as

eyes of the law, but they are likely to have the features and habits of barbarians as of those who are not Roman citizens. There is still a Roman army; there are still legions officered still by centurions and tribunes; but the soldiers are now very commonly Goths, Vandals, and Sarmatians. There are still famous Roman generals, as in the days of Scipio and Marius; and famous victories are won, as in old days, over barbarous hordes; but Stilicho was a Vandal and Aëtius a Sarmatian, and their victories were won perhaps with Roman science, but certainly by barbarian hands. Even the forms are in some cases barbarous. Roman soldiers now rushed to the charge with the old German war-cry, called the barritus; when Julian became Emperor, he was lifted on a shield like a Frankish chief.

Even in the earlier period the word Roman had been stretched considerably beyond its original meaning. There were already multitudes of Roman citizens who had never set foot in Rome. But it was still a name denoting certain nations and excluding others, and it was still justified by the fact that Rome remained the seat of government and the centre of the Empire. It was considered the strangest instance of eccentricity in Tiberius that he retired without necessity from Rome, and deliberately preferred to live elsewhere; a hundred years later the first Antonine lived exclusively, and the second usually, at Rome. But now, not only had the word Roman ceased to be exclusive of any nationality, but it was used to describe an empire of which Rome was not the centre. Diocletian took the government away from Rome, and Constantine provided a worthy seat for it on the Bosporus. Nor by this change did Rome merely cease to be the sole seat of government; it lost its metropolitan character altogether. The Emperors of the West abandoned it as well as those of the East. They preferred to it first Milan and then Ravenna. There are still other claims to the title of Roman, which the earlier Empire had possessed and which the later Empire

wanted. In the time of the Antonines the fact that the Empire had been founded by a conquering nation issuing from Rome, was still conspicuously seen in the distinction between those subjects of the Empire who had the Roman citizenship and those who had not. The distinction was becoming faint, but so long as it was recognised by the law, so long as in the army the legions consisting of Roman citizens were distinct from the allied cohorts and squadrons consisting of those who wanted the citizenship, so long the Empire might still be said, in a sense, to be Roman. But during the transition period this distinction also was effaced. When all the freemen of the Empire were placed on an equal footing, and the distinction between legions and allies disappeared in the army, the last visible record of Rome's conquest was obliterated.

We are accustomed to think of that Holy Roman Empire which disappeared from the world within living memory, as having been Roman only in name. The misnomer in that case was certainly more glaring, but it was hardly more real than in the case of the Empire of Constantine. It is true that the Empire of Constantine had arisen out of that of the Antonines without breach of continuity, and that the change had been gradual. Still it had been a very complete change; one by one most of the Roman characteristics had disappeared. The appropriateness of the title could only be discovered from history. The Empire might be called Roman, as Constantine might be called Cæsar. But Constantine was as much connected by blood with the old Julian gens of Alba Longa as the vast political system half Oriental, half barbaric, in which so many nations were united, was connected with the drowsy old provincial town on the banks of the Tiber, which Ammianus has described for us.

If the Empire was no longer Roman either by nationality or in the sense of being connected as an appurtenance or dependency with the city of Rome, neither was it Roman in the sense of possessing the political institutions

which had originally belonged to Rome. Here the contrast between the age of Constantine and that of the Antonines is particularly marked. Under the Antonines the Empire retained much of the political character of the old Republic. It was in fact nearer to the Republic than it had been under the first Cæsars. Just at that exceptional period the State was guided by a President for life, nominated by his predecessor from among the most promising men of the age, possessing indeed power limited by nothing but his will, but choosing for the most part to regard his Senate with deference. This Senate was a chosen body of distinguished men selected by the Emperor from the whole Empire, and required to take up their residence in Italy. They formed a dignified club at Rome, and gave a powerful expression to the feelings of the upper classes. The old Republic had often witnessed a similar government, when a Dictator had managed the State with the confidence of the aristocratic Senate. The monarchical element was there but in the form least repugnant to Republicanism, for the monarch was not hereditary nor separated by any clear demarcation from his subjects.

In the time of Constantine the government is essentially different, for the Senate as an organ of general aristocratic opinion has practically disappeared, and the Life-President has become a Sultan. Both these changes were natural, and omens of them had appeared even before the Antonines. The Senate of Nero was almost as insignificant as that of Constantine, and no Sultan could trample on human beings more contemptuously than Caligula. When the earlier Emperors were restrained, it was by their own good sense or virtue ; the system was entirely without checks. But what before only the bad Emperors had been, every Emperor was now, and the Senate was habitually as insignificant as before a bad Emperor had occasionally made it. An Augustus, a Trajan, an Antoninus, had found it politic, and perhaps judged it right, to treat the Senate with great

now

respect, and to secure its co-operation in government. But the Emperors of the later series who answer best to these, and who were the wisest rulersDiocletian, Constantine, Valentinian, Theodosius steadily disregarded and trampled on the Senate; only a weak Gratian flatters it. Nor has it only lost favour with the Emperors; it has suffered a great change of character. In the first place there is now no longer a single Senate, but two, one at Rome and another at Constantinople; and next, there are now a multitude of senators scattered through the provinces who do not practically attend the meetings of the body at either of the two capitals. These changes were calculated to destroy the influence of the Senate as an organ of public opinion. Its judgment was no longer the solemn decision of a picked body of distinguished men assembled at the centre of government. It was assembled partly at Rome, which was not the seat of government, but a venerated ancient city possessing a circle of very distinguished and extremely indolent, noble families; and partly at Constantinople, which was sometimes nominally the seat of empire, but often only the seat of the Eastern Government. The decisions of these two bodies might be contradictory, nor did they necessarily represent the opinion of the senatorian order which was scattered through the Empire. Thus changed in character, and steadily discouraged by the Emperor, the Senate loses almost all its influence. It is preserved as a convenient nucleus of wealth for the operations of the tax-gatherer. As a political organ it becomes only once again conspicuous, and that is when the Roman Senate makes its fruitless protest in favour of the ancient gods, and once more sits, as in the old Gallic invasion, to represent a lost cause and to be bearded by victorious invaders. When I say that the Emperor has become a Sultan, I mean, not only that he has assumed Oriental state, and a kind of sacred character as head of the Christian Church, but also that his immeasurable superiority to his subjects is admitted