Defeat and death of Carinus. Before we enter upon the memorable reign of that prince, it will be proper to punish and dismiss the unworthy brother of Numerian. Carinus possessed arms and treasures. sufficient to support his legal title to the empire. But his personal vices overbalanced every advantage of birth and situation. The most faithful servants of the father despised the incapacity and dreaded the cruel arrogance of the son. The hearts of the people were engaged in favor of his rival, and even the senate was inclined to prefer a usurper to a tyrant. The arts of Diocletian inflamed the general discontent; and the winter was employed in secret intrigues and open preparations for a civil war. In the spring the forces of the East and of the West encountered each other in the plains of Margus, a small city of Mæsia, in the neighborhood of the Danube.108 The troops, so lately returned from the Persian war, had acquired their glory at the expense of health and numbers, nor were they in a condition. to contend with the unexhausted strength of the legions of Europe. Their ranks were broken, and, for a moment, Diocletian despaired of the purple and of life. But the advantage which Carinus had obtained by the valor of his soldiers he quickly lost by the infidelity of his officers. A tribune, whose wife he had seduced, seized the opportunity of revenge, and by a single blow extinguished civil discord in the blood of the adulterer.109 A.D. 285. May, cletian killed Aper (a wild-boar) was founded on a prophecy and a pun, as foolish as they are well known. [Vopisc. 1. c.] 108 Eutropius [lib. ix. c. 13] marks its situation very accurately; it was between the Mons Aurens and Viminiacun. M. d'Anville (Géographie Ancienne, tom. i. p. 304) places Margus at Kastolatz, in Servia, a little below Belgrade and Semendria.b 109 Hist. August. p. 254. [Vopisc. Carin. c. 17.] Eutropius, ix. 20 [13]. Aurelius Victor. Victor in Epitome. a This date is only conjectural; for though Carinus must have been slain in this year, there is no evidence to determine the month.-S. Placed by others at Semendria or Passarowitz. der alten Geographie, vol. iii. p. 1092.-S. See Forbiger, Handbuch CHAPTER XIII. The Reign of Diocletian and his Three Associates, Maximian, Galerius, and Constantius.-General Re-establishment of Order and Tranquillity.-The Persian War, Victory, and Triumph.-The new Form of Administration.-Abdication and Retirement of Diocletian and Maximian. Elevation and character of Diocletian. A.D. 285. As the reign of Diocletian was more illustrious than that of any of his predecessors, so was his birth more abject and obscure. The strong claims of merit and of violence had frequently superseded the ideal prerogatives of nobility; but a distinct line of separation was hitherto preserved between the free and the servile part of mankind. The parents of Diocletian had been slaves in the house of Anulinus, a Roman senator; nor was he himself distinguished by any other name than that which he derived from a small town in Dalmatia, from whence his mother deduced her origin. It is, however, probable that his father obtained the freedom of the family, and that he soon acquired an office of scribe, which was commonly exercised by persons of his condition. Favorable oracles, or rather the consciousness of superior merit, prompted his aspiring son to pursue the profession of arms and the hopes of fortune; and it would be extremely curious to observe the gradation of arts and accidents which enabled him in the end to fulfil those oracles, and to display that merit to the world. Diocletian was successively promoted to the government of Mæsia, the honors 1 Eutrop. ix. 19 [13]. Victor in Epitome [c. 39]. The town seems to have been properly called Doclia, from a small tribe of Illyrians (see Cellarius, Geograph. Antiqua, tom. i. p. 393); and the original name of the fortunate slave was probably Docles; he first lengthened it to the Grecian harmony of Diocles, and at length to the Roman majesty of Diocletianus. He likewise assumed the Patrician name of Valerius, and it is usually given him by Aurelius Victor. 2 See Dacier on the sixth satire of the second book of Horace. Cornel. Nepos, in Vit. Eumen. c. 1. of the consulship, and the important command of the guards of the palace. He distinguished his abilities in the Persian war; and after the death of Numerian, the slave, by the confession and judgment of his rivals, was declared the most worthy of the imperial throne. The malice of religious zeal, whilst it arraigns the savage fierceness of his colleague Maximian, has affected to cast suspicions on the personal courage of the Emperor Diocletian. It would not be easy to persuade us of the cowardice of a soldier of fortune who acquired and preserved the esteem of the legions, as well as the favor of so many warlike princes. Yet even calumny is sagacious enough to discover and to attack the most vulnerable part. The valor of Diocletian was never found inadequate to his duty or to the occasion; but he appears not to have possessed the daring and generous spirit of a hero, who courts danger and fame, disdains artifice, and boldly challenges the allegiance of his equals. His abilities were useful rather than splendid—a vigorous mind, improved by the experience and study of mankind; dexterity and application in business; a judicious mixture of liberality and economy, of mildness and rigor; profound dissimulation under the disguise of military frankness; steadiness to pursue his ends; flexibility to vary his means; and, above all, the great art of submitting his own passions, as well as those of others, to the interest of his ambition, and of coloring his ambition with the most specious pretences of justice and public utility. Like Augustus, Diocletian may be considered as the founder of a new empire. Like the adopted son of Cæsar, he was distinguished as a statesman rather than as a warrior; nor did either of those princes employ force whenever their purpose could be effected by policy. The victory of Diocletian was remarkable for its singular mildness. A people accustomed to applaud the clemency of His clemency the conqueror, if the usual punishments of death, and victory. exile, and confiscation were inflicted with any degree of temper and equity, beheld, with the most pleasing as 3 Lactantius (or whoever was the author of the little treatise De Mortibus Persecutorum) accuses Diocletian of timidity in two places, c. 7, 8. In chap. 9 he says of him," Erat in omni tumultu meticulosus et animi disjectus." tonishment, a civil war, the flames of which were extinguished in the field of battle. Diocletian received into his confidence Aristobulus, the principal minister of the House of Carus, respected the lives, the fortunes, and the dignity of his adversaries, and even continued in their respective stations the greater number of the servants of Carinus. It is not improbable that motives of prudence might assist the humanity of the artful Dalmatian: of these servants, many had purchased his favor by secret treachery; in others, he esteemed their grateful fidelity to an unfortunate master. The discerning judgment of Aurelian, of Probus, and of Carus had filled the several departments of the State and army with officers of approved merit, whose removal would have injured the public service, without promoting the interest of the suc cessor. Such a conduct, however, displayed to the Roman world the fairest prospect of the new reign, and the emperor affected to confirm this favorable prepossession by declaring that, among all the virtues of his predecessors, he was the most ambitious of imitating the humane philosophy of Marcus Antoninus." Association The first considerable action of his reign seemed to evince his sincerity as well as his moderation. After the example of Marcus, he gave himself a colleague in the perand character son of Maximian, on whom he bestowed at first the title of Cæsar, and afterwards that of Augustus." But the motives of his conduct, as well as the object of his choice, were of a very different nature from those of Maximian. A.D. 286. In this encomium Aurelius Victor seems to convey a just, though indirect, censure of the cruelty of Constantius. It appears from the Fasti that Aristobulus remained præfect of the city, and that he ended with Diocletian the consulship which he had commenced with Carinus. 5 Aurelius Victor styles Diocletian "Parentem potius quam Dominum." [De Cæsar. 39.] See Hist. August. p. 30. [Capitol. M. Anton, Phil. c. 19.] The question of the time when Maximian received the honors of Cæsar and Augustus has divided modern critics, and given occasion to a great deal of learned wrangling. I have followed M. de Tillemont (Histoire des Empereurs, tom. iv. p. 500-505), who has weighed the several reasons and difficulties with his scrupulous accuracy. a a Eckhel concurs in this view (viii. p. 15).—M. of his admired predecessor. By investing a luxurious youth with the honors of the purple, Marcus had discharged a debt of private gratitude, at the expense, indeed, of the happiness of the State. By associating a friend and a fellow-soldier to the labors of government, Diocletian, in a time of public danger, provided for the defence both of the East and of the West. Maximian was born a peasant, and, like Aurelian, in the territory of Sirmium. Ignorant of letters,' careless of laws, the rusticity of his appearance and manners still betrayed in the most elevated fortune the meanness of his extraction. War was the only art which he professed. In a long course of service, he had distinguished himself on every frontier of the empire; and though his military talents were formed to obey rather than to command-though, perhaps, he never attained the skill of a consummate general-he was capable, by his valor, constancy, and experience, of executing the most arduous undertakings. Nor were the vices of Maximian less useful to his benefactor. Insensible to pity, and fearless of consequences, he was the ready instrument of every act of cruelty which the policy of that artful prince might at once suggest and disclaim. As soon as a bloody sacrifice had been offered to prudence or to revenge, Diocletian, by his seasonable intercession, saved the remaining few whom he had never designed to punish, gently censured the severity of his stern colleague, and enjoyed the comparison of a golden. and an iron age, which was universally applied to their opposite maxims of government. Notwithstanding the difference of their characters, the two emperors maintained, on the throne, that friendship which they had contracted in a pri In an oration delivered before him (Panegyr. Vet. i. 8), Mamertinus expresses a doubt whether his hero, in imitating the conduct of Hannibal and Scipio, had ever heard of their names. From thence we may fairly infer that Maximian was more desirous of being considered as a soldier than as a man of letters: and it is in this manner that we can often translate the language of flattery into that of truth.a a Gibbon's inference as to Maximian's ignorance of the story of Hannibal and Scipio seems unwarranted. All that is meant is, "Had others told you, or did you discover for yourself, that to injure an enemy you must carry the war into his country?"-S. |