any lasting
impression on the mind of his son, who, although not destitute of
imagination and eloquence, was equally devoid of judgment and
humanity. ^36 One dangerous maxim, worthy of a tyrant, was
remembered and abused by Caracalla. "To secure the affections of
the army, and to esteem the rest of his subjects as of little
moment." ^37 But the liberality of the father had been restrained
by prudence, and his indulgence to the troops was tempered by
firmness and authority. The careless profusion of the son was
the policy of one reign, and the inevitable ruin both of the army
and of the empire. The vigor of the soldiers, instead of being
confirmed by the severe discipline of camps, melted away in the
luxury of cities. The excessive increase of their pay and
donatives ^38 exhausted the state to enrich the military order,
whose modesty in peace, and service in war, is best secured by an
honorable poverty. The demeanor of Caracalla was haughty and
full of pride; but with the troops he forgot even the proper
dignity of his rank, encouraged their insolent familiarity, and,
neglecting the essential duties of a general, affected to imitate
the dress and manners of a common soldier.

[Footnote 36: Dion, l. lxxvii. p. 1296.]

[Footnote 37: Dion, l. lxxvi. p. 1284. Mr. Wotton (Hist. of
Rome, p. 330) suspects that this maxim was invented by Caracalla
himself, and attributed to his father.]

[Footnote 38: Dion (l. lxxviii. p. 1343) informs us that the
extraordinary gifts of Caracalla to the army amounted annually to
seventy millions of drachmae (about two millions three hundred
and fifty thousand pounds.) There is another passage in Dion,
concerning the military pay, infinitely curious, were it not
obscure, imperfect, and probably corrupt. The best sense seems
to be, that the Praetorian guards received twelve hundred and
fifty drachmae, (forty pounds a year,) (Dion, l. lxxvii. p.
1307.) Under the reign of Augustus, they were paid at the rate of
two drachmae, or denarii, per day, 720 a year, (Tacit. Annal. i.
17.) Domitian, who increased the soldiers' pay one fourth, must
have raised the Praetorians to 960 drachmae, (Gronoviue de
Pecunia Veteri, l. iii. c. 2.) These successive augmentations
ruined the empire; for, with the soldiers' pay, their numbers too
were increased. We have seen the Praetorians alone increased
from 10,000 to 50,000 men.
Note: Valois and Reimar have explained in a very simple and
probable manner this passage of Dion, which Gibbon seems to me
not to have understood. He ordered that the soldiers should
receive, as the reward of their services the Praetorians 1250
drachms, the other 5000 drachms. Valois thinks that the numbers
have been transposed, and that Caracalla added 5000 drachms to
the donations made to the Praetorians, 1250 to those of the
legionaries. The Praetorians, in fact, always received more than
the others. The error of Gibbon arose from his considering that
this referred to the annual pay of the soldiers, while it relates
to the sum they received as a reward for their services on their
discharge: donatives means recompense for service. Augustus had
settled that the Praetorians, after sixteen campaigns, should
receive 5000 drachms: the legionaries received only 3000 after
twenty years. Caracalla added 5000 drachms to the donative of
the Praetorians, 1250 to that of the legionaries. Gibbon appears
to have been mistaken both in confounding this donative on
discharge with the annual pay, and in not paying attention to the
remark of Valois on the transposition of the numbers in the text.
- G]
It was impossible that such a character, and such conduct as
that of Caracalla, could inspire either love or esteem; but as
long as his vices were beneficial to the armies, he was secure
from the danger of rebellion. A secret conspiracy, provoked by
his own jealousy, was fatal to the tyrant. The Praetorian
praefecture was divided between two ministers. The military
department was intrusted to Adventus, an experienced rather than
able soldier; and the civil affairs were transacted by Opilius
Macrinus, who, by his dexterity in business, had raised himself,
with a fair character, to that high office. But his favor varied
with the caprice of the emperor, and his life might depend on the
slightest suspicion, or the most casual circumstance. Malice or
fanaticism had suggested to an African, deeply skilled in the
knowledge of futurity, a very dangerous prediction, that Macrinus
and his son were destined to reign over the empire. The report
was soon diffused through the province; and when the man was sent
in chains to Rome, he still asserted, in the presence of the
praefect of the city, the faith of his prophecy. That
magistrate, who had received the most pressing instructions to
inform himself of the successors of Caracalla, immediately
communicated the examination of the African to the Imperial
court, which at that time resided in Syria. But, notwithstanding
the diligence of the public messengers, a friend of Macrinus
found means to apprise him of the approaching danger. The
emperor received the letters from Rome; and as he was then
engaged in the conduct of a chariot race, he delivered them
unopened to the Praetorian Praefect, directing him to despatch
the ordinary affairs, and to report the more important business
that might be contained in them. Macrinus read his fate, and
resolved to prevent it. He inflamed the discontents of some
inferior officers, and employed the hand of Martialis, a
desperate soldier, who had been refused the rank of centurion.
The devotion of Caracalla prompted him to make a pilgrimage from
Edessa to the celebrated temple of the Moon at Carrhae. ^* He was
attended by a body of cavalry: but having stopped on the road for
some necessary occasion, his guards preserved a respectful
distance, and Martialis, approaching his person under a presence
of duty, stabbed him with a dagger. The bold assassin was
instantly killed by a Scythian archer of the Imperial guard.
Such was the end of a monster whose life disgraced human nature,
and whose reign accused the patience of the Romans. ^39 The
grateful soldiers forgot his vices, remembered only his partial
liberality, and obliged the senate to prostitute their own
dignity and that of religion, by granting him a place among the
gods. Whilst he was upon earth, Alexander the Great was the only
hero whom this god deemed worthy his admiration. He assumed the
name and ensigns of Alexander, formed a Macedonian phalanx of
guards, persecuted the disciples of Aristotle, and displayed,
with a puerile enthusiasm, the only sentiment by which he
discovered any regard for virtue or glory. We can easily
conceive, that after the battle of Narva, and the conquest of
Poland, Charles XII. (though he still wanted the more elegant
accomplishments of the son of Philip) might boast of having
rivalled his valor and magnanimity; but in no one action of his
life did Caracalla express the faintest resemblance of the
Macedonian hero, except in the murder of a great number of his
own and of his father's friends. ^40

[Footnote *: Carrhae, now Harran, between Edessan and Nisibis,
famous for the defeat of Crassus - the Haran from whence Abraham
set out for the land of Canaan. This city has always been
remarkable for its attachment to Sabaism - G]

[Footnote 39: Dion, l. lxxviii. p. 1312. Herodian, l. iv. p.
168.]
[Footnote 40: The fondness of Caracalla for the name and ensigns
of Alexander is still preserved on the medals of that emperor.
See Spanheim, de Usu Numismatum, Dissertat. xii. Herodian (l.
iv. p. 154) had seen very ridiculous pictures, in which a figure
was drawn with one side of the face like Alexander, and the other
like Caracalla.]

After the extinction of the house of Severus, the Roman
world remained three days without a master. The choice of the
army (for the authority of a distant and feeble senate was little
regarded) hung in anxious suspense, as no candidate presented
himself whose distinguished birth and merit could engage their
attachment and unite their suffrages. The decisive weight of the
Praetorian guards elevated the hopes of their praefects, and
these powerful ministers began to assert their legal claim to
fill the vacancy of the Imperial throne. Adventus, however, the
senior praefect, conscious of his age and infirmities, of his
small reputation, and his smaller abilities, resigned the
dangerous honor to the crafty ambition of his colleague Macrinus,
whose well-dissembled grief removed all suspicion of his being
accessary to his master's death. ^41 The troops neither loved nor
esteemed his character. They cast their eyes around in search of
a competitor, and at last yielded with reluctance to his promises
of unbounded liberality and indulgence. A short time after his
accession, he conferred on his son Diadumenianus, at the age of
only ten years, the Imperial title, and the popular name of
Antoninus. The beautiful figure of the youth, assisted by an
additional donative, for which the ceremony furnished a pretext,
might attract, it was hoped, the favor of the army, and secure
the doubtful throne of Macrinus.

[Footnote 41: Herodian, l. iv. p. 169. Hist. August. p. 94.]
The authority of the new sovereign had been ratified by the
cheerful submission of the senate and provinces. They exulted in
their unexpected deliverance from a hated tyrant, and it seemed
of little consequence to examine into the virtues of the
successor of Caracalla. But as soon as the first transports of
joy and surprise had subsided, they began to scrutinize the
merits of Macrinus with a critical severity, and to arraign the
nasty choice of the army. It had hitherto been considered as a
fundamental maxim of the constitution, that the emperor must be
always chosen in the senate, and the sovereign power, no longer
exercised by the whole body, was always delegated to one of its
members. But Macrinus was not a senator. ^42 The sudden
elevation of the Praetorian praefects betrayed the meanness of
their origin; and the equestrian order was still in possession of
that great office, which commanded with arbitrary sway the lives
and fortunes of the senate. A murmur of indignation was heard,
that a man, whose obscure ^43 extraction had never been
illustrated by any signal service, should dare to invest himself
with the purple, instead of bestowing it on some distinguished
senator, equal in birth and dignity to the splendor of the
Imperial station. As soon as the character of Macrinus was
surveyed by the sharp eye of discontent, some vices, and many
defects, were easily discovered. The choice of his ministers was
in many instances justly censured, and the dissastified
dissatisfied people, with their usual candor, accused at once his
indolent tameness and his excessive severity. ^44

[Footnote 42: Dion, l. lxxxviii. p. 1350. Elagabalus reproached
his predecessor with daring to seat himself on the throne;
though, as Praetorian praefect, he could not have been admitted
into the senate after the voice of the crier had cleared the
house. The personal favor of Plautianus and Sejanus had broke
through the established rule. They rose, indeed, from the
equestrian order; but they preserved the praefecture, with the
rank of senator and even with the annulship.]

[Footnote 43: He was a native of Caesarea, in Numidia, and began
his fortune by serving in the household of Plautian, from whose
ruin he narrowly escaped. His enemies asserted that he was born a
slave, and had exercised, among other infamous professions, that
of Gladiator. The fashion of aspersing the birth and condition
of an adversary seems to have lasted from the time of the Greek
orators to the learned grammarians of the last age.]

[Footnote 44: Both Dion and Herodian speak of the virtues and
vices of Macrinus with candor and impartiality; but the author of
his life, in the Augustan History, seems to have implicitly
copied some of the venal writers, employed by Elagabalus, to
blacken the memory of his predecessor.]
His rash ambition had climbed a height where it was
difficult to stand with firmness, and impossible to fall without
instant destruction. Trained in the arts of courts and the forms
of civil business, he trembled in the presence of the fierce and
undisciplined multitude, over whom he had assumed the command;
his military talents were despised, and his personal courage
suspected; a whisper that circulated in the camp, disclosed the
fatal secret of the conspiracy against the late emperor,
aggravated the guilt of murder by the baseness of hypocrisy, and
heightened contempt by detestation. To alienate the soldiers,
and to provoke inevitable ruin, the character of a reformer was
only wanting; and such was the peculiar hardship of his fate,
that Macrinus was compelled to exercise that invidious office.
The prodigality of Caracalla had left behind it a long train of
ruin and disorder; and if that worthless tyrant had been capable
of reflecting on the sure consequences of his own conduct, he
would perhaps have enjoyed the dark prospect of the distress and
calamities which he bequeathed to his successors.

In the management of this necessary reformation, Macrinus
proceeded with a cautious prudence, which would have restored
health and vigor to the Roman army in an easy and almost
imperceptible manner. To the soldiers already engaged in the
service, he was constrained to leave the dangerous privileges and
extravagant pay given by Caracalla; but the new recruits were
received on the more moderate though liberal establishment of
Severus, and gradually formed to modesty and obedience. ^45 One
fatal error destroyed the salutary effects of this judicious
plan. The numerous army, assembled in the East by the late
emperor, instead of being immediately dispersed by Macrinus
through the several provinces, was suffered to remain united in
Syria, during the winter that followed his elevation. In the
luxurious idleness of their quarters, the troops viewed their
strength and numbers, communicated their complaints, and revolved
in their minds the advantages of another revolution. The
veterans, instead of being flattered by the advantageous
distinction, were alarmed by the first steps of the emperor,
which they considered as the presage of his future intentions.
The recruits, with sullen reluctance, entered on a service, whose
labors were increased while its rewards were diminished by a
covetous and unwarlike sovereign. The murmurs of the army
swelled with impunity into seditious clamors; and the partial
mutinies betrayed a spirit of discontent and disaffection that
waited only for the slightest occasion to break out on every side
into a general rebellion. To minds thus disposed, the occasion
soon presented itself.

Copyright (c) 2007. topbookz.net. All rights reserved.