166 you can contrive means to save our reputation. Let every one die who has dropped an expression, who has entertained a thought against me, against me, the son of Valerian, the father and brother of so many princes. Remember that Ingenuus was made emperor: tear, kill, hew in pieces. I write to you with my own hand, and would inspire you with my own feelings."17 Whilst the public forces of the State were dissipated in private quarrels, the defenceless provinces lay exposed to every invader. The bravest usurpers were compelled, by the perplexity of their situation, to conclude ignominious treaties with the common enemy, to purchase with oppressive tributes the neutrality or services of the barbarians, and to introduce hostile and independent nations into the heart of the Roman monarchy.' 168 Such were the barbarians, and such the tyrants, who, under the reigns of Valerian and Gallienus, dismembered the provinces, and reduced the empire to the lowest pitch of disgrace and ruin, from whence it seemed impossible that it should. ever emerge. As far as the barrenness of materials would permit, we have attempted to trace, with order and perspicuity, the general events of that calamitous period. There still remain some particular facts-I. The disorders of Sicily; II. The tumults of Alexandria; and, III. The rebellion of the Isaurians-which may serve to reflect a strong light on the horrid picture. Disorders I. Whenever numerous troops of banditti, multiplied by success and impunity, publicly defy, instead of of Sicily. eluding, the justice of their country, we may safely infer that the excessive weakness of the government is felt 166 Gallienus had given the titles of Cæsar and Augustus to his son Saloninus, slain at Cologne by the usurper Posthumus. A second son of Gallienus succeeded to the name and rank of his elder brother. Valerian, the brother of Gallienus, was also associated to the empire: several other brothers, sisters, nephews, and nieces of the emperor formed a very numerous royal family. See Tillemont, tom. iii., and M. de Brequigny in the Mémoires de l'Académie, tom. xxxii. p. 262. 167 Hist. August. p. 188. [Pollio, xxx. Tyran. de Ingenuo, 8.] 168 Regillianus had some bands of Roxolani in his service; Posthumus a body of Franks. It was, perhaps, in the character of auxiliaries that the latter introduced themselves into Spain. and abused by the lowest ranks of the community. The situation of Sicily preserved it from the barbarians; nor could the disarmed province have supported a usurper. The sufferings of that once flourishing and still fertile island were inflicted by baser hands. A licentious crowd of slaves and peasants reigned for awhile over the plundered country, and renewed the memory of the servile wars of more ancient times. Devastations, of which the husbandman was either the victim or the accomplice, must have ruined the agriculture of Sicily; and as the principal estates were the property of the opulent senators of Rome, who often enclosed within a farm the territory of an old republic, it is not improbable that this private injury might affect the capital more deeply than all the conquests of the Goths or the Persians. 169 Tumults of 171 170 II. The foundation of Alexandria was a noble design, at once conceived and executed by the son of Philip. The beautiful and regular form of that great city, secAlexandria. ond only to Rome itself, comprehended a circunference of fifteen miles; it was peopled by three hundred thousand free inhabitants, besides at least an equal number of slaves. The lucrative trade of Arabia and India flowed through the port of Alexandria to the capital and provinces of the empire. Idleness was unknown. Some were employed in blowing of glass, others in weaving of linen, others, again, manufacturing the papyrus. Either sex, and every age, was engaged in the pursuits of industry, nor did even the blind or the lame want occupations suited to their condition. But the people of Alexandria, a various mixture of nations, united the vanity and inconstancy of the Greeks with the superstition and obstinacy of the Egyptians. The most 172 169 The Augustan History, p. 177 [Pollio, Gallieni duo, c. 4], calls it servile bellum. See Diodor. Sicul. 1. xxxiv. [Fr. II.] 170 Plin. Hist. Natur. v. 10 [§ 11]. 171 Diodor. Sicul. 1. xvii. [c. 52] p. 590, edit. Wesseling. 172 See a very curious letter of Hadrian, in the Augustan History, p. 245. [Vo pisc. Saturn. c. 8.] a Berenice, or Myos-Hormos, on the Red Sea, received the Eastern commodities. From thence they were transported to the Nile, and down the Nile to Alexandria.-M. trifling occasion, a transient scarcity of flesh or lentils, the neglect of an accustomed salutation, a mistake of precedency in the public baths, or even a religious dispute," were at any time sufficient to kindle a sedition among that vast multitude, whose resentments were furious and implacable." After the captivity of Valerian and the insolence of his son had relaxed the authority of the laws, the Alexandrians abandoned themselves to the ungoverned rage of their passions, and their unhappy country was the theatre of a civil war, which continued (with a few short and suspicious truces) above twelve years. All intercourse was cut off between the several quarters of the afflicted city, every street was polluted with blood, every building of strength converted into a citadel; nor did the tumults subside till a considerable part of Alexandria was irretrievably ruined. The spacious and magnificent district of Bruchion, with its palaces and museum, the residence of the kings and philosophers of Egypt, is described, above a century afterwards, as already reduced to its present state of dreary solitude."7 Rebellion of 175 III. The obscure rebellion of Trebellianus, who assumed the purple in Isauria, a petty province of Asia Minor, was attended with strange and memorable consequences. the Isaurians. The pageant of royalty was soon destroyed by an officer of Gallienus; but his followers, despairing of mercy, resolved to shake off their allegiance, not only to the emperor but to the empire, and suddenly returned to the savage manners from which they had never perfectly been reclaimed. 173 Such as the sacrilegious murder of a divine cat. See Diodor. Sicul. 1. i. [c. 83.] 174 Hist. August. p. 195. [Pollio, xxx. Tyranni, de Emil. 21.] This long and terrible sedition was first occasioned by a dispute between a soldier and a townsman about a pair of shoes. 175 Dionysius apud Euseb. Hist. Eccles. vii. c. 21. 176 Scaliger. Animadver. ad Euseb. Chron. p. 258. Bonamy, in the Mém. de l'Académie, tom. ix. Ammian. xxii. 16. Three dissertations of M. The hostility between the Jewish and Grecian part of the population, afterwards between the two former and the Christian, were unfailing causes of tumult, sedition, and massacre. In no place were the religious disputes, after the estab lishment of Christianity, more frequent or more sanguinary. See Philo. de Legat. Hist. of Jews, ii. 171, iii. 111, 198. Gibbon, ch. xxi. ch. xlvii.-M. Their craggy rocks, a branch of the wide-extended Taurus, protected their inaccessible retreat. The tillage of some fertile valleys" supplied them with necessaries, and a habit of rapine with the luxuries of life. In the heart of the Roman monarchy, the Isaurians long continued a nation of wild barbarians. Succeeding princes, unable to reduce them to obedience either by arms or policy, were compelled to acknowledge their weakness by surrounding the hostile and independent spot with a strong chain of fortifications,' which often proved insufficient to restrain the incursions of these domestic foes. The Isaurians, gradually extending their territory to the sea-coast, subdued the western and mountainous part of Cilicia, formerly the nest of those daring pirates against whom the republic had once been obliged to exert its utmost force, under the conduct of the great Pompey." 180 178 Our habits of thinking so fondly connect the order of the universe with the fate of man, that this gloomy period of hisFamine and tory has been decorated with inundations, earthpestilence. quakes, uncommon meteors, preternatural darkness, and a crowd of prodigies fictitious or exaggerated. But a long and general famine was a calamity of a more serious kind. It was the inevitable consequence of rapine and oppression, which extirpated the produce of the present and the hope of future harvests. Famine is almost always followed by epidemical diseases, the effect of scanty and unwholesome food. Other causes must, however, have contributed to the furious plague which, from the year two hundred and fifty to the year two hundred and sixty-five, raged without interruption in every province, every city, and almost every family of the Roman empire. During some time five thousand persons died daily in Rome, and many towns that had escaped the hands of the barbarians were entirely depopulated.' 181 [Pollio, xxx. Tyranni, de Trebell. 25.] 177 Strabo, 1. xiii. p. 569. 178 Hist. August. p. 197. 179 See Cellarius, Geogr. 180 Hist. August. p. 177. 181 Hist. August. p. 177 [id. ib.]. [c. 21] p. 623 [p. 590, edit. Bonn]. in Epitom. Victor in Cæsar. [c. 33]. Zosimus, l. i. [c. 26] p. 24. Zonaras, l. xii. Diminution We have the knowledge of a very curious circumstance, of some use, perhaps, in the melancholy calculation of human calamities. An exact register was kept at Alexanof the hu- dria of all the citizens entitled to receive the disman species. tribution of corn. It was found that the ancient number of those comprised between the ages of forty and seventy had been equal to the whole sum of claimants, from fourteen to fourscore years of age, who remained alive after the reign of Gallienus. Applying this authentic fact to the most correct tables of mortality, it evidently proves that above half the people of Alexandria had perished; and could we venture to extend the analogy to the other provinces, we might suspect that war, pestilence, and famine had consumed, in a few years, the moiety of the human species.183 182 182 Euseb. Hist. Eccles. vii. 21. The fact is taken from the Letters of Dionysius, who in the time of those troubles was Bishop of Alexandria. 183 In a great number of parishes, 11,000 persons were found between fourteen and eighty; 5365 between forty and seventy. See Buffon, Histoire Naturelle, tom. ii. p. 590. |