As the years went on, the civilian citizens of Rome became weaker and more worthless. They were rich enough, but they had no spirit, no passion; they only considered their little pleasures and gratifications. The real Rome was in the great military camps on the Rhine and the Danube, and in the East.
A new phase began when, in 284, Diocletian, the general of the armies of the Danube, was chosen emperor by his soldiers. He came from poor people: perhaps his parents were slaves. But he was a great man. He found the empire too loose and rambling to be governed by one man, so he chose his own chief general Maximian, to share the honours of the empire with him. The fierce but brave Maximian was raised to the purple, and hailed as Caesar and Augustus along with Diocletian. He was the son of peasants, in Hungary. He was, however, a good leader, and he remained true to Diocletian.
But still the command was inefficient. The two emperors with their armies could not keep watch close enough over Europe and Asia. So they decided to make two new Caesars, and they chose the generals Constantius and Galerius. Constantius and Galerius were Caesars, but not emperors fully. They were not hailed Augustus. Diocletian and Maximian alone held this supreme title. But the four Caesars governed among them the four quarters of the empire.
The great Diocletian, the chief Augustus, kept for himself Asia Minor and Egypt, Greece, and the land we now call Turkey — the lovely, rich old dominions. Maximian Augustus had Italy and North Africa. Galerius was stationed to defend the Danube, and to govern the Balkan Peninsula; whilst Constantius Caesar had Gaul, Spain, Britain, defending the Rhine and the wall of Scotland.
So we see the choice of the greatest emperors leans to the old world — the rich, lovely East, the hot Africa, the proud old Greece and Italy. The subordinate Caesars are given the northern regions, the savage lands.
When Diocletian and Maximian abdicated in 305, Galerius and Constantius, the two Caesars, took the title of Augustus. Galerius became emperor in the East. He was a violent, ambitious, unfriendly man. Constantius, more gentle and more loved, kept command in the West, in Gaul and Britain.
Constantius had a son Constantine, the great Constantine, whom we like to claim as British-born. The mother of Constantine, Helena, is said to have been the daughter of a British chieftain, whom Constantius married when he was a young officer in Britain. So it is said that the famous Constantine was born in Britain. But it is more probable that Helena was the daughter of an innkeeper, and that her son was born somewhere near the Danube. However that may be, Helena was looked upon as a woman of humble origin. When Constantius was raised to the rank of Caesar, it was necessary for him to have a noble wife, and a Roman. So Helena was divorced. Constantine, her son, was at that time eighteen years old. He shared his mother’s disgrace and downfall, and instead of finding himself the honoured son of the Caesar, he was left in a poor rank in the army of Galerius, in the East.
He was, however, brave and clever and lovable. In appearance he was tall, dignified, handsome, and pleasant. The soldiers loved him, and he soon rose to be a leading officer.
Galerius, knowing his right of birth, was jealous of him from the first. Seeing how the soldiers loved the young officer, and respected him in spite of all, Galerius was afraid of him as a dangerous rival. So the Emperor kept the young man in his own grasp in the East, ready to destroy him if anything, happened.
Constantius, the Augustus in Gaul, was anxious for his son, kept so far off in the power of a rival. He sent message after message to Galerius, asking that Constantine might come to Gaul to visit his father. At last Galerius had to comply, for he was afraid of the armies.
Constantine was at this time in Nicomedia, just in Asia Minor, attending Galerius in the palace there. As soon as the young man received permission to go to Gaul, he made swift preparations. He left Nicomedia secretly the same night, and galloped along the road, from post-house to post-house, to the Bosphorus. There he was rowed over into Europe, and taking horse at the post again in Byzantium, he galloped northwards, travelling swiftly every day, taking a new horse at the post-house when the one he rode was tired, and thus journeying too quickly for any officer of Galerius to overtake him.
The emperor of the northern half of the empire was at Boulogne, ready to embark for an expedition against the Caledonians of Scotland. The troops of Gaul shouted with pleasure when Constantine galloped up and kissed his father.
Father and son passed into Britain, and the Caledonians were soon quieted. But it was the last expedition of Constantius. He died at York, begging his son to take care of the empire, and of the little children, his half- brothers and sisters.
The troops lamented their emperor, and felt the same dismay that troops always experience when they are left without a leader. The flower of the armies of Gaul had followed Constantius into Britain. They began to shout for Constantine.
But Constantine carefully kept himself out of sight of the troops, lest they should suddenly hail him Caesar Augustus, and should force him to take the purple. He must be careful, for if anything unusual happened, the Emperor Galerius would denounce him as a rebel and a usurper, and rouse all the armies against him.
The officers, however, were all friends to Constantine. They addressed the legions, asking them, would they tamely wait till some stranger was sent by Galerius from the east, to take command, or would they choose the honour of placing at their head the son of their late beloved emperor. The troops as one man chose Constantine. He, however, still delayed, till he had written a letter telling Galerius the whole state of affairs. And then, at York, Constantine was clothed with the purple robe of the Augustus, and with the purple buskins. This sacred purple of the Romans was what we should call deep, rich crimson, it was not violet. No man might wear it but Caesar.
Galerius was furious when he heard what had happened, for he wanted to be sole emperor. But he was afraid of the northern army. He sent his royal messenger to Constantine, with an imperial mandate, allowing the young man to take command of the troops of Gaul, but forbidding him to take the title of Caesar.
To this Constantine and his soldiers would not agree. War followed. Different Caesars were raised up by different armies, till at one time six emperors were reigning in the empire, of whom Constantine and Galerius were only two. However, Constantine marched with a small but experienced army over the Alps, and defeated a great host in North Italy. He had now the chance of marching on Rome. The Aemilian and Flaminian roads stretched before him, from Milan running south. But he had not yet defeated all his enemies.
At last, the armies in Italy were all broken. In 312 Constantine came to Rome, the great mother-city, and was hailed as emperor. To make friends for himself, he wisely pronounced an act of oblivion, stating that all the deeds of enmity committed by the Romans against him in the past should be considered as forgotten, buried in oblivion. This reassured many frightened people, who fully expected to lose their lives for having sided against the conqueror, and it brought many to his side. He then destroyed the Praetorian Camp, the stronghold of hostile and insolent Roman guards. He also issued an edict of religious toleration, in 313, which allowed all Romans to worship as they pleased. This was a great boon to the trembling Christians.
There were still hostile armies, however. It was necessary to march against the troops of Licinius, on the Danube, then down from the Danube to the Bosphorus. There Constantine besieged the gate-town of Byzantium, a strong fortification. Licinius fled into Asia. Constantine pursued him, defeated him, and at last executed him in Nicomedia.
Thus, in 325, Constantine became master of the world. In the same year he issued letters exhorting his subjects to accept Christianity. But he allowed freedom of worship to all.
Constantine felt himself to be not only the master of the empire, but the founder of a new era: which, indeed, he was. With Constantine the old pagan Rome comes to an end. A new world was to begin, and Constantine wished to give it its new centre. He disliked Rome, the old, terrible mistress of the past. She was too much stained with blood and violence. The Capitol, the very centre of the old world, was crowned with the temples of the old gods, and these old gods could not soon be forgotten. Their spirit filled the old city. Then, too, there had been so much strife, so much violence, so much cruelty and splendour in the Eternal City by the Tiber, the City on the Seven Hills.
The later emperors nearly all disliked Rome. They were strangers, born far off. They depended on far-off armies. They found the Romans conceited and impudent and troublesome. Diocletian would not live in the capital. He preferred even Milan. And he loved Nicomedia, just in Asia. He retired away into Dalmatia, near the further coasts of the Adriatic, to die.
Constantine determined to build a new capital, so that he need not trouble about Rome any more. He wanted a city of his own, where a new life should begin, more peaceful, more congenial, less masterful. So he cast round in his mind for a site. It delighted him to think of raising his own new bright city. He knew the empire from end to end. And he chose Byzantium, at the gate of Europe and Asia, on the Bosphorus.
Constantine said that when he was besieging Byzantium, in the war against Licinius, he had dreamed a curious dream. An old woman came to him and stood by his side. He turned and looked at her, wondering who she was, when suddenly, under his gaze, she was transformed into a young, lovely girl, and he found himself placing the tiara of royalty on her head.
This dream he took to be a sign that the old Greek fortress-town of Byzantium should become a lovely and imperial city at his hands. He told the dream to his attendants. And he went out on the hills to look.
He looked towards Asia, and saw himself almost surrounded by waters. In front of him, looking east, the land narrowed to a blunt point, past which ran the swift blue waters of the Bosphorus, pouring rapidly through winding straits from the Black Sea into the Sea of Marmora, towards the Mediterranean. On his right-hand side, southwards, lay the waters of the Sea of Marmora, then called the Propontis, washing the sunny foot of the land; and on his left-hand side, a mile or two away, like a wide river, curved the beautiful inlet from the Bosphorus, now called the Golden Horn, the harbour to the town, shining and clear, receiving a little river from the hills. In the harbour lay the winged ships, near the steep walls of the fortified Byzantium. And far off to the south he could see broad, dark, and white, and ruddy sails winging away to the Isles of Greece, across the space of the Pro- pontis, whilst down the blue, winding waters in front of him to the north, came ships from the Black Sea, with corn from the Danube.
Behind him lay Europe, unseen. At his feet lay the hills and orchards and field patches, surrounding the little fortress-town, that held the ships to its side. Everywhere temples and shrines rose from the trees by the sea. And across, shining gold in the afternoon light, were the slopes of Asia, the pillared temples among the trees, the white, glittering walls of the opposite port, the white roads winding away among the olive-trees and vineyards, and past the corn of the valleys, on towards Nicomedia, to Ephesus, to Antioch, to Jerusalem. That was the East, where Jesus was born, the East, that loves to be still and dreamy, dreaming of the past. There was a grey dimness of olive trees, and a glitter of white and pink villas, a golden soil, faint tufts of palm-trees, dark groves of orange and lemon and myrtle.
Here Constantine determined to build his city, the centre of the new world, looking to Asia. He was getting old. This was the year 326, and he was born in 272. He had spent his life in the camp, and in moving from province to province. Now he would make a new centre for a new world, and have peace.
Constantine appointed a day for tracing the boundaries of the city. On two sides were the arms of the sea, enclosing the wide, blunt angle of the land. Clothed in the purple, with a lance in his hand, and at the head of a glittering throng, Constantine set out to trace the third side, the base of this wide triangle. He moved slowly forward, drawing the line with his lance. Attendants followed, surveyors, taking accurate mark. Then came the great throng of courtiers and people and soldiers, for it was high holiday. On and on went Constantine, past fields and orchards and vineyards, olive woods, and groves of laurel and pine, over little brooks and up the hillside. The people followed slowly, amazed at the immense space Constantine was enclosing. They murmured among themselves, and at last one ventured to remark that already the Emperor had enclosed more space than was necessary for the most ample city. ‘ I shall go on,’ replied Constantine, ‘ till He, the invisible Guide, who marches before me, thinks proper to stop.’ Thus he continued towards the sea again, enclosing five hills within his line.
And now, immediately, the great work began. Millions of slaves were at work. In the little isle of Proconessus blocks of white marble stood by the shore, the boats deep in the water with their heavy white cargo steered away to the Golden Horn, to the quays of the town, whilst from the North came the timber boats of the Black Sea. There was a great smoke of kilns burning lime for the mortar, and a great sound of thousands of slaves digging, carrying, levelling. Surveyors and architects moved here and there, the builders worked quickly, served by slaves. And the Emperor, in person, wearing his imperial cloak of deep crimson, went to the harbour to see the ships unlade, thousands of men heaving and hauling, or to the hills to see the foundations dug, or to the level places to see the first streets laid out, or to the river to see the aqueduct begun, or to the outskirts to see the deep foss dug out for the city walls. Ship after ship came from Africa with corn, from the isles with grapes and cattle, from Asia with fruits and oil. There were great kitchens, great meals of thousands of busy, excited workmen and women.
The great walls, with their gates, began slowly to rise. On the second hill, where Constantine had pitched his tent outside Byzantium, in the siege, there the chief Forum or market-place was laid out, a vast oval. He longed to see the two great arches, at the opposite ends of the oval space, rise up and be finished in their magnificence, to see the lovely pillared porticoes complete round about the open, elliptical market-place. Then came slow wagons toiling with mysterious heavy objects carefully packed and wrapped in cloths. These were unpacked, and proved to be lovely statues, brought from old Greece or from Asia to set in the porticoes. But most wonderful of all, a sight that thrilled Constantine, was the scaffolding in the centre of this great, grand, elliptical space. There the poles and pulleys rose to a great height, there were masses of slaves and oxen and ropes. And at last, when all the scaffolding was taken away, there stood a huge and lofty naked column, of marble and porphyry, rising a hundred and twenty feet from the ground, and bearing aloft the colossal bronze statue of Apollo, magnificent work of the old, dead masters of Greece.
So the town grew — great circuses, churches, baths, and palaces, marble and sumptuous. Streets were made, with big buildings where the poor would live, each family in one or two rooms. There were open places with fountains, and beautiful gardens with palm-trees, and fine streets leading down to the sea. Unfortunately, such quick building was not very sound, and in a few years’ time several palaces began to fall. But still, it all seemed splendid.
Then, as things began to be ready, Constantine invited rich Roman senators and citizens from the cities of Europe and Asia and Africa, to come and take up their abode in the new palaces. They had to come, at the Emperor’s bidding. They arrived by sea and land, huge trains of slaves and servants, ox-wagons, mules and horses laden with goods. Soon the town was full. The narrow streets were thronged with crowds of people, carriages, horses, mules, litters — there was hardly room to pass. Constantine gave away great quantities of food — African corn and Syrian oil and wine. There was a great profusion and plenty. There were splendid processions, and displays in the circus and theatre. Thousands of people enjoyed the pleasure of a new home, in a new, sunny, lovely climate by the sea, the beginning of a new life.
This removal of the centre of the civilised world, from West to East, from Rome to Constantinople, took place about the year 334. It was the end of the old Rome, and the beginning of Europe. The Byzantine Empire belongs to the East rather than to Europe. Constantinople looks to Asia. Europe was left alone, confused, violent, turbulent, disordered, to face the darkness of her Middle Ages. The real light of culture and civilisation was withdrawn, lapsing back to the East. The West would have to struggle through a long obscure twilight, into her own day, the day of modern Europe.
Rome, the city, lost her power. Later she became the home of the popes, but her empire was really over. Till after the conquest of the Goths there continued a shaky Roman Empire of the West. But it was an empire which could only tumble into nothingness.
The Byzantine Empire continued in Constantinople, however, right into the fifteenth century. It is curious that, though it was a purely Christian state, yet Constantine had really established an oriental form of government. The Emperor was a Christian, yet he accounted himself divine, and supreme above all men. He was as absolute as any Persian tyrant, for he was beyond all laws and all criticism. The people, the state, were at his mercy. And so they continued for a thousand years. This was the way of life the Byzantines preferred. It was a curious form of oriental Christianity, all the pride and glory centring in one man, himself a servant of Jesus. This eastern form of Christianity spread to Russia, where the orthodox Church is the Greek Church. The Greek Church is the Church of Constantinople, for very soon Greek was the language of Constantinople, of emperors and people alike. And this Greek Church keeps much of the mystery of eastern religion, it seems to teach that strange, passionate humility which makes a people prostrate itself before an emperor as before a beautiful god, so that millions willingly leave their lives in the hands of one man. Contrasting with this, there is a savage ferocity which hates the thing or being it has so humbly adored.
So the empire of Constantinople, called the Byzantine Empire, continued for a thousand years after the death of Constantine the Great. Its people were alternately humble to baseness, and inhumanly ferocious, until they were finally destroyed by the Turks in 1453.