T H E

END OF THE
ANCIENT
WORLD
 T H E

EN D OF TH E

ANCIENT
WORLD

Santo M azzarino
TR A N SLATED FRO M TH E IT A L IA N BY

George Holmes

ALFRED • A • KNOPF
N EW YORK
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Copyright © 1966 by A lfred A . Knopf, Inc.

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 Acknowledgments

For permission to quote from copyright works acknowledg­

ments are due as follows :

M essrs George Allen & Unwin for The Revolt o f the Masses
by Ortega y Gasset; the Clarendon Press for A Roman
Reformer and Inventor by E. A. Thompson and Social and
Economic History o f the Roman Empire (second edition)
by M . Rostovtzeff; the Loeb Classical Library and Harvard
University Press for the translation o f Petronius; Oxford
and Cambridge University Presses for the New English
Bible, New Testament, Copyright 1961.
 Preface

T he aim o f this book is twofold : on the one hand to describe the

history o f the ideas o f ‘decadence’ and the ‘death o f Rome’ as they
were understood and transformed fro m the__gecond century B .c .
to our own times; cm the other to give a modern interpretation o f
the fall o f the ancient world through criticism and Higrncdnn r>f rhe
various solutions a n d hypothecs I believe that, considered from
this dual point o f view, the theme o f the ‘death o f Rome’ has a
particular interest. We feel the need both to follow through the
development o f the ideas o f ‘decadence’ and the ‘end’ o f the ancient
world and to consider again on our own account what explanation
o f this ‘end’ may appear necessary and sufficient to the man o f
today. Just for this reason however a ‘dialogue’ o f this kind is
inexhaustible and I shall be content if I have succeeded at least
in bringing out a few o f the aspects o f this vast theme.
I dedicate this labour o f mine to Dr. Giuseppe Antonelli as a
mark o f sincere friendship.

S. M .
 Contents

T ime-C hart of the E nd of the A ncient W orld 13

Part One
1 Tw o Ancient Ideas: Universal Empire and the
Decadence o f the State 17
2 T h e End o f Tim e or the Crisis o f an Empire ? 32
3 ‘External Enemies’ and ‘ Internal Enemies’ 44
4 T h e Judgments o f God as an Historical Category 58
5 T h e End o f Rome as interpreted by Humanism 77
6 Constantine, Julian, Justinian: from Löwenklav’s
‘Apology’ to the question o f the ‘Anekdota* 92

P art T wo
7 T he Religious Problem 109
8 Marriage in late Roman Society 120
9 Slaves without Fam ily 136
10 T he Economic Problem: Country and City 149
11 N atio n s,‘Democracies’, Liberty 159
12 T he Institutional Problem 166
13 Decadence and Continuity 173
14 Criticism o f the Idea o f Decadence 180

E ssential B ibliography 190

I ndex 193
 TIME-CHART OF THE END OF THE ANCIENT WORLD
Emperors Writers
Second Century A.D .
Marcus Aurelius 1 61-80 Dio Cassius 150 -2 35
Commodus 180-92 Bardesanes 15 4 -2 2 2
Septimius Severus 1 9 3 - 2 1 1 Montanus
St. Hippolytus 16 5 -2 3 5
Third Century 2 1 7 -2 2 Callistus Pope
Severus Alexander 2 2 2 -3 5 St. Cyprian 200-58
Maximinus Thrax 2 3 5 -3 8 236 Invasion o f Alemanni St. Dionysius o f Alexan­
and Franks dria 200-65
Philip the Arab 244-49 247 Invasion o f Goths Dexippus 2 10 -70
Decius 2 49 -51 2 5 1 Battle o f Abrittus Porphyry 2 33-30 4
Valerian 253-6 0 Commodian
Gallienus 260-8 Widespread barbarian in­ Eusebius 260-340
vasions St. Methodius o f Olym­
Diocletian 284-30 5 Reconstitution o f imperial pus d. 3 1 1
authority Arnobius d. 330
Fourth Century
Constantine 3 1 1 - 3 7 Christianity becomes official Albcricus
religion St. Apollinarius 310 -9 0
Constantius II 3 3 7 -6 1 Themistius 3 17 -9 0
Julian the Apostate Ammianus Marcellinus
3 6 1-6 3 330 -9 1
Jovian 363-64 St. Ambrose 339 -9 7
Valens 364-78 St. Jerome 342-420
Vegetius
Theodosius 379-95 Victory o f Goths at Adria- St. John Chrysostom
nople 347-40 7
395 : division o f the empire 396-408 Vandal Stilicho St. Augustine 354 -4 30
between Honorius (West) controls Western empire Sulpicius Severus
Arcadius (East) 398 Stilicho defeats rising 36 3-42 5
o f Gildo Sextus Aurelius Victor
Claudian 370-404
Synesius 37 0 -4 14
Fifth Century
410 Alarie and Goths sack
Rome
4 12 Ataulf leads Visigoths Zosimus
into Gaul Orosius
4 19 Vallia establishes Visi- Rutilius
gothic Kingdom Oriendus
Valentinian III rules in 429 Genserie leads Vandals Salvian 400-90
West 4 2 3 -5 5 into Africa Priscus
451 Attila and Huns invade Quodvultdeus Bp. of
Gaul, defeated at Catalau- Carthage
Romulus Augustulus nian Plains Victor Bp. o f Vita
475- 6 Cassiodorus 490-585
End o f Western empire
476
Odoacer King o f Italy 480 -547 St. Benedict o f
476- 89 Nursia
Theodoric King o f Italy
489-526
Sixth Century
Amalasunta regent and Procopius
Queen o f Ostrogothic
Italy 5 2 6 -35 Jordanes
Justinian 5 2 7-6 5 Partial temporary reconquest Isidore o f Seville
o f Western empire 560-636
Totila King o f Italy
54 1-55 590-604 Gregory the Great
Pope
T he men and events included in this chart are generally those given prominence
in this book. Many o f the dates are approximate.
PART ONE
 I

Two Ancient Ideas: Universal Empire

and the Decadence of the State

T he fall o f the ancient world is not, o f course, a completely un­

paralleled historical event. There have been other times when the
human spirit has been crushed by the experience o f decline, by the
slow consumption or violent destruction o f political organisms. T h e
most interesting parallel may be found in the history o f the very
ancient East. T he crisis with which this book is concerned, the crisis
o f the ancient world between the fifth and seventh centuries A .D .,
led from imperial Roman unity to fragmentation. Three thousand
years earlier, in a region o f enormous importance for the history o f
human civilization, lower Mesopotamia, a process which was in a
sense opposite to this had led from the feudal separatism, o f the
S umerian states to the universal monarchy, o f the -Semitic.state_of
Akkad. T he supranational Roman state dissolved between the fifth
and seventh centuries a .d . About 2500-2300 B .C ., in contrast, a
large number o f Sumerian cities entered into the dreadful last agony
o f decline just because they had never grasped the conception o f a
universal empitp
These events were widely separated in time, different and indeed
even opposite in their structure; yet they were similar because in
each case the new organisms germinated in a d is r u p t e d s o il and the
o ld Structures collapsed under th e w e i g h t o f th e ir n w n a n f iq u i r y No

17
 Universal Empire and the Decadence o f the State
one could witness the great declines which took place in these two
cases, and in others comparable with them, without a sensation o f
dread. T he life o f contemporaries, almost split into two, moved
uneasily between the old and the new. In the presence o f highly
dramatic events o f this kind, which o v e rth row -anripnt rpliginuc
v a lu e s , mankind has always wondered anxiously whether it might be
possible in some wav to hold off the final test. T h is is the origin o f
the idea o f decadence, which coincides in one sense with that o f
collective guilt, ‘the great sin’ . But in the case o f the end o f the
Roman Empire more is involved. Not only contemporary thought
but also posterity has regarded this later crisis as the archetype o f
cultural decline and as a warning which also contains the key for the
interpretation o f the whole o f our history. F or this reason it may be
interesting to make the comparison which is being suggested with
the crisis o f the Sumerian states which occurred three millennia
earlier.
During the transition from the small, decadent, theocratic states
o f the Sumerians to the great universal state o f Akkad, about 2500-
2300 B .C ., the Sumerians o f Umma, under the leadership o f L ugal-
zaggisi, attempted almost at the point o f death to bring a universal
state into existence. In fact this was to be achieved only by the
Semites o f Akkad somewhat later. A great contemporary, Uruka-
gina, ruler o f the Sumerian city o f Lagash, had thought to offset the
decadence o f his state by reforms which represented a return to the
original Sumerian institutions, and he had condemned the ‘univer­
salist’ plans o f the Sumerians o f Umma. Urukagina offered a back-
ward-looking interpretation o f the crisis which was shaking the
foundations o f the old Sumerian world, once the creator o f the
highest cultural and artistic values. He thought that he had found
the causes o f decline in the greed o f the governing classes, especially
the priests. He claimed to have put an end to the injustices by re­
instating the old arrangements, compelling the priests to give up
their properties so that they might be restored to the god N in girsu -
that is, ultimately, to the state.
Urukagina, devoted to his god Ningirsu, denounced the ambitions
and violations o f the men o f Umma. But the concept o f a universal
empire, which the Sumerians o f Umma failed to turn into reality,
became the great idea which the Near East realized over the mil-
18
 Universal Empire and the Decadence o f the State
lennia in various forms, from the state ofAkkad (a little after Uruka-
gina) to the empires o f Assyria and Babylonia and finally the great
P e r s ia n E m p i r e , destroyed by Alexander the Great in 3 34-327 B .C .
Alexander gave it to the West.
T h e Roman Empire was based on this idea. After its great M edi­
terranean conquests, Rome reconciled th e a n r ie n t rnnrepfinn. n f t h e
city state with the other conception, also as ancient as the state o f
A kkad, o f a universal empire emhracing hoth the city s ta te a n d rh e
‘ nations* living within the empire. From Europe to Asia and Africa,
the new state gave new life to the old cities. It created new cities,
especially in Europe and Africa. T h e empire superimposed itself on
the nationes, as in the East the great universal states, especially the
Achaemenid, had superimposed themselves on the ‘ tongues’ o f the
subject peoples. And so the crisis o f the Sumerian world under
Urukagina now appears in the memory o f mankind as an episode
which was rediscovered half a century ago, while the crisis of the
qnfflpn ctafp W always s e e in g to he rhe yardstick for the under­
standing of world hi«:tnry) ac rhp m nryi^f when the ancient forms
gave way to the new. And indeed, with the consideration o f the
crisis o f the ancient world, that is to say o f the Roman world, the
idea o f decadence acquires an eternal meaning.
It contains the drama o f the ‘ nations’, which begin through
troubles and convulsions to emerge from the collapsing framework
o f the great em pire: the appearance o f new peoples on the great
stage o f thp rlassiral world; the transition from a centralized and
bureaucratic administration with a corresponding monetary eco-
nomy to an economy which foreshadows feudalism in the West and
seeks m the East to reconcile military service with peasant labour:
the long decay o f an agricultural cyotcm which attempted to strike
a balance between the labour o f slaves and o f coloni bound to the
sojL It is connected with the triumph o f the Christian city o f G od,
as conceived in the ideology o f St. Augustine. T h is is in short the
death o f the ancient world, a death accompanied by the decline o f
values and social forms within and by the emergence o f the G er­
mans, Slavs and Arabs without.
T h e crisis o f the Roman Em pire has two other peculiarities which
are closely connected with each other. F irstly, the end o f antiquity
was in a sense foreshadowed by the great upheavals which disturbed
'9
 Universal Empire and the Decadence o f the State
the Greek world from the time o f the Peloponnesian War (431-404
B.c.) and still more in the fourth century b .c ., the crisis which was
grasped at its onset by the greatest historian o f all time, Thucydides.
Secondly, the crisis o f Roman power was feared and, one might
say, diagnosed, from the second century B .C ., that is to sav from the
time o f Rom e’s great Mediterranean conquests. With the knowledge
we now have we can say that the idea o f decadence spread in Italy
as a result o f the agrarian crisis which followed these conquests.
Amongst the symptoms and consequences o f the crisis in the second
century B.c. and the early decades o f the first century were the pro-
letariani/atinn nf rhe Roman ppasjntry 1 the contraction of the areas
cultivated by small proprietors,1 the presence o f *imported and bar­
barian’ manpower in regions like Etruria.2 and the new agrarian
legislation, with the resulting aspiration o f the Italic peasantry to
Roman citizenship.
T he ancient Etruscan idea o f ‘ages’, equivalent to about the life­
time o f a man or rather more, provided a schematic framework for
the expression o f an awareness o f the decline o f certain traditional
values. As early as circa 100 B.c. (according to some scholars even
earlier, tow ards 200 B.c.) there was written in Etruria a page o f the
‘Vegoic’ books, heavy with foreboding o f guilt and decadence.
‘When Jupiter took to himself the land o f Etruria he intended that
the fields and plots o f land should be marked by boundary stones.
. . . But through the greed o f the eighth age, the next and last to
come,3 men will criminally violate these marks, touching them and
moving them. He who shall have touched them, however, and en­
larged his own land and reduced another’s shall be punished by the
gods for this offence. I f this shall happen through the fault o f slaves,
they shall have harder masters. I f through the fault o f the masters,
the issue o f the guilty man shall be destroyed, all his people shall die,
shall be struck down by sicknesses and wounds and weakened in
their limbs. The land shall be laid waste through storms and whirl­
winds. Its produce will be beaten by rain and hail, dried up by heat
and destroyed by blight. And there will be many dissensions among
the people. Know then that this will happen if such crimes are com-
1 See Tibiletd, X Congresso di Scienze Storiche, Relazioni, II (1955), pp. 235 ff. ;
Kousitchin, Vestnik Drevnej istorii (1957), I, pp. 64 ff.
2 Mazzarino, Historia (1957), pp. n o ff.
8On this translation see op. cit., p. 112 .
20
 Universal Empire and the Decadence o f the State
mitted.’ T h is Etruscan text has come down to us in a translation in
vulgar Latin. It gave expression about ioo b .c ., through a sacred
voice, that o f the ‘ nymph* Vegoia, to the idea o f the decline o f the
Etruscan ‘nation’ . T he Etruscans believed that their nation, or as
they called it their ‘ name’, had been allotted ‘eight ages in all’ (gene
- ‘generations’ - in Plutarch’s Greek formulation), and the Vegoic
text stated that the last o f the eight ages, which was already near,
would bring Etruscan history to an end in the midst o f a ruined
agriculture, through the fault o f the ‘crimes’ o f masters or slaves
(Etruscan slaves were legally capable o f owning property).
T he idea o f the decadence o f the land whose produce no longer
brings in enough was widespread in a different sense in other parts
o f Italy. Lucretius, living in the age o f Cicero, gives us a picture o f
the peasant o f his time made sorrowful by the cold resistance o f the
land to his efforts. T he peasant’s lament became for Lucretius a
bitter statement o f decadence as a materialistically determined fact :
‘And now already our age is decayed (fracta est aetas). T h e earth
grows weary and can scarce create small anim als-earth that once
created all the generations o f men and gave birth to the gigantic
bodies o f beasts. . . . More than this, the same earth once created
spontaneously for mortal men the golden corn and the joyful vines.
It gave sweet fruits and happy pastures; and now on the contrary
they will scarcely grow with all our labour. We exhaust our oxen
and the farmer’s strength and the ploughshare in the task, but the
fields scarcely repay us, they are so greedy and demand so much
labour. And now, shaking his head, the old ploughman sighs often,
bewails his fruitless labour and compares the present time with
times past, praising often the good fortune o f his father. Sadly the
planter o f an aged and shrivelled vine blames the effect o f time and
wearies heaven, protesting that earlier men, full o f piety, made an
easy living out o f narrow fields, although their plots o f land were
much smaller. He does not notice, with his laments, that every­
thing slowly decays, marching towards the fomh, exhausted by the
ancient lapse o f tim eJ^patin aetatis defessa vetusto) ' 1 Not that
Lucretius denied the possibility o f progress, what he called the
experientia mentis pedetemptim progredientis, the experience o f the
mind in its march towards progress. But decadence was a fact o f
1 Lucretius, II, 115 0 ff.
21
 Universal Empire and the Decadence o f the State
nature for him -som ething which concerned nature and not the
‘mind’ o f man. T h e process o f becoming leads to what men call
death-this is an old concept o f Empedocles, and perhaps also o f
another fifth-century Greek philosopher Leucippus, which is
coloured by bitterness in the Epicurean Lucretius.
Facts o f human nature, however, demand a human explanation.
T h e idea o f decadence cannot be reduced to the exhaustion o f the
soil. It was the same Lucretius who said that men, driven by the false
terror o f death, spill the blood o f their brothers in civil wars and that
they hate and fear even the table o f their kinsmen. His own time
appeared to him to be ruled ‘by the love o f wealth and the blind
longing for honours which lead wretched mortals to cross the boun­
daries o f law and often to become accomplices and accessories o f
wrongs, striving night and day with immense labour to rise up to the
heights o f power’ . H is naturalistic determinism went with a con­
sciousness o f living ‘in unhappy times for Rom e’, patriae tempore
iniquo. T his human drama, which the Epicurean Lucretius reduced
to the false terror o f death, was also an historical drama, even in a
sense a consequence o f the Roman conquests in the Mediterranean.
In the eyes o f contemporaries it appeared to be the presage not o f
a cosmic decadence, like the agricultural crisis in Lucretius, but a
political and human crisis.
Amongst the contemporaries o f Lucretius, Cicero gave it this
political and human interpretation. A s early as a century before this
an alert consideration o f the drama had disturbed thinkers and
politicians in the circle o f the Scipios. H ere is another characteristic
o f the problem o f the ‘decadence o f Rom e’ : the supranational
imperium o f the Romans was already, many centuries before its fall,
an object o f anxiety on the part o f those men who had contributed
to its decisive establishment. In the second century b .c . Cornelius
Scipio Nasica Corculum, consul in 155 b .c ., made himself famous
for opposing the point o f view o f Cato (‘ Carthage must be des­
troyed’) and arguing that Carthage must be left standing, since its
existence was necessary to prevent the decadence o f the Roman
state. Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus himself, the conqueror o f Car­
thage, was affected by an obscure foreboding o f the death o f Rome
in either the near or the distant future. Polybius, the great historian
o f Scipio’s circle, was close to him at that time, in 146 B.c., and
22
 Universal Empire and the Decadence o f the State
caught that moment o f sadness in the great captain. ‘He took my
right arm,’ he tells us, ‘and he said to me: “ Yes Polybius, that is
good; but, I do not know why, I am afraid and have a foreboding
that someone else will have to give the same news for our country”
[as is now given for Carthage].’ Polvhius. as a Greek, did not regard
Rome as his fatherland, but he had fallen in love with the lordly
city with the enthusiasm o f a man who knowrs that he is taking part
in wonderful and great events. It was in this spirit that he, the
<pragrnp<V hifttnriani analysed the causes o f the future ‘ fall’ o f
Rom e.1
‘And it is also all too evident that ruin (phthora) and change are
hanging over everything. T he necessity o f nature is enough to con­
vince us o f this. Now there are two wavs in which any type o f state
may die. One is the ruin which comes from outside: the other, in
contrast, is the internal crisis le* Thp first is difficult to fore­
see, the second is determined from within. . . . When in fact a com­
munity has overcome many and serious dangers and has reached
unquestioned power and lordship, new factors come into play.
Prosperity takes its seat in that community and life turns towards
luxury. Men become ambitious in their rivalries to achieve magis­
tracies and other distinctions. A s this goes on, the aspiration to
magistracies, or the protest o f those who see themselves rejected, the
pride and the luxury, will give rise to decadence (tes epi to keiron
metaboles). T h e masses o f the people will be responsible for the
crisis. T hey feel themselves abused by those who wish to pile up
wealth; and by others, ambitious for office, they will be puffed up
and flattered with demagogic wiles. Excited and stirred up, they will
not wish to continue in obedience or to remain within the limits o f
law laid down by the patricians. T hey will wrant to have all the
power, or the greatest power. After that the constitution will have
the finest name there is: liberty and democracy. In reality, on the
other hand, it will be the worst possible, the rule o f the masses
(ochlokratia).y
T o this historian then, the future phthora o f the Roman state
seemed certain, and its causes exactly predictable as far as the

1 See Mioni, /*o/iAio (1949), pp.49 ff.; Ryffcl, AftTa/SoA^ 7roAn-<t<Lv(i949),pp. 180 ff.;
Ziegler, R. E ., X X I , 2 (1952), pp. 1495 ff.; Sasso, Rivista Surica Italiana (1958), pp.
333 ff-
23
 Universal Empire and the Decadence o f the State
conflicts o f classes within were concerned. He did not dare to make
predictions openly about the ‘external causes1, what would be called
‘ the migrations o f the people1 five or six centuries after him. But in
fact he had much to say on this question too. His view was not
limited to Rome. T h e power o f Rom e’s imperium, and even more its
predictable end, were in his vision part o f a general picture o f the
highly civilized states o f the East, including not only those which
had come to an end somewhat earlier but also others which would in
their time fall under the blows o f now distant barbarians. Polybius
said that the empire o f the Romans was infinitely superior to all the
ancient universal empires.
‘There was once a great empire o f the Persians . . . , [the Spartans]
with difficulty held the hegemony over the Greeks for twelve years.
. . . T he M acedonians. . . having overthrown the Persians, added
the empire o f Asia to their dominion. Nevertheless, though they
seemed to be lords o f the vastest areas and o f great power, they left
the greater part o f the world outside their governm ent.. . . But not
so the Romans. T hey have subjected not just some parts o f the world
but almost the whole world; and thus they have left their empire in­
vincible by those who live today and insuperable by those who are
to come.1
Polybius was well enough acquainted with the Hellenistic states
which Macedonian expansion had created in Asia. He was a per­
sonal friend o f the Seleucid K in g Demetrius I. T he Seleucid state,
which had once extended from Syria to eastern Iran but was now in
full decline, might have suggested to his historian’s intelligence a
confused image o f what was in fact to be the crisis o f the ancient
world. It had been dismembered piece by piece. T he Greek state
o f Bactria, consolidated in 206 B .c . by K in g Euthydemus, was
separated from it. Finally in 130 B .C . nomadic horsemen originating
in central Asia had overthrown and ‘barbarized’ Greek Bactria, the
vital outpost o f the Hellenistic world. Polybius used this very word,
‘ barbarized1. He was reflecting on these recent events o f 130 B .C .,
which struck a world that was far distant from the Roman Empire in
space but, like the Roman empire, an expression o f classical culture.
T h e invasions o f the barbarians into the ancient world were thus
first heralded in eastern Iran six centuries before the formation o f
the Romano-barbarian kingdoms in the west. Polybius at least
24
 Universal Empire and the Decadence o f the State
partly understood the terrifying lesson, and in a disturbed and sig­
nificant passage1 he put into the mouth o f Euthydemus, the creator
o f Bactrian power, a reasoned forecast o f the ‘migration o f peoples*
into the highly civilized states.
‘T he title and dignity o f a king belonged to him [independently
o f the Seleucid state]. I f Antiochus did not agree, neither would be
sure o f his power. [That is to say that barbarization menaced both
states.] There were in fact considerable forces o f nomads and both
o f them -Antiochus and Euthydem us-ran the risk o f irruption into
their states. I f they admitted the invaders, the country would be,
without any doubt, barbarized. . . . Antiochus [I I I , the Great]
understood the importance o f the aforesaid reasons and accepted
Euthydemus’s proposal.’
Let us sum up. In Polybius’s Histories we already find the two
themes which are going to be dominant in the interpretation o f the
en d o f the ancient wnrl^j pvpn tn prpg^nf Hay On the one
hand there is the ‘ internal* explanation which is already applied by
Polybius to the constitutional structure o f the Roman Empire with
the deduction o f its future fall from the impossibility o f overcoming
class conflicts. On the other hand there is the ‘external’ explanation
which Polybius applies to the ‘ barbarization* o f the Greco-Bactrian
state in which a great structure o f classical culture, mingled with
Iranian, was submerged under the flood o f Iranian nomads, im­
pelled in their turn by the wave o f Huns, enclosed in their chivalric
iron armour and attracted towards the Bactrian state in the same
way as the Goths, five or six centuries later, were attracted towards
the Roman Empire.
In Polybius’s thought, reflection on the greatness and decadence
o f Rome is flanked by the two opposed interpretations o f the ancient
crisis, the ‘internal’ and the ‘external’ . In the period which followed
the time o f Polybius the theme o f ‘ internal’ decadence was touched
on in various ways. T h e Etruscan Vegoic text, as we saw, spoke in a
tone o f religious emotion about Etruria rather than Rome. Agricul­
tural conditions differed widely at that time between the different
parts o f the peninsula-for example the great estate was the rule
amongst the Etruscans, but small properties amongst the M arsi, and
therefore the first were hostile and the second favourable to Livius
1 Polybius, X I, 34.

25
 Universal Empire and the Decadence o f the State
D rusus.1 T h e civil wars o f the first century b .c . and the War o f
Spartacus (7 3 -7 1 b . c .), however, revealed the Italian agricultural
crisis. In spite o f his thesis that decadence was a natural occurrence
due to the exhaustion o f the soil, Lucretius did not forget the human
aspect and the great problems which disturbed Roman life as a result
o f the conquests. In this respect he spoke, as an Epicurean, not o f
‘ decadence’ but o f the ‘false terror o f death’ . In contrast to Polybius
the emphasis in his outlook did not fall upon the rebellion o f the
masses. T h e ‘terror o f death’ was something that existed in the
inner conscience o f unsatisfied ambition.
Cicero saw the idea o f the decadence o f Rome in two forms : the
decay o f manners and the lack o f really great men (virorum penuria).
‘Before our times the customs o f our people produced outstanding
individuals and ancient customs and traditional institutions were
preserved by eminent personalities. In our age, however, the state
has come to be like a painting which is remarkable but already
fading because o f old age, and people neglect not only to restore the

1 The tribunate of Livius Drusus in 91 B.c. is o f great importance for the under­
standing of Roman history. B y distributing lands in Italy to Roman citizens Livius
Drusus struck at the interests o f the great landed proprietors who were masters o f slaves,
but he benefited the small peasants o f Italy to whom he promised Roman citizenship so
that they too might participate in the distribution o f land (on this see Bernardi, Nuova
Rivista Storica (1944-5 ), PP- 60 ff. and, rather differently, Gabba, Athenaeum (1954),
pp. 41 ff.) or at least would not be damaged by it. Faced by the possibilities which
Drusus opened to them the agriculturalists o f Italy reacted in two opposite ways. The
Marsi, the Samnites and the Lucani-especially the first o f these-were with him. They
saw in the acquisition o f Roman citizenship, amongst other things, a sure way to defend
their small properties or to participate in the near future in colonial projects. T he
Etruscan peasants, on the other hand-a good many o f whom were lautni of foreign
origin, Egyptian for instance (Historia (1957), pp. n o ff)-w e re for the most part
hostile to Drusus because o f their devotion to their owners o f large estates. T o sum up,
the Etruscan-Umbrian big estate was opposed to the small landed property o f the Marsi,
Samnites and Lucani. This distinction in Italian agriculture in the first century B.c.
may have left traces down to the late empire. According to some scholars Southern
Italy was the region par excellence for exploitation de peu d'étendue, that is the opposite
o f Northern Italy (Déléage, La Capitation du Bas-Empire (1945), pp. 2 19 ff., where
however Cod. Th. X I, 12 , 1, is made to refer to Italy rather than Gaul and also the
difference between the designations ingum and millena does not seem to me to imply a
difference in extent). In any case a certain continuity in Italian agriculture may be
established in some areas for the whole imperial period. E.g. the wines o f Cesena were
equally sought after in the first century a .d . and the fourth century a .d . (Cod. Th. X I,
i , 6). There was a break in the Middle Ages with the Lombard system o f pro­
prietary churches which struck at the Tuscan estates. (One may note however that in
the late Empire Tuscia et Umbria was normally regarded as belonging to the vicariate o f
Rome; it was ‘Southern Italy’ .)

26
 Universal Empire and the Decadence o f the State
original colours in it, but even to preserve its shape and outlines.’ 1
An opponent o f Cicero, Sallust, in his anxious analysis,12 also turned
his attention to the ruling groups and their dreams o f wealth and
office. F o r him decadence was inseparable from the d is a p p p a r a n rp
o f y ir tu s- a theme which will recur in Machiavelli. According to
Sallust therefore the crisis o f social customs and the coming o f
luxuria have a clear political consequence which was placed roughly,
as later by another historian Velleius, in 146 b .c . T his was also the
teaching o f the first-century Stoic philosopher Posidonius (Cal­
purnius Piso, on the other hand, put the beginning o f moral decay
in 154 b .c . and L ivy later took it back to 188 b .c .). It was accom­
panied in Sallust by a passionate involvement in the question which
was almost polemical. It was in this period that the word ‘ decline’ in
the sense o f ‘decline o f the state’ was first used in the Roman world.
Inclinata res publica is a phrase which both Cicero and Sallust used.
Sallust’s vision o f decadence has a basis o f general sadness. T he
formula ‘everything that is bom must die* {omnia orta intereunt)
occurs at least twice in his writings. Apart from this his foreboding
o f the end o f Rome shows him rather less resigned than Polybius.
He did not abandon hope; quite the reverse. He wrote to Caesar:
‘This is my opinion. Since everything that is born dies, when the
fate o f death comes to the city o f Rome, citizens will fight with citi­
zens and then, weary and exhausted, they will be the prey o f some
king or nation. Otherwise, neither the whole world nor all the peoples
together have the power to abase or to harm this empire. We must
then consolidate the benefits o f concord and destroy the evils o f
discord.’
T he theory that the end o f the ancient world will be due only to
civil wars to some extent puts off the great fear. A superior man can
restore concord. It is true that the return o f civil war after the death
o f Caesar brought back the feeling o f despair in many circles. In the
sixteenth epode Horace spoke, if we translate his words into Poly-
bian terms, o f ‘internal ruin’ {suis et ipsa Roma viribus ruit) and
‘external ruin’ {barbarus heu cineres insistet victor et urbem eques
sonante verberabit ungula). But the hope o f a man who would put an

1 Gcero, De Re Publica, V, 1 , 2 .
2 See Steidle, ‘Sallusts Historische Monographien’ , Historia, Einzelschriften, Heft 3
( I 958)-
27
 Universal Empire and the Decadence o f the State
end to civil wars allayed the anxieties o f many. It had been Sallust’s
hope, and a modern Italian historian (Aldo Ferrabino) has said there­
fore that ‘Rome, the Rome which Sallust envisages, does not have its
end in decadence.’
T h e prospect o f an inevitable end was also abandoned on the
religious plane. In Etruria the old prophecies which regarded the
eighth ‘age’ as the last and placed its beginning in the year 88
B .c . were relinquished. T h e soothsayer Volcacius added the ninth
and tenth ‘ages’ and thus altered the whole traditional Etruscan
calculation. But, especially for Rome, the optimism o f the auguries
had a profound significance. Faith in life triumphed over the great
fear o f imminent death. In the age o f Varro ( 116 -2 7 b .c .) a certain
Vettius had drawn attention to the prophetic significance o f the
twelve vultures seen by Romulus for, as he said, Rome had at that
time passed through the first 120 years from its foundation and
therefore was destined to last not twelve decades but twelve cen­
turies, 1200 years. According to Varro’s prophet friend, the death o f
Rome would be placed roughly in what was to be the time o f Attila
the Hun.
Astrology suggested yet more speculations. T h e idea o f a more or
less inevitable and predestined ‘decadence’ was replaced by the idea
o f a ‘new foundation’ o f Rome with fixed cycles. A s a result o f the
introduction o f the Julian calendar with 365 days, there was a theory
o f great cycles o f 365 years, after which communities would suffer
either death or renewal. In the year 365 from its foundation, Rome
had survived the threat o f death-the burning by the G auls-through
the intervention o f Camillus, a new Romulus. It was therefore
deduced that now, at the end o f a new cycle o f 365 years starting
from Camillus, Rome had found its ‘new Romulus’ in Augustus,
who was honoured with the tribunician power in 23 B .C .1

Juliu s C aesar and his ‘son* Augustus had in fort nwrrnmp the age
o f the civil wars. After them, through the foundation o f the Augustan

1 I would explain with this hypothesis L ivy’s trecentesimus sexagesimus quintus annus
agitur in the famous speech o f Camillus to which Hubaux especially has drawn atten­
tion. In the explanation which I propose, L ivy would obtain the idea from Augustan
circles. This overcomes the objection, which was always stated against Hubaux, that a
'great year’ o f 365 years was impossible before the Julian calendar. Cf. Hubaux, Rome
et Véies (1958).
28
 Universal Empire and the Decadence o f the State
state in 27 and 23 b .c . the Polybian problem o f the decadence o f
Rome had to be stated in different terms. T he Roman empire was
to endure another five centuries in the w est-in some parts o f the
west, seven, eight or even ten centuries if it was regarded as con­
tinuing in its medieval Roman or Byzantine form. In the east, in
the form o f the Byzantine empire, it was to have its great crisis in
the seventh century and then to continue, after the loss o f some
important territories, down to the establishment o f the Latin empire
in 1204 and, after the Latin interregnum, down to 1453. T his was a
perspective which stretched an immense distance into the future.
Still, from the first centuries o f the empire founded by Augustus,
men continued to state Polybius’s problem. In short the problem, of
the death o f Rome was raised before Rome died.
T he ideal categories o f the problem were now displaced both in
space and in time. In space because Rome was no longer confined to
the old city, or even to Italy. Its provinces were dotted with its
colonies and from the time o f Trajan ( a .d . 0 8 -117 ) it would be
possible to have Roman emperors born outside Italy. From the year
2 12 all freemen in the provinces, pvrppt the dediticii,* ohtained
Roman citizenship. In time because now the problem o f the ‘rebel­
lion o f the masses’, which Polybius had stated, could not be con­
fined to the proletarian masses o f Rome, which he had had in mind.
It was extended to the whole o f Italy and beyond, it came to include
the peasant masses o f Syria, Illyricum , the Celtic provinces, Africa
and Egypt, in short the ‘nations’ (ethne) which inhabited all the1

1 On this constitution granted by the Emperor Caracalla in 212 see below, ch. 11.
We do not however know precisely who were the dediticii whom Caracalla excluded
from the benefits of citizenship. In terms o f pure law all those inhabitants o f the empire
who were not bound to Rome by a treaty of alliance (foedus) were called dediticii, but in
212 the word certainly had a more limited meaning. According to some scholars, in­
cluding the author of this book, they could still include considerable peasant masses,
for example in Egypt, who were not assimilated to Greco-Roman culture. According to
others the name referred only to barbarians received into the empire in relatively recent
times. (Another category of dediticii was composed o f manumitted slaves who, because
of previous crimes, could not become Roman or Latin citizens.) The formula used by
Caracalla which has come down to us runs (P.Giessen 40) : ‘ I therefore grant the citizen­
ship of the Romans to all, [the foreign peoples of] the world, [this grant] relating to . . .
excepting the dediticii.’ The various interpretations proposed always assume an intransi­
tive [M]fvaroi. I understand it as transitive and therefore translate it as ‘relating to’.
Recent literature and discussion in D ’Ors, Emerita (1956), p. 10; Oliver, American
Journal o f Philology (1955), p. 297.

29
 Universal Empire and the Decadence o f the State
provinces o f this immense empire. No longer, as in the age o f the
civil wars, was the crisis o f the ruling class confined to the discon­
tent o f the Roman or Italian proletariat. At the end o f the ancient
world the universal Roman empire would have to take account o f
the problem o f the fanatical masses o f Donatist Africa, o f Nestorian
Syria, o f monophysite Egypt, added to the hostility o f incompletely
romanized Celtic and Pannonian peasants bound to the soil by cruel
fetters. T his then was the problem o f the nations. There was also
the problem o f the threat o f ‘barbarization’ which Polybius had dis­
tinguished in distant Bactria. Now, through the passage o f time, the
problem o f the ‘external causes’ o f decadence was maturing for
Rome too as Polybius had said.
T he foreboding o f a ‘scientifically’ predictable end as it is found
in P olybius-or, understood in ethical terms, as it is found in Cicero
and Sallust-established even in the culture o f republican Rome a
very close connection betw een the idea o f decadence and that o f the
predictability o f historical events. F or this reason the Polybian
‘ prophecy’ was most completely in tune with contemporary thought
in another period in which men believed in the power o f foreseeing
the destined course o f history, the age o f romanticism. A century
ago in 1858 there appeared a book by Lasaulx called The Human
Power o f Prophecy in Poets and Thinkers. It was a completely roman­
tic book from beginning to end and today it is justly forgotten. In its
day it wras remarkably successful because the thesis o f the ‘predicta­
bility o f history’ which it maintained had tenacious supporters and
also very powerful opponents, the chief o f whom was Gervinus. It
was natural that Polybius should be Lasaulx’s chief exhibit for, if
the historian o f the republican period had been able to foresee the
crisis o f the Roman state, all the other ‘prophecies’ , such as that o f
Nicholas Cusanus about the revolution against the German princes
or that o f Leibnitz about the great revolution ‘bred by criticism’,
acquired legitimate places in the history o f the human spirit. A t the
bottom o f the romantic hypothesis about the ‘predictability’ o f
history, however, wras above all the Hegelian doctrine o f satisfied
ages and o f pacifying old age. T h e Polybius o f the romantics was
therefore somewhat far removed from the real Polybius, who rather
preferred facts to patterns. But the age o f Polybius and Sallust and
the romanticism o f a century ago had in common the gloomy sense
30
 Universal Empire and the Decadence o f the State
o f a connection between the notion o f decadence and the pre­
dictability o f history.
In this sense Polybius stands at the crisis o f the Roman republic
in the_same wav that Burckhardt and Nietzsche stand at the crisis o f
our time. In both cases we have men who suppose themselves to be
living at a mature period (the foundation o f the greatest empire in
the world for Polybius; the culture o f the nineteenth century for
Burckhardt and Nietzsche) but also think that they can perceive
dense shadows in the future course o f events. T hey are under the
illusion that their pessimism has a ‘scientific’ justification. In fact
they are forcing the facts into a Procrustean bed made o f certain pre­
suppositions. T h e myth o f progressive decadence, as it is expressed
at the dawn o f classical civilization in Hesiod’s idea o f progressive
movement away from the golden age, has an unmistakably religious
origin in the idea o f ‘eternal recurrence’ which has been studied by
Mircea Eliade in a famous book. A similar attitude expressed in a
cyclical form leads to the idea o f saecula (‘centuries’) which are born
and die. A s we have seen, it gave rise in ancient Italy to the Vegoic
teaching which placed the end o f the Etruscan nation in the eighth
saeculum and interpreted it as a punishment by the god Tinia
(Jupiter). There was also another possible attitude which men could
take in confronting their historical position, to believe that deca­
dence might be overcome through a return to the old order o f things.
T his was the formula o f Urukagina as early as the third millennium
B.c. It may be compared with the teaching o f Sallust, according to
which one ‘must consolidate the benefits o f concord’ in order to hold
o ff the death o f Rom e; and also the ‘new foundation’ by Camillus
and Augustus comes into the same picture. Lucretius’s naturalistic
interpretation, according to which decadence resolved itself into
soil-exhaustion, moved the problem on to a biological and cosmic
plane. Cicero’s image o f the decadent Roman state as an old and
fading picture put the idea o f old age back on an ethico-political
plane. Cicero insisted on the virorum peniuria. In the ancient, as in
the modern, world the idea o f decadence involved the most diverse
perspectives.

3
 2

The End o f Tim e or the

Crisis of an Empire?

When the political structure had been transformed with the coming
o f Augustus the great fears disappeared. Rome and Italy had been
saved and the provinces reorganized in a definitive manner. Very
many people in the generation which enjoyed this renaissance, the
second Augustan generation, no longer wished to hear about de­
cadence o f manners or other such old delusions. T h e poet Ovid
belonged to this generation, and the ancient protests o f the ‘rumi­
natores’ like Varro irritated him. What were the claims o f these
admirers o f past time, these merciless critics o f luxury and avaritia ?
‘Other men,’ said Ovid, ‘like past times, but I am happy to be bom
now; this age suits my way o f life.’ Far from speaking o f decadence
he liked to speak o f progress in technology (mining, commerce) and
culture. ‘Today there is good taste (cultus); and our age flees from
that rusticitas which used to be found amongst our ancestors.’ 1
But some old problems were still unsolved, especially economic
problems. T h e decline o f Italian agriculture repeatedly made itself
felt. It had been hard hit in the age o f the civil wars and ruined, as
early as the time o f Spartacus, by the plantation system. Financial
crises revealed obvious difficulties. I f at the time o f Sulla the poet
Lucretius had bewailed the exhaustion o f the land, a remedy was
1 Ovid, Ars Amatoria, III, 12 1 ff.: a real exaltation of progress.

32
 The End o f Time or the Crisis o f an Empire ?
now sought in the wisdom o f men. In the second half o f the first
century a .d . a famous writer on agriculture, Columella, returned to the
lament over the decadence o f Italian agronomy. He praised ancient
times, that old complaint which Ovid had found unbearable.
There was another problem for which the optimism o f men like
Ovid found no easy remedy. T he establishment o f the principate
initiated a monarchical régime haspd nn rhe aurtnritat nf the prin­
cess. T he ruling class witnessed the dissolution o f the ancient tradi­
tion o f republican liberty, and this was a bitter blow especially in
the early davs. Grief-stricken regret for ancient liberty, connected
with the idea that the new monarchical régime is a sign of old age,
pervades the bitter pages o f Seneca the Elder, who was born in the
republican period but died during the reign o f Caligula. In the
depths o f his grief the hopeless old man dreamed o f ancient republi­
can Rome and re-created the tragic events o f the civil wars.
‘T he first infancy o f Rome was under Romulus, its founder and,
as it were, nourisher. Then the city went through boyhood under
the other kings. As it approached manhood it ceased to tolerate
servitude and, throwing off the yoke, preferred to obey laws rather
than kings. T his adolescence finished with the end o f the Punic
Wars. Then Rom e’s power was strengthened and its youth began.
In fact, having swept aside Carthage, which had long contested the
first place, Rome extended its power over the whole world, by land
and by sea, until, having subjugated all the kings and nations, and
having no more objects in war, it misused its own power and so
exhausted itself. T h is was its first old age, when, torn by the civil
wars and weakened by an internal crisis, it fell again under monarchi­
cal rule as i f in a second childhood. In fact, having lost the liberty
which it had defended under the leadership and by the initiative o f
Brutus, it grew so old that it seemed not to have the power to sus­
tain itself without resting on the support o f the monarchs.’
One can detect in this biological analysis o f the history o f Rom e1
a return to the Ciceronian idea o f the Roman state as a ‘picture
fading because o f old age’, but in a writer o f the time o f Caligula the
idea o f the decadence o f old age is at once a cry o f grief and an
1 On this passage in Seneca see Hanke, Römische Kinderkaiser (1950), pp. 393 ff.
T he idea o f the old age of Rome is then found in Florus; cf. P. Zancan, Floro e Livio
(1942), pp. 13-2 0 (fundamental for the history o f the idea of decadence in this period).
In general cf. Poschl, Gymnasium (1956), pp. 190 ff.

33
 The End o f Time or the Crisis o f an Empire?
exaltation o f liberty, o f liberty seen as the time o f youth. We shall
have to remember Seneca when we come to deal with humanistic
thought, according to which Rom e’s inclinatio was the result o f the
imperial régime, and even when we examine Seeck’s idea o f the
‘elimination o f the best men*.1
It is no accident that the use o f the word ‘decline’ {inclinare) in
questions o f manners and literature begins in the first and second
centuries, especially among the same governing classes o f the empire.
We find in Pliny inclinatis iam moribus and in Quintilian inclinasse
eloquentiam. T hus there is a transference o f the idea o f decline,
which is applied to the state in Cicero, to the sphere o f culture.
T his is the age in which there is talk o f the decadence o f the arts
in Petronius and o f eloquence in Tacitus and Quintilian. Roman
tradition, represented by the senatorial classes and by high culture,
has then worked out its own kind o f humanism. T h is same concept
o f inclinatio will be, in modern history, the great discovery o f our
Quattrocento. Juvenal takes up again Varro’s old theme o f luxuria
as the source o f evils: ‘worse than arms, luxuria oppresses us and
takes revenge for the world which we conquered; since Romans
ceased to be poor there is no crime which is not committed among
us.’
Outside the traditional world, which expressed itself wonderfully
in the Senecan idea o f monarchical old age, a great spiritual revolu­
tion was giving a new sense o f tragedy to the crisis poisoning the
classical world : the Christian revolution. In certain o f its mani­
festations it may be compared with some contemporary expressions
o f the Judaic world, humiliated and overthrown by the Roman
conquest and by the oppression which followed. There is, for
instance, the Commentary on Habbakuk, one o f the texts revealed to
us by the Dead Sea discoveries, in which the spiritual drama o f
Judaism is declared and the blame for it given to an impious priest,
described by the Commentary as ‘ he who, because o f the insult
offered to the Master o f Justice and the members o f his community,
was given by God into the hands o f his enemies that they might
ruin him with an act o f destruction, with bitterness for his soul,
1 In modern terminology one might say that for Seneca the Elder history is ‘ the
history o f liberty’ . In contrast to the ancients, modern interpreters o f history as the
history o f liberty often take refuge in biological formulations. One thinks o f Croce and
Riistow.
34
 The End o f Time or the Crisis o f an Empire?
since he had acted in an impious manner towards his chosen’ .
T his ‘impious priest’ is condemned by the Commentary on Habba-
kuk together with all those ‘who were silent when the Master o f
Justice was punished and have not helped him against the man of
falsehood who offended against the L aw ’ . T he Commentary adds
to the condemnation o f the ‘ impious priest’ and the ‘ man o f false­
hood’ an implacable hatred o f the Romans (kittim) who ‘will sacri­
fice to their banners, and their instruments o f war will be wor­
shipped by them’ .
Here the idea o f religious guilt replaces the idea o f decadence,
and the Romans, together with those Jew s who were traitors, are the
hated authors o f the offence to God. Primitive Christianity, more
tolerant than this towards the Roman Empire but still formed in the
same atmosphere o f the Jew ish spiritual revival, reveals, amongst
other things, one very serious aspect o f the crisis o f the ancient
world, namely the social oppression which characterized Roman
rule over the peasants of the provinces. St. Jam es, who like Jesus
was condemned to death in the end, expressed at the very beginning
o f the empire this interpretation o f the world crisis, seen from the
tormented point o f view o f the Judaic-Palestinian world where there
were powerful stirrings o f those ideas which would one day make
the classical world collapse upon itself.
‘ Next a word to you who have great possessions. Weep and wail
over the miserable fate descending on you. Your riches have rotted;
your fine clothes are moth-eaten; your silver and gold have rusted
away, and their very rust will be evidence against you and consume
your flesh like fire. You have piled up wealth in an age that is near
its close. T h e wages you never paid to the men who mowed your
fields are loud against you, and the outcry o f the reapers has reached
the ears o f the Lord o f Hosts. You have lived on earth in wanton
luxury, fattening yourselves like cattle-and the day for slaughter has
come. You have condemned the innocent and murdered him; he
offers no resistance.’ 1
A few Roman knights, ‘ men with gold rings’ , as St. Jam es himself
calls them, were carried away beside the Palestinian peasants in
these earliest synagogues o f the Christians. Both listened to the
dramatic prophecy o f St. Jam es on the end o f a world ruled by
1 From the New English Bible, St. James's Epistle.

35
 The End o f Time or the Crisis o f an Empire?
privilege. We can perhaps imagine the gloomy looks o f the Roman
knights, and the eagerness for liberation o f the Palestinian peasants
around whom the rule o f the privileged had erected a kind o f
invisible prison. Soon the new faith won over great masses o f ad-
herents, and the idea o f the imminent end o f the Roman empire
must have dominated Mif "™ « y in that great mass o f
Christians who were burnt like torches and cruelly martyred in
Nero’s Rome. Besides, the idea o f the end o f Rome was for them
identical with the idea o f the end o f the world. Antichrist would
come and the breath o f the Lord would destroy him. With the
passage o f time, since the end o f the w'orld no longer appeared
imminent (and even St. Paul’s injunctions had assumed its con­
tinuance) the attitudes o f the Christians to the imperial crisis began
to diverge somewhat. Some, exalting the work o f Providence, trust­
ingly reconciled the empire o f Rome with Christianity; others dis­
paraged the empire and tried to explain its imminent fall to them­
selves, with disguised pleasure, by the coming o f Antichrist, Nero
reborn, who would be smashed by the blast o f the Lord.
T w o sacred texts at any rate inspired their expectation. One was
the Book o f P an ielT written between 167 and 165 B .C . T h is book,
which is also cited by Jesus in St. Matthew’s Gospel, seemed
to declare that four monarchies succeed each other in history,
all rulers o f the world. T hey are represented by the parts o f the
statue dreamt o f by Nebuchadnezzar, respectively by the head o f
gold, the breast and arms o f silver, the belly o f copper and the legs
o f iron, the toes and feet o f the statue being o f iron mixed with
clay. Furthermore, the vision o f Daniel included four beasts which
also came to be interpreted as the four monarchies. T h e end o f the
world was to follow immediately after the disappearance o f the last
monarchy; this was the point on which fears and hopes were
concentrated.
T he other great book, the Revelation o f St. John, envisaged the
serpent giving its strength to a beast which climbed out o f the sea
with seven heads and ten horns, ruler o f every tribe, people, lan­
guage, nation, worshipped by all the inhabitants o f the earth. It saw
an angel pointing to an abominable woman ‘the great city which has
government over the kings on earth’ and another announcing the
end o f the ‘great city, the powerful Babylon’ on whose death the
36
 The End o f Time or the Crisis o f an Empire?
merchants weep. M any interpreters saw in this apocalyptic sym­
bolism an announcement o f the end o f the world, the fall o f Rome
the greatest o f the cities. About a century after St. John, towards the
end o f the reign o f the emperor Marcus Aurelius (d. a .d. 180), a
Christian oracular poet imagined the ‘Antichristian’ decline o f
Rome, marked by impiousness and tribulation, arising out o f the
oppression which burdened the provincials and filled the houses o f
the emperor with riches. In this poet the end o f the Roman world
is a religious certainty, not an excited foreboding; the apocalytic
images are mingled with a vision o f imminent famine and civil war.
He detests the universality o f an em pire in whirh as if in a huge
crucible, many nations are ground into a single colour. Therefore
his evocation, flashing with hatred, is not so much an examination
o f the causes which will lead to the death o f the empire hut rathpr a
curse uttered in burning eagerness to invoke the shattering of an
unjust state. Fundamentally, for this oracular poet, the Roman
Caesar is the enemy o f the provincials. T h e idea o f the oppressed
nations which had appeared tentatively even in the writings o f the
Augustan age acquired, with the luminous power o f the new faith, a
great moral force and was combined with the certainty o f the deca­
dence and the imminent end o f Rome.
‘An old monarch [Marcus Aurelius] will have a long period o f
rule. He will be a wretched king who will shut up all the treasures
o f the world in his houses so that when the fugitive matricide
[Antichrist, Nero reborn] comes from the end o f the earth, they shall
be distributed and shall be a great wealth for Asia. Then you will
weep, O proud Queen, scion o f Latin Rom e; giving up the sena­
torial tunic o f the rulers you will put on mourning clothes. There
will be no more glory for your pride, nor, unhappy creature, will
you find any comfort, but will be subdued. And indeed the glory o f
the eagle-bearing legions will end. Where then will be your strength ?
What land, unjustly enslaved by your follies, will help you ? Great
confusion will come among all the men o f the earth then, when the
Almighty, appearing on the Throne, will judge the souls o f the
living and dead and the whole world. Then neither will parents be
dear to their children nor children to their parents, because o f the
impiousness and desperate tribulation. Gnashing o f teeth and sepa­
ration and imprisonment will follow when the cities fall and the
37
 The End o f Time or the Crisis o f an Empire ?
earth opens. And when the red dragon comes on the waves with his
belly full to afflict your children, and famine comes and civil war,
then will be the end o f the W'orld and the last day and for the
glorious who are called the judgment o f immortal God. T here will
be pitiless anger in the first place against the Romans, a time thirsty
for blood and an unhappy life.
‘ Evil for you, land o f Italy, great barbarian race: you did not
know whence you had come, naked and unworthy, into the light o f
the sun, to plunge again naked into this same place and at last to
come to the Judge since you yourself judge unjustly. . . . Gigantic
hands will make you fall alone, through the world, down from your
height and you will lie under the earth. You will disappear burnt by
oil and pitch and sulphur and much smoke and you will be dust for
centuries. And whoever looks will hear from Hades the great wail o f
grief and the grinding o f teeth and you beating your godless breast
with your hand. . . .
‘Because the empire o f Rome, once flourishing, the ancient lord
o f the cities around, has vanished. T h e blooming land o f Rome shall
conquer no more when the conqueror [Antichrist] comes from Asia
with Ares. When he has finished all that he will come upon the
City which is puffed up. [O Rome] you will be 948 years old when
the fate o f death will descend with force upon you, completing the
years o f your name.’
T h is Christian oracular writer presented the end o f the ancient
world (and that meant o f the world) as imminent. He placed it 948
years after the foundation o f Rome, that is to say in a .d . 195. But in
this case again the eager apocalyptic expectation went unfulfilled.
M arcus Aurelius, under whom this was written, was succeeded by
Commodus, a young monarch whose personality was full o f contra­
dictions. He was extremely handsome and yet sick with a malady o f
old age, proud o f presenting himself as the ‘Roman Hercules’ who
could slay beasts and fight like a gladiator but in love with M arcia, a
Christian woman to whom he had given almost all the honours o f
an empress. In his time the idea o f the end o f the world once again
receded; he was a peaceful emperor and put an end to the wars
undertaken by his father M arcus against the barbarians who
threatened the frontiers from without. But the idea o f the decadence
o f the empire did not recede. T h e old governing classes, pagan and
38
 The End o f Time or the Crisis o f an Empire?
admirers o f Marcus, said that an age o f iron had appeared with the
coming o f Commodus. For them the good period had ended with
Marcus. Din CassiusL a historian who was a senator in this period,
said ‘[after the death o f Marcus] history passed from an empire o f
gold to one o f iron, rusted’ . Herodian, another historian, and per­
haps an imperial freedman, who lived at Rome in this period, also
thought that with the death nf Marcus Aurelius an epoch » d eca­
dence began.
‘ I f one considers the period from Augustus onwards, from the
time when the empire o f the Romans took on a monarchical form,
one will not find in all the years, amounting to about two centuries,
up to Marcus, such rapid successions o f reigns or such varied for­
tunes in civil and foreign wars or movements o f peoples and occu­
pations o f cities in our empire and beyond, or earthquakes or
atmospheric disturbances, or abnormal behaviour by usurpers and
emperors. For previously there is either no record at all or only
rarely o f such things.’
T h e decadence o f the ancient world appeared to the two pagans,
Dio Cassius and Herodian, in terms quite opposed to those for­
mulated at the end o f the reign o f Marcus by the Christian oracular
poet. For him the death o f Rome coincided with the reign o f M arcus,
but for the two pagans the reign o f M arcus was the state’s last golden
age. In the oracular vision the end o f Rome was the iust sentence for
tributary oppression and the wars o f M arcus. In Herodian’s inter­
pretation, on the contrary, the great crisis began at the moment
when Commodus, the peaceful emperor, had preferred the delights
o f Rome to the war and the icv Danube, and his preference for
Rome had been inspired bv his ‘ahnormal’ ‘ paraHnviraP Ufr,
to use Herodian’s Greek phrases.
T h e reign o f Commodus was followed by the year o f the five
emperors (193), the civil war and the reigns o f the Severi. Amongst
many Christians the great hope remained alive and Montanus
believed that the collapse o f this world was imminent. In Pontus
Christian peasants left their fields, sold their goods and awaited the
day o f judgment, while the same expectation o f the imminent end
led men, women and children in Syria to move to meet the K ing­
dom o f God in the desert. Tertullian prayed ‘that the end might be
delayed’ , pro mora finis. And here a great Christian writer, St.
39
 The End o f Time or the Crisis o f an Empire ?
Hippolytus, intervenes. H e too starts, in his investigation o f the end
o f the world, from the Book o f Daniel and the Revelation o f St.
John. In his Commentary on Daniel St. H ippolytus gave an u n for­
gettable expression to this end n f w n fld w h irli coincides with
the end otThe Roman empire. He p laces it in A.n. <fnn, npir. tn
date earlier predicted by the pagan Vettius who had, we mav
remember, allowed Rome twelve centuries n f life But the difference
between Vettius, the pagan o f the age o f Varro, and St. Hippolytus,
the Christian o f the age o f Severus, is enormous. St. Hippolytus
attributes the end o f Rome to the rise o f the democracies.
‘T h e toes [o f the statue in the dream o f Nebuchadnezzar] are
meant to represent the democracies which are to come and which
will be separate one from another like the ten toes o f the statue on
which iron will be mingled with clay.*
These ‘ democracies’ arise from the ‘nations', ‘while ten kings’ ,
Hippolytus says elsewhere, ‘will partition the empire according to
the nations’ . Hippolytus has seen correctly the time and manner o f
the death o f Rome, for the end o f the ancient world was in effect to
a large extent a victory o f the parts over the whole, of th*» p frîp W y
over the weakened centre. T h e apocalyptic perspective drew Hippo-
lytus’s attention towards the internal contradictions and the final
destiny o f the empire o f the world. Apart from that, the problem o f
the ‘ nations’ , the ‘ democracies’ , which would one day divide the
empire o f Rome between themselves, constantly dominated Hippo-
lytus’s thought. ‘T he Kyrios [Lord] was born in the forty-second
year o f Augustus, with whom the flowering o f the Roman empire
began. Through the Apostles he called all the nations and all the
tongues and made them into one nation o f Christian faithful who
bore the name o f the Kyriosy the new name, in their hearts. T he
empire which rules us according to the power o f Satan wished to
imitate all this and so it too gathered together the strongest from all
the nations and armed them for war, calling them by the name o f
Rom ans.’
T his view emphasized one aspect o f the crisis, the condition o f
the peoples within, rhp nnivpr«;al statp. nf Rnmp Another Christian
writer later examined the crisis in moral life, a more general aspect
but an equally interesting one; a Sallustian theme dropped into the
dramatic atmosphere o f the third century A.D. He was a dis-
40
 The End o f Time or the Crisis o f an Empire ?
tinguished Carthaginian rhetorician, Cyprian. Within the officially
pagan empire the Christians were not a sparse minority hut a note­
worthy section o f the population, strengthened by their faith.
Under Commodus the emperor’s concubine herself, Marcia, had
been a Christian;1 half a century later the Christian communities
were still stronger and even one emperor, Philip the Arab, who ruled
from 244 to 249, was regarded as a Christian.
Cyprian was converted to Christianity at the time o f Philip the
Arab/TH e fury o f war had taken hold o f the empire under Philip’s
predecessor. T h e new emperor, Christian or near to the Christians,
had arranged a peace, but this was not enough to quieten the
anguished soul o f Cyprian. T h e eager neophyte thought he could
see in the everyday life o f R oman society an inexorable decline of
values “equivalent to a sentenceToT death. He protested against the
wars. ‘ I f someone commits murder he regards it as a crime; if the
murder is carried out in the name o f the state, it is considered vir­
tuous.’ In the administration o f justice again he saw the hopes o f a
better society vanishing. ‘T h e laws are written on the twelve tables
and in the public edicts but the judge sells his decision to the highest
bidder’ ; wills are falsified; ‘law is in league with crime*. In 251 the
tragedy deepened. Decius, a pagan emperor, had been ruling since
249. T h e fifty-year-old Cyprian returned to his battle. In his letter
addressed to Demetrianus he tried to reaffirm his conception o f the
inexorable decadence o f an aged world against pagans who attri­
buted the ills o f the state to the new faith. T h is was, as we have
already seen, a Lucretian motif, but Cyprian made it his own and
felt on all sides the tiredness o f old age and the cold touch o f death.
‘You ought to know that this world has already grown old. It no
longer has the powers which once supported it; the vigour and
strength by which it was once sustained. Even if we Christians did
not speak and give expression to the warnings o f the Holy Scrip­
tures and the divine prophecies, the world itself is already announ­
cing its decay and the events themselves are the evidence o f its
decline and fall. In winter there is no longer plenty o f water for the
seed, in summer no longer the accustomed heat to mature them; nor

1 Or at least very close to the Christians. Bishop Hippolytus who expresses the most
unyielding Christianity calls her philotheos, ‘pious’. She was devoted to the Bishop of
Rome, Victor. Cf. ch. 7, below.

41
 The End o f Time or the Crisis o f an Empire?
is the spring weather happy nor autumn fertile in produce. T he
production o f silver and gold has gone down in the exhausted mines
as well as the production o f marble; the worked-out veins give less
and less from day to day. T he cultivator is no longer in the fields, the
sailor on the seas, soldier in the barracks, honesty in the market­
place, justice in the law court, solidarity in friendship, skill in the
arts, discipline in manners. Do you really think that so aged a world
can have the energy that youth, still fresh and new, could once find ?
Everything which approaches its end and turns towards decline and
death must necessarily lose vigour. As in its owm setting the sun
sends out rays less bright and fiery, so also the moon is less bright
in its waning, and the tree which had once been fertile and green,
its branches drying up, becomes sterile and deformed by old age___
‘You blame the Christians because everything is reduced with the
ageing o f the world. But it is certainly not the Christians’ fault that
old men lose their strength and no longer have the powers o f hearing
they once had or their speed or sight, their sturdiness, hardiness or
health. Once the long-lived attained 800 or 900 years, now with
difficulty a hundred. We see bald children, the hair disappearing
before growing; nowadays life does not end but begins with old
age-----
‘As for the greater frequency o f wars, the more serious preoccu­
pation with overcoming famines and sterility, the raging o f sick­
nesses which ruin health, the devastation wreaked by the plague in
the midst o f m en -this too, make no mistake, was foretold: that in
the last times ills are multiplied, misfortunes are diversified and,
with the approach o f the day o f judgment, G od’s angry punishment
moves towards the ruin o f men. You are mistaken, in your foolish
ignorance o f the truth, when you protest that these things happen
because we do not worship the gods; they happen because you do
not worship G od.’
T w o themes are mingled in Cyprian On the oqfì ig thp
analysis o f the Roman crisis, a ppcsimicfir picture lirith rharowm^
especially Sallustian, colouring and with biological motifs: old age,
as in Seneca the Elder and in Florus, and certain climatological and
geographical observations which might remind one o f modern
thinkers like the geographer Ellsworth Huntington and the chemist
Liebig. On the other hand there is the idea o f the imminent end o f
42
 The End o f Time or the Crisis o f an Empire ?
the world with the coming o f Antichrist. T hey are the two expres-
sions ot human anguisn in tnis tormented period o f the Roman
Em pire: pessimistic observation and apocalyptic certainty. T h e first
applies to categories which are more or less linked with the frame­
work o f ancient tradition. T he second, which transforms the end o f
the state into the end o f Tim e, is infused by the Christian sense of
tragedy and stretches towards the future, burning the past behind it.

43
 3

‘External Enemies’ and ‘Internal Enemies’

Another Christian writer o f the third century, Commodian, was the

first to introduce the Germans, or more precisely the G oths, into
the literature o fth e world as protagonists in the fall ofTTome. In
the reign o f Decius, a stern persecutor o f the Christians, the Goths
had invaded and plundered the Balkan peninsula, and the Emperor
himself died in 251 in a fierce battle among the marshes at Abrittus.
In 252-3 the flood o f the Gothic invasion touched Asia M inor and
extended as far as Ephesus. It was under the impression o f these
events and o f those which followed, including the new persecution
o f the Christians unleashed by Valerian in 257-8 and that emperor’s
ill-fated Persian War, that Commodian, about 260 approximately,
wrote his Carmen Apologeticum. He could not bring himself to
believe that a great part o f the Roman world had remained deaf for
two centuries and more to the message o f the Christian faith; in
another work he asked scornfully, ‘Why have yon been children
(only children can believe in the thunderbolts o f Jove) for two hun­
dred years?’ 1 In the Carmen Apologeticum his scorn for the perse­
cuting emperor overflowed. T h e splendid lines o f poetry were
invaded from time to time, briefly and tumultuously, by a burning
desire for revenge and a longing to see justice done. He wrote with
1 This passage is crucial for the important and difficult question o f the chronology
o f Commodian. For this see, for example, Courcelle, Histoire Littéraire des Grandes
Invasions Germaniques (1948), pp. 127 ff. (with different conclusions from ours).

44
 ‘External Enemies' and ‘Internal Enemies'
disdain o f the pagans who had been taken prisoner by the bar­
barians and with implied delight o f the invading Goths who had
made friends with Christians. T o the K in g o f the Goths, Kniva, he
gave the name Apollyon, ‘the destroyer’, taken from the Book o f
Revelations. T h e barbarian invasion became part o f the apocalyp­
tic picture o f the end o f the empire, expected to take place in the
near future.
Commodian was not, o f course, the first writer to introduce the
Germans into classical literature. As early as the time o f Alexander
the Great, a traveller from Marseilles, Pytheas, had spoken o f these
Northern peoples; and about 200 B.c. a Greek collection o f ‘strange
things’ 1 had made obscure references to the Germara, peoples o f
the extreme North, ‘who never see the light o f day’ , ethnically akin
to the Celts. Eratosthenes and Poseidonius had given information
about the Germanic world. Caesar12 distinguished these peoples
from the Celts, emphasizing amongst other things the absence o f a
priestly class among the Germ ans, a feature which indeed is o f v e ry
great importance for the h istory o f their culture. In A.D. 98 Tacitus3
had drawn his picture o f the germanio ‘virtues’, connecting them
with the ‘ancestral way o f life’ o f the Romans which he considered
to have been obscured by the more recently developed ‘legalism’
and other effects o f civilization. But even Tacitus’s valuation o f
germanio characteristics was not altogether original; it was con­
nected in various ways with Poseidonius’s distinction between
nature and culture, between the savages and decadent cultivation.
and this was a Stoic doctrine, expressed not only in Poseidonius but
also in the famous ninetieth letter o f the philosopher Seneca. We
should not therefore press too far the Tacitean distinction between
germanio ‘virtues’ on the one hand and the legalistic decadence o f
the Romans on the other; Tacitus would have expressed approval
o f the ‘virtues’ o f any other people in a state o f nature, for instance
o f the indomitable Britons, whose ferocia he emphasized in contrast
with the ‘softness’ engendered by long peacefulness.

1 Known from an edition, which has not survived, of the de mirab. ause, o f the Pseudo-
Aristotle (four other versions o f this have come down to us), used by Stephanus Byzan­
tinus, s.v. ripfiapa (or from its source).
2 Walser, Historia, Einzclschr., Heft 2.
3 Walser, Rom, das Reich und die fremden Völker in der Geschichtschreibung der
frühen Kaiserzeit (1951).

45
 *External Enemies* and ‘Internal Enemies*
Only the view o f the Christians, directed towards the future like
that o f all creative minorities, could perceive (more than a century
and a half after Tacitus) the position o f the Germans as the leading
people o f modern history, set over against Rome. And that insight
came, one must remember, to a poet o f the highest genius1 (for such
Commodian was), who saw the judgment o f G o d in the blasphemous
grimaces o f the persecuting Romans. So the revolutionary spirit o f
this intransigent Christian met with the new peoples who were to
make history in the centuries now beginning, and indeed were
already making history as they fell in fury upon the cities o f the old
empire. In some ways the new faith could be more easily received
by these peoples than by the old classical states, which had been
shaken to the core by the great spiritual upheaval o f Christianity but
were still bound by the external and official forms o f a powerful
tradition. T h e conversion o f the Visigoths to Christianity was in
fact initiated by those Christian families which had ‘fraternized*
with them in the third century, during the invasion. In his imagina­
tion Commodian transformed the invasion o f the Goths into a
menace directed against ‘Rome*, against the whole em pire; an
eager, feverish wishfulness made him leap ahead o f events. In
reality, a century and a half later, Alaric’s Goths (Christians by this
time, no longer pagans like those described by Commodian) would
strike suddenly at an empire which was no longer persecuting the
Christians.
‘T he beginning o f the end will be our seventh persecution:
behold it is already knocking at the door and presses on with the
sword : [as a divine punishment] it will carry across the river the
Goths breaking in [to the empire]. With them will be the king
Apollyon, terrible in name, wfho in the midst o f the fighting will end
the persecution o f the Christians. He moves towards Rome with
many thousands o f men and by G od’s decree he subdues them and
takes them prisoner. M any o f the senators, made prisoner, will weep
then; conquered by the barbarian they blaspheme the God o f
heaven.
‘These pagan [Goths] however everywhere nourish the Christ-

1 One recalls the judgment of Huysmans: ‘ un seul poète chrétien, Commodien de

Gaza, représentait dans sa bibliothèque l’art de l’an III. . . . Ces vers tendus, sombres,
sentant le fauve . . .’ .
46
 *External Enemies' and ‘Internal Enemies'
ians, whom they seek out gladly as brothers, preferring them to the
luxurious worshippers o f false idols. In fact the Goths persecute the
pagans and place the senate under their yoke. These evils descend
upon those who have persecuted the Christians. Within five months
the persecutors are slain by the enemy.’
In his understanding o f the rôle o f the Germans in the history of
the empire. Commodian remains an isolated figure in the thirdcen­
tury. About the same time another great Christian writer, D ionysius
Bishop o f Alexandria, contented himself with a definition o f the
decadence o f the empire in terms o f demographic crisis on the one
hand and o f an apocalyptic extinction o f the human race on the
other.
‘T hey marvel and wonder whence come the continual plagues,
the deaths o f all kinds, whence comes the varied and enormous
depopulation. T hey ask why the city now contains altogether-in­
cluding the children and the aged -a population barely equal to that
o f the old people alone in past time. T h e fact is that the number of
men between forty and seventy then surpassed the number o f men
today between fourteen and eighty. Today the youngest are the
companions o f the eldest.’
Behind all Christian pessimism, violent like Commodian’s or
reflective like that o f Dionysius, there was however the eschato­
logical conviction n f the end n f the worldTmore or less near but in
any case certain. T h is ending seemed to be guaranteed by scripture
-th e Book o f Daniel and the Book o f Revelations. Therefore the
pagans tried to attack these books which seemed almost to unite in
themselves the whole suppressed protest o f the followers o f Christ.
About 2ÓQ Porphyry, who knew the sacred writings o f Christianity
well, directed his attack against the fundamentals in his famous
polemic Against the Christians, his swansong. In the twelfth book o f
this work he tried to show that the Book o f Daniel could give no
certainty about the decadence and imminent end o f the empire o f
Rom e. With the astonishing penetration which made him the great­
est orientalist o f antiquity he perceived that in this text the last of
the ‘four monarchies’ points to the Seleucid and not at all to the
R oman empire. T he Book o f Daniel, he concluded, did not contain
a prophecy o f the collapse o f the Roman world, it simply expressed
the tensions between fndnism and Hellenism in the second century
47
 ‘External Enemies' and ‘Internal Enemies*
B .C .But philological researches cannot prevail over great spiritual
revolutions. T h e ecclesiastical tradition o f that age continued to
seek in the Book o f Daniel confirmation o f the unalterable con­
demnation o f the empire o f Rom e. Christian authors like Eusebius,
Apollinarius and Methodius o f Olympus also wrote with this con­
viction. About 407 St. Jerom e summed up this point o f view in his
famous Commentary on Daniel :
‘We assert what all ecclesiastical writers have handed down to us:
at the end o f the world, at that time when the kingdom o f the
Romans must be destroyed, there will be ten kings who will divide
the Roman world. . .
When St. Jerom e was writing the Commentary on Daniel the
emperors had been Christian for nearly^ a century. Constantine,
who was master o f Rome from October 1 1 2 . had been converted
to the Christian God, abandoning the pagan devotion which was
still perpetuated in the juridical structure. T h e old traditionalist
circles, which even before the time o f Constantine blamed the
Christians for the Roman crisis, continued in their isolated position
to speak o f decadence. T hey did not protest openly about the
Christianization o f the state which had taken place, but, reviving the
old astrological calculations, they predicted that Christianity would
have a life corresponding to a ‘great year’ o f 365 years.1 Above all
they protested against Constantine who had introduced a new
bureaucracy and police. It was to the latter that the historian
Aurelius Victor attributed the ‘ruin’ o f the Roman state.2 And so
the idea o f Roman decadence, which for the Christians was now a
question o f biblical exegesis, came to be for the pagans the obses­
sion o f a sick man who wants at all costs to be cured. F or Julian
the Apostate the empire was ‘sick’ , as he said, and in decline. He
strove to give the rusty tradition a new content. One o f the in­
habitants o f Julian’s world o f ideas was a critic o f Constantine (and
therefore probably a pagan) who addressed to an unknown emperor
(apparently Constantius II) a work in which he advanced proposals
for economic reforms, for reforms o f the bureaucratic structure, and
for new military devices. We do not know this writer’s name, but
1 Hubaux, Antiquité Classique (1948), pp. 143 ff.
8 Hence the antithesis Diocletian-Constantine; cf. the present writer’s Aspetti
Sociali del quarto secolo (19 5 1); Seston, Reallexikon fü r Antike und Christentum (1955),
pp. 10 36-7.
 ‘External Enemies’ and ‘Internal Enemies’
he has undoubtedly given us interesting evidence o f the way in
which the idea o f ‘ decadence’ was adapted by those who were
most concerned about the preservation o f the Roman state. Their
extremely intelligent recognition o f the actual facts did not change
their surprising capacity for self-sacrifice. T he anonymous author
o f this work took the new economic and social conditions as his start­
ing point in order to deduce his proposals from them.
‘ It was in the age o f Constantine that extravagant grants assigned
gold instead o f bronze (which earlier was considered o f great value)
to petty commercial transactions; but the greed I speak o f is thought
to have arisen from the following causes. When the gold and silver
and the huge quantity o f precious stones which had been stored
away in the temples long ago reached the public, they enkindled all
men’s possessive and spendthrift instincts. And while the expendi­
ture o f bronze itself-w hich, as I have said, had been stamped with
the heads o f kings-had seemed already vast and burdensome
enough, yet from some kind o f blind folly there ensued an even
more extravagant passion for spending gold, which is considered
more precious. T h is store o f gold meant that the houses o f the
powerful were crammed full and their splendour enhanced to the
destruction o f the poor, the poorer classes o f course being held down
by force. But the poor were driven by their afflictions into various
criminal enterprises, and losing sight o f all respect for law, all feel­
ings o f loyalty, they entrusted their revenge to crime. For they often
inflicted the most severe injuries on the Empire, laying waste the
fields, breaking the peace with outbursts o f brigandage, stirring up
animosities; and passing from one crime to another supported
usurpers whom they brought forth for the glorification o f Your
Virtuous M ajesty: it was not bravado that inspired them.
‘Therefore, Most Excellent Emperor, you will take care in your
prudence to limit public grants and thereby look to the taxpayers’
interests and transmit to posterity the glory o f your name. Where­
fore, do you reflect for a little on the story o f those happy times, and
ponder upon those famous kingdoms o f antique poverty, which had
learned to till the fields and abstain from riches: remember how
their uncorrupted frugality commends them to all history with
honour and praise. Assuredly we term “ golden” those realms which
had no gold at all.
49
 ‘External Enemies' and ‘Internal Enemies'
‘Among the intolerable mischiefs from which the state suffers is
the debasement o f the solidus arising from the fraudulent practices
o f certain persons. . . . For the unscrupulous cunning o f the pur­
chaser o f the solidus and the pernicious dilemma o f the seller have
combined to introduce considerable difficulty into the actual con­
tracts so as to preclude the possibility o f straight dealing in business
transactions. Therefore your Majesties’ correction must be applied
in this matter, too, as in all others: I mean, the workers o f the M int
must be assembled from every quarter and concentrated in a single
island so as to improve the utility o f the coinage and the circulation
o f the solidi. Let them, in fact, be cut off for all time from association
with the neighbouring land, so that freedom o f intercourse, which
lends itself to fraudulent practices, may not marr the integrity o f a
public service. Confidence in the M int will there be maintained un­
impaired thanks to its isolation; there will be no room for fraud
when there is no opportunity for trade. . . .
‘ Now in addition m these injuries, wherewith the arts o f avarice
afflict the provinces, comes the appalling greed o f the provincial
Governors, which is ruinous to the taxpayers’ interests. F or these
men, despising the respectable character o f their office, think that
they have been sent into the provinces as merchants, and are all the
more burdensome in that injustice proceeds from the very persons
from whom a remedy should have been expected. And as if their
own iniquity were not enough, everyone o f them directs in the work
o f ruin Exactors o f such character that they completely exhaust the
resources o f the taxpayers by various methods o f extortion-evi­
dently the Governors assume that they would be insufficiently dis­
tinguished were they alone to transgress. . . .
‘ I have now described, as I intended, the distresses o f the State,
which should rightly be removed by Imperial measures. Let us now
turn to the vast expenditure on the army which must be checked
similarly, for this is what has thrown the entire system o f tax pay­
ment into difficulties. But in case one as busy as Your M ajesty
should be wearied by such a mass o f confusion, I shall explain the
solution o f this chronic problem briefly. [Instead o f twenty or
twenty-five years as usual] A member o f the forces, after completing
some years’ service and attaining to a rate o f five annonae or more,
should be granted an honourable discharge and go into retirement
50
 ‘External Enemies' and ‘Internal Enemies'
to enjoy his leisure, so that he may not burden the State by receiving
these annonae any longer. . . . T h is procedure will not only relieve
the state, oppressed as it is by its expenditure, but will also diminish
the worries o f the Imperial Foresight. Further, it will encourage
more men to enter the service, men who were formerly deterred by
the slowness o f promotion.’ 1
Behind these proposals and admonitions, followed by projects for
new types o f military machines, there is o f course one preoccupation
which is especially underlined: the author wants the empire to
exploit to the maximum extent its resources o f manpower. These
had been seriously diminished in the countryside, and therefore in
the army, which was recruited from the peasantry; and at the same
time, beyond the limes, as the anonymous author said, the bar­
barians ‘ were barking about’ . If, as we suppose, the author was
writing under Constantius I I , a little before the coming o f Julian in
36 1, one might say that in this respect he was relatively fortunate;
he did not see, or at least he had not yet seen, the decisive onslaught
o f the barbarians on their immense prey. But the thought that the
great calamity might overtake the empire one day made him reflect
on it again and again.
It is easy for us today to smile at proposals like the enforced isola­
tion o f the moneyers. Our age is too disabused to believe that the
sick will rise from their beds after a sudden cure. But these men­
the anonymous author who wrote under Constantius I I , Julian the
Apostate, and many others too-loved their state to the point o f
madness. T hey loved it no less immoderately than Commodian and
Arnobius had hated it; for the empire o f Rome could in reality be
the object o f infinite love as well as infinite hatred. Therefore even
desperate proposals like that o f the island o f moneyers deserve our
respect. So does the despair o f Julian, burning his fleet on the T igris
because o f the mirage o f a great pitched battle. Moreover the pro­
posals o f the anonymous writer were in some cases most intelligent :
his request for deflation was carried into effect by Julian ; his pro­
posal for an army o f wage-paid peasantry anticipated by two

1 Thompson, A Roman Reformer and Inventor ( 19 5 1); cf. Andreotti, Rivista di

Filologia Classica (1953), p. 164. It is worth emphasizing, in so far as it affects the
chronology, that tyrannus could only be the usurper; a man like Firmus could not be
described as tyrannus.

51
 4External Enemies' and ‘Internal Enemies'
centuries and a half the creation o f the ‘themes* by Heraclius.1 But
we should respect above all his far-seeing sadness. In 375 the catas­
trophe began.
A s before in the time o f Commodian, the movements o f the
peoples threatened the classic heart o f the empire. In 375 there was
danger o f war in Italy; St. Ambrose’s brother Satyrus hastened to
return to M ilan from Africa, where he was at the time. In another
part o f the empire the Emperor Valens received the Goths as mer­
cenary troops. When coexistence with the barbarians proved to be
im possible-and the fault certainly lav with the Roman ruling classes,
a^jmateH h y a profound hatred for the new guests-the conflict
between Romans and Goths could not be avoided: in 378,. after one
of the most dram atic n f m ilitary campaigns. Valens was defeated
and died at Adrianoole^ T o placate the victors, Theodosius, the
successor o f Valens, had to grant them the military command o f
Illyricum. Under the influence o f the catastrophe men returned to
questioning themselves about the deeper reasons for the disaster.
A panegyrist, Them istius, was pleased to minimize these ills: in an
oration dating from the beginning o f 3 8 1, he showed him self con­
tent that Theodosius should have ceded the Illyrican provinces to
the barbarians.
1 The assessment of Heraclius’s introduction of the themes is most important for the
understanding of both Roman and medieval history; Heraclius stands just on the
boundary between antiquity and the ‘Byzantine Middle Ages’ . This great Byzantine
emperor, who ruled from 610 to 641, had to submit to the Arab advance which took
Egypt and Syria from the empire, but he was able to throw back the Persian advance
which threatened to submerge the whole o f Asia Minor. And this success was un­
doubtedly due to the introduction of the themes. Heraclius set up districts in which he
assigned ‘ property for soldiers’ to the troops, with hereditary title. Each district was
called a thema, a ‘body of armed men’. There has been much debate about the origin
of Heraclius’s reform. The most generally held view (most recently in G . Ostrogorsky,
History o f the Byzantine State, trans. J. Hussey (1956), pp. 87 ff.) traces it back to the
limitanei (‘confinar»’, soldiers on the frontiers) of the late empire. I f this is correct,
Heraclius’s reform would not be a true innovation but would have continued Roman
institutions which were already in being in the fourth century a .d . But in reality the
limitanei of the late empire were never as a matter of rule soldier-tenants (cf. Seston,
Historia (1955), pp. 284 ff.; Jones, Classical Review (1953), p. 114. Another view is put
by Van Berchem, L'armée de Dioclétien et la reforme constantinienne (1952). The chief
evidence adduced by Van Berchem is, however, a passage in which the Byzantine his­
torian Malalas says that Diocletian put the duces ‘more within the encampments’ ; if,
as I believe, the expression of Malalas refers solely to those 'inner boundaries’ men­
tioned by Ammianus, X X I II, 5, 1, one may draw the conclusion that the duces also
are at the limes, even if at an inner line, and that therefore the limitanei are not, as the
distinguished Swiss historian thinks, peasant soldiers, distinct from the other soldiers
proper).
52
 ‘External Enemies' and *Internal Enemies'
T h e hypothesis which always faced the Christians was that the
catastrophe might in truth signify not only the decadence but the
coming end o f the world. Commenting, in 386-8, on Jesu s’s pro­
phecy o f the destruction o f the temple o f Jerusalem and o f the con­
summatio saeculi, the B ishop o f M ilan, St. Am brose, drew a balance
o f the tragedy. On the one hand his acute sense o f politics saw
clearly the seriousness o f the insurrectio o f the Huns against the
Alans, o f the Alans against the Goths, in fact o f the whole migra­
tion o f peoples: on the other hand he announced a moral crisis
which, in his usual manner, he painted in biblical colours. He spoke
therefore o f external enemies and internal enemies, hostes extranei et
hostes domestici. B y a strange chance he thus concurred with Poly­
bius, who had spoken (though on an exclusively historical plane) o f
eventual ‘external causes’ and ‘ internal causes’ o f the decadence o f
Rome. (A modern reader will immediately be reminded o f Toynbee’s
categories o f ‘external proletariat’ and ‘ internal proletariat’, but
these are sociological predicates in Toynbee, generic concepts in St.
Ambrose.) T h e Bishop o f M ilan, a completely loyal Christian sub­
ject o f the emperor, regarded the acceptance o f barbarian ways by a
bishop as plain sacrilege and recognized the Goths in the people o f
Magog o f whom Ezekiel had spoken. T hey were the hostes extranei
(external enemies) while the hostes domestici (internal enemies) were
the passions-above all the longing for money and authority-w hich
had diverted men from their primitive path and ultimately from the
law o f nature.1
‘T he best proofs o f these celestial words are ourselves, who bear
the stamp o f the end o f the world. How many wars and what
reports o f catastrophe will be ascribed to us! T h e Huns turn against
the Alans, the Alans against the Goths, the Goths against the
Taifali and Sarmati. Exiled from their homes, the Goths have made
us in Illyricum exiles in our own homeland. And the end o f all
this is not yet in sight. T here is famine on all sides and plague
attacks men and oxen and other beasts equally, so that even we
who were not directly injured by the war find ourselves reduced by
pestilence to the same condition as those who were defeated. We are
indeed in the twilight o f this world and therefore some o f the

1 For the understanding o f the whole o f ‘Christian historical apologetics’, one may
consult the fundamental essay by Straub, Historia (1950), pp. 52 ff.

53
 ‘External Enemies’ and ‘Internal Enemies*
world’s evils come first: famine is an evil o f the world, pestilence
is an evil o f the world, persecution is an evil o f the world.
‘But there are also other wars which the Christian must face : the
battles o f rival greeds, and the conflicts o f passions. T he enemies
within are much more serious than those w ithout.. . . But the strong
man says : though an host should encamp against me, my heart shall
not fear : though war should rise against me, in this will I be con­
fident [Psalm 26].’
In the years when St. Ambrose was writing these lines. Ammi­
anus Marcellinus was working on his Annals. the most famous and
most profound historical work to be produced in the late empire.
He was a pagan from Antioch, but he did not write with the pur­
pose o f supporting his own beliefs. He believed in the possibility o f
‘objective’ historical writing. Like St. Ambrose he had no love for
the Germ ans; for example, the primitive initiation ceremonies o f
the Taifali appeared to him as thoroughly immoral. He tried to
explain the origins o f the onrush o f barbarian peoples, which had
thrown everything in its path into confusion, by means o f an analy­
sis o f the way o f life o f the H uns; and he was sufficiently objective
to recognize that the disaster o f Adrianool* haH Kppn in a certain
sense willed by the Roman ruling class which had given dog meat
to the Goths in return for their sons who had been reduced to
slavery. He saw the origin o f Roman decadence in an excessive
growth o f bureaucracy and oppressiveness o f taxation. Therefore
his disapproval fell upon Constantius I I and his adm iration-
restrained, however, within definite lim its-w as reserved for Julian
who, as Caesar in Gaul, had reduced the tribute from 25 solidi to 7.
His attitude was on the same plane as that o f the anonymous writer,
mentioned earlier, who had upbraided Constantine for the excessive
issue o f gold and the governors for their ‘appalling greed . . . ruinous
to the taxpayers’ interests’ . Fundamentally Ammianus’s work was
an_epic o f the res publica which was in danger o f having the life
squeezed out o f it by the barbarian hordes pressing on the frontiers
and enrolled in the imperial army, bv the desertions and treacheries
of the soldiers, hy tk/> mie*™«; which humiliated the nrhan life n f
Rome, and bv the struggles for Pnman qiisrnpal tlirnnp Every
episode and page o f his Annals seems to lead back ideally to the
thought o f the catastrophe o f Adrianople (378). Ammianus was
54
 ‘External Enemies’ and ‘Internal Enemies’
writing in the age o f the Emperor Theodosius the Great (379-95)
which was dominated by the memory o f that battle with the horri­
fying final scene o f the defeated emperor burnt in the fire. And
another who seems to have lived in the time o f Theodosius1 was
Vegetius, a much lesser writer than Ammianus but nevertheless
obsessed like him by the idea o f the grievous decadence o f Rome.
Ammianus was a pagan; Vegetius, formally at least, a Christian.
But both wrote as if in the midst o f an oppressive emptiness and
with the obscure sense that something had been lost after 375:
Ammianus with the implacable melancholy o f the great historian,
Vegetius with the learned optimism o f one who throws out im­
possible solutions and plays with magic names which have by now
become mere shadows o f what they had been. T he venerated word
which came to represent for him a panacea was the ‘legion’ . For him
the remedy for decadence was the old legionary discipline; a remedy
whose vagueness and abstractness does indeed contrast with the
proposals o f the anonymous author who wrote under Constantius I I ,
proposals which had been sometimes utopian but still alive and up
to date. As for explanation o f the crisis, Vegetius justly looked for
it in the indifference o f landed proprietors who avoided sending
their better tenants to the levies and instead offered unfit people who
would not be suitable for field work either. T h is was in the last
analysis a precise diagnosis o f the trouble-but an antiquarian
remedy. Though, however, his diagnosis o f the decadence has been
forgotten, some o f his military precepts are still familiar to our ears
and, while they have remained Vegetius’s own up to a point, they
were in part adopted by Machiavelli.
These outworn proposals o f Vegetius were then not so much
remedies as contributions to the literary lamentations about deca­
dence. A s such they were also a comfort to those who wished to
forget that Theodosius the Great had had to quarter the Gothic
soldiers, the victors o f Adrianople, in the Illyrican region in the very
heart o f the empire. Vegetius’s scholarly labours allowed his readers
to conclude that the crisis o f Rome was not a new thing, since even
the age o f H annibal-or so this author assured them -had seen
something similar ‘ in consequence o f the long peace which followed

1 For the chronology o f Vegetius cf. the indications in Giannelli-Mazzarino, Trattato

di Storia romana, II (1956), pp. 542 -3.

55
 4External Enemies' a n d 4Internal Enemies*
the First Punic W ar’ . But when the M oor Gildo rebelled against
Rome the danger began to be deeply felt, so that even Claudian, poet
o f the general Stilicho, confessed that ‘the very bastion o f Rome
harms the empire’ . Gildo was overcome. In 401 and 402 Stilicho
defeated Alaric in Italy. Nevertheless the Romans o f this age had to
make something o f an effort to believe the panegyrical effusions o f
the paganizing Claudian rather than the pessimism o f the Christian
Sulpicius Severus, who about 400 brought to mind that the feet o f
the statue o f Nebuchadnezzar were o f clay. In 406 Stilicho defeated
the Ostrogoth Radagaisus but in the same year waves o f barbarians
poured over Gaul and some o f them later into Spain : Alans, Suevi
and Vandals. A section o f the empire began to fall apart.
And then in 408 Stilicho was killed; in 4 10 Alaric took Rome. On
Alaric’s death his Visigoths went back up Italy into Gaul. Orientius,
a man o f the world who had turned religious under the weight o f
the tragedy, wrote his Commonitorium about this time: ‘A ll Gaul*,
he said, ‘ has become one funeral pyre.’
I t was not just the derndpnrç hut the rnllapse o f the empire.
Orientius’s Commonitorium took the origin o f the evil to be simply
the first grievous sins : lust, envy, avarice, anger, lying. At the end o f
the Commonitorium come the four final experience s: death, hell,
heaven, the last judgment. One might say that with this little poem,
stretching out to the life beyond, * h e jy ;d d ie h f g in -n in e re n -
turies later the same motif o f sin and the four last things will supply
the medieval spiritual synthesis which is also the greatest poetical
work o f Christianity, the Divine Comedy. With Orientius the idea o f
decadence passes beyond the sphere o f proposals and forecasts to
become a terrified remorse in the presence o f sin, a pure expectation
o f divine judgment.
‘Why go over the funeral ceremonies o f a world falling into ruins
in accordance with the common law o f all that passes away ? [Here
again then the echo o f Sallust’s omnia orta intereunt.] Why dwell on
the number o f those who die in the world, when you yourself see
your own last day drawing near ? . . . Blessed is he who, considering
this solemn judgment, watched for by the city and the nations, can
await it with a steady heart and a calm view, secure in the innocence
o f his life.’
In 4 16 another Christian poet o f Gaul wrote the celebrated
56
 ‘External Enemies' and ‘Internal Enemies'
Carmen de providentia, in which the idea o f the ‘judgment o f G od’
and the ‘heavenly city’ sets the tone for a general review o f recent
disasters and the condemnation o f sinners.
‘T his man weeps over the gold and silver which he has lost; this
other over the furniture which was snatched from him, for the neck­
laces which the brides o f the Goths have divided amongst them­
selves. . . . But you who weep over your lands, over your abandoned
houses, over the avenues o f your burnt castle, would you not do
better to weep over your real evil, if you could see the devastation
which is at your heart’s core ? . . .
‘ L et us not raise up against us, with furious lamentation, the just
anger o f G o d ; let us not accuse the judgment o f God, which sur­
passes the means o f our reason and our rage more than does the
bottomless abyss.’

57
 4

The Judgments o f God as

an Historical Category'

St. Ambrose had spoken o f ‘external enemies’ , the barbarians,

and o f ‘ internal enemies’, sins. T h e Comrnfi*,itnril,n' Orientine
and the Carmen de t rnvidentia grave first place to the internal
enemies.
T he idea o f decadence, now strengthened by a profound sense o f
guilt, was transformed into the idea o f the judgments o f God. T he
historical work o f Orosius, finished about 418, is woven out o f
‘judgments o f G od’ . Orosius was a Spanish priest, very devoted to
St. Augustine, who had known at first hand in his own country the
devastations and horrors o f the barbarian migrations. ‘ I saw the
barbarians’ , he said, ‘and I had to avoid them because they were
harmful, to flatter them because they were the masters, to pray to
them though they were infidels, to flee them because they laid
traps.’ But even this tragedy o f his own life and o f Roman life in the
overrun provinces seemed to him nothing in comparison with the
great flux o f history.
‘[Alexander and the Macedonians] first afflicted [the Persians]
with wars and then regulated them with new laws. [The barbarians]
too are now troubling with acts o f war regions in which, if they were
1 For the whole of this chapter cf. Spörl, Grundformen Hochmittelalterlicher Geschichts­
anschauung (19 35); Kamlah, Christentum und Geschichtlichkeit (second ed., 1951).

58
 The Judgments o f God as an Historical Category
to succeed in maintaining themselves there-w hich God forbid ! —
they would be compelled to establish an order o f their own kind
so that those who are now regarded as the cruellest enemies would
come to be called kings in the future. Whatever name one may wish
to give to these expeditions, whether they are regarded as our ills
or as the military virtue o f the barbarians, in any case they remain
inferior to comparable events o f ancient times and in both cases
they may suitably be compared with the struggle between Alex­
ander and the Persians. I f we consider them as military virtue our
enemies are inferior in that respect to Alexander: if we consider
them in the light o f resulting evils, those endured by the Romans
are less severe than those o f the Persians when they were conquered
by Alexander.’
T his work, called for by Sr. Augustine and based on the idea o f
the four mnnarrhipg n f the Book o f Daniel, may be considered as an
interpretation in terms o f universal history o f the chronological
elements, deduced from the synchronism o f sacred and profane
history, which Christian thought had already elaborated in the age
o f Severus Alexander. Sacred and profane history are distinguished
From the point o f view o f the ‘judgments o f G od’ which are revealed
in both, however, they are inseparable. In this interpretation there is
a judgment o f God corresponding to each Roman fault. For example,
the persecution o f Valerian leads to the barbarian devastation:
‘o f which small and poor places in various provinces still conserve
the saddest traces and reminiscences in names amongst the ruins o f
great cities. We will point out some indeed in our own Spain as a
comfort from the recent evils.’
T h is hrings niu-hnw the classical idea o f consolatio meets the new
and completely Christian idea o f the judgments o f G o d . For Orosius
the recent barbarian migrations seem to be the most evident o f
G od’s judgments and it may be said o f them that ‘they have oc­
curred as penalty for the Roman guilt’ (poenaliter accidisse), in fact as
a penalty for the persecution o f Diocletian. T he whole Orosian
interpretation o f imperial history moves on this plane. For him
Constantine is the emperor through whose work God sends his
pagans the ‘tenth plague’ :
‘T his king felt and tested the power o f God and feared and there­
fore permitted the people o f God to go free; this king felt and tested
59
 The Judgments o f God as an Historical Category
the power o f God and believed and therefore permitted the people
o f God to go free.’
T he rhythmic rules o f high rhetoric have given these words a
grave and moving solemnity. In other places too parallelism and
homoeoteleuton, traditional stylistic forms, but now converted into a
hieratic expressiveness, give a magical power to the judgments o f
God which Orosius evokes in an atmosphere o f gloom and suffering,
and almost pathological fervour. Divine mercy swooped against the
impious Ju lian ; Valens was burnt alive at Adrianople ‘by the just
judgment o f G od’ ; in the battle o f Frigidus against Eugenius and
Arbogast, Theodosius won the most splendid victory to be found in
Roman history since the foundation o f the city; Radagaisus, a pagan
Goth, was defeated by divine intervention while Alaric, a Goth but
a Christian, succeeded in conquering pagan Rome. Orosius has no
hesitation in condemning Stilicho and his poet Claudian; Stilicho,
whose son meditated the persecution o f the Christians, is a traitor by
nature, and Claudian is paganus pervicacissimus.1
Orosius shows more understanding for the barbarian invaders.
As we saw, he does not exclude the possibility that one day their
chiefs may appear as ‘great kings’ , founders, we should say, o f
Romano-Germanic states. He tries to reduce the gravity o f Alaric’s
sack o f Rome. He compares the two years o f barbarian outrage in
Spain with the two hundred years o f violence which the Spaniards
had once endured at the hands o f the Romans. But above all, ‘there
are Romans’ he says ‘who prefer to live in poverty-stricken freedom
among the barbarians rather than to support the weight o f the tribute
among the Romans’ . He thought that he could see something splen­
did, indeed unique in the whole o f world history, in the peace which
the Gothic king Vallia wished to make with the Emperor Honorius.
A famous passage o f Orosius in which he quotes the authority o f St.
Jerom e, with whom he had close relations, attributes a remarkable
conception to Ataulf, the predecessor o f Vallia. Since the Goths,
because o f their barbarism, cannot obey laws and yet a state without
laws is no true state, it is impossible to substitute a Gothia for a
Romania. Therefore A taulf seeks no more than to be the restorer o f
the Roman name rather than the creator o f a new order.2 About

1 Schmid, Reallexikon fü r Antike und Christentum, III, pp. 1 1 3 ff.

2 An original interpretation o f this passage in Orosius has recently been given by
60
 The Judgments o f God as an Historical Category
Vallia himself, Orosius can say something less ideological and more
precise.
‘ He offered his own hazard for the sake o f Roman security, offer­
ing to fight with his own forces against the other barbarians settled
in Spain and to conquer them for the Romans. Besides this the other
kings o f the Alans, Vandals and Suevi made the same agreement
with us, saying to the Emperor Honorius : You make peace with us all
and accept hostages from all o f us [barbarians] and we will fight each
othery we will kill each othery but we will conquer in your namey a great
benefit to your state i f a ll o f us disappear in this way. Who would
believe these things i f the facts did not confirm them ?’
Orosius’s optimism may surprise the modern reader, it may
perhaps even appear grotesque, but in this case his optimism
grasped one o f the many truths about this absurd and contradictory
epoch in which a barbarian can be a sworn enemy o f a barbarian
and both can be allies and destroyers o f the greatest empire o f the
world. T h e empire is universal h ut the harharian world is divided
by conflicts full o f significance for the future. With his powerful
mind, inspired by the Augustinian vision o f the city o f God, Orosius
has penetrated into the centuries to come, created a historical yard­
stick which will go through the whole medieval period. Starting
from a polemic against the pagans who cannot renounce the old
world, this priest, who has been persecuted by the barbarians, ends
by exalting peace between the barbarians and his own emperor. T he
Augustinian co n cep tion n f the wnriH ) in the final analytic, r n l-
minates in the total acceptance o f history as the history o f the judg­
ments o f G o d. ‘And since’ Orosius says, ‘the judgments o f God are
ineffable and we cannot know them all or explain those which are
known to us, I shall say briefly that the punishment o f God the
judge, in whatever form it occurs, falls justly on those who do not
know.’ With this presupposition the idea o f decadence is in fact
minimised, reduced to the pure guilt o f those on whom divine
judgment has swooped. Stripped o f its mythical content and o f its
relation to contemporary events, the thought o f Orosius leads to the
rnnrlnginp rhar h isto ry is all divine, that earh event speaks H irrrtly

Straub, Unser Geschichtsbild (1954), pp. 65-6. Cf. in general the monograph o f Lippold,
Rom und die Barbaren in der Beurteilung des Orosius (typescript dissertation, Erlangen,
1952); idem. Rheinisches Museum (1954,) pp. 254 ff.
6l
 The Judgments o f God as an Historical Category
to God. By channels which are sometimes extremely complex and
contradictory, sometimes clear, his thought leads to Hegel and
Ranke. His exaltation o f the present (the Christiana tempora) as
against the past, is basically a first acceptance o f the actual as th e
divinely rational. Classical thought, which exalted the past and
trembled at the idea o f decadence could not have understood Orosius
o f course, but equally it could not have understood Hegel or Ranke.
Classical thought was still alive in the West in the minds o f some
pagan members o f the aristocracy. For some o f them it had been
reduced to a traditionalism loaded with imaginary ideas or formulas.
Thus, in revising the lives o f the emperors in the so-called Historia
Augusta, one o f these, who seems to have lived in the age o f Honorius,
had emphasized the great misfortune o f the ‘boy-emperors’ (as if
Valens or Theodosius, the victim and the friend o f the Goths, had
been boys), and in introducing the half tragic and half crude figure
o f Maximinus Thrax had been happy to invent a Gothic-Alan
origin for this ‘tyrant’ emperor. But other pagans o f the West saw
more vividly the drama in which they were living. T hey were not
resigned to the abandonment o f the marvellous idea n f rhp supra-
national stateTo f the world transformed into one city and one single
fatherland for all peoples. For them this beautiful fatherland must
not and could not die. T hey blamed Stilicho for the misfortunes
which had beset it, agreeing in this with the Christians, but o f course
for the opposite reasons. S rilichn haH Hppn a fr#»p spirit author

O f those unwilling to lose their fatherland the most outstanding

was Rutilius, a spokesman o f the Gallic aristocracy who turned back
to Rome confident o f a Renaissance. It was precisely this word, o f
such great importance for the history o f modern European civiliza­
tion, which he used: ‘way o f rebirth’ {ordo renascendi). He also
spoke o f ‘drawing a benefit from evils’ . Thus, while St. Augustine
was attacking Virgil’s imperium sine fine and denying the value o f the
pagan auspicium o f the eternity o f Rome and Orosius was striving
to interpret the work o f the future ‘great kings’ o f the barbarians,
Rutilius’s dream re-evoked an Augustan and Plinian phantom o f
eternal Rome. These fossil ideas, grandiose but already buried, were
accompanied by a clearly polemical arrière-pensée. While the Chris­
tians were exhorting the Roman aristocracy to be converted, Rutilius
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was writing his famous tirade against the monks. T h e Roman mob,
still intoxicated by the circus, kept up its pompous acclamation
Invicta Roma fe lix senatus.1
Classical thought lived on still more in the Eastern than in the
Western part o f the empire. Here, under the Emperor Arcadius
(395-408), Christians o f pagan origin like Synesius2 and the un­
yielding Christians like St. Joh n Chrysostom were equally opposed
to any concession to the barbarians. In the second half o f the fifth
century Zosimus. a fervent pagan , wrote his New History under the
guidance o f the works o f Eunapius and Olympiodorus. There could
be no greater contrast than exists between this book and the His­
tories o f Orosius, a contrast which reflects the enormous difference
o f mentality and spiritual life which still divided the two parts o f
the empire more effectively than any barrier.
In the New History o f Zosimus the classic problem 'T flyman
decadence is again dominant. T h e historian cannot reconcile himself
to the fall o f the world which seems to be declining. He does not
impute the guilt to Constantine, the hateful emperor who imposes
three intolerable tributes, kills his own son, and, by the formation o f
the army o f comitatenses, accustoms the soldiers to civilian life.
Moreover Constantine’s conversion is seen by Zosimus as some­
thing delayed. He connects it not with the campaign against Maxen­
tius in 3 12 , in the Christian tradition o f Eusebius, but with Con­
stantine’s crimes against his own family in 326, the murder o f his
son Crispus and his wife Fausta. He attributes its origin to ‘an
Egyptian who had come from Spain’ -probably, as Tillem ont
realized, Hosius Bishop o f C ordova-and he makes the ‘impious­
ness’ o f Constantine begin in 326 as a result o f his conversion. In
this same year Constantine was in Rome and his impiety culmin­
ates in his refusal to associate himself with the annual festival in
which the army was supposed to go to the Capitol. For Zosimus
impiety is o f course the fatal abandonment o f traditional rites. Con­
stantine^ the revolutionary emperor, always appeared in this light
to the traditionalists who identified the fall o f the empire with the
victory o f Christianity. For Zosimus, the Emperors Jovian and Theo­
dosius are also to be counted among the great bearers o f guilt. His

1 Cf. S. Mazzarino, Enciclopedia delVArte Antica, II, under Contorniati.

2 Lacombrade, Synesios Hellène et Chrétierf

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judgment on Stilicho, a completely Christian ruler but one tolerant
o f the pagans, is contradictory. In any case what arouses one’s
interest in the New HistoryTand almost affects one, is the boundless
and simple love o f the old things.
‘Polybius narrated how the Romans in a short time conquered the
empire. I am about to tell how in no short time they sent it to ruin
by their own fault. I shall expound these things when I have come
to that point in the n arrative.. . . When I have reached those times
in which the empire o f the Romans, in a brief space barbarized, was
reduced to a small part which was also decadent (Siafdapév), then I
shall also expound the causes o f the disaster and I shall also add as
far as I can the oracles which foretold such events. . . .
‘[Jovian, the successor o f Julian made peace (in 363) with the
Persians, ceding to them Nisibis and five regions beyond the Tigris.]
At this point it occurs to me to turn back to a more ancient time and
to wonder if the Romans ever reconciled themselves to granting
something that they had conquered to others, or if indeed they
tolerated that another should have what had been at one time made
part o f their empire. [This never happened even as a result o f the
gravest o f disasters, that o f the campaign o f Valerian.] Only the
death o f the Emperor Julian could lead to the loss o f those terri­
tories [which Jovian ceded]. T hus up to now the Roman emperors
have failed to recover any o f them and moreover have in a brief
time lost the greater part o f the subject nations, some becoming
independent, others ceded to the barbarians and yet others reduced
to serious depopulation. . . .
‘[When Valens (in 378) went to fight the Goths] a strange spec­
tacle presented itself to the army which was going forth and to the
emperor himself. On the road they found a wretched man whose
body was quite still and apparently beaten from head to foot, but his
eyes were open and watched whoever came near him. T hey asked
him who he was and from whom he had received these injuries and,
since he did not reply, they decided that they had met with some­
thing quite out o f the ordinary and brought him to the notice o f the
emperor. T he latter interrogated him but the man remained dumb.
It seemed as i f he were not living because his head did not move
and that he wras not dead because his eyes were looking. . . . But
those who understood these matters said that it was the presage o f
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 The Judgments o f God as an Historical Category
the future collapse (Kardoraaiv) o f the state and that the common­
wealth would be struck and beaten to the point o f death until finally
it would be destroyed by the baseness o f the emperors and rulers.
Considering the separate events one sees that this was truly s a id .. . .
‘[In 380] T h eodosius sent out the collectors o f the public taxes to
round up the tribute with the greatest thoroughness. He was acting
as though the victories o f the barbarians had not brought any ills at
all to the cities o f Macedonia and Thessaly ! So one could see that if
the humaneness o f the barbarians had left something the tax collec­
tor would carry that o ff too. In fact the taxpayers had to make their
payments not only in money but also with women’s jewellery and
with garments o f all kinds, even underclothes, and as a result o f this
exaction o f taxes city and countryside were full o f laments and com­
plaint and all invoked the barbarians and sought the help o f the
barbarians. . . .
‘[From the year 395] by the will o f Theodosius the performance o f
sacrifices was ended at Rome and other things wrere neglected which
derived from ancestral tradition. F o r this reason the empire o f the
Romans decayed [“ was diminished” ] in part and became open to the
barbarians so that finally, escaping from the control o f its own
inhabitants, it took on such a form that even the places where there
were formerly cities are no longer recognizable.’
Zosimus’s melancholy derived from this obstinate defence o f the
old forgotten things but he did not attain to the serenity o f reflec­
tion and he is not a really great historian. Another historian who also
wrote in the second half o f the fifth century was Priscus, a Thracian
who had taken part in the Byzantine embassy to the K in g o f the
Huns, Attila, in 449. T his journey had enlarged the horizons o f his
conception o f the great theatre o f the barbarian world. He too felt
the sadness o f the decay but he did not consider it merely as a mis­
fortune imposed by destiny. T h e barbarian invaders had been
introduced into the literature nf the classical peoples by a Christian
poet of the third century, the (.ommodian o f the Carmen apolo-
geticum. Soon after, still in the third century, the age o f the Emperor
Claudius the Goth had produced a historical work by Dexippus
about the G o th -‘ Scythians’ , burning with the eagerness for
imperial restoration which animated the work o f the Illyrian
emperors.
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 The Judgments o f God as an Historical Category
T w o hundred years after Dexippus the picture o f the barbarian
peoples appeared to Priscus in all the richness o f its varied colours.
He could not stop, as Dexippus had done, at a simple antithesis
between the ‘ reason’ (logos) represented by Rome and the violence
(amathia) proper to the barbarians. It was not his task to describe
restorations or Roman victories. He could still see before him the
restless little eyes o f Attila, lord o f the Huns, terrible and yet
human. And another character in his story was certainly the Vandal
Genserie, the conqueror o f Rome, stooping and lame, incapable o f
long speeches and closed in upon himself. But, above all, the power
o f these two and o f the other barbarian kings appeared to him to be
connected with the organic difficulty o f avoiding the discontent
amongst the inhabitants o f the Roman empire. One episode brought
him very close to this aspect o f the crisis. On his journey to the Hun
court he had gone through the old lands o f Dacia, once a Roman
dominion, now lost for almost two centuries and returned to bar­
barism. With the exception o f those who had frequent contacts with
the Romans on this side o f the Danube, no one spoke Latin in Dacia
any longer; no one spoke Greek except prisoners o f Thracian or
Illyrican origin. But there was one Roman whom he met and who
spoke Greek to him, a refugee who had abandoned his own country
and was happy to remain in the land o f the Huns. Why had he fled ?
With sophistic relish, but also with thoughtful sadness, Priscus
relates his conversation with the man who had chosen to exile him­
self from the world o f the vine and wheaten bread. T h e man says:
‘Among the Romans the laws do not apply to everyone. I f they are
broken by one o f the rich he does not pay the penalty; if by a poor
man he will be punished if he does not die before judgment is given
against him, through the delays and expenses o f the case.’ Priscus
replies : ‘No, the laws apply to everyone, so much so that even the
emperor is bound to obey them. A s for the costs o f cases, they are
necessary to pay the expenses o f the court.’ There is an endless
sadness in this exchange. Men prefer a happy savagery to the w eight
o f a superior civilization. GrotiusT who later contrasted the .gond
barbarian laws w ith the complex laws o f the Rom ans, would L a w
been glad to quote this passage from Priscus.
Priscus underlines in his historical work the difference between
the two parts o f the empire : ‘Attila was undecided which o f the two
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 The Judgments o f God as an Historical Category
empires he ought to attack. It seemed to him at last advisable to
devote him self to what would hp r h p m n r p h i t t e r w a r hy marrhing
towards the West.’ T w o hundred years earlier Dexippus too had
observed that ‘the men o f the West are all more warlike than those
o f the other part o f the empire’ . But the consideration which Priscus
attributes to Attila has quite a different significance. Here it is not
a matter o f warlike soldiers from the western Roman provinces; for
Attila the western war is more bitter because it is a war against
Goths. T he truly Roman army is a contemptible thing in the eyes
o f the Hun captain and Priscus implicitly endorses this attitude. T h e
great strength o f the Roman army o f the west lay in the Visigoths
who were allied troops rather than auxiliaries, fighting in their own
barbarian units and not allowing themselves to be romanized like
the Celtic or British troops o f the third century. These Visigoths
defeated Attila in 4 51. T h e western part o f the empire had already
set out on its new road, ‘barbarized* as Polybius would have said
and as Zosimus was now saying.
Only the historiographical tradition initiated by Orosius, inspired
by St. Augustine’s City o f God, could throw a bridge between
Christianity and barbarism. O f course not all Christians loved the
barbarians. T he sermon On the Barbaric Time written in Vandal
Africa and attributed to Quodvultdeus, Bishop o f Carthage, who
was exiled by Genserie in 439, almost foretold the disappearance o f
the Vandals, but at the same time it declared the new tribulations
to be just.
‘Yes, you tell me that the barbarian snatches everything from you.
“ I ” , you tell me, “ remain in misery and he is replete with that which
is not his.” I see, I understand, I consider: you have been a fish
placed in this sea which a greater fish has devoured. Wait a while. A
still greater fish will come to devour him who devoured, to despoil
him who despoiled, to take from him who has taken. In fact, although
your tribulations are ju st-in not giving to others you have wickedly
kept your own things-nevertheless you have seen and will see the
sufferings o f him who stole from another. T his plague with which
we are scourged will not last for ever. It is indeed in the hands o f
Omnipotent G od.’
The hopes expressed in the sermon On the Barbaric Time were not
fulfilled. T he Vandals remained in Africa and made even worse
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attacks on the Christians so that in 488-9 Victor Bishop o f Vita pro­
tested against useless sympathies with the barbarians. But in general
the Orosian idea o f the judgments o f God had expressed adequately
the Christian attitude towards the invasion. Towards the middle o f
that terrible fifth century Salvian o f M arseilles had reaffirmed the
principle that 'the Romans are enduring their punishments hy the
first judgment o f G od’, and that the barbarian plundering was not
as intolerable as the tributary exactions o f the Romans. T his was
not just rhetoric; the provincials had in fact been invoking the bar­
barians since the time o f Adrianople to liberate them from the weight
o f the tributes, and one recalls the Roman who declared to Priscus
that he preferred the Huns to the rulers o f his homeland. Men o f
religion, even if they were not pro-barbarian, still made themselves
mediators between barbarians and Romans; like Pope Leo with
Attila and St. Severinus with Odoacer and with the royal family o f
the Rugii. T his phenomenon o f religious mediation also had its pre­
history from the time o f Adrianople.
When Odoacer in 476 deposed the Emperor Romulus in Italy
and then in 403 had to capitulate before the Ostrogoth Theodori^
these serious events put decisively in front o f everyone the problem
o f the attitude to be adopted to the barbarians. For the idea o f
decadence was substituted that o f collaboration between Romans
and Goths for the defence o f a common civilization. In this way
civilitas, an important concept in the late empire, already used to
exalt the spiritual attitude o f Julian the Apostate (civilis, ‘towards
all’), entered fully into the history o f Romano-Germanic Europe.
‘ T he glory o f the Goth’ , said Cassiodorus,1 ‘ is the guardianship o f
civilitas.’ Another exponent o f high Roman culture, Ablavius, had
already before him investigated the heroic sagas (prisca carmina) o f
the Goths, seeking points o f contact between this barbarian history
and the history o f Rome. T he invention o f the Historia Augusta
that the Emperor Maximinus had been o f Gothic-Alan extraction
became an accepted tradition. More recent history was falsified with
more deliberate purpose. Stilicho, the bête noire o f Orosius, was
buried under the weight o f a new charge when Cassiodorus pre­
sented him as defeated and put to flight by Alaric’s Goths at

1 On the personality o f Cassiodorus see the recent work o f Momigliano, Rendiconti

dell'Accademia dei Lincei (1956), pp. 279 ff.
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 The Judgments o f God as an Historical Category
Pollentia. When it came to Alaric’s sack o f Rome in 4 10 Cassiodorus
found a way, by applying an Orosian tradition, o f emphasizing
Alaric’s religious side.
S o little by little, in the West, the tragic memory o f 4 10, the y ear
o f the occupation o f Rome, was whittled down. T o contemporaries
this drama had seemed to be the sign o f the end o f a worldTperhaps
o f the w hole world. St. Augustine and Orosius, though contem­
poraries, had tried to perceive the judgments o f God in it. Cassio­
dorus, the contemporary o f Theodoric, had found in it the evidence
o f Alaric’s Christian devotion. Jordanes, a Goth-Alan, who wrote
in 551 when the Ostrogothic state had already declined, repeated
the praises o f Alaric which were already to be found in Cassio­
dorus. According to him, and perhaps according to Cassiodorus, no
burning had taken place during the sack. Besides, the occupation o f
Rome remained a contemporary question. Totila had made two
ingressus into Rome in 546 and 549. T h is was the perditio Romae.
Gregory the Great, who was Pope from 590 to 604, was convinced
that Rome could never have been destroyed by the barbarians.
Looking back, we can compare these writers with each other and
follow their reactions to the vicissitudes o f the city which had fallen
and survived. From St. Augustine to St. Gregory the Great there is
a dialogue on the subject lasting for nearly two centuries. In an
oration in the year 4 10 itself Augustine had said:
‘ Does it surprise you that the world is failing? You are surprised
that the world grows old. M an is born, grows up, ages. There are
many woes in old age. . . . I f a man grows old he is full o f tribula­
tions; if the world grows old it is full o f disasters. Perhaps God did
not give you enough when he sent you Christ in the world’s old
a g e .. . . Do not remain bound to the old world and do not refuse to
be rejuvenated in Christ who says to you “ Let the world perish, let
it grow old, let it fail, suffer the gasping o f old age. Do not fear.
Your youth shall renew itself like eagles.” Yes, the pagan says,
Rome is dying in the age o f the Christians. Perhaps Rome is not
dying: perhaps it was beaten but not killed, perhaps it was chastised
but not destroyed. Perhaps Rome does not die if the Romans do not
perish. T hey will not perish if they praise God, but they will perish
if they blaspheme against Him. What indeed is Rome if not the
Romans ? It is not a matter o f stones and planks, o f high buildings
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and great walls. These things were made to be sometime destroyed.
In building man puts stone upon stone and in destroying he takes
stone from stone. A man makes these things and a man destroys
them. Does one do wrong to Rome by saying that it is falling. No,
not to Rome, but rather, if at all, to its creator.*
Again in the City o f God he writes:
‘What furv o f foreign peoples, what harharian cruelty, can he
compared with the harm done hy civil wars ? . . . T h e Goths spared
so many senators that it is rather to be marvelled that they killed a
few. . . . T h e last list o f proscriptions made by Sulla, on the other
hand, not to speak o f innumerable other deaths, brought death to
more senators than the Goths could even have plundered [in Alaric’s
sack o f Rom e].’
In Orosius the motifs o f Augustine are expanded into a coherent
historical interpretation.
‘After [the punishment o f Stilicho and] such an increase o f blas­
phemy and absence o f repentance, there fell on the City that [divine]
judgment which had been so long in suspense. Alaric comes to
besiege, trouble and invade humbled Rome. However he first gives
the order to leave unharmed and in peace those who had taken
refuge in holy places and especially the basilicas o f Peter and Paul
and further that, though his men might plunder without restraint,
they should abstain from the shedding o f blood. . . . While the bar­
barians were roving about the city, by chance one o f the Goths, a
man o f high position and o f Christian faith, found in a church a
virgin consecrated to God, now advanced in age, and, without
offering offence, asked her for gold and silver. With Christian sure­
ness she told him that she had a great quantity o f it, sent for it to be
brought to him, and showed it to him. Since the barbarian was
astounded by the great weight o f wealth but did not know the
quality o f the vessels, the virgin o f Christ said to the barbarian,
“ These are the holy instruments o f the apostle Peter. Take them if
you dare. . . . ” T he barbarian, compelled to religious reverence
by fear o f God and by the virgin’s faith, sent a messenger to tell
these things to Alaric who ordered that all the vessels, as they were,
should be carried immediately to the basilica o f the Apostle and
that the virgin, and with her all the Christians who should join the
procession, should be conducted there under escort. . . . On the
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third day the barbarians left the city o f their own accord after having
burnt a certain number o f houses, but not as many as the dwellings
destroyed by mere accident in the seven-hundredth year o f the
foundation o f the City.’
Orosius had completed his Historiarium Libri in 4 17 and his inter­
pretation o f Alaric’s sack had a central position in it. When Cassio-
dorus was Praetorian Prefect, an office which had been entrusted to
him by Amalasunta in 533, he also went over the same great events
which he had already dealt with in his Historia Gothorum.
‘ When K in g Alaric, satisfied by the sack o f the city o f Rome,
received from his men the vessels o f the apostle Peter, and knew by
inquiry what they were, he ordered that they should be returned to
the sacred basilica by the same hands which had taken them, so that
greed, which had caused the crime in the fury o f plundering, should
wipe out the mistake by showing the most complete devotion.’
Cassiodorus’s account, in order to exalt still more Alaric’s reli­
gious feeling, imagined that the sacred vessels had been carried before
him. Jordanes, about 550, repeated Cassiodorus’s interpretation.
‘Finally, having entered Rome, the Visigoths limited themselves
to plunder, but unlike the pagans they did not bum or allow that
insults should be made in the places o f the Saints.’
Gregory the Great, whose whole life centred around Rome (he
was born there in 540, prefect o f the city before 573, abbot o f his
monastery in 585, and finally pope in 590), gave a new development
to the theme under the inspiration o f a new and much later bar­
barian occupation o f Rome, Totila’s march through the Porta
Asinaria in 546.
‘[St. Benedict said to T otila:] “ You will enter Rome, you will
cross the sea, you will hold the kingdom for nine years, in the tenth
you will die.” Hearing this the king was much frightened; he with­
drew asking the saint to pray for him and from that time he was less
cruel. Not long afterwards he entered Rome, he went to Sicily, and
in the tenth year o f his reign by the judgment o f God he lost, with
his life, his power. Moreover the bishop o f the church o f Canosa
used to turn to the servant o f God [St. Benedict] and the man o f
God loved him greatly for his way o f life. Speaking with the saint
about the entry o f T otila into Rome and about the end o f the city,
the bishop said, “ T his city will be destroyed by the work o f this
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king so that it will no longer be inhabited” . T h e man o f God replied
to him, “ Rome will not be destroyed by the barbarians but will
perish overthrown by thunderstorms, whirlwinds and earthquake
in itself” . For us the mysteries o f this prophecy are clearer than day.
We see in this city the walls going to ruin, the houses fallen down,
the churches destroyed by the whirlwind; and the buildings crum­
bling from old age because ruins upon ruins tear them down.'
T h is ideal dialogue on the fall o f Rome, begun by St. Augustine,
does not stop with St. G regory the G reat.1 Still in the age o f
Frederick Barbarossa, almost six and a half centuries after Gregory
the Great the Expositio o f Alexander the Minorite is dominated by
the idea o f Roma capta.
‘Rome, the head o f the church, was often taken, not by its own
kings but by barbarians and by infidels. First indeed by Alaric o f
whom Augustine writes. T hen again it was taken by Genserie, then
by Totila, o f whom Gregory writes. T hen again for 14 years by
Odoacer who afflicted the faithful for a long time. However the
kingdom o f our Lord Jesus Christ continued and grew on earth
and his kingdom in eternity will have no end.’
We may now smile at the placing o f Odoacer (476) after Totila
(546). But in the vision o f the M inorite as in all the ‘ historical
eschatology’ (if one may use this contradictory description) which
dominates the medieval West, the essence o f problems lies not in
the re c o n stri lPf inn o f the past but in the interpretation o f the
judgments o f G o d . I n this sense the whole medieval world and itsi
literary production, which varied so much in quality, saw history
with the eyes o f Augustine and Orosius. O f course the Orosian
m otif o f the four monarchies, which was illuminated also by a
classicist like St. Jerom e, was corrupted by the typically Augustinian
m otif o f the six or seven ages o f the world; Isidore and Bede are the
other arbiters o f medieval spirituality. In this perspective the end
o f the ancient world, identified with the end o f the world, became
generally speaking removed from the past and projected, so to
speak, into the present or future. T h e foundation o f the new
‘ Roman Em pire’ of the West at Christmas 8002 only confirmed this
perspective o f a style which had survived beyond its own time.
1 Cf. Manselli, La ‘Lectura super Apocalipsim> di Pietro di Giovanni Ulivi (1955).
2 O f the older works one should mention, in addition to the famous book by Graf,
Roma nella memoria e nelle immaginazioni del Medio Evo, I and II (1883), the brief
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 The Judgments o f God as an Historical Category
T he problem o f the end o f the ancient world became rather a
problem o f translatio. In this dimension o f historical events, i f at all,
it was possible to feel the break caused by the Arab invasion. Medie­
val men tended at times to take a view akin to Pirenne’s thesis;
that is o f course on an eschatological rather than a historical plane.
Carrying the historical application o f the categories o f Augustine
and Orosius to an extreme point one could see the history o f the
empire in absolute connection with ecclesiastical history,~Tn the
manner say o f Hugh o f Fleury. But the symbol oFthe epoch re­
mained its famous invention (prior to 778), the Constitutum Con­
stantini. There was endless conflict about this throughout the
M iddle A g es-fo r us the most interesting episode may be the famous
criticism o f Leo o f Vercelli in 10 0 1-a n d Constantine and Julian, on
the good and bad sides respectively, dominated medieval fantasies.
T h e Gallicanus o f Hrosvitha was the dramatic expression o f this
perspective.
However the sense o f decadence in this period was not limited to
laments about the ‘ drying up’ o f studies or in another field to warn­
ings against the increasing worldliness o f the Church. T h e fascina­
tion o f the vanished empire began to take the shape either o f tor­
tuous literary combinations based on Sallust or Lucan or o f a sad
sensibility to the empire’s unique greatness in the history o f the
world. In the first category there are reflections like those which
characterize the rhythmic composition o f a canon o f St. Orner,
Petrus Pictor, On the Destruction o f the Roman Empire and on the
Magnificence o f Cato :
‘Rome, once powerful, capital o f the world, glory o f the countries,
is now a den o f thieves, its palace a poor man’s shack. We would
need Cato to return.’
Here all historical perspective is lost. T h e real concern o f Petrus
Pictor is his protest against simony and the corruption o f the world.
His Cato is a conflation o f Cato the Censor with Cato o f Utica and

contribution by Patctta, Atti dell 'Accademia di Scienze di Torino (1895). Cf. Morghen,
Medioevo Cristiano (second ed., 1958), pp. 41 ff., 60 ff.; Dupré-Thescider, L'idea
imperiale di Roma (1942). A new burst of studies on Carolingian symbolism has been
inspired by the works of Schramm; see Deer, Schweizer Beiträge (1957), pp. 5 ff.;
Beumann, Historische Zeitschrift (1958), pp. 5 15 ff. In particular note this point which
has generally been neglected: in the prayers of Adrian I and Leo III for Charlemagne
to abandon the Frankish habitus appear requirements expressed, about four centuries
earlier, in Codex Theodosianus, X IV , 10, 2, 3, 4 (cf. ch. 8 below).

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the author o f the Disticha Catonis. A high degree o f emotion is
aroused, about the same time by the two famous poems o f Hildebert
o f L e Mans, inspired by his journey to Rome in n o i . Here the
transition from Rome, lady o f the earth, to Rome, lady o f heaven,
is felt in the framework o f a grandiose Augustinian ‘rhythm’ . Also
Augustinian in spirit are the imminui o f the regnum mundi, that is o f
the Roman Empire, in Otto o f Freising, the uncle o f Frederick
Barbarossa.
One aspect o f the end o f the ancient world, its relation with the
Arab invasions, was naturally particularly felt in the Spain o f the
Reconquista. In the thirteenth century Rodrigo o f Toledo exalted
the glorious tradition o f the Goths, ‘that conquering people, that
noble people, the nation o f the Goths to whom Asia and Europe
had given themselves; and the African world had been ceded to the
Vandals who had fled before them.’ T hus Rodrigo, with a perspec­
tive which foreshadows the thesis expounded by Henri Pirenne in
Mahomet and Charlemagne, belittles the drama o f the end o f Rome
and accentuates that o f the Arab invasion. In evoking this, Rod­
rigo’s prose has strains o f desperation which recall, as if in con­
trast, the lament o f St. Ambrose, between eight and nine centuries
earlier, for the victories o f the Goths in the empire. T h e exaltation
o f the Goths by Jordanes is repeated, but by a new voice. T o Rod­
rigo the Goths appear to be the real masters o f the ancient world,
the conquerors even o f the Persian king Cyrus (the reference is to
the queen o f the Massagetae, who by a commonplace juxtaposition
had also been ‘transformed’ into Goths) and the break introduced
into the history o f the world by the Arab invasion was all the sadder
for this.
‘Oh, Sorrow! Here ends the glory o f the majesty o f the Goths, in
the year 752 [equivalent to a .d . 7 1 1] . That majesty which had sub­
dued innumerable kingdoms in innumerable wars, lowered (in­
clinavit) in a single war the standards o f its glory. T hey who with
various massacres had devastated Pontus, Asia, Macedonia, Greece
and Illyricum ; whose queens had subjugated in wars the region o f
the East, and in a welter o f blood had killed their defeated prisoner
Cyrus, the great lord o f Babylonia, Assyria, Media, Syria and Hyr­
cania; and Rome, lord o f all the provinces, defeated, had bowed the
knee to them; by whom Emperor Valens was defeated, burnt in the
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 The Judgments o f God as an Historical Category
fire; whose empire the illustrious Attila K in g o f the Huns recog­
nized in the battle o f the Catalaunian Plains; to whom the Alans,
fleeing in battle left Pannonia and the Vandals, also in flight, aban­
doned the provinces o f G aul; the menacing thunders o f whose wars
resounded through the centuries. T he rebellion o f Mahomet, burst­
ing out in a short time, overwhelmed them in one single war with
unheard o f slaughter.*

Beside the medieval West were the worlds o f Byzantium and the
Arabs. At Byzantium the interpretation o f the Roman crisis was
very much more closely tied to the historical events. T he sense o f
the state was still alive and the new Rome, Constantinople, set itself
the problem o f the late Roman empire. T h e greatest o f the Byzan­
tine historians, Procopius, in a certain sense christianized the classi-
cal sense o f decadence. In his Anekdota, written in 550, Justinian is
regarded as the arch-demon. In the broad sweep o f Procopius’s
vision,1 in his Wars, there was a clear view o f the events which had
led to the crisis o f the empire in the West and then to the restoration
carried out by Belisarius. But even after Procopius the problems o f
the late empire remained living problems for the Byzantine his­
torians. T h e polemics against Zosimus in favour o f Constantine, for
instance, dealt with living questions.
T he Arab world is full o f surprises for us. Here there is a great
spiritual gap and the Roman empire is seen with eyes turned to
Byzantium. In the fourteenth century a very great man, Jh û -K h al-
dun, sums up this wonderful Arab culture, embracing a kaleido­
scope o f nationalities and dynasties which rise and fall. In his work
there is the idea o f decadence connected with city life (haddra)y
contrasted with the life o f the countryside (badava) on the other
hand which calls forth esprit de corps (‘ asabiyya) and conquests.
T h e crisis o f the Roman empire o f the West which culminated in
the battle o f Yarmuk (636) and the taking o f Alexandria (646) is
studied within the framework o f religious values and ideals which
give life to the esprit de corps (‘asabiyya). His work is the _onlv
sociological interpretation o f the end o f the ancient world which
was evolved during the M iddle Ages and even now we can learn a

1 On Procopins we now have the fundamental essay by Rubin (Paulys Realencylo-

pädie, X X I II, i).

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 The Judgments o f God as an Historical Category
lot from it. It may suggest two particular reflections. F irstly the
battle o f 636 was a break, which we ought to regard as the last act
in the end o f the ancient world which had begun with the invasions
o f the G o ths. Secondly the decisive factor in the Rom an crisis
appears as the religious hostility o f Nestorian Syria, and we may
add monophvsite Egypt. to the empire. Sim ilarly in the West the
imperial crisis is expressed in part in the fervour o f the Donatist
heretics in Africa. In spite o f appearances Ibn Khaldun is not
animated in this investigation by his pride as a M uslim. He knows
perfectly well that the M uslim states, just as much as the empire
o f Rum , will fall ‘when God wills’ . With his work Polybius’s
‘ objectivity’ returns.
‘T he light o f religion (sighba dîniyya) drives away the feelings o f
rivalry and envy which reign among the peoples inspired by a strong
esprit de corps (‘asabiyya). It gives all spirits a single direction in the
sense o f the law. I f they concentrate their efforts on their own
interests nothing can resist them because they all have one direction,
one aim, and for this they will face death. Even if the inhabitants o f
the state which they are trying to capture are twice as strong the
efforts o f the defenders are in vain; they desert each other for fear
in face o f the death which comes [from attackers inspired by the
light o f religion]. Thus the defenders offer no resistance even if they
are much more numerous and the conquerors defeat them. And
decadence carries o ff the defenders by the comfort and corruption
which reign amongst them, as we were saying. T h is happened in
the early period o f Islam when the Arabs made their conquests.
At Yarmuk the Muslim army went into battle against the troops
which Heraclius had collected there, whose numbers, if we believe
al-Waqidi, reached 400,000 men. In those two battles nothing
could hold back the Arabs. T hey threw the enemy into confusion
and took possession o f the booty.*

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 5

The End o f Rome as interpreted by

Humanism

Humanism understood at once the great upheaval that had over­

turned the western world in the fifth century. Petrarch in the four­
teenth century was already lamenting the disappearance o f those
‘anime leggiadre’ who had placed Rome ‘là dov’ella era’ ; he there­
fore explained the fall o f Rome above all hv the disappearance o f
great men, a judgment in thp spirit nf fir p m 1 ‘Civic* humanism -
to use the wpll-knnwn phrase nf the historian nf Florentine pnliti-
cal thought, Hans B aro n -enlarged on this theme and the concept
o f the ‘decline’ o f the Roman empire in its last period was elabo­
rated. T he ‘causes’ o f the decline o f Rome played a part in every
serious humanistic d isp u te-G uarino said that this decline was due
not to Caesar but to the corruption o f manners. Rome’s inclinatio
was, in short, at the bottom o f a particular way o f understanding
history.
In 1441 the Florentine humanist Leonardo Bruni spoke o f
vacillatio; his famous literary opponent Flavio Biondo used the
word inclinatio, ‘decline’ . Biondo’s chief work, completed in 1453,
carried even into the title page this sense o f a break between the
ancient world and the ‘ middle age’ o f which Cusanus, or at least
his followers, had already spoken. The book was called Historiarum
1 G . Toffanin, L'uomo antico nel pensiero del Rinascimento (1955).
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 The End o f Rome as interpreted by Humanism
ab inclinatione Romanorum imperii decades tresy ‘Histories beginning
with the decline o f the Empire o f the Romans*. W hy inclinatio,
‘decline’ ? Both the concept and its name are, used in this sense, new,
a sign o f the extraordinary creativity o f the age o f humanism, which
discovered not only the greatness o f ancient Rome but also the Sad­
ness nf its withdrawal into itself plmnct at th p m o m en t n f ifg fall
M odem scholars have made some investigations into the origins
o f this idea o f inclinatio or ‘ decline’, which has to be considered in
conjunction with the later idea o f ‘rebirth’ , destined to provide such
a wonderful definition o f the age o f Humanism and Renaissance.
T he general opinion today is that the concept o f the ‘ inclinatio* o f
the Roman empire, from which Biondo’s work starts, is modelled
on the New Testament image o f Jesus who expired inclinato capite,
‘with his head bowed*. T he suggestion is that in the terminology o f
B iondo and the humanists, Rome, as caput mundL was a kind o f
allegorical image to which was applied the ecclesiasHral formula :
tenebrae factae sunt- e t inclinato capite remisit spiritum, ‘ darkness
came and with his head bowed Jesus gave up the ghost*. T his is a
fascinating and brilliant hyp o t h e c hnf it Hoes not seem quite fn
bif the truth Perhaps one may suggest a simpler explanation both
o f the concept and o f the word inclinatio by deriving it from the
biblical idea o f the power o f God over the kingdoms, as it is for­
mulated in Psalm 45, the song o f trust in God. At verse 7 the Vulgate
reads conturbatae sunt gentes et inclinata sunt regna. In fact in Biondo’s
rnnrpptinr) fhp itirlirtntin rjf the Roman empire is above all a punish­
ment, from that God who in the psalmist’s words ‘troubles the
nations and bows down the kingdoms’ . I f this may be regarded as
the primary origin o f the conception, we should add to it the vivid
memory, which must have been present in Biondo’s mind, o f the
anxiety o f Cicero and Sallust for the inclinata res publica, for a Rome
which was bending under the weight o f the crisis in the last period
o f the republic. Had not Cicero said o f that Octavian who would
one day become Augustus that he might have brought support to
the free republic ‘which almost falls and collapses’, labente et
inclinatae paene res publicae ? One jsc a lls-th a H b r Biondo another
distant cause, not yet a beginning o f the inclinatio o f the Empire was
just this transition from the free republic to the monarchical stati»
of the imperial period.
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 The End o f Rome as interpreted by Humanism
I f Flavio Biondo did indeed derive his idea o f inclinatio in the way
here suggested, the genesis o f this conception, which was to prove
itself so fruitful throughout modern historiography, would in a
sense reflect the dual aspect o f a part o f the world o f Renaissance
Humanism. On one side is the attraction o f the great tradition o f
Rome’s republican liberty, expressed by Cicero in its most tragic
and harrassed moment; on the other the attempt to embrace the
ancient biblical wisdom, as expressed for example in the Psalms, in
a serene and yet pragmatic vision o f human things. Behind this
complex experience there is at the same time a precious recovery o f
historical perspective. T h e sense o f time, which the M iddle Ages
had lost in the stress towards the future, returned and dissipated the
misty vision o f the past in terms o f an imprecise eschatology.
In the first place this now makes periodization necessary. Flavio
Biondo makes the inclinatio o f the Empire start with the sack hv
Alaric in 4 10 (which he mistakenly puts in 412). Secondly it raises
the question o f causes, quite distinct from that o f periodization. It
may be a matter o f very remote causes (such as the loss o f republican
liberty) or just distant ones (the persecution o f the Christians, the
translation o f the Capital to Constantinople) or finally o f generic
causes (the recurrence o f the decline o f kingdoms). Some o f these
‘causes’, above all the emphasis on the persecution o f the Chris­
tians, are derived from Orosius. But the difference between Orosius
and Biondo is vital. F o r Orosius each persecution brings its own
special revenge (Nero’s persecution leads to the plague o f the civil
war o f 69, Domitian’s brings about the misery and exile o f nearly
all the citizens, and so on; only the tenth persecution has a distant
effect up to the barbarian migrations). For Biondo the persecutions
in general, and not one particular example, are all a
remote cause o f Rome’s inclinatio. F urthermore, the inclusion o f
imperial caesarism amongst the possible causes o f the inrlinatin is
more in the spirit o f Petrarch than in fb*r T h e loss o f
republican liberty appears to Biondo as hound up with the deteriora­
tion o f moral life and therefore with the coming o f inferior types o f
humanity (vili and tristi), _a very modern point o f view which
resembles some o f the formulations o f Otto Seeck (see ch. 8)
and Guglielmo Ferrerò (see ch. 12). T h e general cause itself,
the changing vicissitudes o f human things, has in Flavio Biondo
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 The End o f Rome as interpreted by Humanism
something classical and humane about it, rather different from
Orosius’s rigid construction based on eschatology and numbers.
It is especially significant that Flavio Biondo can, at a distance o f
a millennium, narrate events for which Orosius is the principal
source, and yet at the same time correct the source, or, at any rate,
free it o f superimposed constructions. For Biondo, as previously for
Orosius, Stilicho is-n o r could he be otherw ise-the great pro­
tagonist o f the fatal age in which the Visigothic attack was unleashed
and with it the inclinatio o f the empire. Also in Biondo, as in Oro­
sius, Stilicho appears as a perfidious and wretched man; but in
Biondo this miserable individual is portrayed as a master o f military
arts, so that he is no longer evil through and through. Biondo in fact
brings a clearly critical approach to bear on his authors in his recon­
struction o f the imperial decline, not least to Orosius who is his
point o f departure. In the very first pages o f his work, the lament for
the inadequacy o f the. contemporary sources o f this epoch o f
inclinatio, in comparison with the classical sources for the republican
period, is inseparable from his idea o f the general decadence o f
culture in an age o f eclipse and the previously mentioned inquiry
into the ‘causes’ .
‘ When Romp wag grpaf its splendour w as parallel with the blos­
soming o f poets, historians and orators which accompanied its
development. As soon as the crisis o f the empire began with the
reduction and humiliation o f its power the poets, historians and
orators “also disappeared. T hus we have monuments o f its greatness
and glory which have never been equalled on earth, celebrated by
the works o f many and illustrious talents; but the greatest obscurity
shrouds and covers its decline. . . . We say that the summit and, as it
were, the apex o f the empire was the age o f Theodosius I and, ten
years later, o f his sons Arcadius and Honorius. In fact, although the
Roman state had endured by that time many damages and evils, it
was soon restored and returned to its ancient majestic authority. But
in the tenth year o f Arcadius and Honorius, after the defeat o f
Radagaisus at Fiesole, the dignity o f the empire, which was already
tending towards ruin, began to suffer a serious decadence with the
very numerous inroads o f the barbarians, first o f all that o f Alaric.
. . . We shall shortly narrate these events. Now let us turn aside to
refute the opinion, which many uphold, that the decadence (in-
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 The End o f Rome as interpreted by Humanism
clinatio) o f the empire had already begun under the dictatorship of
Juliu s Caesar. We do not accept that opinion because, on the con­
trary, Roman power was increased under many o f the Caesars rather
than reduced. In the same way I can agree that the transference
{translatio) o f the capital to Byzantium by Constantine may have
been a remote cause o f the decadence to come but I will never con­
cede that it may be called the beginning o f the decadence. Since I
am thus bound to express an opinion on the cause and first origin o f
Roman decadence, I sav that it is not an altogether erroneous view
which, sees the origin o f this upheaval in the disappearance o f
rppnhlipfln liherty under Caesar: for together with liberty perished
the arts o f living well and piously. For the sake o f the government o f
one man the fear o f laws disappeared. T he princes distrusted virtue
and magnanimity and preferred the ignoble to the strong, the evil
to the good, the flatterers and the corrupt to the men o f character
and sanctity. M y judgment would not reject the opinion o f those
who, considering the transitoriness o f the things o f this world, hold
that the Romans lost the empire because o f that same destiny which
led some other peoples and cities o f almost equal greatness into
serious decay: Babylonia, the Medes, Carthage, Macedonia. T o
speak with Orosius, we ought not to marvel if Rome, which was
born servile under the kings, lost with the decemvirate the liberty
previously won under the consuls and in the year 360 o f its founda­
tion was occupied and burnt by the Gauls and then, after its won­
derful recovery, power and pride growing with each other and vices
overcoming wealth, was torn by the civil wars {bellis est lacerata
civilibus) and finally in its seven-hundredth year submitted to the
yoke o f a single ruler, Caesar. A third explanation o f the fall o f
Rome is also proposed; I mean the religious negligence o f the
R omans; and I hold this to be the best explanation just because
it is a religious explanation. In fact the Roman emperors in the
midst o f their lordly splendour raged against the Christians with
most cruel torments; nor did the cruelty o f the massacres or the
divine omens dissuade them from this purpose. Therefore, after ten
persecutions o f the Christians made by edicts, they were led by the
secret judgments o f God to that which was the cause o f the fall
o f the empire which they did not deserve. In fact Flavius Constan­
tine called the Great, a most Christian prince, the instrument
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 The End o f Rome as interpreted by Humanism
o f divine punishment for the impiety committed by the Roman
people against the Christians, was elevated by our God so that by
changing the seat o f the empire he weakened Rome, which was
destined soon to return to that nothingness from which it had risen
to power. Therefore I say that the decadence o f the city, whether it
is to be attributed to all the above reasons or to any one o f them_had
its beginning in the invasion o f the city o f Rome bv the Goths.*
Naturally this vision o f a world in decline was always suffused
with an atmosphere o f deep melancholy. But the humanists were
always aware that the drama o f the vanished ancient world could
now subside into the contemplation o f its beauty. Biondo wrote the
Roma instaurata. T he saddest humanist ode on the death o f Rome
is the work o f Poggio Bracciolini de fortunae varietate urbis Romae
et de ruina eiusdem descriptio, ‘On the variation o f the fortunes o f the
city o f Rome and on its ruins’ . But for Poggio this sadness suggests
a scientific interest. In the same way as the consideration o f the
republican tabularium and Vespasian’s lex regia had given Cola di
R ienzo-the Roman revolutionary o f the mid-fourteenth cen tury-
inspiration for his collection o f inscriptions, so now the considera­
tion o f the same tabularium suggested to Poggio his famous eulogy
o f the study o f inscriptions. But for Poggio, a man o f the fifteenth
century, the emphasis falls on the greatness o f republican Rome,
‘when the city’, he says, ‘was not oppressed by servitude*, even
though he admits that ‘very many and excellent buildings now
vanished are remembered’ from the imperial epoch. One might
call this melancholy o f Poggio’s the melancholy o f the epigraphist,
for whom the ancient greatness is revealed in the solemn monu-
mentality o f the inscriptions; and, not content with this, he would
like to look upon that great expanse o f solemn forms o f which they
speak but which have vanished from sight. T h e buildings have
crumbled as Rome’s power has crumbled. Whose is the blame ? In
this brief work Poggio replies through the mouth o f his interlocutor.
‘ In the giving and the taking back o f these things, as o f right, for­
tune is mistress.’ Fortune: as in Polybius, in Sallust, and Procopius.
Procopius had been made known in Italy, even before Flavio
Biondo wrote his Historiarum ab inclinatione decades by a humanist
o f outstandingly Polybian and Procopian spirit, Leonardo Bruni
Aretino. Unfortunately Bruni did not mention the name o f the great
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 The End o f Rome as interpreted by Humanism
Byzantine historian and published his De Bello Italico adversus
Gothos, which is substantially a reorganization (plagiarism one
might say) o f Procopius, completed by 14 4 1, as his own work.
Procopius’s name was given prominence later by Flavio Biondo.
But the reviver o f Procopius had a profoundly real, contemporary
feeling for the problem o f the decadence o f Rome, or as he called it
vacillatio, derived from his involvement in humane and political
affairs. Procopius had taken 476 as his starting point, though making
brief reference to Alaric and Attila. Bruni also realized the import­
ance o f 476 but he saw imperial decadence above all as a chapter o f
Italian history. For him the crises o f the barbarian age did not have
a catastrophic character; as far as Italian history was concerned life
blossomed again out o f death. Preparing to narrate the events o f
what he called ‘the Italian war against the Goths’ he said : ‘While I
write these pages, though many things sadden me because o f my
great love for my fatherland, still one reflexion consoles m e; that, if
Italy suffered the greatest adversity at that time, she came out at the
end victor over the foreigners and remained up to our own times
most powerful by land and by sea, and up to this time cities have
flourished here which are made splendid by their great riches and
are o f great authority, and they still flourish, and her glory and
empire extends wide and far. So we should not be saddened by the
things which happened then but rather rejoice for them. T hey are
like the labours o f Hercules; he became more illustrious through
them than he would have been without them.’
T h e end o f the western empire appeared to him then as an Italian
crisis which went back to 455, precisely to the killing o f Valentinian
I I I at T or Pignattara. ‘After the death o f Valentinian I I I who is
knmyn tn havp hppn killed hy his own men, the Western empire
began to decline and to become exhausted. There were in Italy at
this time very great bands o f foreign soldiers, previously called in by
Valentinian I I I against the terror o f Attila (the reference is to the
descent o f Attila into Italy in 462) and then united with the Romans
against the Vandals. Seeing this great crisis and the decline o f the
empire these men took courage and demanded a third part o f the
fields . . .; the patrician Orestes would not grant the request, the
soldiers killed him and, led by Odoacer who had come to Rome, they
deposed the Emperor Augustulus [son o f Orestes]. Having thus
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 The End o f Rome as interpreted by Humanism
become the masters o f the country, they divided a third o f the fields
amongst themselves. Odoacer, having attained power in this way,
governed the city at his whim, in his own name and that o f the
arm y.’
Here the date 455 is substituted o f course for 475/6, the date
which had been given prominence in the first page o f Bruni’s model,
the Gothic War o f Procopius. 410 , the date which strikes the reader
o f Orosius (it is also important in the first pages [I, ii, 7-30] o f the
Vandal War o f Procopius) seems to be forgotten by Bruni. In con­
trast to Flavio Biondo, for whom 410 , mistakenly given as 4 12,
marks the beginning o f Roman decadence with the sack by Alaric,
Bruni concentrates his attention on the last twenty years o f the
Empire o f the West, as if to emphasize even more what Polybius
would have called, if he had known about it, the ‘external cause’ o f
the fall o f Rome. T h is apart, Bruni gives as much or perhaps more
attention to the ‘ internal cause’, for he has thoroughly absorbed the
spirit o f Polybius, his favourite author. For him, as for Petrarch and
Flavio Biondo, the ‘ internal cause’ is remote. He lays even more
stress than Biondo on the importance o f the loss o f liberty. His for­
mula, as expressed in his Historiae Florentini populi (‘Histories o f the
Florentine people’) is quite clear: ‘the Roman empire began to decay
when the name o f Caesar, like a ruin, fell upon the city.’ For him
too imperial government means the elimination o f the best people.
‘T he imperial court welcomed the base rather than the strong,
flatterers rather than men o f action, and the transference n f gnvem-
ment into the hands nf inferior people brought about little bv little
the fall o f the^empire.’
One result o f the new understanding o f the problem o f the Roman
crisis was the final downfall o f a myth which had already long been
attacked from various sides: the Donation o f Constantine. Doubts
had already been expressed at Rome about the alleged donation in
the days o f Otto I I I and again in the twelfth century, but now under
the blows o f Nicholas Cusanus and above all Lorenzo Valla the old
legend collapsed. Lorenzo Valla’s little book on The False Donation
o f Constantine was written about 1440. It is not only a demonstra­
tion o f the falseness o f that one document. With the myth o f the
Donation o f Constantine also fell in a sense the myth o f Constantine
himself; thrown together with the others under condemnation for
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 The End o f Rome as interpreted by Humanism
violence, his reputation could not emerge unscathed from this sort
o f bellum diplomaticum. In an imaginary protest by the senate and
the Roman people Valla makes his fictitious orator speak thus:
\ . . You [Constantine] have no rights over the Roman empire.
Caesar secured power by force. Augustus imitated him in this stroke
and made himself master by destroying the opposing party. Tiberius,
Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian and the
others made havoc o f our liberty by the same or similar means. You
yourself have become master by driving out or killing the others. I
leave aside the fact that you were not even born in wedlock.’
T he criticism o f Constantine has thus become an anti-Caesarean
critique, and it is also, apart from this, a realistic evaluation o f the
Romano-barbarian kingdoms.
‘ I f there were cities and peoples (and we know that it happened
thus) which, being abandoned by the emperor during the barbarian
invasions, had o f necessity to give themselves kings, under whom
they might defeat the barbarians, should they then have deposed
these kings from their thrones ? Or should they have reduced their
sons to the rank o f private citizens even if they were recommended
as kings either by paternal tradition or by their own personal
bravery? Should they have returned to the Roman em pire?’
All this o f course implies criticism o f the medieval idea o f the
translatio. For Lorenzo Valla the true emperor is the Greek, as he
says himself, and the Carolingian empire is only a papal creation.
T hus is established a new historical perspective, whose greatest
importance is that it follows the concrete juridical and political
events.
I f the fifteenth century gave us the criticism o f the Donation o f
Constantine, the contribution o f the sixteenth century was to criti-
cize the legislation o f Justinian. T h is was the work o f the Culti, an
historical school o f jurists who were able, through the discovery o f
the interpolations in the Codex o f Justinian, to show how the late
empire voluntarily ahandoned the severe lines o f classical juris­
prudence. T he whole great effort o f research into Roman law in the
sixteenth century, carried out by Budé, Alciati and Cujas was domi­
nated by this problem, whose origin is clearly connected with the
French polemic against the universal empire. (This has been given
prominence recently by Domenico Maffei.) T h e scholars’ attack was
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 The End o f Rome as interpreted by Humanism
directed against the ‘crimes o f Tribonianus’ {facinora Triboniani)
and the impact o f this scholarly investigation on the interpretation
o f Roman decadence was enormous. We can find it explained in a
conclusive manner in a formula o f Antonio Agostino, Bishop o f
Ib rid a, the famous humanist jurist.
‘T he Romans lost their liberty and their empire over the other
provinces when they abandoned their ancient customs and institu­
tions. when all the inferior people did not scruple to change the
laws. Tacitus speaks well when he says that the Roman state had to
suffer first for the sins o f the Romans and then for those o f their
laws and the tw elve tables were the last expression o f just law. It is
better not to speak o f Tribonianus against whom all are ready with
the charge o f corruption, which might be formulated in the manner
o f Virgil. Fixit enim leges pretio. So say the sources; and what is
more serious still, he confounded the old and the new and made
them over.’
For the man o f th*» Rpnaicc^nn» was due to the
abandonment o f ancient manners, which is in a sense the opposite
i f what we think today. We prefer to see in the crisis o f a society an
equilibrium between new requirements and old tradition. But the
Renaissance starts from an ancient model which is to be found in
tradition itself and the ordo renascendi depends on loyalty to this
external tradition, almost an immortal phoenix. We all remember
the first page o f Guicciardini: ‘from the time when the Roman
Empire, weakened principally by the transformation o f ancient
customs, began more than a thousand years ago to decline from that
greatness to which it had climbed with marvellous virtue and for­
tune. . . .’
T h e demoniacal forces which dominated the decline were per­
ceived by M achiavelli1 in a rhythm o f events which leads from
ignobility to sloth, from that to disorder and thence to decay and so
back to the beginning. He was not the first to formulate a theory o f
historical cycles. Werner Rolevinck (14 2 5-150 2), for example, had
spoken o f a cursus temporumy which we might call the Sallustian
cycle, running from abundance to misery to temperance and then
over again; and other examples could be quoted. In Machiavelli the
series o f events is quite different. It is historicized by the interven-
1 C f., most recently, Sasso, Rivista Storica Italiana (1958), pp. 3 33 ff.
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 The End o f Rome as interpreted by Humanism
tion o f virtue and fortune, both authors o f the greatness o f Rome,
and the great crisis lies in the disappearance o f virtue and the mer­
cenariness o f the imperial period. In fact Machiavelli gives a new
content to Sallust’s m otif o f decadence as the disappearance o f virtus,
making the caesarism and laziness o f the leaders and the faithless­
ness o f the rulers the preconditions o f the collapse. T h e pheno­
menon o f the migration o f many peoples, not just one, and o f the
failure o f virtue dominate this most remarkable Renaissance inter­
pretation o f the end o f the ancient world. For Machiavelli it is
almost a matter o f pre-ordained and regular migrations, a concep­
tion which grafts humanistic motifs onto the tradition o f Paul the
Deacon.
From another part o f Europe, Conrad Peutinger, the editor o f
Jordanes, set him self the same problem o f the migrations o f the
people. He put forward the image o f the inclinatio o f the empire
with the connected commigrationes exterarum gentium, praecipue
Germanarum without any substantial innovation. We meet again in
his ‘epitome’ the motifs o f the ‘ perfidy o f Stilicho’, who denies
Alaric his wages, o f Saul ‘ the Je w ’, whom Alaric had defeated, o f
Alaric’s burning o f Rome, except the Christian churches, placed in
4 12 instead o f 410. A certain prominence is given to the meeting
o f Attila and Pope Leo. These old, uncorrected errors are however
significant, and it may be interesting to notice that Peutinger’s
epitome also omits the name o f Odoacer, which seems to suggest
a certain underestimate o f the importance o f the events o f 476. It
closes with a solemn statement which is full o f Sallustian melan­
choly: ‘ So kingdoms die and empires crumble from their founda­
tions and nothing on earth is lasting’, sic regnorum interitus, et
funditus excisa imperia, nihilque in terris perpetuum.
A friend o f Peutinger, Beatus Rhenanus, pointed out meanw hile
the national importance o f the barbarian migrations from the G er­
man point o f view. (This led eventually to one very noteworthy
result because it made clear the conventional character, for example,
o f the designation ‘G eti’ instead o f ‘ G oti’ in some sources relating
to the Germanic migrations.) Beatus made it a matter o f high
national pride. ‘ Forgetful o f the Homeric line,’ he said, ‘according
to which, “ in our house there is good and evil” , we give too much
attention to the histories o f other peoples, whereas there are on the
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other hand remarkable deeds o f our own, which in some cases may
be considered worthy not only to be known but even to be imitated.
F o r the triumphs o f the Goths, the Vandals and the Franks are our
triumphs. T h e states set up by these peoples in the splendid Roman
provinces and even in Italy and at Rome itself, once the queen o f all
cities, are a proof o f glory for us, even though nowadays there
remains only that state founded by the Franks which was always the
most fortunate in peace and war. Not that I am an admirer, to speak
the truth, o f the burning o f cities, destruction and the devastation
o f countrysides, without which victories o f this kind are never
accomplished, for who indeed who has a heart does not hate such
madness? But because we know in general that these things are
valued so that all nobility is deduced from them.’ T hus the theme o f
the transition from the ancient to the medieval world came into
contact with that o f the ethical values which make up ‘nobility’ .
T h is is the theme which one might call Erasmian.
In 1534 when the Erasmian polemic was at its height Pietro Corsi
(Cursius), a member o f the Roman clergy, thought to defend Italy
against Erasmus, who had denied that the Italians had military gifts.
Erasmus replied calmly that, in wishing to praise the military virtue
o f the Italians, one ran the risk o f praising the Goths instead. ‘When
I was at Rome some scholars seriously held the opinion that the
heroic spirits amongst the Italians were descendants o f the Goths
and the other barbarian nations, whereas the under-sized and ill-
born and weak were the true remnants o f the Roman race. Whence
it was deduced that the greatest part o f the Italian nobility took its
origin from the barbarian nations.’ It has been justly remarked by
Renaudet that this passage expose certaines vues d'une ethnographie
fo rt moderne. Erasmus has little love for fighting m en-one o f his
favourite emperors was Probus to whom the Historia Augusta
attributes an essentially anti-militaristic ideal- and certainly he did
not aim to insult the Italians in denying their warlike capacity. But
the suspicion that the Italian nobility drew its origin from the bar­
barian destroyers o f the Roman empire stands on the same plane o f
national pride, though restrained and humane, as the attitude o f
Beatus Rhenanus, for whom the triumphs o f the Goths are the
national triumphs o f his own people.
There is another rather important point. T h e scholar friends o f
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 The End o f Rome as interpreted by Humanism
E rasmus who made the Ttalmn nnhles descendants o f the barbarian
conquerors were opening a new chapter in historical methodology.
For them the problem o f the ethnic boundary between the ancient
and medieval worlds linked up with a problem which we might
describe as heraldic. T h e end o f the aged Roman world and the
migrations o f the young barbarian forbears o f the Italian aristocracy
was later, in the eighteenth century, to become a preoccupation o f
Ludovico Antonio Muratori. T h e sixteenth century foresaw the
possibility o f a positive evaluation o f the migrations and ultimately
o f the end o f the ancient world in rhp study o f th e mnHprn nations;
this was the problem for Peutinger and Beatus.
Peutinger and Beatus had met at the ‘pan-Germanic’ diet o f
Augsburg. T hey had a common interest in res Germanicae, the study
o f Germans and Germany, and Beatus was indebted to Peutinger
for his copy o f Procopius. In the richly animated life o f his own
Augsburg, the ancient Roman City made German, Peutinger could
feel that an eternally recurring pattern o f events imposed on states,
at a fatal moment, the sleep o f death. ‘ So kingdoms die’, he wrote,
thinking o f the fall o f Rome itself. In this too he was a man o f his
time. T h e old identification o f the fourth empire o f Daniel with the
Roman Empire, which had dominated the M iddle Ages, could
certainly still be defeated; the Reformer Melanchthon and the Pro­
testant historian Sleidanus for example were highly authoritative
supporters o f it. What imperial subject could doubt that Charles V
was Caesar in the same manner, almost in the same ideal line, as
Augustus, Constantine, Theodosius and Justinian? T h e Roman
empire was there still, in the shape o f the empire o f the German
nation. But, by an extraordinary circumstance, it was also, as the
empire o f Rome, a distant and completed fact, so much so that
Beatus Rhenanus could now speak o f the glories o f the Germans in
antithesis to those o f the Romans. T h e historical phenomenon
o f the extinct empire was superimposed on that medieval con­
viction o f the eternal empire destined to survive to the end o f
time.
These two antithetical ideas o f the end o f the Roman empire in
the fifth century and its definition as the fourth monarchy o f Daniel
continued to exist side by side like adversaries who could not make
up their minds to come to blows. T h ey met finally in 1566 when
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Jean Bodin, the most celebrated French historian o f the sixteenth
century, complaining o f certain prejudices o f his contemporary
Calvin, made a fundamental attack on the identification o f the
Roman empire with the fourth monarchy o f Daniel. But behind
these celebrated pages in Bodin’s Methodus, lies the whole Renais­
sance elaboration o f the idea o f decadence. T h e shadow o f the dead
empire was concentrated on the one year marked by destiny, 4 12 or
455 or 476. There were other years fateful for other empires as
that had been for the empire o f Rome.
So the sixteenth century, with its encyclopaedic cultural forma­
tion still rooted in astrological traditions, believed that it had
reached the moment to uncover this hidden secret o f the years o f
destiny, in which states were transformed and extinguished, by
investigating the movements o f the earth. In 150 5-7 Copernicus had
formulated in the De hypothesibus his doctrine that the sun and not
the earth stood still. In 1540 -3 his disciple Rheticus put the new
theory in print for the first time and expounded in the Narratio
prima the Copernican teaching about the vicissitudes o f states. ‘We
see’, he said, ‘that all monarchies have their beginning when the
centre o f the eccentric comes to be in a certain notable point o f the
terrestrial orbit. Thus when the sun’s eccentricity was greatest the
Roman Empire passed into a monarchical form and, as the eccen­
tricity diminished, so the empire, as it grew older, became less and
completely disappeared.’
With this doctrine the Copernican school projected history into
the immense space which it had transformed. It wras not simply a
return to the astrological approach o f the medieval chronicler G io­
vanni Villani. It represented a greater awareness o f the pheno­
menology o f the birth and death o f human worlds. Rheticus’s for­
mula was designed to ‘ periodize’ historical cycles without artificially
prolonging the separate duration o f governments and states. Jean
Bodin subjected it to a concise criticism in his Methodus. Bodin did
not deny the doctrine o f years o f destiny, for him too the birth and
death o f states was deterministically regulated; but he believed the
relationship to be not an astronomical but a numerical one based on
the perfect number 496. He calculated, with all kinds o f distortions,
496 years from the foundation o f the Roman republic to Julius Caesar
and another 496 for the whole empire from Augustus to Augustulus.
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He replaced the astronomical hypothesis o f the Copernicans with
the old number mystique.
Nowadays these calculations make us smile, though the number
mystique, demythologized, has been compared by someone with
modern ‘statistics o f conjuncture\ But they have their own importance
in the history o f the idea o f decadence. We can certainly marvel
that the sixteenth century, the age o f Renaissance and Reformation,
should have been completely obsessed by astrology and that men like
Rheticus and Bodin should have connected historical events with
astronomical figures or with multiples o f the number seven. Per­
haps our very modern view o f the system o f thought o f sixteenth-
century man makes us run the risk o f misunderstanding this irra­
tional juxtaposition o f history and astronomy or arithmetic. We
should regard it as only one o f the many forms o f expression for the
need to fit the events called conversiones, therefore also the births
and deaths o f the great states, into a cosmic and universal pheno­
menology. Therefore for Copernicans as for Bodin the pheno­
menology o f decline appeared in infinitely varied forms. Bodin
could speak o f the death o f Rome as one o f many transformations
and conversiones, beside the conversiones o f a number o f other régimes
and states, the Athenian, Spattan, English, Turkish, and so forth.
T h e idea o f the four monarchies was thus enlarged and Bodin could
proceed to liquidate it. T here was an infinite number o f forms o f
decline, represented as if in a panorama by the most diverse com­
binations. Put beside other ‘ declines’ and the many births and
deaths o f régimes, the end o f the ancient world too became a finite
reality, a ‘fateful time*, which must be investigated through its
component parts. It was a fateful time also for Johannes Löwen-
klav (Leunclavius), a historian who is forgotten today but nevertheless
a great one. Löwenklav wrote in 1576 but he transformed the human­
ist problem o f Roman decline into something organic and critically
thought out.
 6

Constantine, Julian, Justinian:

from Löwenklav’s ‘Apology’ to the
question o f the ‘Anekdota’

T h e new restatement o f the problem o f the late empire may be

said to have been initiated by Löwenklav in 1576 and completed
by Gibbon two centuries later: the first a historian whom we have
now almost forgotten and the second a historian o f universal fame.
Though he was a genius, Löwenklav has fallen into relative ob­
scurity. His historical rôle w as to be the pioneer o f lines o f thought
which were fully developed much later. H im self a man o f the late
Renaissance, he opened the way which only the Enlightenment, and
in some respects only modern thought, could exploit fully. H e has,
at any rate, a position o f capital importance in the history o f Euro­
pean historiography as the first modern interpreter o f the end o f the
ancient world. 382 years after the appearance o f his Apology in
Defence ofZosimus we still feel, as he felt, that the history o f the late
empire is dominated by the two great contrasting personalities,
Constantine the revolutionary and Tulian the desperate defender o f
tradition, and that both must be understood if we are to grasp late
Roman civilization in its fullness. Without resorting to the rotation
o f the earth, like the Copemicans, or to number symbolism, like
Jean Bodin, Löwenklav had an equal sense o f the drama o f ancient
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 Constantine, Ju lian, Justinian
Rome’s collapse, o f the tempora fatalia, as he said, but his sense was
that o f the pure historian, studying the elements in the situation as
they were defined by human nature.
How did Löwenklav arrive at his interpretation o f the late
Em pire? In 15 7 1 he had published an edition o f Gregory o f Nyssa.
In 1576 came the translation o f Zosimus with the connected Apology
in Defence o f Zosimus. He had dealt with a Christian and a pagan
author within a period o f five years. Standing aside from the two
opposing faiths which had confronted each other in bitter conflict
during the Roman empire, Löwenklav, though he was himself an
undoubted Christian, could affirm the need for the most objective
investigation. ‘ Since we have at our disposal’, he said, ‘ historical
sources o f very different tendencies, the truth will be most success­
fully sought by the scholar who is capable o f judgment and can
recognize (through these contrasting sources) the almost living
image o f the truth.’ For this reason his friend Redinger had sought
diligently, though unsuccessfully, for the Histories o f the pagan
Eunapius, and for this reason Löwenklav wrote his wonderful
Apology in Defence o f Zosimus. T h e central problem in the inter­
pretation o f the crisis o f the ancient world was usually the evaluation
o f the work o f Constantine, but Löwenklav linked this with the
interpretation o f the antithetical personality, Julian the Apostate,
and further with his judgment on Constantius, the Christian, but
Arian, emperor, who had given the Caesarship to Julian. In the
background was the great question o f the connections between the
Christianization o f the empire and the end o f the ancient world; and
also an academic debate about the evaluation o f the Christian
empire in contrast to the principate o f the first three centuries.
T h icf form ™f *h? p ™ H °m f" llv present in Löwenklav’s
m în rl anH frhprpfXrp. M c Apnlngp «V» T ie fe r e n f .7 n tif» ,{^ m a y b e Cn n -
sidered as the foundation charter o f modern studies on the late
empire.
‘ [The adversaries o f Zosimus] say that this historian was hostile
to Constantine because Constantine gave the victory to the new
religion. So be it; what is to be deduced from this ? . . . We should
admit that this religious hatred led Zosimus to attribute to Con­
stantine the introduction o f that intolerable kind o f tribute called
chrysargyron . . . (the aurum lustrale as it is called in books o f civil
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law because it was exacted every five years);1 we should admit that
it was the religious hatred which led Zosimus to accuse Constantine
o f laying heavy impositions on the property o f others. We ought to
be suspicious o f the Zosimian tradition if it should be established
that Zosimus spoke falsely. On the other hand it is possible to
demonstrate that Zosimus had good sources for his accusation
against Constantine, so much so that, even if the testimonies o f
others were lacking, Constantine still could not be acquitted o f this
charge. Even if the tribute o f the chrysargyron had been already
imposed by Constantine’s predecessors (which the critics o f Zosi­
mus do not dare to affirm) and he had merely maintained it, Zosi-
mus’s charge would still in a sense be unaffected because Constan­
tine would not have abolished this hateful tribute already introduced
by pagan emperors. In this case then Zosimus did no more than his
duty as an objective historian: he reported the matter, as he had
learnt it from his sources, honestly. . . . But they admit further that
this tax was always fashionable under the Christian empire, from
Constantine onwards until Anastasius. . . . L et them cease then to
bewail the charge o f Zosimus against Constantine.. . . Zosimus says
that Constantine was prodigal, once he had gained the throne, be­
cause he exhausted the finances o f the state with immense donatives,
engaged in superfluous luxury expenditure on the largest scale,
employed money in a vast number o f useless constructions, not
distinguishing between prodigality and munificence; all o f which is
historically accurate, and no one can deny that just for these
reasons he must have devised new methods o f exacting taxes and
introduced onerous tributes since moderate measures were in-

1 It is significant that Löwenklav, on the basis of Zosimus, grasped the importance

of the chrysargyron in the economy o f the Constantinian state. It was a tax on capital
employed in commerce or (if no capital were employed) on commercial activity itself.
T he concept of ‘capital’ included for example even beasts used for the transport of
goods. Therefore the chrysargyron fell indiscriminately upon the whole bourgeoisie
and proletariat of the empire from the richest merchant to the innkeeper or the most
miserable beggar. The Constantinian state-which for the normal payment of the
annona to the soldiers always had recourse to direct taxation of landed property (capita-
tio-iugatio, exacted either in kind or in money; cf. infra, ch. io)-found in the chryar-
gyron a useful method for the payment of donatives in gold or silver money. Hence the
name chrysargyron, that is to say ‘the (tax in ?) gold-silver’ . In emphasizing this question
of Constantinian taxation Löwenklav perceived what modern historians call the eco­
nomic ‘planning’ introduced by Constantine, or rather perfected by him. (Piganiol,
Scientia (1947), pp. 95 ff. ; Journal des Savants (1955), pp. 9 ff. ; Lambrechts, Ant. Class.
(1949), PP- 109 ff.).
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 Constantine, Ju lia n , Justinian
sufficient. T h e essential thing for him was that he should not aban­
don his policy o f abundant issue and granting o f money. . . . In
the same way we are told that he was liberal with the soldiers, which
Zosimus also attests. Nor could he well be otherwise since he had
obtained power by means o f the army and must persevere in this
path, the only one by which he could have made himself preferred
to the legitimate sons o f Constantius Chlorus, born o f the latter’s
marriage with Theodora. Now all this involved enormous dona­
tives and could not happen without the economic ruin o f the sub­
jects. So to report, as does Zosimus, the introduction o f this odious
taxation and the intolerable exactions carried out by Constantine,
or by Valentinian I or Theodosius the Great, is not a denigration
o f pious and religious princes; it is rather a demonstration o f the
true facts which may provide useful examples for ourselves. In fact
this is a warning to present and future princes that they who protect
the Christian religion should not consider themselves authorized
to use that arbitrary power against the property o f their subjects
which Julian and other pagans denied to themselves. Julian and the
others were good and moderate administrators and it would be
shameful if our Christian princes were to be surpassed in this by
pagan s.. . . I f then Zosimus recognized objectively some glories and
merits o f Constantine this confirms that he was certainly a good
historian ; . . . you others however, who attack Zosimus for so little,
do not make gods o f the Christian princes, or anyway do not exalt
them to the skies with praise. . . . Certainly Constantine was great
in name and deed. Who denies it ? . . . But it is the duty o f those who
would narrate the events o f Constantine’s age to record not only
the praiseworthy things about him but also those which are other­
w ise; the law o f history demands it. . . . Even some o f those who,
unlike the pagan Zosimus, follow our religion, do not hesitate to
attack Constantine freely. . . . T hey attack him for the change
which came about in his old age when, at the suggestion o f his
sister Constantia he recalled Arius, the author o f a most immoral
heresy, from exile and had Athanasius deported to Trier. . . . Eva-
grius and Nicephorus attack Constantine because they say that
Crispus Caesar, a youth o f outstanding virtue [the son o f Con­
stantine] and Fausta Augusta [Constantine’s wife] were killed by
Constantine himself. . . . T hey say that no mention is made o f these
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 Constantine, Ju lia n , Justinian
murders o f Constantine by Eusebius Pamphyli, a contemporary
who survived Constantine. But I prefer Zosimus to Eusebius. It is a
mistake to resort to witnesses like Eusebius and in general to
historians like him. Eusebius did not want to present Crispus as
guilty because everyone knew that he was not, and on the other
hand, so as not to accuse Constantine, he avoided saying that
Crispus had been killed by his father. . . . From this one may fairly
deduce that Crispus was truly innocent, just as Zosimus relates,
saying that the grandmother o f Crispus, Helena, unreservedly con­
demned the crime. Therefore Eusebius, for his own reasons, pre­
ferred to take up a neutral position, while Zosimus, being further
removed from the time o f these events, could speak the truth and
indeed could not avoid doing so. And I marvel that these same his­
torians, not content with making such absurd observations against
Zosimus, also want to deny all cruelty in Constantius II. . . . Cer­
tainly Gregory o f Nazianzus, the most severe o f men, praises him
for hatred o f Tulian: but Julian was in reality, on account o f many
great virtues, not only equal but superior to Constantius. . . .
‘There is yet another charge against Zosimus, by which he would
be, according to his critics, guilty partly o f lying and partly o f insult­
ing Constantine. Zosimus says that Constantine, tormented by
remorse for his violated oaths and murders and other crimes, and
failing to find purification in the religion o f the pagans, passed under
the inspiration o f a Spaniard called Egizius to the Christian teaching
for the sake o f the serenity o f spirit which it offers to the penitent
who appeal with confidence to the Son o f God, the reconciler o f men
with God. T h e critics o f Zosimus deny this. T hey exclude the
possibility that Constantine might have committed the said murder
and observe in opposition to Zosimus that Constantine obtained at
the end o f his life that purification from sins which is achieved
through baptism. But this removes nothing from the truth o f
Zosimus’s account. In fact Constantine could still be a follower of
the Christian religion even if he obtained baptism so late. In those
days it was the custom that the followers o f Christianity should
delay baptism until the last years o f their life because, I suppose,
they believed (as indeed some still believe now) that with baptism
our life is purified from every sin and it is not necessary, once this
has been obtained, to expiate in any other way.’
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Here we have the prototype o f the problem o f Constantine as it
always appears in modern historiography : the problem o f the per­
sonality o f Constantine, o f his violence» his conversing made so
much more obscure by his baptism almost at the point o f death:
furthermore the problem ot the economic policy o f extensive issue
o f money introduced by Constantine, profoundly different in its
results from thepolicies which were followed by his nephew Julian,
who was so tragically akin and so tragically opposite to him. (With
the statement o f this economic problem Löwenklav foreshadows
historiographical tendencies o f very recent times.) Above all certain
illusions disappear from the myth o f Constantine and, almost in
antithesis, there arises the myth o f Julian which, two centuries
later, will be the centre o f Gibbon’s historical experience. In the face
o f this great innovation no one will want to waste time on Löwen-
klav’s trivial error in transforming the ‘Egyptian come from Spain*
o f whom Zosimus speaks into ‘a Spaniard called Egizius’ . Even the
pragmatic style o f these evaluations (one must not forget that for
the humanist history is normally the magistra vitae) takes nothing
from the historiographical importance o f the Constantine-Julian
antithesis as pointed out by Löwenklav.
‘ Let us leave religion on one side’ , says Löwenklav, ‘and see what
kind o f a man Julian was. In Julian there were, not merely suggested
but apparent, multifarious signs o f outstanding virtue; so much so
that if they had not been obscured by his error in regard to the
worship o f the true God it would certainly have been permissible to
see in him the ideal embodiment o f the good prince, and even when
he was very young. . . . Who then, I ask, however hostile he may be
to Julian would not wish to exalt this illustrious man for so many
admirable virtues o f spirit and o f body ? . . . Yet there are writers so
devoid o f all spirit o f humanity that they do not hesitate to belittle
his virtues solely on account o f his apostasy and to declare him to
have been an unfortunate or even ruinous prince for his state. T he
reason they give is that he was not successful in the Persian war and
that being killed in enemy territory, he brought enormous harm upon
the state. T he truth is different. T hose two nations which were so
dangerous and fateful for the Roman empire, the German and the
Persian, were reduced by him to such difficulties that one was
defeated in grievous harries and iirgpntly sought and obtained
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 Constantine, Ju lia n , Justinian

warTike^andTmpatient o f peace: the other, terrified hy this con­

tinuous series o f victories confesse ^ however u n w i l l i n g that it
had been close to final ruin. . . . A ll the fear and harm on this
account ought, on the contrary, to be attributed to his successor
Jovian, a man o f our religion. In fact, Jovian, to the eternal shame o f
the Roman name, made himself almost a suppliant to the victorious
enemy, and while the Persians (who were spontaneously seeking
peace) should have ceded part o f their territory, he actually appeased
them by the cession o f numerous provinces.’
Löwenklav’s exaltation o f Julian foreshadowed certain motifs in
Gibbon : the talent, the temperance, the generous spirit, the chastity
o f Julian. It was founded, amongst other things, on the works o f
Julian himself. It had as an inevitable result the re-examination o f
the pagan view, also stated by Zosimus, that the crisis o f the Roman
empire had been due to the abandonment o f the ancient religion.
It is natural that Zosimus’s Byzantine critics, against whom Löwen-
klav reacted, should have opposed this pagan attitude with as much
violence as it had been opposed earlier, in a western world under
attack from the Goths and Vandals, by the great Bishop o f Hippo,
Augustine. But the Augustinian solution existed within the sphere
o f metahistorical reflection about the crises o f the earthly city.
Augustine had not ventured to make a strictly political comparison
between pagan and Christian emperors. Such a confrontation
became possible only in the Byzantine world and it had led to the
paradoxical conclusion o f the critics o f Zosimus, who had stood the
pagan thesis on its head and attributed to the Christian empire
political successes (concretely expressed in terms o f power) posi­
tively superior to the victories and conquests o f pagan Rome.
Löwenklav was aware o f the gravity o f the new problem. Since he
denied, as seemed to him necessary from the standpoint o f his­
torical ‘objectivity’, the superiority o f the Christian over the pagan
emperors, he ran the risk o f returning to the old pagan thesis o f
Christianity as the cause o f the death o f Rome. H is Christian con­
victions ruled out such a solution. ‘T h e causes o f the fall o f Rome*,
he concluded, ‘are to be studied otherwise, requiring that one should
investigate the reasons for which these sad fallings o f kingdoms and
confusions and massacres occur at certain fatal moments o f history
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 Constantine, Ju lia n , Justinian
( fatalibus quibusdam temporum momentis). . . history teaches us that
this happened often in times past and in the full light o f our own
times. We see it happen daily/ Removed from the ancient dispute
between pagans and Christians-that is between traditionalists and
revolutionaries-the question ‘why did the ancient world die?*
remained essentially unanswerable; or rather it was reduced to the
consideration o f the decisive moments (the fatalia quaedam temporum
momenta o f Löwenklav) in which history overthrows kingdoms and
massacres men.
Löwenklav had before him the example o f his owrn times. When
he was writing in 1576 spirits w ere subdued, in spite o f Lepanto, by
the Turkish menace. His whole life as a student and, one might say,
as a politician, was dominated by the encounter with the Turkish
world. He had discovered the text o f Zosimus during an embassy to
the Turks and he was the founder, with his Historiae musulmanae
Tureorum, o f the modern study o f Turkish civilization. T h e great
fear which Islam had excited in Christendom for nine centuries
remained a standard o f comparison for the fatal period in wrhich the
ancient world fell. Later there will be other Ideen which can simi­
larly call forth a new vision o f the late empire and o f the migration
o f peoples; in the second half o f the eighteenth century, two hun­
dred years after Löwenklav, will come Herder’s vision o f the
‘ inundations’ and ‘rejuvenation’ o f future centuries by the peoples
o f the Ukraine and Russia and the Steppes o f central Asia. T h e road
byjwhich history may attain ‘objectivity’ lies through the pressure
o f contemporary preoccupations. Though this may seem a paradox
it is a truth confirmed by experience and indeed comprehensible
a priori.
In the first half o f the seventeenth century one man who wras
immersed in the contemporary life o f his own time and yet fascinated
by the great historical problem was Hugo Grotius. His toleran*
Protestantism suggested to him a Christian vision o f the history o f
E u ro p e-‘ Europe’ is a word wrhich appears frequently in the thought
o f the men o f this time, confronted by the terrible w ars o f religion.
In his famous little book On the Truth o f the Christian Religion {De
veritate religionis Christianae), which appeared in 1639 we find,
among other things, an exaltation o f the religious life o f the Chris­
tians in the first three centuries, a m otif which implicitly suggested
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 Constantine, Ju lia n , Justinian
the conception o f a ‘secularized’ Christianity in the late empire. In
1640 appeared his commentary on the biblical texts relating to
Antichrist (Commentatio ad loca quaedam quae de Antichristo agunt
aut agere putantur). With an intuition which has been confirmed by
modern studies, he traced the early Christians’ idea o f Antichrist to
the horror which the madness o f Caligula had inspired during the
early empire and, above all, he saw in the Revelation o f St. Joh n a
true and proper prophecy o f the barbarian migrations, or more
strictly, o f the ‘rebellion o f the federati against the empire which’, he
said, ‘began in the age o f Honorius’ . (Note the periodization in the
manner o f Flavio Biondo.) Thus in the eyes o f a fervent Christian
the end o f the ancient world appeared to be conditioned, in accord­
ance with the Orosian tradition, by the symbolic significance o f a
divine sanction. But Grotius’s chief contribution to the study o f the
Roman crisis is not to be found o f course in these two little works o f
apologetics and exegesis. ft™ * intellectual battle was con­
cerned essentially with the very modern idea (though it had some
Senecan and Tacitean roots) o f the noble savage. Grotius was above
all the student o f natural law and his thought was always dominated
by the primitivist aspiration towards spontaneity and simplicity in
law. Therefore the old criticism o f the Culti directed against Ju s ­
tinian’s law and the facinora Triboniani became for him a revaluation
o f the contribution made by the barbarians, men o f simple and just
laws, to the juridical structure o f Europe. In the Prolegomena,
admiration for the Gothic world, which had become a professional
interest (he was Swedish ambassador in France in the decade
1634-45), made him regard the Goths and other barbarians as
builders o f a simple and sane society on the ruins o f a corrupt world.
Naturally the exaltation o f the Germans, which we have already
found, i f in a limited form, in Beatus Rhenanus, was not a great
novelty, least o f all in Swedish tradition, which had always regarded
the Gothic glories as a matter o f national h isto ry -if the Goths had
come from Sweden the real fount and motherland o f Germ anic
virtues was always there. T h e Swede Joannes Magnus, last but one
o f the Catholic bishops o f Uppsala (the last was his brother O laf) had
written a Gothorum Sueonumque historiay published posthumously
in 1554 by his brother. Modelling his work on the Decades o f Flavio
Biondo, the Swedish bishop had insisted that ‘the inclinatio o f the
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 Constantine, Ju lia n , Justinian
Roman empire had its origin with the Goths’ , but, in contrast to
Flavio, he had traced the fall o f the empire to the terrible crisis o f
the third century, more precisely to the Gallieni inertia, ‘the in­
capacity o f Gallienus’ . In general the Historia o f Joannes Magnus,
with its ingenuousness and its sonorously nationalistic tone, was a
feeble and monotonous w ork-all the virtues belonged to the Goths
and as usual Alaric was deceived by the ingens perfidia o f Stilicho.
Nevertheless the history o f the Goths, seen as Swedish national
history, could open up interesting new points o f view on the fortunes
o f the Roman empire, already tested by the barbarian invasions o f
the third century, in what we would call the age o f Commodian.
T h e epoch o f Gustavus Vasa (K ing o f Sweden 1523-60) gave a new
impulse to the Germanic pride o f the descendants o f the ancient
Suiones, just as marked in the Lutheran statesman Gustavus as in
the Catholic historian Joannes Magnus. About a century after this
awakening, Grotius, whom we may call a Dutchman turned Swede,
saw again in his Goths the ancient sons o f the Scandinavian country
which had given him a noble mission in life. In his new historical
perspective Salvian, Isidore and Jordanes seemed to speak with a
more elevated voice as stern judges o f Roman decadence and ardent
investigators o f the barbarian spirit. Even the old m otif (which
appeared already in Erasmus) o f the Germanic origin o f the neo-
Latin aristocracies, revived by Grotius, acquired almost a tone o f
humane austerity. It was fitted into that kind o f elopium o f the
migration o f the peoples which seemed to distort history bv throw-
ing over the old empire o f Rome the shadow o f its guilty exhaustion.
‘T h e harvest o f Gothic, Vandal and Lombard laws will not be
accepted by those who admire only Roman things. I see in Roman
laws an ingenuity which seeks out trifles, an instability and incon­
stancy, and in the end so great a mass, such uncertainty, that no one
can have a memory so good that he will not stumble often in those
contradictory laws. M y philosophy wishes that the law should be
simple, brief, clear, like, for example, the government o f fathers over
their families. T he constancy o f such a law carries with it much
authority and I am happy to find this in the laws o f our N ortherners.
Therefore I think that if this simplicity had not pleased God as
much as the subtleties, he would never have given its majestic
strength to the laws o f these innocent peoples. Usage (no false judge)
IOI
 Constantine, Ju lia n , Justinian
amongst many peoples, prefers these (Germanic) laws to the
Roman : Sidonius tells us that in Gaul the laws o f Theodoric, not
those o f Theodosius were in for c e .. . . (However let us make a com­
parison, by the ch ief divisions, between Roman and Germanic
law).1 . . . In public law there is the same fundamental structure o f
laws, depending amongst the Romans on the will o f the prince; that
is o f one man who may easily be mistaken or change his opinion.
Therefore among so many imperial edicts one conflicts with another.
Justinian not only changed many at the bidding o f that Tribonianus
who was altogether corrupt, he furthermore changed his own
opinion on the same matter three or four times. Amongst your
(Germanic) peoples, on the other hand the laws, properly moderated
by the princes and by those elected bv the orders o f the people, have
three advantages: because o f the number o f good councillors the
laws cannot conceal anything harmful, they are observed with
pleasure because they are derived from common agreement, they
are never changed except bv absolute necessity. . . .*
T his exaltation by Grotius o f pure Germanic customs has then its
own innocent national prejudice. It has also however, conceived as
it was in the age in which Alemanni published the Anekdota o f
Procopius, a methodological interest. For Grotius it is a ‘ Procopian*
problem, but regarded from a religiously tolerant standpoint (there­
fore he sees in Procopius’s Christianity something rather like his
own Christianity, anxious for unity, withdrawn from the conflicts
between opposing confessions), and he strains to emphasize the anti-
Justinianian, pro-Germanic aspects o f Procopius’s work. In vindicat-

1 G r o t i u s ’ s d o c t r in e o f th e s u p e r i o r i t y o f th e G e r m a n ic la w s to R o m a n la w le d to
d iff ic u l tie s o f w h i c h G r o t i u s h i m s e lf w a s a w a r e . H o w d o e s o n e e x p la in t h a t J u s t in ia n ,
t o w h o m w e o w e th e fa m o u s C o d e x o f 5 2 9 , h a d d e fe a te d th e V a n d a ls in 5 3 3 a n d th e
G o t h s in 5 3 5 - 5 5 5 ? G ro tiu s r e p lie s th a t to p r e s e r v e th e p u r it y o f th e ir v i r t u e th e
V a n d a l s a n d G o t h s w o u ld h a v e h a d to a v o id th e f r e q u e n t m a r r ia g e s w it h th e d e fe a te d
R o m a n s a n d to c o n v e r t th e o c c u p i e d la n d s in to c o m m o n la n d s ( a p r o v is io n w h i c h h e
p r a is e d in th e s ta te o f th e I n c a s a n d a ls o in th e p r im i t iv e R o m a n sta te ). G r o t i u s ’ s
p r im i t iv is m t h u s c o n n e c t s th e p r o b le m o f th e b a r b a r ia n m ig r a t io n s in th e R o m a n
E m p i r e w it h th a t o f th e In d i a n p o li c y o f th e S p a n i s h C o n q u ista d o re s w h o h a d b e c o m e
b y c h a n c e th e id e a l h e irs o f th e m ig r a t io n o f p e o p le s . I n a n y c a s e th e im p o r t a n c e o f
G r o t i u s ’ s P ro le g o m en a f o r th e h is t o r y o f c iv iliz a t io n is w o r t h n o tin g . G r o t i u s p o in t e d
o u t a m o n g s t o t h e r t h in g s th e a ffin ity b e t w e e n th e G e r m a n ic la n g u a g e s a n d P e r s ia n .
T h i s d is c o v e r y , th o u g h d e r i v e d f r o m a m is ta k e n e q u a t io n o f S c y t h i a n s w it h G o t h s ,
f o r e s h a d o w s B o p p . T o d a y it is f o r g o t te n . B u t G r o t i u s w a s a w a r e o f th e im p o r t a n c e o f
h i s d is c o v e r y , w r it i n g a b o u t it , f o r e x a m p l e , to S c h m a lt z i n te r m s w h i c h b e t r a y h is
ju s tifie d p r id e .
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 Constantine yJuliany Justinian
ing the purity o f the ancient Goths, which seemed to him to be
attested by some passages in Procopius, Grotius declared that doubts
o f the sincerity o f the professed Christianity o f the historian o f
Caesarea were without foundation; and thus he took up a position
on the question o f the Procopian Anekdota (or as they were and are
commonly called the Secret History) which, in the seventeenth
century, was undoubtedly the most vexed and discussed work
in late-Roman literature.
T his debate had been opened by the librarian o f the Vatican,
Nicola Alemanni, who had discovered the work and published it in
1623. Alemanni, who came from Ancona and was o f Greek ancestry,
was initiated into the study o f ecclesiastical history in the tradition
started by Cardinal Baronio with the Annaliy published between
1588 and 1607. Baronio’s tradition could not have very much sym­
pathy with Justinian. Preoccupied with safeguarding Egypt at all
costs, this great emperor had tried to reconcile orthodoxy with the
rebels against the Council o f Chalcedon and therefore had to keep up
a conflict, sometimes bitter and sometimes restrained, with the
popes. T h e discovery o f the Anekdota seemed a blessing to the his­
torians o f Baronio’s persuasion. N ow at last a new aspect o f Justinian
had come to light, the ruler dominated by the
And in fact Alemanni was in a sense a minor Löwenklav. Ju st as the
tradition o f Zosimus had led Löwenklav to demolish the myth o f
Constantine, so the new work o f Procopius led Alemanni to a
revision o f judgment on the personality o f Justinian. T h e discoveries
o f new texts are in some ways less accidental than they seem at first
sight; there is generally something ‘necessary’ in the meeting
between the searcher and his discovery.
Though the methodological importance o f the criticism o f Con­
stantine may be compared with that o f the criticism o f Justinian, the
nature and results o f Alemanni’s revision were however far removed
from the spirit which had enlivened the great pages o f Löwenklav.
Löwenklav had aimed to liberate the historiography o f the late
empire from sectarian preoccupations. Through his criticism o f
Eusebius and Gregory he had given students a new understanding
o f the relationship between the figures o f Constantine and lulian.
which is essential to the history o f the fourth century, and his dis­
covery had been something altogether new and original. Alemanni’s
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 Constantine, Ju lia n , Justinian
criticism o f Justinian’s personality, on the other hand, was a kind o f
seventeenth-century pendant to the glorious criticism o f Justinian’s
legislation, which had been carried out in the sixteenth century, in
connection with the discovery o f the interpolations. It was not
therefore altogether new. But it appeared as such because by now
the criticism o f the facinora Triboniani, which had arisen in France
as an expression o f the new French science o f law, was falling into
the background.
T h e essential question was modern. T he problem which excited
the polemic about Procopius was the relation between church and
state. T o Alemanni and the ‘ Baronians in general Tustinian appeared
as an enemy o f the papacy. T o the jurists who opposed Alemanni,
Justinian appeared as the defender o f the rights o f the state. T hus
an apparently strange situation arose: the jurists, who in the six­
teenth century had made unceasing attacks on Justinian and the
facinora Triboniani, now became the inflexible supporters o f Ju s ­
tinian against the Anekdota o f Procopius and against Alemanni. Not
Grotius however. He defended the rights o f the state, not by refer­
ence to Justinian, but with his Ostrogoths, and moreover his reli­
gious tolerance prevented him from thinking too clearly in sectarian
terms. Though he was an extremely devout, but not fanatical,
Lutheran, Grotius succeeded in winning the love o f the Catholics,
and after his death Father Petan said the mass for his soul.
T h e opponents o f the Procopian Anekdota and o f Alemanni were
o f another temper. T hey would certainly never have understood the
moderation o f Grotius, the uncertainties o f Schmaltz, or the con­
version o f Queen Christina. T h e most determined o f them was
Joannes Eichel, jurist to the house o f Brunswick. When he attempted
to confute Alemanni in 1654 he put into his writing the intransi­
gence which had inspired the Brunswick family in the Thirty Years
War and the anxiety which shrinks from compromise. (Mazarin was
preparing the League o f the Rhine.) Justinian appeared to them in
the guise o f their own lords and also o f the Great Elector Frederick
William. T he charges made by the Anekdota seemed to them so
absurd that Procopius could not have been their author. . . . And
what o f the rights o f the critic? Is it impossible to touch the great
men, the heroes ? ‘Naturally’ , said Eichel, ‘ I am not ignorant o f the
Apology o f Löwenklav in defence o f Zosim us; but I am so far from
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 Constantine, Ju lia n , Justinian
considering it, except for a small part, decisive that I would certainly
maintain on the contrary that it has demonstrated the absolute
impossibility o f defending Zosimus. It is as clear as daylight that in
those days writers like Zosimus were common enough and no one
will be so malicious or wretched as to give the slightest credence to
the charges o f Zosimus against Constantine’ . For Eichel, Löwen-
klav’s criticism o f Constantine, based on Zosimus, was absurd and
Alemanni’s criticism o f Justinian was equally absurd in the same
way.
T his was, in part at least, a step backwards. Today no one doubts
the authenticity o f the Procopian Anekdota and naturally no one
would think o f throwing away such an important source. T he
modern historian knows very well that he has no right to put himself
in the position o f judge or confessor to condemn or absolve and he
knows equally well that all the voices o f an epoch have the right to
be heard, even when they are directed against the great myths or
question the Stature o f the giants. T h e history n f th e late empire is
a story o f tragic and powerful men. Constantine. Julian and lus-
tinian amongst them. I .öwenklav had shown that the way to under­
stand them was to place oneself at a suitable distance from them all
so as to catch the contrast between the various voices. In spite o f
Eichel’s attachment to the great traditional myths, this approach
was repeatedly rediscovered every time that research overcame the
instinctive practical preoccupations o f the moment and became
capable o f grasping the dimensions o f the conflicts-often para­
doxical conflicts-at the end o f a world. It was significant o f these
conflicts that the tradition o f the great Justinian had to struggle, after
an irreversible inversion o f values, with the Procopian idea that
Justinian was the prince o f demons.
T h e era which stretched from Löwenklav to the Procopian con­
troversy was then in a sense the most profitable for the establish-
ment o f a critical historiography o f the late empire. T h e comparison
o f interpretations transmitted in the best-known texts with inter­
pretations completely opposed and almost unsuspected hitherto-
Eusebius with Zosimus, the Wars o f Procopius with the same
author’s Anekdota-brought to light that complex interweaving o f
diverse elements and evaluations which is the true pattern o f every
great historical event. And, since the appearance o f the late empire
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 Constantine, Ju lian, Justinian
changes according to one’s interpretation, for example, o f Con­
stantine or Julian the Apostate or Justinian, one may say that the
presuppositions were being discovered for a real scientific historio­
graphy which deals with the shadows beside the places o f illumina­
tion. In the years 1626-52 Godefroy could write a remarkable com­
mentary on the Codex Theodosianus which is still today a valuable
administrative history o f the late Roman empire. Every modern
library in which the end o f the ancient world is studied includes
amongst its most important reference works this book by Godefroy,
and from the late seventeenth century, the work o f Tillemont, from
the eighteenth century Montesquieu’s little essay and Gibbon’s
monumental History, beside the works o f Sybel, Dahn and Secck
from the nineteenth century and Stein and Piganiol from the twen­
tieth. There is no break in the continuity o f scholarship from Gode­
froy and Tillem ont to our own day. O f course the spirit o f men
changes: ‘their’ sense o f decadence was conditioned by the rise o f
religious disputes within the framework o f the religious confessions
and then, in the eighteenth century, by the definition o f the prin­
ciples whose abandonment determined the crisis. Our idea o f
decadence in the nineteenth century and after has a larger patho­
logical element and sometimes seems to resemble the expectation o f
Antichrist in the Roman empire itself and the M iddle Ages. But
many o f the problems which we extract from that distant past, a
millennium and a half aw ay from us today, are ‘their’ ow n problems.
Was Constantine converted? In what sense was Julian opposed to
him ? How did Christianity triumph over the classical w w ld ? Why
was the unitary economy o f the Roman empire broken up ? Did the
barbarian flood break into a world which w as already crashing ? . . .
T h e same questions w^ere on the agenda o f the historians eight or
ten generations ago. T h e seventeenth century sensed them and
sometimes posed them ; the eighteenth century certainly posed
them. We can now examine them one by one, the ways in which
they were stated and their dialectical changes, as they have developed
from that time to the present day.

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PART TWO
 7

The Religious Problem

It has recently been suggested1 that Eusebius, the famous bio­

grapher and contemporary o f Constantine, was responsible for the
distinction between the ecclesiastical and the political history o f
the Roman imperial period ; and that therefore we, who regard the
study o f the one kind o f history separately from the other as plainly
impossible, have to correct an error which originated essentially in
the age o f Constantine itself. But, in this instance at any rate, Euse­
bius seems to be quite innocent. He did indeed write an Ecclesiastical
History, following the remarkable example already set in the second
century by Hegesippus, but it is not true that he was trying to
isolate the vicissitudes o f the Christian communities from the general
framework o f imperial history when he described them in that book.
O f course this does not necessarily mean that he was a great his­
torian, only that he is not responsible for the distinction between the
two kinds o f history.
Bolingbroke, in his Letters, made the opposite charge against
Eusebius, that he had ‘corrupted the waters’, confusing sacred and
profane history. T h e truth is that the late empire and the M iddle
Ages, in applying, with varying completeness, the kind o f explana­
tion which is provided by the idea o f ‘divine judgments’, put profane
history at the service o f ecclesiastical history. It was ecclesiastical
1 C f . W . W e b e r , K a iserg es ch ic h te u n d K irc h e n g e sc h ic h te ( 1 9 2 9 ) .

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 The Religious Problem
history, as sacred history, which gave the key to the understanding
o f human events. (In fact Walafrid Strabo, the most gifted historian
o f the Carolingian period, and perhaps o f the whole M iddle Ages in
the west, made genuine discoveries about the conversion o f the
Germans to Arianism.) T he Humanist-Renaissance epoch dis­
covered profane history and thus the distinction arose. But, from
Löwenklav to Godefroy and Grotius, the need to overcome it
became ever clearer, and the point o f departure was the personality
who dominates the final phase o f the ancient world and wiio was so
much discussed by Löwenklav : Constantine^.
One could now study critically the traditional ‘vision’ and with it
the conversion o f Constantine. Godefroy, a lawyer, debated the
authenticity o f Eusebius’s Life o f Constantine. Oisel, the numis­
matist, thought Eusebius’s whole account o f Constantine’s vision
a fairy tale. In 1679 appeared the second o f the Libri Miscellaneorum
o f Etienne Baluze1 the librarian o f the Colbertine, w hich contained
a decisive vindication o f the traditional Eusebian account. ‘And what
will there be left to call true’ , said Baluze, ‘if wre can relegate to the
category o f ancient inventions a story like this wrhich is based on the
testimony o f Lactantius, Optatus, Porphyry, Eusebius, and also o f
coins ? Matters like this should be treated with more piety and that
irreligious temerity should be far removed from Christian souls.*
Baluze’s protest against the ‘ irreligious temerity’ w'hich had made
the Constantinian question possible certainly seems out o f place in
our eyes now adays, but it is an interesting piece o f evidence o f the
obstacles w hich w ere encountered in the late seventeenth century if
one tried to break down the barriers between ecclesiastical and
secular history.
T h e barriers were broken down by a Protestant pastor, L e Sueur.
He is a forgotten historian now, but between 1672 and 1677 he
published a Histoire de L ’Eglise et de LE m pire. O f coursehe attached
enormous importance to the age o f Constantine. ‘We have seen the
usefulness o f joining the history o f the empire with that o f the
church for the period from the first to the third centuries; for the
centuries which follow this method appears quite essential, in as
much as the most notable actions o f the emperors were those things
which they did in favour o f the Christian Church or against it.
1 C f . M o l l a t , D ic t io n n a ir e d ' H is t o ir e et d e G é o g r a p h ie E c c lé s ia s tiq u e , V I , p p . 4 3 9 ff .

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 The Religious Problem
Therefore we consider it necessary to unite them.’ T he idea o f
decadence and ‘corruption’, as he said, had then an important place
in his work; but it was above all an idea o f religious and moral
decadence.
‘B y these things (riches, luxury and so on) one may see how the
purity o f the Christian religion was insensibly affected. . . . We
ought principally to consider what great strides the Arian heresy has
made in the century through the assaults o f false teachers and the
protection o f emperors and em presses.. . . Another important factor
is the dissipation o f a large part o f the Roman empire, a dissipation
which was the work o f the barbarians who flooded into it and in­
creased the barbarism, ignorance and superstition.. . . We enter the
fifth century, full o f strange calamities. In the fourth century God
had sustained good emperors who gave peace and well-being to the
Church. But, since the Christians had abused it and turned it into
dissolution, giving themselves up to vices, the Sovereign Judge o f
the Universe was angered by their rebellion and made them feel just
afflictions, especially the afflictions o f a terrible war. T h e foreign and
barbarian nations burst into the Roman empire like a flood and
broke it into pieces so that each powerful leader had a part o f it in
which he could establish a separate kingdom. T hus may be seen in
this century the beginning o f the fulfilment o f the prophecy o f
Daniel and that o f St. Joh n in the Book o f Revelations: that ten
kings, that is to say more kings or kingdoms, would have to arise on
the ruins o f the fourth empire which is that o f Rome. During those
terrible moments the Church suffered much. T h e Prince o f Dark­
ness made ignorance, superstition and errors arise in various forms.*
In spite o f this vision, which is greatly affected by the idea o f
decadence, L e Sueur regarded the history o f the emperors with a
sort o f benevolence. Some o f them had even aided ‘the advances o f
the Faith*. He had, in particular, no reservations about Constantine,
no doubts about his vision and conversion, and he applied to the
problem o f his delayed baptism the correct explanation which had
already been given by Löwenklav. He also tried to give an objective
judgment on Julian, regarding him as a man o f talent.
‘ I f this ruler had been Christian and God-fearing, he would
undoubtedly have deserved great praise and would have shown good
qualities in the government o f the empire. H e was keen, chaste,
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 The Religious Problem
sober, patiently hard-working, a protector o f scholars, wise and
eloquent. Nevertheless even Ammianus Marcellinus, a pagan,
speaks o f him as a frivolous man, rather talkative and superstitious.
In truth people o f this kind deceive those who place trust in them.’
L e Sueur’s judgment on Stilicho, who had been severely con­
demned by the Orosian tradition, was inspired by his desire to
escape from the Orosian pattern and was decidedly contradictory.
On the one hand he attributed to Stilicho conseils et ordres salutaires;
on the other he condemned him for méchantes actions and malheureux
desseins for the last period o f his life. But the earthquake o f 408
seemed to him a presage o f evil rather than (as it had seemed to
Baronio) almost a protest by the forces o f nature against Stilicho’s
betrayal. Justinian received great eulogies, expressing in fact Eichel’s
point o f view rather than Alemanni’s. T hus the first modern his-
torical work which assumed the necessity o f u n i t i n g the, history o f
the Church and the history o f the empire applied the concept of
‘corruption' and the corresponding medieval category o f judgm ents
ot G od' with the aim o f achieving a relative balance!
T h e idea o f the corruption o f Christianity in the fourth century
which was emphasized, amongst other things, in the Historia
Ecclesiastica o f Spanheim (luxus gliscens in Ecclesiam) did not yet
extend to a complete condemnation. But this came soon after from
the pietistic tradition and its classic expression was in the famous
Impartial History o f the Churches and the Heretics,* published by
Gottfried Arnold and completed in 1688, to which Goethe owed his
interpretation o f Christianity. Constantine, who had been discussed
by Löwenklav more than a century earlier on the basis o f historical
considerations, was now condemned by Arnold because o f an
evaluation by religious criteria.
In speaking o f ‘ religious decadence’ Arnold seemed to be taking
up a concept which had been used from the earliest times o f Pro­
testant historiography, the concept o f a ‘ fall* or ‘estrangement’ from
original Christian purity. But, in this pietistic writer who sym­
pathises with the heretics, this Lutheran concept takes on an un­
compromising form which involves Constantine and the whole late1

1 O n A r n o l d c f . n o w M e in h o l d , Saeculum ( 1 9 5 0 ) , p p . 19 6 ff.; H irs c h , Geschichte der

neueren protestantischer Theologie, I I ( 1 9 5 1 ) , p p . 2 6 0 f f . ; a n d th e c la s s ic p a g e s o f M e i n ­
ecke, Entstehung des Historismus, s e c o n d e d itio n ( 1 9 4 6 ) .

1 12
 The Religious Problem
empire in a religious and also political condemnation. T he uniting
o f the two sides o f history, the great requirement at the end o f the
seventeenth century, led to a renewed application o f the Orosian
category o f judgments o f God, but in a completely different form,
for Orosius had in fact exalted Constantine. It was now exposed to
the various gradations o f sectarian attitudes or simply, in the case o f
Arnold, to the strictness o f the collegium pietatis.
T he Abbé Tillem ont1 also wished to unite the two histories.
Originally his Mémoires for ecclesiastical history were part o f his
Histoire des Empereurs, and only fear o f censure led him to separate
them. Just because he placed his enormous learning at the service o f
the ‘liaison’ between the twro sides o f history, he created a work o f
scholarship which remains fundamental. T h e profane part, the
Histoire des Empereurs, began to be published from 1690 on, the
Mémoires from 1694. Eighteen and twenty two years respectively had
passed since the publication o f L e Sueur’s Histoire de L'Eglise et de
L'Em pire. Tillem ont’s work certainly reflects that Augustinian spirit
which inspired the whole o f the production o f the age o f Louis X IV ,
bridging sectarian divisions and infusing the Histoire o f the Protest­
ant L e Sueur, the great Discours o f the Orthodox Bossuet, the work
o f the Jansenist Tillemont and the Histoire Ecclésiastique (published
from 1691 on) by the Gallican Fleury. But Tillemont was capable, for
example, o f understanding, and giving positive value to, the ‘objec­
tivity’ o f the pagan Ammianus Marcellinus. T o see to what extent
he could resist the Orosian tradition, one may consider, as we did
in the case o f L e Sueur, his treatment o f the individual who was
Orosius’s bête noire, Stilicho, the effective ruler o f the western
part o f the empire in the decisive years from 395 to 408.
Tillemont managed to show that, in spite o f the hostility o f a part
o f the work o f the pagan Zosimus, Stilicho had on the whole a good
press from the pagans, wdiile the Christians delivered an inflexible
judgment o f condemnation on him. T his observation did not
enable him however to go on to an historical judgment. He confined
himself to confronting the exaltation w hich the pagan Claudian gave
to Stilicho with the hostility o f Orosius, and he accepted in full the
Orosian idea o f the different judgments o f God (he said ‘ Divine

1 On T il l e m o n t c f . M o m ig li a n o , R i v is t a S to ric a I t a lia n a ( 1 9 3 6 ) , p. 4 ff.; id e m ,

C o n t rib u to a lla s t o r ia d e g li s t u d i cla ss ici ( 1 9 5 5 ) , p p . 1 0 7 ff.

II3
 The Religious Problem
Providence’) expressed in Stilicho’s victory at Fiesole-w hich there­
fore appeared to him, as to Orosius, a m iracle-and in the final suc­
cess o f Alaric. He did not o f course grasp the extreme conflict
between tradition and religious revolution which made the drama o f
the age o f Stilicho, or rather, to be more precise, this conflict was fo r
him the inescapable divergence between sources-inspired by the two
opposed faiths. Nevertheless this was a notable step forward if one
thinks that these sources are in the final analysis the direct voice
with which the age o f Stilicho speaks to us, the age in which lived
not only St. Augustine, St. Jerom e and Orosius but also Claudian.
T h e voice is indeed confused and complicated by conflicts: on the
one hand pagan traditionalism in its period o f eclipse, which no
longer had ears to listen seriously to its intransigent and victorious
enem ies-Claudian confined himself to a formal adherence to Chris­
tianity, writing a hymn On the Saviour1 - on the other hand those
intransigent, modern men, men like Augustine, Jerom e and Orosius,
who regarded Claudian as a ‘most obstinate pagan’ and found
Stilicho’s protection o f this damned soul disturbing and offensive.
Out and out Augustinians, as the writers o f the age o f Louis X IV
were, found it difficult to keep aloof from the violent conflict in
wfiich their party was clearly placed and committed. It is enough
that Tillemont should have felt and understood the significance and
origin o f the opposition between the sources.
T his conflict w ent through the whole history o f the empire from
the time when ancient man began to lose the assurance o f his old
spiritual inheritance. Above all it is at the root o f the fourth century
division which was summed up for Hrosvitha and Löwenklav, and
is summed up for us, in the antithesis between Constantine and
Julian. Of course Tillem ont had no doubts about the vision and
conversion o f Augustine. When the French period o f Augustinian
historians, the age o f Louis X IV , was well in the past, all seemed
ready for a more detached interpretation in entirely human terms.
T h is was the interpretation o f Gibbon12 whose History o f the Decline
ami Fa ll o f the Roman Empire began to appear in 1776. It grew out o f
a polemical inspiration; the friars were singing Vespers in the

1 S c h m i d , R e a lle x ik a n f ü r A n t i k e u n d C h r is te n t u m , V I I ( 1 9 5 5 ) , p p . 1 5 2 ff.
2 G i a r r i z z o , E d w a r d G ib b o n e la cu ltu ra inglese d e l settecento ( 1 9 5 4 ) ; M o m ig li a n o ,
H is t o r ia ( 1 9 5 4 ) , p p . 4 5 0 ff.

I I4
 The Religious Problem
Tem ple o f Jupiter at Rome. T his is a reversal o f the medieval inter­
pretation o f Hrosvitha or Hildebert. I t is also a reassertion o f the
need to study both the gradual victory o f Christianity and the
gradual crisis o f the ancient world in their relationship with each
other nn the plane o f human history.
Gibbon declared that he wished to write history without preju­
dice. Tillemont had had no doubts about the vision and conversion
o f Constantine, and Fleury had found it necessary to believe Euse­
bius and Zosimus at the same tim e-an impossible reconciliation as
Löwenklav had already show n-but for G ibbon the kev to Con-
stantine’s soul was his ambition, the foundation o f the Christian
empire was the product o f his genius as a politician. Tust for that
reason, however, Constantine’s great revolution seemed to him to
be linked with the spiritual power, the ‘five causes’ by which he
explained the victory o f Christianity over the pagan empire. This
spiritual force, in his judgment, expressed itself above all in the
powerful organization o f the Church, the ‘fifth cause’ , which a
man like Constantine could not resist turning to account. A nd,
sinre the hest proof of the organizational power o f Christianity was
to be found in its resistance to the persecutions and in its relation to
new ideals-zeal, the virtues, faith in m iracles-so the problem o f
Constantine was propounded by Gibbon as a corollary to the
problem o f the persecutions, and the sections relating to the per­
secutions were interpolated into his treatment o f Constantine.
One hundred and eighty years later this connection between the
problem o f the persecutions and the problem o f Constantine still
seems to us unquestionable and necessary, though entirely new
demands may draw us away from the solutions offered by Gibbon.
H is interpretation o f Constantine as a wise politician, in whom
virtues and vices were mingled, was to have a great future. In the
late Romantic period it was developed and deepened by Burckhardt,
whose work o f genius The Age o f Constantine was published in
18 52-3. In this book too Constantine’s religious sense seems
diminished or denied and replaced by his political intelligence,
which enabled him to. grasp the importance of Christianity as a
universal force. Even Burckhardt’s thesis o f the ‘demonization o f
paganism’ is foreshadowed in some pages o f Gibbon. Again, Gibbon’s
interpretation o f the persecutions starts from the idea o f Roman
” 5
 The Religious Problem
tolerance o f foreign religions, and thus the nineteenth century raised
the question o f their juridical basis, envisaging with Mommsen the
hypothesis that they were police action (in as much as the admission
of Christianity involved the ahapHnnmrnt o f n udiiii m il irtigion),
or the doctrine that they were the application o f an institutum
Neronianum, or some other possibility. T hus, in the two basic ques­
tions o f Constantine and the persecutions, the point o f departure
was always essentially Gibbon’s statement, through the re-thinking
and revision attempted in the work o f great modern historians-
Burckhardt, Renan, Mommsen, Seeck and Duchesne-and in the
problem o f the ‘Hellenization o f Christianity’ (Harnack). Some
scholars still uphold today the interpretation o f Constantine as a
pure politician; others however insist on his religious sense and the
decisive importance o f his conversion. Some, in dealing with the
persecutions, speak o f a ‘small number o f martyrs’, a thesis dear to
Gibbon and to Dodwell before him; others insist on the traditional
interpretation. Recently an interesting debate, provoked by G ré­
goire, has reconsidered Gibbon’s theory.1
T o deepen our understanding o f this problem as far as is possible
today, we have to approach more closely the troubled sensibility o f
an age that witnessed the collapse o f the values o f classical culture,
which had once been universally recognized. We must understand
the discordant harmony o f the voices which move between the
pagan world and the Christian revolution. A cold political calcula­
tion is not really enough to awaken in a man, even a great man, the
energy required to change the face o f the world. For this reason
Constantine cannot be considered a pure politician. He certainly
believed in the God o f the Christians and his delayed baptism must
be explained not as an expression o f religious indifference, but, on
the contrary, by his hope o f a complete purification, as Löwenklav
already realized. His conversion is only the point o f climax in the
conversion o f a whole world. T o understand the conversion o f
Constantine involves indeed studying the whole epoch which it
ended, the epoch o f the persecutions, as Gibbon had grasped. It
1 Recent works on the persecutions are Grégoire, L e s P er sécu tio n s J a n s P E m p i r e
(19 5 1); Sherwin-White, J o u r n a l o f T h e o lo g ic a l S t u d ie s (1952), pp. 199 f f . ;
R o m a in e
Vogt and Last, R e a lle x ik o n f ü r A n t i k e u n d C h ris te n tu m , pp. 1159 f f ; Schmid, M a i a
(1955), pp. 5 f f ; Moreau, L a P er sécu tio n d u C h r is tia n is m e (1956); cf. Vogt, H is t o r ia
(1957), PP- 508 f f
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 The Religious Problem
must be studied with a realization o f the contradictions which are
peculiar to the great periods o f decline.

For this reason it is worth going back into the history o f the
empire. For the historiography o f our time the problem involves,
above all, the interpretation o f the second and third centuries. One
might say that the spiritual change which leads from the old world
to the new has its most interesting manifestations, and in some ways
its most lively expression, in the age o f Commodus and, the Severi
from 180 to ^ 35. This age o f temps houleux1 witnessed a typical
divorce, so to speak, between the law, which regarded Christianity
as a crime, and the spiritual reality which already knew the first
notable examples o f Christian art and the very finest o f Christian
inscriptions, the famous inscription o f Abercius. T he official per­
secution o f the Christian was accompanied on the other hand by an
enormous diffusion o f the new religion in the eastern parts o f the
empire and the adhesion to it o f no less a person than Marcia, the
very powerful concubine o f the emperor Commodus. There is an
insnlnhle contradiction hetween the classical tradition, whirh is
formally untouchable, and the spiritual revolution, which has already
corroded and weakened it on every side. It is just this contradiction
which is protracted for a whole century up to Constantine, the
emperor who believes in the God o f the Christians and who, seated
at the Council o f Nicaea on a golden throne, modestly declares
himself to be bishop only over the laity.
T he fa grin a finn n f thq age o f Commodus and the Severi lies then
in the contradiction which pervades it. There is no period in the
whole history o f our civilization which is as rich as this in para­
doxical absurdities. About 184-8, during the reign o f Commodus,
Callistus, a banker slave, who will one day be Pope, is accused and
condemned for the crime o f Christianity. Everyone knows that he
and his patron, the powerful imperial freedman Carpophorus, are
both Christians, yet, when Callistus is accused o f Christianity, Car­
pophorus himself makes every effort to defend him and hastens to
declare that Callistus is not a Christian. Only the strong and obstin­
ate faith o f Callistus, who gives the lie to his patron, determines his
condemnation to forced labour, and the courageous slave ends up in
1 T h e fa m o u s e x p r e s s io n o f H u y s m a n s , A R e b o u r s , 4 4 .

” 7
 The Religious Problem
the mines o f Sardinia. T he thoroughly Christian bishop Hippolytus,
a rigorous man, when telling us o f these events constantly gives
Carpophorus the attribute pistos, which means Christian. Car-
pophorus’s weakness was not enough to make him lose his place in
the Christian community. Even a Christian like Carpophorus then
acknowledges officially that Christianity is a crime and therefore
tries to exculpate his slave; a very significant contradiction indeed.
In the eyes o f all the Roman emperors, even those closest to it,
Christianity remained officially a crime. Its criminal character fol­
lowed from the fact that the Christian was, by his very nomen o f
Christianus, a declared follower o f C hrist, who had suffered under
T iberius a sentence o f death at the hands o f the Roman state. At the
same time, writings o f Christians are read and published everywhere,
didaskaleia o f Christians are found everywhere, the names o f Chris­
tian bishops are known, and the properties which they administer,
and so on. T here is officially a crime o f Christianity yet M arcia, the
lady who rules the court and the heart o f the Emperor Commodus,
is a Christian or close to the Christians (philotheos), even according
to Hippolytus. There is a Christian rigorism, o f which Hippolytus is
the expression, and yet the Christian work de Aleatoribus perhaps by
Pope Victor, tells us o f Christians who do reverence to the God o f
the pagans while they play dice.
Under Commodus, who reigned from 180 to 192, we find famous
cases o f persecution, yet a Christian text which is contemporary
with him tells us that the reign o f this emperor is not only a period
o f peace for the empire but also a period o f peace for the Christians.
Or again: everyone knows that the M anes are pagan and yet you
can find the inscription Dis Manibus on the funeral tablets o f Chris­
tians. Septimius Severus ( 1 9 3 - 2 1 1) confirms the rescripts o f his
predecessors against Christianity, yet Tertullian in 2 12 will present
him as Christianorum memor and his son as lacte Christiano educatus.
Sextus Juliu s Africanus, to whom Alexander Severus entrusted the
direction o f a pagan temple, the Pantheon, is nevertheless a Chris­
tian, but he uses pagan magic formulas. M en live two lives, one
lazily settled in tradition, the other more or less decisively revolu­
tionary in spirit and in fact Christian. T h e classical historians who
are contemporary with Commodus and the Severi do not tell us
about Christianity, though this is the religion dear to Marcia and
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 The Religious Problem
holds undisputed sway over the great masses o f Asia M inor and
Syria. For a man like Dio Cassius, Christianity, which he never
explicitly mentions, is only one form o f ‘Judaic customs’ , yet this
historian came from Bithynia, a region which had ceased to honour
pagan gods more than a century before his time. Tradition compels
these members o f the pagan aristocracy to ignore this phenomenon,
characteristic o f their crumbling society, though their wives go to
Christian didaskaleia and they themselves are forever seeking con­
tacts with the bishops. But reality always revenges itself on abstract
forms. Imperial rescripts against the crime o f Christianity are
always valid but they are not in practice easy to enforce. T hey can
be enforced against the courageous slave Callistus, but never against
his powerful and prudent patron Carpophorus.
T he Christians were the great creative minority and the history
of the new age was woven by their new construction. T h e concepts
o f minority and majority are indeed relative. Already at the time o f
Trajan whole regions in the east were no longer pagan. But a world
which had produced Homer and Virgil and Roman L aw resisted the
abandonment o f the forms o f its civilization even if they had already
been emptied o f substance. T his produces the contradictions o f the
age o f the Severi, then, a century later those o f the age o f Constan­
tine and finally those o f the age o f Stilicho.
Already towards the end o f the first century a .d. many pagans
had sensed that their world was beginning to give way. But they
would not surrender. At the same time, about a .d. ioo, Plutarch
observed that the oracle o f Delphi was declining and he put forward
demonological explanations o f this ‘decadence’ far removed from
reality. Yet in his dialogue On the Eclipse o f the Oracles, some o f the
speakers look for real ‘causes’ . One o f these, a cynic, says that men
have become too wicked, another says that they have become too
few in the classical land o f Greece. Is this a kind o f ‘ elimination o f
the best’ ?

i IQ
 8

Marriage in late Roman Society

T h e concept o f the ‘elimination o f the best’ is commonly linked

with the work and personality o f a great historian o f the late nine­
teenth century, Otto Seeck. But it is not, or not in all respects at
any rate, an invention o f Seeck. One could even defend the view that
it is implicit in any theory o f inclinatio, as the humanists called it;
implicit in the sense that an inclinatio or decline, an abandonment o f
the highest, or archetypal, forms o f culture, presupposes the spiritual
exhaustion o f the old world which had developed those forms. A s
early as the Carolingian period Dungal thought that the voluntas o f
ancient man was superior ‘ because o f the youth o f the world and the
strength o f body and vigour o f the senses’ . T h e idea is to be found
in embryonic form especially in the humanistic period. It seemed to
Petrarch that, as if through the influence o f some unlucky stars,
heaven was against the men o f his time. Flavio Biondo deduced the
inclinatio o f the Roman empire from a degradation n f imperial
Bnnjjin enripty, which constantly strengthened the ignoble people,
obedient to the monarch instead o f the free and courageous spirits.
In explanations o f this kind the loss o f liberty becomes decadence
because it coincides with a moral phenomenon, which in its
turn is connected with the ‘ passing away’ o f personalities and o f
‘graceful spirits’ . But Flavio Biondo would never have emphasized
such a passing away except for a pure moral evaluation, nor would it
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 Marriage in late Roman Society
have been possible to do this before the nineteenth century. For the
eighteenth century the idea o f decadence is especially bound up with
the disappearance o f ‘manners’ and likewise o f ‘maxims’ and ‘prin­
ciples’, not yet o f men, still less o f the corresponding vitality o f
these men.
Only the nineteenth century, with its largely voluntaristic and
vitalistic attitude, could introduce, one might say without realizing
it, a kind o f biological aspect into the general idea o f decadence. In
some o f its expressions it introduced into modern culture that idea
o f the ‘old age’ o f states and men which had been expressed in the
Roman world, with an implicit exaltation o f liberty, considered as an
attribute o f youth, by Seneca the Elder. Through Florus it had come
to Christian thinkers like Cyprian who employed it to show that
decadence was not due to Christianity but was just an ordinary bio­
logical phenomenon, necessary and irreversible because it coincided
with the end o f the world. T h e romantics o f course substituted for
the ‘end o f the world’ the end o f the ‘ Latin peoples’, tired and almost
gasping for breath, like the French after the Revolution in Chateau­
briand’s Mémoires d'outre tombe. Soon the idea o f senescence began
to be identified with that o f the decadence o f peoples and, as the end
o f the ancient world is a paradigm for every interpretation o f deca­
dence, it inspired a masterpiece o f late Romantic historiography,
Burckhardt’s Age o f Constantine, which we have already mentioned
and which appeared in 1852-3. ‘T h e whole history o f this time’, said
Burckhardt, ‘is nothing but a clear testimony o f the senility and
decadence o f Roman life, for which things no blame is to be attached
to Christianity.’
Amongst Burckhardt’s observations in Chapter 7 o f his book one
might select three, all very penetrating but very debatable and at the
same time characteristic, for evaluating the concept o f decadence in
the world o f this born historian: the consideration o f the ‘silence of
thejhcrnririans ahnnf the empire’ ; the judgment ‘on deformity and
phydral HpfipneraHon’ at least in the upper classes ; and the idea of
‘ degeneracy in fashion’ .
Criticism o f these concepts is not difficult. One can say that if the
sophists o f the imperial period are silent about the empire, preferring
to exalt personalities and subjects from the Greek and republican
periods, it is because their interests are inspired by a humanistic
12 1
 Marriage in late Roman Society
ideal and they are encouraged by their training to evoke the period
o f ancient liberty and therefore to contrast ‘the kingly man’ with ‘the
tyrannical man’ . In fact the cultivated and traditionalist classes in
the empire classed as a ‘tyrant’ not only a Domitian or a Commodus
but also Alexander the Great (thus for example Aelian who lived in
the age o f the Severi) and, especially in the third century, reacted
against the militarism o f the empire and against the fiscal policy and
inflation. T hus the opposition o f the sophists illustrates their sense
o f decadence rather than an aspect o f decadence, and an age which
contains humanistic manifestations o f this kind cannot be, as such,
an age o f degeneracy; it is, i f anything, an age in which the classical
values appeared more real than ever and in which a tragic conflict
arose between tradition and modern times. Moreover a German
historian, Johannes Straub, has recently (1939) demonstrated that
the formulae o f the rhetoricians o f the imperial period have a
genuine propaganda significance and that they introduce us to the
charismatic conception o f the empire, so that their harking-back to
the ancient models does not prevent, for example, the exaltation o f
the divine mission o f the modem period, in which the ruler is pre­
cisely ruler by the grace o f God. (Straub has rightly emphasized in
this connection the importance o f a passage in the rhetorician
Themistius.) As for the deformity and physical degeneracy o f which
Burckhardt spoke, one has to point out that the sculptured monu­
ments (today one would think immediately o f the mosaics o f the
Piazza Armerina) convey to us just that anxiety o f troubled inner
life, which was expressing itself in the new religious sensibility and
in the spiritual revolution by which classical transformed itself into
Christian civilization. T h e ‘possessed’ or, later, hieratic faces o f the
late empire convey to us not a sense o f physical decadence but one o f
spiritual tension. And finally, fashion. Here the longing for luxury,
which Burckhardt underlined, has to be considered in conjunction
with the assimilation, which was not at all luxurious, o f barbarian
habits, such as the use o f trousers, which was derived from the riding
dress o f the steppes. Here again there is a revolution in taste, which
is consistent with the usual conflict between tradition and the new
reality. A t Rome in fact the emperors forbade people to go about in
trousers or other such barbarian clothes.
Nevertheless these three observations by Burckhardt, two o f
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 Marriage in late Roman Society
which come up again in Seeck, have an unquestionable importance.
When he was writing his Constantine, European culture was in
between the old romanticism and the new positivism. In France the
second empire posed agonising problems. In 1868 Prévost-Paradol
was insisting on the ‘signs o f decadence’ o f the Latins as opposed to
the Germanic powers. These were, in particular, demographic
signs; the French birthrate seemed to him to be discouraging. T hus
appeared again the Polybian image o f the crisis o f Greece conquered
first by Macedonia and then by Rome. According to Polybius the
conclusive aspect o f this crisis had been the oliganthropia, the decline
o f the birthrate. People like Prévost-Paradol were inclined to ask
themselves whether Prussia had undertaken in Europe the task
which Philip’s Macedon had carried out, according to Droysen’s
reconstruction, in Greece. T h e Franco-Prussian war o f 1870
deeply affected the historians o f the two opposite sides. T h e mani­
festo o f Von Sybel brought a reply from the great French historian
Taine. Von Sybel was for that generation the learned interpreter
o f the barbarian invasions and o f the death o f Rome under the
weight o f Germanic kingship: his Rise o f German Kingship is a
classic. Taine, an anti-Romantic positivist, and yet a strongly
romantic man at heart, had always contrasted healthy epochs and
sick epochs. Before and after the ‘débâcle’ he insisted on the idea
o f decadence occurring through the destruction o f the historically
creative classes. T h e idea o f ‘the elimination o f the best’ was in the
air.
T h e novel idea which Otto Seeck wanted to introduce, and which
was expressed precisely in the formula ‘elimination o f the best’ , was
meant to involve an exact examination o f the family and the socio­
logical conditions which had brought about the end o f the Roman
empire through demographic decay and the disappearance o f the
best men. T h is was the central problem o f the famous first two
volumes o f his History o f the Decline o f the Ancient World, especially
o f the first, published in 1894 and soon republished in a second
edition in 1897. Seeck belonged to the generation which was com­
pletely dominated by the problem o f heredity and natural selection.
T h e book o f books for this generation was Darwin’s Descent o f Man,
and Ribot’s V Hérédité and other similar books all followed in its
wake. For this generation the great question (which has been taken
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 Marriage in late Roman Society
up again recently, though with other presuppositions, in the Soviet
Union) was how to determine the forms and characters in which the
laws o f heredity were m anifested-for example the Spencerian
transmission o f acquired characteristics. And the second problem
was the influence o f customs and conceptions o f life on the ‘ blossom­
ing and ageing* o f peoples-in 1889 appeared a book by Georg
Hansen about this blossoming and ageing which, like the works o f
Darwin and Ribot, had a great influence on the thought o f Seeck.
Thus, and especially in this second way, the eighteenth-century idea
o f the corrupted ‘manners’ o f the Roman empire, abandoned with­
out regrets because o f its plainly moralizing tone, returned un­
observed through the back door in books bristling with figures and
biological notations.
Seeck brought something vital to the positivistic atmosphere
which had developed in this w ay: confidence in his power to explain
the end o f antiquity by careful investigation o f the everyday life,
even the family life, o f that classical world which called itself the
empire o f the Romans. Because o f the previously unhoped-for
concreteness which he brought to the subject, every theory about
the late empire evolved by a modern historian has to take account o f
Otto Seeck’s work and is a debate, even if an armed debate, with
the master. T he two points in his analysis which are still famous,
and seemed central to him also, are his examination, or rather per­
haps his condemnation, nf Roman marriage, and his theory o f
natural selection in reverse. We can begin our debate with the first
point. Seeck’s theory about Roman marriage goes back to the
republican and Augustan ages.
‘When, in 13 1 B .C ., the censor Metellus preached against celibacy,
he used, among others, the following argument: “ I f we, o Quirites,
had some way o f living without wives, none o f us would wish to take
on himself the trouble o f marriage, but, since nature has willed that
one cannot live without wives, even if life with them is not entirely
satisfactory, a man must take care o f his permanent salvation rather
than o f his momentary convenience.” Every Roman would have
subscribed enthusiastically to Metellus’s words. In fact a century
later, Augustus read this speech in the senate and brought it to the
notice o f everyone by public display. T w o centuries after Augustus
a rhetorician exercised his powers in criticizing the speech and
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wondered whether it would not have been better if the censor had
painted the advantages o f marriage in bright colours rather than
making his appeal merely to nature. The rhetorician however came
to the conclusion that the disadvantages o f marriage were indeed too
well known to all men and that Metellus had been right to speak in
this way since extenuations and subtleties would have been quite
useless. Whereas nowadays (1894), at least in Germany and England,
almost every love story ends with union in marriage and thus mar­
riage comes to be acknowledged as the crown o f human felicity, for
the Romans it was on the contrary a necessary evil and nothing
more.
‘T his difference in points o f view is closely connected with an­
other . . . Children were often married at the age o f nine or ten . . .
the tender and pure feelings o f our betrothed couples were quite
unknown to the Roman. When the young wife began to reveal
to her husband her feminine charm she had already lost for him
the charm o f first acquaintance. Marriages for love could occur only
in the case o f widows or o f divorced women and, even in these
cases, they were unusual, so that it was considered simply ridiculous
to fall in love with one’s own wife. “ Any love for the wife o f another
man is to be disapproved,” says Seneca, “ but exaggerated love for
one’s own wife is also deplorable. . . .” With attitudes o f this kind
. . . marriage became a mere transaction, in which the dowry played
the decisive part. No doubt this is not a characteristic confined to
the Romans and the Greeks. In primitive conditions this type o f
marriage occurs amongst all peoples and even today our peasants
marry in the same way. Moreover one cannot say that these mar­
riages must necessarily be unhappy. T he more primitive a people is
and the more spiritually unawakened a class is -so that the differ­
ence between individuals in it is less developed-the easier it will be
to put together married couples arbitrarily without their life to­
gether causing too troublesome antipathies. . . . But the Roman
world had already advanced beyond this primitive sragp n f riviHya-
tion, without, however, outgrowing the form o f marriage custom
which is appropriate to primitive societies. T he personality o f the
cultivated Roman, by now clearly defined, had certain requirements
but no one pretended that they were satisfied by an adequate
marriage. . . .’
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By drawing attention to Roman marriages within the framework
o f the imperial crisis the master posed a fundamental problem.
Recent investigations by the French historian Marcel D urry,1
amongst other things, have confirmed the existence o f marriages
arranged when the woman was still a young child. In the sphere o f
law this is connected with the extent o f patria potestas. But Seeck
did not solve the whole problem. We must analyse the question
itself for ourselves; and we have to try an approach to which Seeck
did not pay sufficient attention : that is to ‘ historicize’ the question
completely. L et us put the question in this w ay: was the arranged
marriage, that spectre which is supposed to have marked Roman
houses with an inescapable sentence o f tedium or even simply o f
death, always, throughout the imperial epoch, the unquestioned
controller o f Roman married life ? We have to question the upper
classes on whom, according to Seeck, the spectre bore more heavily
than on the others. T h e w'omen o f senatorial families in the ruling
class attract the attention o f the historian. T heir marriages, their
ambitions, their passions, in short the style o f their life, under the
curious gaze o f all Rome, and often the world, really had enormous
importance. One might say that the history o f the senatorial o rd er-
that is o f the upper class par excellence -w a s also the history o f the
daughters and wives o f the senators. T h e result o f our investigation
is an interpretation w'hich it would be reasonable to regard as
exactly opposite to Seeck’s.
One premise is necessary. O f the two ruling classes o f the Roman
empire before Constantine, that is to say the senatorial class and the
equestrian or knightly class, the senatorial has one unmistakable
characteristic which is important for its family life. These great lords
with aristocratic and famous names transmitted their title o f rank,
clarissimus, to their womenfolk, daughters or wives. T h e women
therefore come to be called, in the definitive systematization o f titles,
clarissimae feminae, ‘ honourable ladies'. But not the knights. These
important gentlemen, faultlessly dressed in togas with narrow purple
stripes (while the senators had broad stripes),2 proud o f their right

1 D u r r y , C o m p te s re n d u s d e l'A c a d é m ie d e s In s c rip tio n s e t B e lle s - L e t t r e s ( 1 9 5 5 ) , p . 8 4 ;

G y m n a s iu m ( 1 9 5 6 ) , p . 1 8 7 .
2 I t d o e s n o t f o l lo w th a t a t th e h e ig h t o f th e e m p ir e s e n a to ria l la d ie s w e r e a b le to
w e a r th e s e c lo t h e s , w h i c h d is t in g u is h e d th e ir fa th e r s o r h u s b a n d s f r o m th e e q u e s t r ia n s .
B u t in th e la te e m p ir e a c a s e o f th is k in d m a y o c c u r . T h e h e ire s s o f a s e n a to r w h o d ie s

I2Ó
 Marriage in late Roman Society
to wear the golden ring, could not give their daughters and wives
their titles o f rank, which were finally defined as egregius, eminentis-
simus and perfectissimus. There were indeed knights who wielded
enormous power; one has only to think o f the pretorian prefects (the
commanders o f the imperial guard) and the governors o f Egypt,
when they were drawn from the equestrian order. Moreover the
equestrian order, the backbone o f the great empire’s bureaucracy,
enjoyed that unconditional authority which is always reserved for
the aristocracy o f wealth. But the dignitas o f the senatorial order w as
very much superior. Even in the early empire, the fathers o f sena­
torial families bounded by this pride o f caste, made their daughters
marry within the sphere o f the senatorial order. And it was natural
that this dignitas should have an extraordinary power over the
women too. T h ey were born with the rank o f senatorial ladies and
they attached importance to retaining it. But the rigidification o f
Roman law led to the establishment at the end o f a very hard rule;
i f the senatorial lady, clarissima, had married an equestrian or, worse
still, a plebeian, she ceased to have this rank.
T h e period o f the Roman empire before Constantine lasted more
than three hundred years, the first three centuries o f the Christian
era. T h e senatorial women o f this period had inherited in a sense
the ethical ideals which characterized the home-bound ‘spinning
women’ and completely faithful wives (lanificae, univirae) o f the
best republican period, those splendid and terrible Lucretias and
Cornelias who continued to be the patterns o f virtue. Otto Seeck
would also o f course have acknowledged the existence o f such vir­
tues, except that, to him, they would perhaps have seemed too
classical and official. We may grant that he is more or less right
about this, with the reservation, however, that we must remember
the senatorial lady celebrated in the so-called Laudatio Turiae, who

without having been able to fulfil the obligations deriving from his election as praetor
assumes the obligations of her father in proportion to her inheritance. Thus she be­
comes, though in a secondary way and only in part, ‘praetor’ ; she assumes the sump­
tuous senatorial dress. In the late empire when the old equestrian class (which wc might
call the upper middle class of knights) had in fact disappeared, the senatorial dignitas
was on the other hand higher than ever. In admitting that even a woman could adopt
senatorial dress the old class with all its dignitas was giving way on the one hand to
certain ‘feminist’ tendencies and on the other, more particularly, to the economic
difficulties (because it was difficult to find a person willing to undertake the heavy
burden o f the praetorship with its responsibility for very expensive games).
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saved her husband's life, and the fact that the Laudatio Turiae is not
the only text o f this kind. However, in spite o f our modern depre­
ciation o f the eighteenth-century ‘ history o f manners', the crisis o f
virtues has a meaning, and in the early period o f the Roman empire
many o f those Lucretias and Cornelias had come down from their
stiff thrones, and they had come down too much. So let us look at
some authentic dramas from that age which the textbooks call
‘Augustan’ and ‘Julio-Claudian’ , dramas which came out o f the
inner sanctuaries o f the senatorial fam ilies-of which there were
about 600 to 900 in the imperial period-and passed on to the city
squares and into the theatres and thus into the books o f the his­
torians.
One famous story is that o f Augustus’s unfortunate daughter,
Julia-n aturally, as the emperor is a senator his daughter is a lady o f
senatorial rank. But there are others, less well-known but not less
significant. For instance, there is the story o f a lady called Aemilia
Lepida, a niece o f the famous triumvir and also a descendant o f
Sulla and Pompey. She had already been divorced by Quirinius
twenty years earlier, and was now being prosecuted by him on
various charges, amongst others for having questioned astrologers
about the fortunes o f the house o f Tiberius, when she betook her­
self to the theatre o f Pompey to lament publicly amongst a crowd
o f other matrons the obscurity o f the origins o f her ex-husband,
who, although he was a senator, had forbears rather less illustrious
than his wife’s patrician ancestors. Or there is the opposite kind o f
story o f another Aemilia Lepida, who fell in love with a slave and,
being discovered, avoided trial by means o f suicide. T h e period in
which these two ladies lived was the earliest period o f the empire,
under Tiberius, successor to Augustus. A profound insecurity, the
legacy o f the civil wars, made the lives o f some aristocrats and the
lives o f their women and their marriages particularly complicated.
T h e early imperial period is a time o f feminism and o f freedmen.
New formulas are being sought and the old state finds itself faced
by revolutionary spiritual realities. One important change which has
already appeared is that, while good senators in command o f armies
and provinces march mechanically along the traditional paths, their
wives, as if compelled by anxiety, are questioning the priests o f
oriental religions. There are two outstanding cases: Paulina under
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Tiberius and Pomponia Graecina under Nero. M uch less notable
but still significant is the case o f the senatorial lady who marries out­
side the senatorial order: one recalls Poppaea who married as her
first husband the commander o f the Pretorians-therefore an eques­
trian, though in this case he had also received senatorial honours.
T h e Julio-Claudian and the Flavian periods are followed by the age
o f the humanistic empire o f the second century. In appearance at
least, the family life o f the aristocracy is less troubled at this time.
An example is the virtuous Calpurnia, praised by her husband the
famous senator Pliny, panegyrist o f Trajan. She hid behind a curtain
to listen to the intellectual work o f her husband, who was no
longer young. T he third century however sees a return o f the
feminist tendencies and the power o f the freedmen which had
characterized the early empire. T he oriental religions had enormous
success amongst the senatorial ladies (clarissimae feminae), beginning
with the empress Julia Domna, daughter o f the priest o f Elagabal o f
Emesa. Some Christian senatorial ladies found difficulties in marry­
ing within the ambit o f the senatorial order where they would
inevitably find husbands who, as proconsuls or legati or urban
prefects, would pronounce heavy judgments against their co-reli­
gionists. When they were married they interceded for the accused
Christians with their husbands, and some were successful; but
Christianity remained a crime and the ruler had to condemn it.
Others preferred to assert their own initiative in the choice o f a
husband, thus breaking up the mummified traditions o f family
law and risking the loss, if their husbands were not senators, o f
the title o f clarissima femina, to which they were not unnaturally
attached. T his is just the point which enables us to reverse Seeck’s
thesis.
Seeck thought that the crisis o f the ancient world, on the path
which led from the principate to the late empire, was marked by
forced marriages. T h e opposite is the truth, for it was just in the
period o f the later empire, from the time o f M arcus Aurelius and
still more from that o f the Severi, that the rebellion against tradi­
tion took place. His diagnosis o f the Roman aristocracy as being
without love-matches appears inadequate precisely when one con­
siders this later period which he pitilessly condemned. In the
brilliant houses where the senatorial ladies o f the third century lived
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we find couples who pose new problems to a pathologically tradi­
tionalist world. Soaemias, niece o f Julia Domna, marries an eques­
trian. She ought therefore to lose her senatorial rank, but the emperor
who loves too this passionate and courageous Syrian, elevates her
lucky husband to the senatorial order. Mammaea, another niece o f
Ju lia Domna, having married a senator, makes a second marriage
with an equestrian. She too therefore ought to lose her senatorial
rank; but, by one o f those concessions which the emperors make
only ‘ in very rare cases’, she is allowed to keep the senatorial dig­
nitas which, legally, she ought to have laid aside.1
These are marriages o f senatorial ladies, but o f the imperial
house. M ore significant are other cases o f ordinary senatorial women.
A s early as the reign o f M arcus Aurelius some o f these would like to
marry freedmen, that is emancipated slaves. T h e philosopher em­
peror, a proud defender o f ancient tradition, declares then that the
marriages o f senatorial ladies {clarissimae) with freedmen are legally
null and void. T h e emperor’s reaction tells us a great deal. We can
understand the social significance o f the marriage o f a senatorial
lady with a freedman. I f M arcus Aurelius had not intervened with
his threat o f nullity, this matron, with her aura o f aristocratic dig­
nity, respected by everyone, would have been able to marry even
a slave. She had only to manumit him or, if he was someone else’s
slave, to secure his manumission. But it is rather significant that
these ladies should have had such intentions. One must remember
that in marrying a freedman they would not only have lost the sena­
torial dignitas, which was the aim o f highest ambition in the Roman-
ruling class, they would also have aroused something like a feeling
o f disgust in the whole o f the society which had seen their birth. I f
M arcus Aurelius thought it necessary to prevent scandal with a pre­
cise enactment, this means that he felt the gravity o f the threat. He
certainly thought that unquestioned traditions ran the risk o f
crumbling i f even a few o f these mad women had succeeded in their
1 Mammaea’s second husband remained an equestrian (minoris dignitatis vir : Ulp.
Dig., I, 9, 12 ); unlike the husband o f Soaemias (Dio. L X X V I I I , 30, 2 -3 ) he was not
adlectus to the senate (Barbieri, Albo senatorio (1952), p. 65, n. 264-5, mistakenly
includes him in the roll o f senators); thus already under Caracalla the principle was
affirmed that though it was quite an exceptional matter, a senatorial lady could retain
her rank even if she married a man of inferior dignitas. This principle was then extended
by Soaemias to all senatorial ladies through the institution o f the ‘little senate of ladies’
under Elagabalus, as we shall soon see.
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object. And indeed these mad women, daughters o f senators who
wanted to become wives o f ex-slaves, showed a courage which one
might say is unheard o f in the society o f our own time, which Seeck
held in such high esteem. (So do we, it is understood, but with some
discretion.) We must underline the word ‘marry* : they wanted to
marry manumitted slaves.
Our conclusion is that the state o f mind o f senatorial ladies o f the
imperial period was rather far-removed from what Seeck supposes.
T hey were beginning to believe in themselves, not just in their vir­
tues. In the age o f the Severi we find a genuine feminism, developed
and bold. Here again we must remember Soaemias, the Syrian o f
great beauty who was represented as Aphrodite and adored as Hera.
After she had become first lady o f the empire (the emperor was her
son Elagabalus, the fourteenth priest o f Elagabal) she arranged the
setting up o f a ‘little senate o f ladies’ with its seat on the Quirinal.
One source, the Historia Augusta, describes the duties o f this ‘little
senate’ as being to issue decrees on the relations o f high society
among senatorial ladies. T he same source gives us one rather more
interesting detail : the ‘little senate’ was connected with an institu­
tion concerned with providing ne innobilitatae manerent, that is, ‘to
prevent the loss o f nobility by senatorial ladies who had married
non-senators’ .
T h is particular expression, word for word, is very noteworthy.
Here in fact is a formula completely analogous to another which is
used in the Christian camp for the transmission o f an edict o f Pope
Callistus, who directed the community at Rome at the same time as
Soaemias was Augusta. Pope Callistus, according to his contempor­
ary and opponent Hippolytus, authorized de facto unions, o f sena­
torial women with men o f whatever rank-including, then, freed-
men or slaves- in such a way that the ladies, by such unions, ‘should
not lose their nobility’ . T h is is the same age ( 2 1 4 - 17 ; 2 14 - 18 ) and
the same problem, though o f course the feminist solution envisaged
by the Empress Soaemias through the ‘little senate o f ladies’ is on a
rather different plane from that proposed by Callistus, the ex-slave
become Pope. T h e father’s consent was necessary for the marriage
to be legally valid, and for those women who did not marry senators,
there was a danger o f losing senatorial rank; yet the senatorial ladies
had in the ‘little senate’ or in the edict o f Pope Callistus, means o f
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defending their autonomy o f choice according to their feelings. J n
this wav too the third century sees the dusk o f ancient pagan civiliza­
tion. T he old tradition o f privilege is breaking u p . Inscriptions o f
the third century also make known cases o f senatorial ladies who
kept their rank though married to non-senators, or even to ordinary
plebeians-typical are those o f the Christians Hydria Tertulla and
Cassia Faretria. Meanwhile, on the Quirinal, the ‘little senate o f
ladies’ revived by the Emperor Aurelian (270-5) carried on the ‘par­
liamentary’ feminism o f the time o f Soaemias.
Our juxtaposition o f the formula used in connection with the
‘little senate o f ladies’ (ne innobilitatae manerent) and the analogous
formula o f the edict o f Pope Callistus shows us the seriousness o f
the disturbance which gave women a new consciousness and gave
Roman marriage a new aspect. In this case too it was the Christian
spiritual revolution. Persecuted by the law as a crime, Christianity
affected from top to bottom the society which resisted it, which was de­
feated and continued to resist. It entered the home and taught women
to marry the husband o f their choice, if possible a co-religionist,
and that in any case they must attempt to convert him. T h e teaching
o f St. Paul was authoritative. In houses where there was a Christian
woman the relations between the two sexes were transformed.
Families in which the women, as Seeck says, served only to give
legitimate descendants to the father, were succeeded by families in
which the women, with their initiative and their faith, struck severe
blows against classical tradition. Seeck saw only the first kind o f
family and missed the second. But it is from the second that the
modern world substantially is derived and it is in this sense the
complete reversal o f the Greco-Roman world. T h e modern exalta-
tion o f women and of love has its origin here, in the cultural ferment
o? the later Roman empire, though it has been filtered through the
chivalrous emotions o f the new protagonists o f post-classical history,
the Germanic peoples.
Though they had had a Catullus, the classical peoples would
never have understood, creators though they were o f the finest
poetry in the history o f the world, the enormous importance o f
romantic love in modern art from Tristan and Iseult to Madame
Bovary. But the men o f the third century could perhaps have
understood it in a sense, and still more the men o f the late empire,
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among whom the Christian women had a great importance. (The life
o f Julian the Apostate as a child was saved by his mother’s religious
friends.) T he last pagan senators, who resisted fiercely even after
the foundation o f the Christian empire, were themselves possessed
by a kind o f mystical warm-heartedness. We know no poetry o f
married love which is more human and moving than the lines
inscribed on the tomb o f Vettius Agorius Praetestatus, a pagan
senator o f the age o f Theodosius, and his sad widow. ‘ I would
have been happy, o my husband, if the gods had granted me that
you might survive me; but yet I am happy because I am yours,
and was yours, and soon, after death, shall be again.’
Our debate with the master, Otto Seeck, may thus be regarded
as closed so far as it concerns his deductions from the unhappiness
o f Roman marriages. What we have said about the senatorial women,
the representatives o f the upper classes to which Seeck was especially
referring, must in fact be true also for the lower classes, for which
Seeck himself allowed a greater possibility o f well-matched mar­
riages. From our point o f view we can also add that in the lower
classes, where they must have been very numerous, Christian
women would have had considerable opportunities for converting
their husbands. These men were not obliged to respect official tradi­
tion, as were the senatorial rulers and the equestrian bureaucrats.
Moreover the women o f lower social strata were often more fertile
in initiative. T he Christian empire was created by Constantine, the
talented son o f a stablewoman, who had managed to conquer the
heart o f Constantius Chlorus. T he problem o f domestic life, re­
garded from the point o f view o f the Christian spiritual revolution,
also has in this case some quite special aspects.
What then determined the demographic decline o f the late
empire ? Since, unlike Seeck, we cannot now point to the system
o f arranged marriages, we must once again consider this same spiri­
tual revolution which emancipated women from subjection to a
paternalistic traditionalism. T he nearer to the end o f the world
people thought themselves to be, the more rarely, in the ruling
classes, they raised the families o f ten sons for which there is still
evidence in the late second century. T h e same women who had
brought about that spiritual revolution accepted willingly Euse­
bius’s admonition according to which, as the end o f everything drew
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near, people should not think o f having a son or two to guarantee
their physical posterity but should rather ensure spiritual descend­
ants to themselves through evangelization. T h e lower classes, bur­
dened by taxation, could easily accept that admonition. Here again,
if we remove o f course the idea o f the imminent end, we are at the
origins o f modern civilization. There is a great difference between
these wives o f the late empire and the good wife o f the affectionate
Xenophon. T hey make one think o f Claudel.
It would however be a mistake to suppose that the Eusebian ideal
o f making an end with paidopoiia and polyanthropiay carried very
great weight in the demographic crisis. T h e depopulation was rather
more serious in the west than in the east and in the countryside than
in the cities. I f the Christians had carried out Eusebius’s recom­
mendations to the letter, we should have to expect the opposite
situation ; the east should have had the greatest decline in the birth
rate. In this case again the real crisis was not only demographic, so
to speak, in origin. W ith the exception o f the plagues which raged
terribly through the whole empire in the times o f M arcus Aurelius
and Commodus, the Gallic provin c e depopulated because the
peasants could not manage to support the weight o f the tributes.
T h ey gave themselves up to latrocinia (the brigand Maternus was
famous as early as the age o f Commodus) and enrolled in bands o f
partisans (the Bagaudae). Unlike the Gallo-Roman middle class and
aristocracy, which with Rutilius sang the last great song o f the dying
empire, a great many Celtic peasants, who for a long time did not
give up their own language, offered a strong resistance to Roman-
ization. T h e same is true o f Pannonia, Africa, Syria and Egypt. Gaul
was the first to fall in the great invasion o f 406; it was the creation
o f Caesar and the heart o f the west. Syria and Egypt, the creations
o f Pompey and Octavian, fell at the first touch o f Islam in the
seventh century.
These considerations also contain an implicit destruction o f the
other point in Seeck’s theory; that the best men had disappeared by
means o f natural selection in reverse. I f one means by the best men,
as Seeck did, the scions o f the aristocracies o f an earlier period, their
disappearance need not matter very much. Great evils often came
from the nobles o f the Julio-Claudian period, and so also thereafter.
Patricians like Acilius Glabrio, who refused the empire that famous
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night at the end o f the year 192, were certainly not great men, and
yet his family boasted descent from Aeneas. We can in fact say just
the opposite: late-Roman civilization is rich in very great and indeed
gigantic personalities, from Septimius Severus to Dio^1ot^n| C rm_
Stantine and Julian the Apostate, fm m „Tprnillian and Origen to
Ammianus Marcellinus and S t Angustine AnH this prejudice about
superior races and superior men, which was so popular at the time
o f Seeck, no longer tells us anything today. Even the contemporaries
o f Theognis no longer took account o f it and thus created the H el­
lenic democracies. States do not fall because o f the elimination o f
hypothetical descendents o f men who were superior; they do not
really fall either because o f the diminution o f the numbers o f those
who would have to defend them.

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 9

Slaves without Family

Like other parts o f the inquiry, the investigation o f the society and
the economic ‘style’ o f the late empire goes back to the sixteenth
century. It was presented then as a juridical inquiry. T h e character­
istic form o f taxation in the late empire had been the capitatio-
iugatio which took the shape at once o f a tax on the caput (on each
‘head’ o f a worker attached to estates) and o f a land-tax (on each
iugum o f land). T he scholars o f the sixteenth and seventeenth cen­
turies asked themselves whether the element o f taxation by head
predominated in this system or the element o f real-property taxation.
T his was a great question which was widely discussed, with opinion
divided between the opposing doctrines o f Cujas and Godefroy.
T h e eighteenth century, with its mercantilist outlook, expressed the
economic problem o f Roman decadence principally in terms o f one
element, the ‘lack o f precious metal’ . T he classic statement o f this
attitude is by Montesquieu.
‘ It is known that the mines o f Britain were not yet exploited,
and that there were very few in Italy and the Gallic provinces, that
the mines o f Spain were no longer worked from the time o f the Car­
thaginians, or at least were no longer so rich. Thus gold and silver
became scarce in Europe; but the emperors wished to impose the
same taxation, which ruined everything.’
In our time too some talented scholars, like the German D el-
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brück and the Englishman Davies, have explained the decadence
o f the Roman empire by the decline in mineral resources, especially
in the west. But this hypothesis is, at the least, insufficient and A ndré
Piganiol has rightly insisted on the activity o f precious metal mines
in Sardinia, Spain and Thrace. On the other hand prospectors for
gold in the late empire were subject to heavy taxation and thus to
wretched conditions o f life which, in the fatal year 378, led them
to make common cause with the barbarians in the regions which
were occupied. T h e crisis o f the empire was expressed not in the
lack o f gold and silver blit in the trpmpnHniw tavatinn and the
monstrous burden which was crushing the workers. Ju st for this
reason the nineteenth century, the century which felt in a special
way the problem o f the relation between capital and labour, was able
to make striking advances in the economic interpretation o f the end
o f the ancient world. I t wm then that Rodbertus discovered the
essential point about capitation; he grasped that this tax showed in
a sense that the late empire established a rnnnerrinn hetween the
unit o f labour and the unit n f land
T he whole labour o f research o f this great century converged in
the work o f M ax Weber. We all acknowledge, in this exceptionally
great historian and sociologist, one o f the masters o f the contempor­
ary world. He was a free spirit, or rather a liberal, alive to social
problems, and is remembered for his political work at the time o f
the Weimar republic. Long before this, however, as a young man in
18 9 1, he had written a genuine historical masterpiece, Roman
Agrarian History. He took up some suggestions o f Mommsen but
followed also his own ideas, in which he could be compared with
two M arxists, the German Hartmann and the Italian Ciccotti.
In 1896 he wrote a study o f The Social Origins o f the Decline o f
Ancient Civilisation. T o re-read it after sixty-two years is to marvel;
it could have been written yesterday. It was the time when Seeck
had just expounded his idea o f the ‘elimination o f the best men’ .
M ax Weber, who did not approve o f Seeck’s theories, based his essay
on the great theme which excited men in the second half o f the
nineteenth century: the concentration o f landed property and the
establishment o f wage labour.
‘T he sources give us the clearest picture o f the agricultural under­
takings o f the late republican and early imperial periods. T h e great
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landed estate is the essential form o f wealth. On the basis o f this are
raised even the fortunes which are employed in speculation. . . .
T h e management o f land is o f the plantation type and the workers
on the estates are slaves. T he fam ilia n f the slaves and th t coloni, side
bv side with each other, are, still in the imperial period, the normal
inhabitants o f the grpar petafpg
‘ Let us first o f all consider the slaves. What is their condi­
tion ?
‘ Let us look at the ideal scheme which has been transmitted to us
by the ancient authors o f works on agriculture. T h e dwelling place
o f the “ talking stock” {instrumentum vocale), that is the slaves, is to
be found near to that o f the animals {instrumentum semivocale). It
consists o f the dormitories, the hospital {valetudinarium), the prison
{career), the workshop for the workers (ergastulum); in short we
immediately build up the picture o f a barracks. . . . And in fact the
slave’s life is normally barrack life. T hey sleep and eat together
under the surveillance o f the vilicus. . . . Work is disciplined in a
strictly military fashion. . . . T h is was indeed essential for, without
using the whip, one could not get productive labour from unfree
men. But for us one element which can be deduced from this form
o f barrack life is especially im portant-the slave living in a barracks
not only had no property, he had no family either. Only the vilicus
lives securely in his separate cell together with a woman in slave
marriage {contubernium), more or less like the non-commissioned
officer in a modern barracks; indeed, according to the writers on
agriculture, this arrangement for the vilicus is an obligatory rule in
the interest o f the owners. And, since property and family life are
always inter-connected, this relationship can be established also in
the case o f the vilicus; he has his own peculium. . . . But the great
mass o f slaves lack a peculium as well as a normal relationship o f
monogamous union. . . . T he absence o f the monogamous family
leads to other consequences. M an can flourish only in the bosom o f
the family. T hus the slave barracks, deprived o f slave families, can­
not reproduce itself independently. T o grow and to be renewed it
must have recourse to the continual acquisition o f slaves. . . . T h e
old slave system consumes men as the blast-furnace consumes coal.
T he slav£_market, with a continual new acquisition o f human
material, is an essential premise for the slave barracks . . . therefore
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 Slaves without Family
it depends on the uninterrupted importation o f men into the
market. . . .
‘ Later writers on agriculture give the impression that the rising
price o f the human material had led at first to the improvement o f
technique by means o f the development o f specialized workers. But
after the end o f the last wars o f aggression in the second century,
which had already effectively acquired the character o f slave hunts,
came the crisis o f the great plantations with their slaves to whom
marriage and property were denied.
‘We can tell that this happened, and how it happened, by com­
paring the condition o f the slaves o f the big agricultural under­
takings, as they are described by Roman authors, with their condition
on the estates o f the Carolingian period as we know them from
Charlemagne’s instructions for his demesnes in the capituiare de
villis imperialibus and from the monastic surveys o f that time. In
both these periods we find slaves as agricultural workers, lacking
rights and in particular subjected to the absolute authority o f the
owners o f their labour. In these respects then there is no difference.
. . . But in another respect there is a difference and a radical one:
Roman slaves live communally in glayp barracks* the servus o f the
Carolingian period on the other hand lives in a mansus v m ilh on the
land which the lord has granted him with the obligation o f personal
services. Thus the slave is restored to family life and with the family
comes also the pnsgfrgsinn n f gnnHc nn thp part o f the slave. T h is
separation nf the slave from the oikos took place in the late-Roman
period and it was in fact bound to be a consequence o f the failure o f
growth in the slave barra ck s.. . .
‘While the slave thus climbed socially up to the position o f a
peasant obliged to perform personal services, at the same time the
colonus sank to the position o f a peasant bound to the land. . . .
‘[On the other hand it was impossible to produce for the market
with the simple means offered by the forced labour or personal ser­
vices o f the colonus ; production organized for sale required the
disciplined barracks o f slaves.] . . . T h e chief purpose o f the oikos
is more and more to cover the needs o f the landowner through the
division o f labour. T h e big estates detach themselves from the city
marjtet. . . .
‘ In the late-Roman period this decadence o f the city is affected
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and determined by the financial policy o f the state. T his too, with
growing financial demands, increasingly takes on the form o f natural
economy and the treasury becomes an oikos which resorts for its
needs to the market as little as possible and to its own means as
much as possible, in this way making difficult the creation o f fortunes
in money. . . . Indeed with the decadence o f the cities and o f com­
munications and the collapse into a natural economy the possibility
of taxation on a monetary basis became, as far as the countryside
was concerned, more and more remote.
‘Where therefore, half a millennium later, Charlemagne, that late
executor o f the will o f Diocletian, gave renewed life to the political
unity o f the west, this process was carried out on the basis o f a
strictly natural economy. . . .
‘T he city has disappeared : the Carolingian age knows nothing o f
the city as a specifically administrative concept. T h e pillars o f
civilization are the landed nobility. . . . Civilization has become
rural. . . .
‘T he separate family and private property were given back to the
masses o f unfree men. T hey were gradually raised from the status
o f instrumentum vocale into the circle o f humanity and thpir family
life was protected with moral guarantees thanks to Christianity. . . .
T h e spiritual life o f the west fell into a dark night but its decline
recalls that giant o f Greek myth who acquired new strength when
he rested on the bosom o f Mother Earth.’
T h is long quotation was necessary because M ax Weber’s essay is
really the most fundamental work and the greatest w ork o f genius
which has ever been written on the economic crisis o f antiquity.
It is true that it labours under the severe handicap o f the completely
adverse judgment o f Michael Rostovtzeff. But what matters in
Weber’s work is the vision o f the transition from the monetary
economy o f ^ Rnman empire to the self-sufficient economy o f l he
Middle A gee through t\u> min r>f thp ancient world and o f the
institutions which had made possible the great supranational unity
o f Rom e. Everything that has been written since Weber about the
economic development o f the ancient world is connected directly, or
quite often indirectly, with his vision. It was already present in the
Roman Agrarian History o f 1891 and it was formulated with superb
brilliance in the essay we have been recalling. Later on he developed
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 Slaves without Family
the same concept in the great Social and economic history o f anti­
quity’ which he published in 1909 under the title Agricultural rela­
tionships in Antiquity in the Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften.
T he logical train o f his reasoning is clear. City life and the related
monetary economy based on commercial transactions were possible
only as long as the landed estates w rrr cultivated bv slaves in
barracks without wives or children. After the end o f the wars of
conquest and o f the importation o f slaves which they facilitated, it
was necessary to resort to the settlement o f slaves with their wives
and children or to free coloni bound to the estate. B ut when the slave
had a familvTthe rural economy o f the oikos-th at is to say a closed
econom y-w as substituted for the monetary economy: trading con­
nections disappeared and the treasury, hemming an nibnc itself,
required taxation basically in kind. There are two essential points in
this Weberian interpretation. Firstly: the commercial economy was
pnssihle only as long as there were barracks o f slaves without families
and also wars o f conquest which guaranteed a continual supply o f
them. Secondly: the treasury is an oikos which could tend towards
forms o f natural rather than monetary prnnnmy Let us examine
these two points, beginning with the first.
Is it true that, as Weber thinks, the economy depending on slaves,
lodged in barracks without women or children, declines because of
the drying up o f the wars o f conquest; and that the crisis o f this
economy, enforcing the grant to the slaves o f a woman and a pecu-
lium, led to the stagnation o f trade and therefore to a domestic
economy ? It is only possible to reply to this after we have considered
more closely the important and painful spectacle o f the life o f the
country slave in the Roman world. (City slaves were rather more
fortunate in that manumission was much easier for them and their
owners were much more closely bound to them.) Let us attempt to
investigate the mind o f a country slave in the age o f Cato and Varro
in the second and first centuries B.C., the great age o f the slave
economy.
B y a principle which always reigns unquestioned, this slave, like
all men o f servile condition, has no rights. Therefore he has no right
to love. He really is a talking animal, instrumentum vocale. Cato
grants him, on certain conditions, occasional and sorry loves, but
never true love and still less a permanent partner. Only to the slave
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 Slaves without Family
who is in charge o f the work, the vilicus or steward, does Cato allow
a female partner, the vilica. A s far as this goes then M ax Weber is
undoubtedly right : the slave has no family. But, if we question more
deeply the mind o f the slave o f this age, we begin to sense that he
feels the weight o f his bestial state o f life. He reacts. Cato’s little
work gives us the picture o f rural slavery in the first h alf o f the
second century B .C . In the second half o f this same century (more
precisely in 13 5 -3 2 and 10 4 -1) there were two great slave rebellions
in Sicily. Slaves, men who may not love, see their work as a curse
worse than death.1 T hey may not love; nor may they drink wine.
T hey are allowed only the lora, the drink made from the remains o f
the pressed grapes which is not alcoholic and is provided as a sub­
stitute since it cannot excite them to protest.
But no rational brutalization can destroy the humanity in man.
T h e mind o f the slave has not lost that moral consciousness o f which
men try to deprive him by right o f conquest. For example the rebels
o f 135 B .c . spared the generous daughter o f a very cruel slave­
owner. Their resentment, however, is as hard as the metal o f which
the chains are made which when they are recaptured they will carry
back to the labour prison.
In these conditions the labour o f slaves in a plantation economy
cannot be as productiv** ac nnp ™ight im ^ in o Th*» Roman slave-
owners began to realize the im portant » w »b*» «1™«» is
settled on the land, with wife and children, becomes fond o f the
land and produces more. T h ey did not o f course accept all the con­
sequences o f this immediately. But there is no doubt that the more
intelligent among them made this observation. Varro, who compiled
his work on agriculture in 36 B.c. found it already in one o f his
predecessors, Cassius,2 who had published his work in 88 B.c. And

1 Cf. now Vogt, ‘Struktur der antiken Sklavenkriege’, A b h a n d lu n g e n M a i n z , G e is t,

und S o z . K l. ( 1 9 5 7 ) ,p. 1 ; Burian, L i s t y filo lo g ic h e ( 1 9 5 7 ) , pp. 197 f f
2 Varro found in Cassius the information that the slaves of Epirus were famous for
their attachment to women and children. On the other hand it is known that in 1 6 7 B.c.
quite 1 5 0 , 0 0 0 men of Epirus were taken into slavery ‘in a single day’ (cf., e.g., Rostov-
tzeff, T h e S o c i a l a n d E co n o m ic H is t o r y o f the H e lle n is tic W o r l d ( 1 9 4 1 ) , I I , p. 7 3 9 ) . I
believe that many of these 1 5 0 ,0 0 0 slaves on Roman estates were not entirely torn away
from their close relations and that, briefly, there were many, many thousands o f Epirote
slaves on the estates with their wives and children. Thus it seems to me it can be
established that the Epirote slave settled apart was more profitable than the slave who
was deprived of love and descendants. Knowledge of this fact reached Cassius, whose
‘ translation’ from Mago was really a work rich in ideas quite separate from those of Mago.
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 Slaves without Family
we find, even in Cassius, the observation that it is necessary to
employ, beside the slaves, free wage-labourers. Even at that time
apparently free labour seemed useful in competition with servile
labour.
T h e slavp W i-grlg was thus destined to decline because a number
o f rnnsiderafinnc gngpesteH the nee/1 fn prive the slave an interest in
production and fn pive him a family and a pint In this sense, then,
we can partially amend the first point in Weber’s theory.1 It was not
the end o f the wars of conquest, so much as the simple need for a
greater economic output, which often suggested the substitution o f
the slave settled on land for the slave in harrarlfR and the greater and
greater use o f another labour force or, as they sav. o f cnloni^T h e
plantation economy with slave barracks was at bottom a pheno­
menon due to the influence o f the Carthaginian agricultural system
on the Roman. In the Maghreb ruled by Carthage it had been
possible for a long time; in the Roman world it was widely under­
mined by the slave wars o f the second and first centuries B . c . and
by the subsequent cultural and economic needs. One might perhaps
say that this plantation economy was in a sense a parenthesis-
though one o f great im portance-in the history o f Italy. Etruria2 for
example had been a classic land o f servi-coloni with families, the
etera and lautni-etera, and continued to be so even in the second
and first centuries when labour from the Hellenistic countries was
imported into it. T h e system o f cultivation by slaves settled on the
land or free coloni might be regarded, in this sense, as the victory
o f an Italic, or at least Etruscan, tradition over the methods o f the
great estates o f Carthaginian Africa. A t any rate the crisis o f this
system, far from bringing about a halt in the commercial economy,
coincided with a revival o f economic consciousness inspired by the
nouveau riche middle class, the Trimalchios o f the first century.
T hey seem to have thought that the raising up o f the slaves was in
the long run an expense worth facing for the sake o f having a labour
force with a stake in the work and not too hostile. These Trim al­
chios o f the first century A.D. were quite intelligent people. They

1 Cf. also Westermann in Pauly-Wissowa, R e a l -E n c y c lo p ä d i e d e r classisch en A l t e r ­

tu m sw issen sch a ft , Supplement-band V I, pp. 944 ff.; and in general for the Hellenistic
age Biezunska-Mallowist, E o s , suppl. 20 (1949).
a H is t o r ia , 1957, pp. n o ff.; cf. ch. 1 above; and in general Bilinski, A r c h e o lo g ia ,
III (1949), pp. 93 ff.

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 Slaves without Family
came from the ranks and they could do their sums. Petronius has
drawn an unforgettable portrait o f one o f them for us.
‘But a clerk quite interrupted his [Trimalchio’s] passion for the
dance by reading as though from the gazette : “ Ju ly the 26th. T hirty
[slave] boys and forty [slave] girls were born on Trim alchio’s estate
at Cumae. Five hundred thousand pecks o f wheat were taken up
from the threshing-floor into the barn. Five hundred oxen were
broken in. On the same date: the slave Mithridates was led to cruci­
fixion for having damned the soul o f our lord Gaius [Caligula].
On the same date : ten million sesterces which could not be invested
were returned to the reserve. On the same day : there was a fire in
our gardens at Pompeii, which broke out in the house o f Nosta the
bailiff.” “ Stop,” said Trim alchio, “ when did I buy any gardens at
Pompeii ?” “ Last year,” said the clerk, “ so that they are not entered
in your accounts yet.” Trimalchio glowed with passion, and said,
“ I will not have any property which is bought in my name entered
in my accounts unless I hear o f it within six months.” We now had
a further recitation o f police notices, and some foresters’ wills . . .
then the names o f bailiffs. . . .M
T h e ‘Gazette’ o f Trim alchio’s estate is amusing but it is also
suggestive. T h e world o f Petronius’s story is in fact made up o f
estates and o f slaves who live on them, grow up, and even maybe
make their fortune there. In the next century, at the time o f Marcus
Aurelius and Commodus, Apuleius’s novel shows us estates not
cultivated by slaves but, on the contrary, by coloni. N o’ ' servile and
free labour are living side by side and approximating increasingly
to each other. T he principle that it is inhuman to separate the slave
from his female partner is being asserted and, on the other hand, the
free colonus who, as a free man, can never be restricted in his right to
have a family, and may smile upon his wife and children after his
work is done, has nonetheless to perform labour services to the
master. Servile labour had the a d v a n c e for «F» the
slaves could never be recruited for military service and this was a
significant point which seems to us to have been an important reason
for the persistence of slavery. B ut free labour also had its advan­
tages. In the end there was an equalization o f the two types. T his
change was not determined by the end o f the wars o f conquest.
1 Loeb translation.
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 Slaves without Family
From the time o f Marcus Aurelius and throughout the late
empire many defeated barbarians became laeti. Thus they were not
reduced to slavery but were settled in the countryside to work the
lands which were called laeticae, and settled o f course cum opibus
liberisque, ‘with means o f livelihood and children’ . Yet, even in the
final sunset o f Roman greatness under Stilicho, the great victory over
Radagaisus resulted in an enormous unloading o f Ostrogothic slaves
onto the market. In cases like this, the result o f victorious war was
still the enslavement o f the barbarians and not their settlement as
laeti. But the empire’s economic problem was not solved by the
introduction o f a free barbarian labour force, and still less by
the enslavement o f defeated barbarians. It had passed beyond
the stage where the choice between free and servile labour was
decisive.
I f we want to examine further the Weberian problem o f the
relationship between wars o f conquest and a slave economy, it will
be useful to look at one region o f great historical importance: Panno­
nia. Pannonia, and the whole region o f Augustan Illyricum , with
Dalmatia, Moesia and Pannonia, included such flourishing cities, on
the Danube or not far from it, as Vindobuna, Solva, Aquincum,
Carnuntum, Intercisa, Mursa, Cibale, Singidunum and Sirmium,
and behind these Sabaena, Poetovio and others. It was a region o f
great value. Several present-day capitals are within the territories o f
the cities which have just been listed; Vindobuna is Vienna, Aqin-
cum is Budapest, Singidunum is Belgrade. How then were the lands
o f this flourishing territory farmed ? T he great Russian historian,
Rostovtzeff, decided, with shrewd intuition, that the Pannonian
fields had been cultivated by slaves. Later, Westermann1 denied
that Rostovtzeff’s theory was acceptable because, he pointed out,
there was no evidence for it in our sources. Who is right ; Rostov­
tzeff or Westermann ? As far as the late empire is concerned we can
find the answer in a significant text called the Expositio totius mundi,
an extremely intelligent and detailed geo-economic picture o f the
Roman world which was compiled at that time. T h e Expositio tells
us in detail the products, the economic character and the extent of
trade in each region o f the empire. O f Pannonia it says, ‘Now comes

1 Westermann, op. cit., p. 1024.

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the region o f Pannonia, a land rich in everything, especially in fruit,
mules, trades and, in part, slaves.’ T he mention o f slaves stands out,
for in the whole o f its treatment o f the economic geography o f the
Roman world, the Expositio mentions the abundance o f slaves only
in Pannonia (though it is indeed said to be only partial) and Maure­
tania. And it must be realized o f course that Pannonia in Europe and
Mauretania in Africa were frontier regions where warlike operations
or commercial activity must have contributed notably to the
market in slaves even in the late empire.
T h e consequences o f this slave economy wrere however once again
ruinous. T h e presence o f a powerful servile labour force tended to
depress free labour and ended by extinguishing the difference in
incomes between the theoretically free colonus and the peasant-slave
with a sturdy barbarian ancestry. T h e coloni o f Pannonia continually
wanted in fact to flee from the estates, so that the emperors were
compelled in 3 7 1 to insist on the obligation to serfdom o f the coloni
o f this province. T hus Pannonia in the late empire witnessed again
the phenomenon which had appeared in Italy and Sicily five
centuries earlier, the weariness and impatience o f the slaves,
with the very serious additional discontent o f the coloni who were
becoming, rather more than in other regions, assimilated to the
slaves.
T h e crisis o f the empire was not then due to the drying up o f the
import o f slaves. I f anything it was more acute in those very regions
where there was a marked presence o f slave labour. T he Pannonian
peasantry were men seized by desperation. T hey could not pay their
taxes. T hey appealed to the presence o f the barbarians as to a
liberation. In 406, that crucial moment in the age o f Stilicho, they
moved from Pannonia towards distant Gaul to take part in the con­
quest o f the empire with the invading barbarians. T hey were
victorious; joined with the barbarians they devastated the west. St.
Jerom e protests in one o f his letters:
‘ innumerable and ferocious peoples have occupied all the Gauls.
All that land which extends from the Alps to the Pyrenees and is
bounded by the Ocean and Rhine has been devastated by the
Quadi, the Vandals, Sarmatians, Alans, Gepids, Heruli, Saxons and
Burgundians, and, o our poor state, the Pannonians too are our
enemies.’
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 Slaves without Family
T his rebellion o f the Pannonians1 is a rebellion o f the oppressed
who have chosen the way pointed out by desperation. Still earlier
than this, in the age o f Stilicho, a great rebellion against Rome had
started out in 397 from Mauretania, the other region which the
Expositio selects as rich in slaves and an exporter o f this human
merchandise. (‘ Mauretania’ , says the Expositio, ‘exports clothes and
slaves and abounds in corn.’) Though it was subdued by Stilicho,
this revolt, in which the ‘barbarian’ Moorish tribes were led by the
Gildo, is extremely significant.
W p rq p n m v s a y H pfin ifply th a t th p pm l n f th p a n rip n t w nrlH w ag
not determined bv the abandonment o f wars o f conquest with their
trails o f wretches drflggpd jntr> da w ry In short, on this matter, we
have parted company with Weber. But the central intuition o f
Weber’s work remains alive: the countryside had increasing im­
portance.2 T h e economy became more and more an oikos economy3
and the development o f the seigneurial estate divided the city from
the countryside. Not that the cities simply declined; on the con­
trary the great cities o f the late empire found their economic powrer
increased, while in many regions, especially the west, the smaller
ones languished. Another partial ™ rrrrtmn th a t has to be made to
Weber’s vision is that the commerce n f the late empire, did not
necessarily stagnate. T h e passages which we have just quoted from
the Expositio totius mundi about Pannonia and Mauretania are
enough to prove the liveliness o f their export trades. But there is no
doubt that the estate o f the late empire, cultivated in part by coloni
and in part by slaves, tended to become a closed unit.4 An estate-

1 T he ‘revolution’ of the Pannonians is thus to be added to the other cases of ‘revolu­

tion’ pointed out by Maschkin, R ö m is ch e G e s c h ic h te (German translation, 1953), pp.
632 ff. It is understood of course that in the application of the concept of ‘revolution’
to the end of the ancient world, one assumes also the presence of the characteristics
o f a society profoundly different from the modern world. Cf. the methodological limita­
tions formulated by Kovaliov, V e s tn ik D r e v n e j Is to r ii (1954), pp. 3, 40 ff.; and by
Vittinghoff, G e s c h ic h te in W iss e n s c h a ft u n d U n te r r ic h t (1958), pp. 464 ff.
2 Cf. recent remarks on the reflection o f the phenomenon in ecclesiastical organiza­
tion by Kirsten, R e a lle x ik o n f ü r A n t i k e u n d C h r is te n tu m , IH , p. 1 1 1 2 .
3 T he case o f Africa is typical: Piganiol, H o m m a g e à L u c ie n F e b v r e (1953), I, pp.
67 ff. In general see Courtois, Leschi, Perrat, Saumagne, T a b le tte s A lb e r t i n i , (1952).
4 Cf. in general Pallasse, O r ie n t et O c c id e n t à p r o p o s d u C o lo n a t R o m a in a u B a s -
E m p ir e (1950); R e v u e H is t o r iq u e d e D r o it F r a n ç a i s et E t r a n g e r (1958), pp. 67 ff.; Lot,
N o u v e lle s re ch e rch e s su r l 'im p ô t f o n c i e r et la c a p ita tio n p e rso n elle sous le B a s - E m p i r e
(19 55); the discussion in V e s tn ik D r e v n e j I s t o r ii (19 53, 1954, 1955, 1956) between
Shtaerman, Kazdan, Korsunski, Kovalev, Siuziumov, Udaltsova, Lipchitz; finally

H?
 Slaves without Family
owner o f the late empire writes: ‘T h e presence o f the master is the
wealth o f the estate.. . . It must necessarily contain workers in iron,
wood, pottery, so that the lure o f the city does not take agricultural
labour away from the countryside.’ T h e seigneurial estate o f this
period is thus an oikosy a unit in itself with tendencies towards a
natural economy. Is the treasury, that is essentially the Roman stateT
also zxuukos ? T h is assertion is what we called the second point in
M ax Weber’s teaching. It is connected with the internal dialectic
o f the economic process which lies between antiquity and the
medieval w orld,1 the transition from a monetary economy to a pre­
dominantly natural economy. It is one o f the antitheses which
present themselves to the student o f this age o f contrast, which are
profound yet not always clear. We shall examine it in the next
chapter within the framework o f the antitheses which dominated the
men o f that time and still fascinate us in spite o f their remoteness.
Shtaerman, Krisis RabovladeVceskovo Stroja v Zapad'nich Provintzijach Rimskoj Imp.
(19 57); cf. Djakov, Vestnik Drevnej Istorii (1958), pp. 12 2 If.
1 Latouche, The Birth o f Western Economy (1961).

148
 IO

The Economic Problem:

Country and City

M ax Weber’s essay on The Social Causes o f the Decline o f Ancient

Civilisation came out in 1896. T h e questions which it raised still
confront every student o f the subject with new problems and the
great social changes which we have witnessed in this century make
us even more acutely interested in Weber’s antitheses. What was the
relation between natural economy and money economy at the end o f
the Roman empire ? Weber had asserted that even the treasury was
an economic unit in itself, an oikos. T h is idea, which Weber himself
had formulated very cautiously, was developed with unexpected
results by a remarkable young Finnish scholar, Gunnar Mickwitz.
In 1932 Mickwitz published his fundamental work, Money and
Economy in the Roman Empire o f the Fourth Century. Here, for the
first time, the problem raised by Weber was related to the other
problem o f the relationship between the bureaucracy and the tax­
payers. Mickwitz, who could perhaps be defined as an extreme
Weberian, spoke o f a class struggle between the staff* h n r ^ m ^ r y
which wanted payment in kind (‘the treasury is an oikos1) and tax-
payers who were trying to pay in money {adaerare as it was called)
the taxes which the state asked to have as services in kind. One cause
of the fall o f the ancient world was to be sought in this struggle
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 The Economic Problem : Country and City
between natural economy, preferred by the treasury, and money
economy, preferred by the taxpayers.
But even this possible ‘cause’ o f the death o f Rome appears in­
sufficient for the interpretation o f that great phenomenon on the
economic plane. On the contrary, one can be sure that in many cases
the taxpayers preferred to pay in kind rather than money. ‘Adaera­
tio offered’ (in the fourth and fifth centuries) ‘a dangerous margin
for abuses o f power. Some emperors took notice o f this danger;
others did not. It depended on the authority which they could exert
over a bureaucracy whose abuses were in large measure responsible
for the catastrophe.’ 1
Thus the problem broadens out. It becomes once again the whole
question o f the catastrophe o f the Roman Em pire in its relation
with monetary and economic phenomena in general. T o understand
it we have to go much further back, as far as the age o f Commodus
(180-92) when the economic crisis first manifested itself clearly. We
may get some suggestions from the history o f a bank o f the time o f
Commodus which was managed by the slave-banker Callistus, the
man who later, under Elagabalus, became Pope and enriched the
history o f imperial Rome with his genius and his boundless faith.
T h e bank directed by Callistus while he was still a slave belonged
to his master Carpophorus, an imperial freedman and himself also
a slave. It was a bank for Christians in an officially pagan Rome. It
accepted deposits from Christians, put the money out at interest,
lending for example to Jew s, and returned the interest as profits to
the small Christian savers; in short it was a bank dealing in deposits
and loans. At a certain point it went bankrupt. Carpophorus natur­
ally treated Callistus as the scapegoat and threw him into the
pistrinum, that living hell where slaves turned the millstone and
ground the grain. Later on after he had been freed from the pistrinum
Callistus was condemned for his Christianity. T h e bankruptcy o f
Carpophorus and Callistus and the latter’s condemnation are to be
dated around 184-8. T h is was the golden age o f the very powerful
imperial freedmen, and yet Carpophorus, who was one o f them,
could not prevent the collapse. When Callistus later came to be in
charge o f his famous catacombs and then finally Pope, he showed
him self to be an excellent administrator. Surely his courage as a
1 Piganiol, Jo u r n a l des Savan ts (1955), p. 10.
ISO
 The Economic Problem : Country and City
financier would have saved the bank if the economic circumstances
had permitted it. In fact the tendency o f the economic circumstances
o f the age o f Commodus was towards inflation and, in the Roman
world, inflation always produced a great disequilibrium o f interest.
Those to whom Callistus had lent substantial sums could no longer
pay the high interest rates which were necessary to sustain a bank
which was designed largely for charitable purposes. T he shipwreck
o f the bank under Commodus is then symptomatic o f a general
malaise. T h e state itself had to steer a difficult course through the
dangers o f the new economic circumstances. From 184 onwards the
Italian property owners could no longer keep up with the interest
rates needed by charitable institutions.
What was the origin o f this crisis ? T h e question has been much
debated in recent times, and one might say that there are two theories
about this economic change, which marks the beginning o f the late-
Roman period. T h e first theory, originally formulated by Heichel­
heim and then accepted by M ickwitz and Piganiol, maintains that
there was a remarkable price-rise under Commodus, amounting to
a price revolution. T h e other theory, which is supported by Schehl
and Passerini,1 denies altogether that there was a price revolution
under Commodus and shifts the crisis to the next epoch, the age o f
the Severi. T h is is not a matter o f detail but a question o f basic im­
portance : what determined the great economic crisis o f the Roman
empire? Those who deny the existence o f the price revolution
under Commodus argue something like this: Commodus was a
peaceful emperor who tried to preserve the purity o f the silver coin­
age (the denarius)-, so there was no economic crisis under Corn-
modus. T h is reasoning does not take account o f some extraordinary
elements in the late-Roman epoch and especially in the work o f that
complex and strange son o f Marcus. Commodus tried to keep the
silver content o f the denarius intact, avoiding the material expression
o f inflation which would be given by the reduction o f the fineness
o f the silver in the denarius. He tried to keep prices down by price
controls?1 O f course this young Roman Hercules, who loved his

1 Passerini, ‘Sulla pretesa rivoluzione dei prezzi durante il regno di Commodo’ in

Studi in onore di Gino Luzzatto (1949).
2 In an epigraphic text o f Henchir Snobbeur (C ./.L ., V i l i , 23956; see Merlin, Ins.
latines de la Tunisie, no. 676) Commodus mentions the price o f a slave ex forma cen­
soria (500 denarii, not a high price). His maximum price list (whose extent however is

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 The Economic Problem : Country and City
populace so much that he offered them the spectacle o f his own
imperial gladiatorial skill, did not waver in the assurance that he
had found the remedy for a sick economy. But Commodus’s good
coinage did not in fact stave o ff inflation.
T h is paradox is really no paradox. We have to consider the
economic facts in the context o f the spiritual climate in which they
appeared. Monetary phenomena are not enough to determine a
crisis. Even if Commodus’s denarius had retained the same fineness
o f silver that it had had under his father M arcus, the agony o f the old
economic system would not have been averted. Only after Corn-
modus is silver money definitely inflated, by Septimius Severus,
who brings about a change from an alloy including 25-30 per cent
o f copper to one with 50 per cent o f copper, a radical depreciation o f
the denarius. But the transformation o f the currency by Septimius
Severus was only a consequence o f the crisis, not the crisis itself,
which already existed under Commodus as a result o f the plagues
and the wars o f the age o f Marcus.
An epidemic is a sickle which reaps pitilessly, scattering death
abroad. At Rome under the same Commodus, in certain periods o f
the year 189, 2,000 men a day died o f the plague. I f the sickness had
not been checked the whole population o f the city would have dis­
appeared in one year. In these circumstances measures undertaken
by the state, like Commodus’s list o f maximum prices, were no
more than rough palliatives. T h e urban population o f Rome con­
tinued to suffer dreadfully. There are no magical remedies to deal
with hunger. In hopelessly unfavourable circumstances even good
intentions seem to be deceptions. So, when grain was short, the
Roman masses rebelled against the imperial freedman Cleander,
whom Commodus had appointed praetorian prefect. It was a dan­
gerous moment and Commodus, with the advice o f Marcia, had to
sacrifice his prefect. In the provinces the crisis struck especially at
Gaul, where military conscription continually snatched hands from
the fields: hence the desperate revolution o f a Gallic peasant who

unknown to us) is attested by the H is t o r ia A u g u s t a , according to which it had no success

because goods disappeared from the market ( v ilita te m p r o p o s u it, e x qu a m a jo rem p e n u ­
r ia m e ffecit ; in the maximum price list of Diocletian the same terms, v ilita s and p e n u r ia ,
recur). On economic planning in general, of which the maximum prices are the charac­
teristic expression, see Piganiol, S c ie n t ia (1947), pp. 95 f f ; Lambrechts, A n t iq u it é
C la s s iq u e (1949), pp. 109 f f , Cf. ch. 6 above.

15 2
 The Economic Problem : Country and City
organized a band o f brigands and got as far as conceiving an attempt
on Commodus’s life. T his was a crisis, then, which dripped with the
blood and the sufferings o f the provincials, not an economic and
demographic crisis but also spiritual and political. T he more in­
exorable it appeared the greater became Commodus’s obsession
with his inability to placate the mob by his Herculean presence in
the circus and the amphitheatre, and with the confiscation o f the
property o f condemned senators. On the last night o f 192, after a
reign o f thirteen years, he was overthrown by a conspiracy in which
his own companion Marcia took part.
T he year o f the five emperors was 193, from which emerged
the founder o f the line o f the Severi, Septimius Severus. Septimius
devalued the denarius and the inflation which this produced seemed
to be at last a remedy to the economic crisis. But in fact the distrust
o f the silver money (the denarius) lasted on after him. No one now
willingly exchanged the good gold coinage, the aureus, which was
not easily adulterated, for the devalued silver currency, which was
theoretically, according to the emperor, equivalent to one-twenty-
fifth o f the aureus but actually worth scarcely one-fiftieth. Com­
modus’s solution imposed by authority-the maximum prices and
the maintenance o f the fineness o f the silver denarius-had proved
inadequate. But equally inadequate was the plainly inflationist
solution o f Septimius Severus. Anyone who wanted to change an
aureus on the black market would have found someone or other
ready to give him more than the 25 denarii which was the official
exchange rate. Now there was, as always in this age o f paradoxical
contradictions, a divorce between reality and theory. And between
them sprang up the tendency towards a natural economy. Now the
man who received his salarium in gold {salarium militiae in auro)
considered himself to be in an impregnable position, secure from
deceits and from the contradictions o f the theory. T he man paid in
gold felt himself almost paid in kind, or even better. In the futile
list o f maximum prices fixed by Commodus a slave cost 500 denarii
in silver money. Under the Severi it was 2,500. But the man who
paid in gold would have found it hard to pay out those 100 aurei
which were theoretically equivalent to 2,500 denarii.
T his situation continued, more or less, throughout the third
century. In this field too the great revolutionary was Constantine. He
153
 The Economic Problem : Country and City
rrpafeH a stähle and sound gold coinage, the solidus, which was to
dominate the whole Byzantine period for centuries and centuries.
T herefore the age o f Constantine is in a sense the opposite o f the
third century. In the earlier period the issue o f gold coinage was
reduced ; now on the other hand it was abundant. Then there had
been inflation o f smaller units o f money, now instead they were
normally tied to gold.
T his explains why in the fourth century adaeratio could be
attractive to bureaucrats and soldiers. An economy tied to gold was
a safeguard against the fluctuations o f the market. It was in the fourth
century that the rhetorician Libanius recommended to a friend
that he should take his remuneration in money and not in kind.1
C onstantine’s innovation had had an enormous importance. But it
was not appreciated by the masses. T h ey c o nlH n n t p a y taxes cal­
culated in gold if they did not possess any gold. Everywhere in the
empire the peasant masses felt themselves crushed under the weight
o f the new economy. T h e small peasant-proprietors turned them-
selves into dediticii o f the rich, or as they were called in Celtic vassi:
these are the first hints o f the economic system o f vassalage which
marks the M iddle Ages. S mall men took retuge under the patronage
o f great landed lordships, which alone could drive away the spectre
o f tKe intolerable exactions. In the west it was thought to put an
end to all this by reducing the issue o f gold money, by, amongst
other things, minting smaller gold coins. T h e name o f the new coins,
tremisses, was on the lips o f right-thinking people as a discovery o f
the good old d a y s -o f Alexander Severus, it was said. But every
extreme deflationary effort in conditions o f insufficient productivity
brought the society nearer to a natural economy.
Thus they set o ff towards the M iddle Ages. T he huge economic
crisis o f the late empire, resulting from the lack o f balance between
productivity and the needs o f centralization, led to the decline o f the
supranational unity based on a money economy. T h e economic
manifestation o f the crisis thus shows us what we might almost call
its ‘mathematical’ side: a deflation without corresponding pro­
ductivity led to the collapse o f the economic framework.

T he human side o f the crisis is however beyond this mathematical

1 Petit, Libanius et la vie municipale à Antioche au I V e siècle (1955), p. 303.

154
 The Economic Problem : Country and City
formula. T he history o f material culture is, before everything, the
history o f culture : o f the tragédie and comédie humaine.
Beside the antithesis o f natural economy and money economy the
ancient world also embraced the antithesis between rural masses and
city middle class. As far as it concerns the Roman empire this
problem is at the heart o f another fundamental work, the Social and
Economic History o f the Roman Empire by Michael Rostovtzeff,
published in 1926. T his historian saw in the crisis o f the empire the
results o f a conflict between peasantry and urban flaecpc,
which might be considered analogous to that which developed in
the early part o f the Leninist revolution between the kulaks and the
labouring populations o f the cities. He had been led to this new
interpretation not only by an emotional reflection on this aspect o f
the Russian revolution but also, on the plane o f scholarship, by the
consideration that as early as the third century and throughout the
late empire the Roman army y™* rprniitpd frnm rfcu» m n l miccpt
He concluded that this army, composed o f peasants, was a natural
enemy o f the city middle classes. Therefore in his History, which
covered the period from Augustus to Diocletian, the emphasis was
placed on the last part o f the second and, especially, on the third
century. This conflict between peasant soldiers and city middle class
seemed to him to be already manifested in the violence with which
the soldiers o f Septimius Severus hurled themselves against Byzan­
tium (196) and against Lyons (197). But the centre o f these events
in his account, the point at which the conflict seems to reach a crisis
and reveal itself in its full seriousness, is the year 238, the year of
the rebellion against the Emperor Maximinus Thrax. One might say
that it is this brutal and powerful soldier who stands out amongst
the protagonists o f Rostovtzeff’s History : a man who knew how to
defeat the Germans but not how to make himself loved by the senate
and who comes down to us under the weight o f a senatorial tradition
which was relentless in its condemnation o f him.
‘T h e events in Africa are generally misrepresented by modern
scholars, who persist in speaking o f a peasant revolt, in face o f the
clear statement o f Herodian, our best source, who wras misunder­
stood and mistranslated by the Latin biographer o f Maximinus.
What really happened was as follows. After the accession o f M axi­
minus the procurator o f Africa received a commission to extort
155
 The Economic Problem : Country and City
money there for the emperor. That he was appointed governor o f
the province in place o f the aged proconsul M . Antonius Gordianus,
who retired to the city o f Thysdrus, is a very attractive hypothesis o f
von Domaszewski. T h e procurator, reluctantly helped by the
quaestor and his assistants, proceeded in the usual ruthless manner
and attacked particularly the rich landowners o f the province, who
formed, as we know, the most influential portion o f the population
o f the African cities. Some o f these men, described by Herodian as
“ well-born and rich” , being threatened with the prospect o f losing
their “ paternal and ancestral estates” , organized a plot. T o ensure its
complete success, they ordered some o f the oiketai (slaves or
tenants, probably the former) to come from their estates to the city
armed with axes and sticks. Such a crowd would not look suspicious
to the procurator, who was accustomed to receive from the peasants
complaints against their landlords. These men killed the procurator,
and thereupon the leaders o f the plot, a group o f African landowners,
whose numbers were increased by other men o f the same class, pro­
claimed Gordian emperor. Gordian, however, did not succeed in
receiving any support from the African army. H is forces were a
motley crowd consisting o f a few soldiers (perhaps the cohors
urbana o f Carthage) and a militia composed o f men who dwelt in
the cities, probably the members o f the curiae imiorum. T hey were
attracted by Gordian’s promise to banish all the spies and to restore
the confiscated estates. These troops were badly equipped and badly
organized. T hey had no weapons and used such as were to be found
in the houses o f the African bourgeoisie-swords, axes, and hunting
javelins (the equipment o f hunters may be seen on numerous
African mosaics). It is hardly probable that many peasants and
tenants joined his standard. N o wonder that his army was easily
vanquished by the regular troops o f Africa, led by the Numidian
legatus Capelianus, his personal enemy. T h e victory was followed
by an orgy o f murder and confiscation. Capelianus first executed all
the aristocracy o f Carthage and confiscated both their private
fortunes and the money belonging to the city and the temples. He
then proceeded to do the same in the other cities, “ killing the
prominent men, exiling the common citizens, and ordering the
soldiers to burn and pillage the estates and the villages.”
‘Meanwhile Gordian had been recognized at Rome, and the
156
 The Economic Problem : Country and City
Romans, even after his death, persisted in their revolt against
Maximinus. T h e revolt spread quickly all over Italy and assumed
the same form as the revolt o f Africa : it was a desperate fight o f the
city bourgeoisie against the soldiers and their leader, the soldier-
emperor.’ . . . ‘ I do not doubt that Maximin was an honest man
and an able general. B ut his aim was to destroy the main fabric o f
the Roman gfatp| ag hased on the cities. N o wonder that he was
hated bv those who saw in such destruction the fall o f ancient
civilization as a w hole-w hich indeed it really was. How could
they believe in the necessity o f it, if even modern scholars are
not all convinced that it was necessary to crush the educated
classes in order to bring about an alleged equality that was never
achieved P’ 1
T his passage by Rostovtzeff on the African movements against
Maximinus, which reduces the events to the city-countryside anti­
thesis, is directed against, and at the same time closely connected
with, a passage by Otto Seeck. Seeck also had emphasized the im­
portance o f that revolt, which appeared to him, preoccupied as he
was with studying the ‘elimination o f the best’, as a consequence o f
the barbarization which he believed to have taken place after the
settlement o f laeti inside the empire from the time o f Marcus
onward. Seeck’s interpretation fa lls-as far as the cultural ‘barbariza­
tion’ o f the peasants is concerned-together with his famous premise,
the ‘elimination o f the best’ . But we cannot completely accept
Rostovtzeff’s theory either. One cannot really see any solidarity
between peasants and soldiers against the cultured classes in the
events o f 238.2 Herodian, the principle source o f information on
the revolt, tells us that ‘relatives and domestics abused the soldiers,
thinking that Maximinus himself was doing these things through
their action. . . . M aximinus’s legate ordered the soldiers to burn
and plunder fields and villages’ .
There was in reality no genuine solidarity between peasants and
soldiers as far as the revolt o f 238 in Africa is concerned. And again
in Egypt, under Decius, we hear o f some peasants who go from a
wedding feast to attack and put to flight ‘with a single attack’ the

1 Rostovtzeff, Social and Economic History o f the Roman Empire (second edition,
revised by P. M . Fraser, 1957), I, pp. 455-7, H , P- 7 3 4 -
* Cassola, Nuova Rivista Storica (1957).
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 The Economic Problem : Country and City
soldiers who had arrested Bishop Dionysius o f Alexandria.1 T h e
city-country antithesis therefore cannot be converted straightfor­
wardly into a city-soldiery antithesis. As for the complex pheno­
menon o f the ‘reawakening o f the peasants’ in the imperial period,
it was never a unified phenomenon, nor always conscious. Being the
product o f a complex and many-sided disquiet, it cannot easily be
reduced to a single description. Furthermore there was, either
secretly in their hearts or openly in rebellions, the weariness or
simply protest o f the peasants against the fiscal oppression. But
there was also the protest o f the rural masses about the wages denied
by their masters or unpaid (one should not forget the epistle o f St.
Jam es as early as the first century o f the empire); and sometimes on
the imperial estates there is the unhappiness o f peasants oppressed
by extortionate administrators___ These protests and this weariness
called forth a kind o f national consciousness in some areas, the
chivalrous pride o f the Celtic peasant and the powerful personality
o f the Syrian colonus begin to act. We can circumscribe the conflict
between peasants and upper classes within these limits. Behind the
multitudes o f peasants appears the first timid manifestation o f the
‘nations’, the ethne, which according to the biblical exegesis o f St.
Hippolytus, would destroy the Roman empire at the end o f the
world.

1 Eusebius, H .E ., V I, 40, 5-9. (Note that it is not a matter of peasants who are
declared Christians : in fact the bishop, even when he has grasped their friendly inten­
tions, begs them to cut his head off.)
 II

Nations, ‘Democracies’, Liberty

l i b e r t y and the nations* is in a sense a new theme as far as the his­

tory o f the Roman empire is concerned.1 It can however be con­
nected with the problems raised by Rostovtzeff and also with the
theme o f the dissatisfaction o f the peasant masses forced to live
within the composite unity o f the great empire. In this field as in
others the new features which are most significant for the crisis o f
the ancient world appear in the age o f Commodus (180-Q2) and the
Severi (19 3-23 5 ^
Was it possible to bring the masses closer to the Hellenistic-
Roman culture o f the upper classes ? T h e wars o f M arcus Aurelius
had deepened the weariness o f the provincials under the burden o f
tributes. At that time a Christian oracular poet sees in the end o f
the empire the liberation o f each ethnos from the Roman ‘yoke’ .2
Ethnos suggests ‘nation’, a concept which was always connected in
the Roman world more or less with language,3 but never reached as
far as the clear idea o f the nation-state and appeared rather as a
peripheral concept, in contrast with the city-state and the supra­
national state. While the Christian poet under M arcus Aurelius was

1 E . L . W o o d w a r d ’ s C h r is t ia n it y a n d N a tio n a lis m in th e L a t e r R o m a n E m p ir e ( 1 9 1 6 ) ,
s h o u ld h o w e v e r b e m e n tio n e d .
2 O r. S ih ., V I I I , 1 2 6 - 7 .
* T h i s is d e a r f r o m th e A c h a e m e n i d in s c r ip t io n s , w h e r e th e p e o p le s s u b je c t to th e
P e r s ia n s a r e lis te d in th e t e x t a s ‘ to n g u e s ’ ( lis a n i).

159
 Nations , ‘ Democracies*, Liberty
dreaming o f the liberation o f every ethnos at the end o f the empire,
which he thought was near at hand, the official Roman state under
the same emperor was, on the other hand, praying to its gods for
the safety o f the subject ‘nations’ . T h e priestly college o f the Fratres
Arvales in their annual prayers addressed to Jupiter Optimus
M axim us their petition for the safety o f ‘the Roman Empire, the
army, associates, the nationes which are sub dicione o f the Roman
people o f the Quirites\ M arcus Aurelius’s son, Commodus, put an
end to his father’s wars; he hoped that the nationes would feel relief
and that the peasants o f the provinces would welcome the peace
joyfully.
We asked earlier whether it was possible to divest these masses o f
their ‘national’ characteristics o f language and custom? T o put it
more precisely, was it possible to bring them into still closer relation
to the state, by assimilating their traditions and cults to those o f the
classical Greco-Roman inheritance? T h is was the great ambition
o f Caracalla. G iving citizenship to all the free inhabitants o f the
provinces (excepTthe dediticii) in 2 12 he declared that he wanted on
the religious plane to unify the cults o f the provincials and o f the
state^ Indeed, in an inscription recently discovered at D m eir1 in
Syria he makes a show o f favour to a certain Aur. Carzaeus, one o f
the provincials to whom he had newly given citizenship, at the
expense o f an old Roman citizen; and his sympathy for Aur. Car­
zaeus is in particular an act o f respect for the devotion o f the
peasantry o f the place for their Zeus Hypsistos. In reality, Cara-
calla’s new citizens express the old spirit o f the provinces where
romanization finds it hard to penetrate the lower classes. Caracalla
hopes to overcome ‘national’ barriers by drawing to himself favoured
individuals from the agrarian masses. He knew that these ‘national’
barriers operated within the empire to its disadvantage.
At the time o f Caracalla (or o f the Severi in general) the philoso­
phical idea o f liberty was put in relation to the idea o f the ‘nation’
for the first time by a great thinker, Bardesanes, a Christian o f
Edessa. Edessa was the capital o f the state o f Osrhoene, whose king,
Abgar IX , had been converted to Christianity and persecuted the

1 R o u s s e l-D e V iss c h e r , S y r ia (19 4 2 -3 ), pp. 17 3 ff .; c f. A r a n g io R u iz , B . I . D . R .

( 1 9 4 8 ) , p p . 4 6 f f . ; K u n k e l , F e s ts c h r ift L e w a l d , p p . 8 1 f f . ; W e n g e r , M é la n g e s G r é g o ir e ,
I I I , p p . 4 6 9 ff.

16 0
 Nations, 'Democracies', Liberty
worshippers o f the goddess Atargatis. In 2 13 Caracalla deposed
Abgar IX and incorporated Osrhoene into the Roman empire.
Bardesanes was a fairly influential man at the court o f Abgar IX ,
master o f the great Syriac ‘ national’ literature which was destined
to have great importance in the eastern part o f the Roman empire.
In workfing out a connection between the idea o f liberty and that o f
the nations (‘countries’), he was not concerned with liberty in its
strictly political sense, which had been an object o f inquiry for the
men o f the Greek democracies. He was concerned more with the
problem o f liberty as a spiritual fact, briefly as human free will
independent o f the influence o f the planets and the Zodiac. He held
that freedom o f this kind revealed itself in the national characteris­
tics o f the different peoples. His Dialogue on the Laws o f the Countries
has come down to us. It is to be identified with, or at least is con­
nected with, a book o f his On Destiny, dedicated to a certain An­
toninus who is in all probability Caracalla himself.1 In this Dialogue
Bardesanes’s view ranges widely over the world. Everywhere the
different nations have differing customs and laws, and in this is
revealed human freedom, independent o f the horoscope.
‘ M en have indeed established laws in each country according to
that freedom which was given to them by God. In fact the gift o f
liberty is opposed to the Fate o f the Powers, so that they do not
assume that which was not given to them. I shall relate, as far as I
recall, starting from the East which is the beginning o f the whole
world.’
Thus Bardesanes speaks o f the various customs o f the peoples,
from the humane Chinese, whose ‘freedom Ares does not restrict
in such a way that they should scatter the blood o f a companion with
the sword’, to the Indians, Persians, G eti, Kushanites, Recamites,
Edessenes, and Arabs, to the Germans, Celts and Britons and so
forth. ‘Fate cannot compel the Chinese to commit murders, because
they do not will it, nor the Brahmans to eat meat, nor the Persians
1 I t is g e n e r a l ly th o u g h t to b e E la g a b a l u s . B u t a t c . 6 0 7 E d e s s a w o u ld s e e m to b e s till
i n d e p e n d e n t. I n c o n t r a s t to th e ‘ A r a b s ’ o f c . 6 0 3 w h o s e r e lig io u s c u s t o m s a r c c h a n g e d
b y th e s u p e r v e n in g R o m a n c o n q u e s t , a t E d e s s a th e c u s t o m s e s ta b lis h e d b y A b g a r I X
c o n t in u e a n d n o m o r e w o r s h i p p e r s o f A t a r g a t is a r e fo u n d t h e r e . T h e Dialogue s e e m s
to m e t h e r e fo r e to b e e a r lie r th a n 2 1 3 . O n B a r d e s a n e s c f . e .g . L e v i D e l la V i d a , R ivista
Trimestrale d i S tu d i Filosofici e Religiosi ( 1 9 2 0 ) , p p . 3 9 9 f f . ; S c h a e d e r , Zeitschrift f ü r
Kirchengeschichte ( 1 9 3 2 ) , p p . 2 1 f f . ; C e r f a u x , Reallexikon f ü r A n tike und Christentum ,
p p . 1 1 7 6 ff.

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to avoid marriage with daughters and sisters . . . nor the Britons to
avoid polyandry, nor the Edessenes to depart from chastity, nor the
Greeks to cease from nude gymnastics, nor the Romans not to
conquer territories. . . T hus in a work addressed to a member o f
the imperial Roman family (the ‘Antoninus’ who may, as we sug­
gested, be Caracalla) Bardesanes placed the Romans on the same
level as the other people, barbarian and civilized all together. T heir
‘ national’ custom o f annexing territories seemed to him on the same
plane as, for example, the national custom o f polyandry amongst
the Britons, or incest amongst Persians or the palestra amongst the
Greeks. T hus the Roman idea o f supranationalism was reduced to
an ordinary custom, no matter whether grood or bad, like all the
others. T h e diverse laws o f countries govern the philosophical
intelligence o f this great Syrian and in the varying nature o f peoples
he sees the freedom o f the will revealed. It would be difficult to find
another work in which the individuality o f the nations is emphasized
with such interest, and it is worth underlining once again that
Bardesanes wrote at the time o f the Severi, the dynasty which
attempted consistently and by various means from 193 to 235 to
strengthen imperial unity above national characteristics. In Bar-
desanes’s scheme o f things the Romans confirm the doctrine o f free
will by their capacity for changing the laws o f countries by armed
conquest : ‘yesterday again the Romans have conquered the Arabs
and abolished all the previous laws [o f that region], . . . : thus one
who has free will obeys the law which was imposed by another who
also has free will’ . But Bardesanes also recognizes a higher freedom,
which unites the Christians to each other. T h is Christian liberty
rises above national characteristics: ‘in whatever country and place
they may find themselves the laws o f the countries do not divide
them from the law o f their Christ.’
Im plicitly and almost without realizing it, Bardesanes super­
imposes the Christian supranationalism on that other supranational
idea which had inspired the foundation o f the Roman empire. We
have no grounds for supposing that he was hostile to the Roman
empire and, i f anything, we should be entitled to take the opposite
view. Nevertheless his new perspective, in which the national
characteristics o f the peoples have an unexpectedly prominent
position, implicitly suggests a comparison between the pure idea o f
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Christian unity and the supranational government o f the Romans,
based on that tendency to conquest which he considered to be a
characteristic o f them.
Another Christian contemporary o f Bardesanes really was hostile
to the Romans: Hippolytus the dissident bishop o f Rome. As we
have seen earlier, Hippolytus thought that at the end o f the empire,
which equalled for him the end o f the world, ten democracies would
have stripped the Romans o f their pow er, dividing it ‘according to
nations’ , kata ethne. And he also said, in his writing on Antichrist,
that the Roman empire ‘rules over all against their will’ and, in his
Commentary on Daniel, that the Roman supranational unity was a
Satanic counterfeit o f Christian unity. T he concept o f ‘ nations’,
which he set over against the ‘Satanic’ empire o f Rome, was cer­
tainly not foreign to the climate o f thought o f his age. Something
was corroding deeply the great Roman supranational structure. T he
most striking symptom o f this wras the formation o f the Syriac and
Coptic ‘national’ literatures, bred almost by the religious demands o f
the masses. But also in the west Irenaeus, the master o f Hippolytus,
had preached in Celtic to peasants o f Gaul and, just as Syriac wras
being spoken in the neighbourhood o f Antioch about 400, so also
Celtic was being spoken at the same time around T rie r.1 T h e
‘national’ languages pressed up to the gates o f the capitals, as if to
draw attention to the fact that unity had not been attained, in that
great kaleidoscope in which many peoples could not present a single
image. Though the Roman state tried in every way to maintain
official ignorance o f this re-awakening o f nationality,12 reality wras
every day belying the official assumptions. When the empire was
Christianized, Coptic and Syriac ‘nationalities’ found their lasting
expression in the monasteries o f Egypt and Syria. T he Egyptian
monks persistently opposed the military conscription ordered by the
Emperor Valens at the most tragic moment o f imperial history

1 T h e fir s t p o in t is w e ll k n o w n fr o m a fr e q u e n t ly c it e d p a s s a g e o f S t . J o h n C h r y s o s ­
t o m ( c f . P a r a n , L a C r i s i d e lla S c u o l a n e l I V secolo i . C . ( 1 9 5 2 ) , p p . 1 5 0 - 3 ) . T h e s e c o n d
m a y b e d e m o n s tr a te d fr o m th e p r o lo g u e to th e s e c o n d b o o k o f S t . J e r o m e ’ s C o m m e n t a r y
o n th e E p i s t l e o f S t . P a u l to th e G a la t i a n s (t h is p a s s a g e in S t . J e r o m e is a ls o i m p o r ta n t
b e c a u s e it a tte s ts t h a t a s e a r ly a s h is tim e th e L a t i n la n g u a g e ‘ c h a n g e s e v e r y d a y a c c o r d ­
i n g to th e r e g io n s a n d th e t im e ’ : th e fo r e r u n n e r o f th e R o m a n c e v e r n a c u la r s ).
2 W h e n a ca n d id a tu s o f C o n s t a n t iu s g o e s to v is it th e m o n k H i la r io n C o n s t a n t iu s d o e s
n o t a r r a n g e fo r h im to b e a c c o m p a n ie d b y a n y in t e r p r e t e r f o r th e S y r i a c la n g u a g e .
( M i g n e , P a t r o lo g ia L a t i n a , X X I I I , p . 3 9 . )

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 Nations , 4Democracies1, Liberty
(375).1 These monks, whom Georges Sorel perspicaciously likened
to the Mafia, were, more simply, the bearers o f national cultures
rooted in the soil o f Egypt and Syria, resistent to the aristocratic
imposition o f the Greco-Roman culture. In Africa the resistance o f
the native substratum, which still spoke Punic and Berber, was
rather more conspicuous and violent in the age o f the Christianized
empire. It gave rise to the Donatist movement12 and to its extreme
wing, the Circumcelliones.
These ‘ national* upheavals were certainly not in themselves a
unique ‘ cause’ o f the death o f Rome. Without the external shock o f
the Germans in the wrest and the Arabs in the east, they would not
have acquired the decisive importance which they actually came to
have. But, even apart from the Germanic and Arab attack, the empire
found itself disarmed in face o f the national ferments. Based as it was
on Greco-Roman culture, it could not admit the elevation o f Coptic
or Syriac, Punic or Celtic to the rank o f an official language. T h e
greatest revolutionary o f the imperial period, Constantine, dared to
Christianize the empire but not to broaden the Greco-Roman cul­
tural substance. That is to say, he accepted the victory o f the
Christian religious sense, which had already appeared to Tertullian
as a revolt ‘ against the old ways’ {adversus vetustatem), and he
accepted it sincerely, himself believing in the God o f the Christians.
Still, the revolt ‘against the old ways’, o f which Tertullian had
spoken, went beyond the mere acceptance o f Christianity. New
forces which had been held in check for centuries were pressing
from below. Culture was being democratized even in the matter o f
bureaucratic language. T he Roman state no longer spoke officially
o f the aureus but rather the solidusy no longer o f legatus ad corri­
gendum statum but o f corrector; in this way the language o f common
speech was being introduced into official statements. But it was the
common Latin speech (or Italian as it was called). T he culture o f
the empire remained basically Greco-Roman, and this remains true
even for the Byzantine period.3 National cultures like the Syriac

1 On the character o f the recruitment ordered by Valens, cf. the recent work of
Pallasse, R e v u e H is t o r iq u e d u D r o it F r a n ç a i s et E t r a n g e r (1958), p. 70.
2 Willis, S t A u g u s t in e a n d th e D o n a tis t C o n t r o v e r s y (1950 ); Frend, T h e D o n a tis t
C h u r c h (1952).
3 Zilliacus, Z u m K a m p f d e r W e lts p ra c h e n im oström ischen R e ic h (1935). One must
however remember that the two p a r t e s o f the empire, east and west, tended more and
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and the Coptic continued to go their own way. T h e problem o f the

peasant masses, to which Rostovtzeff usefully drew the attention of
historiansT appears to us. then, as a problem o f subject, but un­
assimilated, nations. T hey gave rather more than they received; the
new antiquantitative and psalmodie music o f the Roman world was
a gift o f the Judaic genius and o f the Syriac masses.

m o r e to b e d iff e r e n tia te d li n g u is t ic a lly . C f . a ls o C o u r c e l le , L e s L e ttr e s G r e c q u e s en

O c c id e n t ( 1 9 4 8 ) ; B a r d y , L a Q u e s tio n d e s L a n g u e s d a n s l 'E g l i s e a n cien n e ( 1 9 3 8 ) .

65
 12

T he Institutional Problem

When Rostovtzeff published his great History in 1926 the theme ‘the
end o f the ancient world’ was everywhere regarded with a mixture
o f apprehension and keen human interest. T h e historians o f that
generation had seen the collapse with the Great War o f state struc­
tures which were linked in ideas, even to extent o f the title o f Kaiser
or Czar, with Roman Caesarism. T h e Romanovs, the Habsburgs
and the Hohenzollern had fallen. T h e fall o f the Roman empire o f
the west, and the whole end o f the ancient world in general, seemed
like a model o f the present tim e; de te fabula narratur. In 1923 a
historian from Lund, Axel Persson, had thought to find in the social
history o f the late empire a series o f events comparable with those
o f the Russian Revolution. H is comparison, however, concerned
only the social aspect o f the problem. T h e fall o f the great Russian,
Habsburg and German empires also made acute the institutional
problem o f the relationship between the idea o f liberty and the end
o f the ancient w orld.1 About the same time it inspired some essays,
which became famous, by the celebrated Spanish thinker Ortega, by
an English historian Heitland, and by the Italian Guglielmo Ferrerò.
T o get an idea o f the effect o f these writings it is enough to think o f
Georges Sorel, who as far back as 1901 had published a book with

1 F o r th e p r e s u p p o s it io n s o f th is th e m e in th e c u lt u r e o f L i b e r t i n is m a n d th e E n ­
l i g h t e n m e n t c f . D e C a p r a r ii s , R i v is t a S t o r i c a I t a l i a m ( 1 9 5 5 ) , p p . 1 7 6 ff.

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 The Institutional Problem
the title Ruine du Monde Antique and now felt drawn to revise it for
a second edition in 1922, as a result o f the publication o f Ferrero’s
book with the same title. It seemed to him indeed that Ferrero’s
book, with its statement o f the question in institutional terms, was
clearly opposed to the materialist conception o f history. But the
most lively o f these books, inspired by the institutional interpretation
o f the crisis, was certainly Ortega’s. According to Ortega, the crisis
o f the Roman imperial state consisted o f the inability to substitute
new arrangements o f representative democracy for the structure of
thp old statp This is a point o f view 1 open to obvious criticism for
we cannot expect the ancient world to exhibit constitutional develop­
ments which are characteristic o f our own time. It may also be
pointed out that the Roman world did have examples o f provincial
assemblies. T he problem is rather more complicated : how to assimi­
late the peasant masses speaking Coptic, Syriac and so on. This
could not have been done simply by means o f juridical institutions,
for cultural factors have their own irrepressible logic.
Ortega’s interpretation is interesting in another way for its very
modern side. From Polybius onwards, Roman decline was always
seen as the disappearance o f something perfect. Take for instance
the judgment (1583) o f Antonio Agostino, Bishop o f Lerida. Accord­
ing to this humanist, ‘the Romans lost their liberty and their empire
over the provinces when they abandoned their ancient customs and
institutions’ . For Antonio Agostino the main blame fell on T ribo­
nianus, the interpolator o f the Roman laws. Or there is Gibbon, for
whom the end o f the empire was due to the transformation o f ‘civil
society’ after the flourishing times o f the Antonines. In short it had
always been presupposed, in investigating the end o f the ancient
world, that the abandonment o f ancient institutions was the cause,
or at least the symptom, o f the great crisis. T h is prejudice in fact
seems completely tautological. Urtegals formulation turns these
premises upside down. He is not interested in the comparison with
a previous institutional reality which would seem better but, on the
contrary, in the inability o f the Romans to devise new forms for
new problems. Here Ortega is the man o f our age par excellence,
looting forward towards a possible future which yet never existed.
Even for this point o f view, the contradictions in his thought are
1 I t m a y b e c o m p a r e d w i t h H e i t la n d ’ s .

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 The Institutional Problem
interesting. Though he was him self an unreserved classicist, under
the influence especially o f Renan, and an admirer o f traditional
Roman liberty (that ‘freedom without a king’ to which he devoted in
1936 the best pages o f his Historia como sistema), he did not hesitate
to condemn Roman traditionalism as responsible for the end o f the
ancient world. In spite o f his classicism Ortega lived in the world o f
pure historical possibilities. Las virtudes que no tenemos son las que
mds importan.
H is interpretation o f historical facts was in essence a basically
aristocratic interpretation. He could even be considered as the last
disciple o f Montesquieu. La rebelión de las masas is in part intended
as an explanation o f the end o f the ancient world, seen as the para­
digm o f the end o f an aristocratic civilization. T h is aspect o f it
recalls the conclusion o f Rostovtzeff’s Social and Economic History,
which we have already mentioned :
‘ Is it possible to extend a higher civilization to the lower classes
without debasing its standard and diluting its quality to the vanish­
ing point? Is not every civilization bound to decay as soon as it
begins to penetrate the masses ?’
But Rostovtzeff as the great historian had wanted to keep on his
guard against abstract statements. Not so Ortega. He had an in­
stinctive revulsion from what he called the ‘epochs o f K a li’ .
‘T h e history o f the Roman Empire is also the history o f the up­
rising o f the Empire o f the Masses, who absorb and annul the direct­
ing minorities and put themselves in their place. Then also is pro­
duced the phenomenon o f agglomeration, o f “ the full” . For that
reason, as Spengler has very well observed, it was necessary, just as
in our own day, to construct enormous buildings. T he epoch o f the
masses is the epoch o f the colossal. T h e tragic thing about this pro­
cess is that while these agglomerations were in formation there was
beginning that depopulation o f the countryside which was to result
in an absolute decrease o f the number o f inhabitants in the Em pire.’ 1
These formulations o f unconcealed, though only partial, Spengler-
ian origin may contain strands o f truth, but the truth in this case is
mixed up with errors which in a sense vitiate the substance. It is
true that mass movements arp rW n rtprisrir o f im perial history,
especially the history o f the late empire. But one has to distinguish
1 F r o m O r t e g a y G a s s e t , T h e R e v o lt o f the M a s s e s , A lle n a n d U n w in .

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 The Institutional Problem
clearly between the masses o f the bip cities, especially R o me, and
the proletarian masses o f the provinces. As for the agglomerations,
these persist only in the great cities (fourth-century Rome, accord­
ing to calculations which seem fairly probable, had something like
300,000 inhabitants receiving public distributions).1 T he small
cities diminished strikingly in importance, enclosed within their
restricted walled enclosures. F urthermore one must be careful to
avoid the idea that the masses were simply substituted for the ruling
classes. Roman traditionalism acted as a limitation to what might be
called the democratization o f culture’ so that the senatorial ruling
class was always the essential nucleus which gave leadership to the
empire and hindered, in effect, rule by the masses. N o doubt the
new religion which changed the face o f the Roman state had arisen
from the complaint o f the provincial peasant masses, oppressed by
masters and tributes, and this cry had reached the lord god o f the
armies. But the structure o f the Christian empire as it was organ­
ized by Constantine was essentially a pyramidal society in which the
potentiores stood at the top and the peasant masses were (following
the early lament o f the anonymous writer whom we have placed in
the age o f Julian) afflicta paupertas ; afflicted, that is, by the tributes
and compelled to take refuge in the protection o f the old ruling
classes.
Representatives o f the lower classes, who eventually penetrated
through military service into the ruling class, assimilated themselves
unquestiomngly, as Jar as mentality and style o f living were con-
cerned, to the ruling class. M en ot the municipal middle class, who
succeeded in attaining the rank o f clarissimi (meaning membership
o f the senatorial class) through the bureaucracy, ended still more
readily by assimilating themselves unreservedly to their colleagues.
T he hierarchies o f the Christian Church had been rather more open
to the lower classes, at one time for instance able to accept a slave
who became pope, and a pope o f revolutionary spirit too, St. Callis­
tus. But, as the Christian empire went on, men o f the ruling classes
more and more filled the high ecclesiastical offices, the most illus­
trious and remarkable case being that o f St. Ambrose who was born
into a family o f clarissimi and was him self governor o f Liguria. A

1 C h a s t a g n o l , R e v u e H is to r iq u e ( 1 9 5 3 ) , P P - *3 ff- F o r A n t io c h , P e t it , L ib a n iu s et la
V i e M u n ic ip a le à A n tio c h e ( c f . E n s s l in , H is t o r ia , 1 9 5 7 , p . 3 7 7 ) .

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 The Institutional Problem
contemporary o f Ambrose at Rome was Pope Damasus, who came
to the pontifical sec as candidate o f the Roman aristocracy against
the Anti-Pope Ursinus. One o f the most persistent spokesmen o f the
pagan aristocracy o f Rome, Vettius Agorius Praetestatus, was
famous amongst other things for a remark addressed to Pope
Damasus: ‘ Make me pope and I will become a Christian’ . T h is
reconciliation between the ruling classes o f the state and the superior
ecclesiastical hierarchies became more complete in the fifth century,
especially with Pope Leo.
Ortega’s formula that the masses o f the late empire replaced the
ruling class is then rather questionable. And how much more ques­
tionable is the other famous but vast generalization which he wanted
to apply to the end o f Roman civilization : los demagogos han sido los
grandes estranguladores de civilizaciones. T h e fact is that Roman
civilization o f the imperial period knew no demagogues, unless one
means by this word the great Christian martyrs who gave the masses
the new slogan adversus vetustatem. T he late republic on the other
hand certainly had demagogues when it was moving towards the
constitutional form o f the em pire-the name o f one o f them was
Juliu s Caesar.
In the last analysis the aristocratic interpretation o f history fails
just at the problem which appears most central to it, the problem
o f the ‘democratization o f culture’ , because it contains contradic­
tions. On the one hand Ortega would have an empire which created
a representative democracy, but on the other hand he bewails the
non-existent replacement o f the ruling class by the masses. T h e
critical relationship in the great civilizations is that between the
ruling classes and the masses but this is n o t-it is worth repeating-
a matter o f constant or abstract relationship. Nevertheless, in spite
o f this fundamental mistake, which is the great weakness in the
investigation, Ortega can teach professional historians something;
indeed a great deal. He can teach us above all the present-day mean­
ing o f an eternal problem like that o f the death o f Rome. He can
teach us that a touch o f humanism is not out o f place in the con­
sideration o f this long drawn-out death ; the humanism o f Ortega,
which is completely modern and Spanish and which carries in itself
the emotion o f the tragedy and the serenity o f the narrative. ‘ I say
that the end o f a civilization is the scene most imbued with melan­
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 The Institutional Problem
choly for men. T he possibility that a civilization should die doubles
our own mortality.’
T he same year in which he had written La rebelión de las masas
saw the publication o f the Italian translation o f the work o f Gugliel­
mo Ferrerò on La rovina della civiltà antica. Like Heitland and
Ortega, Ferrerò attempted an explanation on a politico-constitu­
tional basis; ancient civilization had fallen with the decay o f the
senatorial assembly which must have ensured legitimacy and in a
sense continued the traditions o f liberty o f the republican epoch. But
Ferrerò too, like Ortega, was wrong. Recent studies1 have made clear
that the late empire has its own constitutional ‘ legitimacy’ . Again, '
the estate-owning senators carried enormous weight in the late
empire, not only in social life but also in politics. Constantine him­
self, the founder o f the Christian empire, was the emperor who
‘ restored authority to the senate’ . T h e senate o f the late empire
presses for laws and approves laws and it often has a part in imperial
elections. In the autumn o f 397, with a procedure which recalls the
republican period, the Roman senate declared Gildo hostis publicum
T he highest magistrates are always senators, often drawn from
ancient senatorial families.12 At the critical moment o f the early fifth
century, when Alaric was knocking at the gates o f Italy, the wisdom
o f Stilicho would willingly have appeased him. But it was from the
senate that there came the first spark which brought about Stilicho’s
confusion. A senator cried ‘T his is not peace but a pact o f servitude’ .
It was a proud protest but made up only o f words. He contributed to
the overthrow o f the Roman leader, but did not succeed in prevent­
ing the victory o f Alaric.
T he problem o f liberty is not solely an institutional problem.

1 E s p e c i a l l y S t r a u b , Vom Herrscherideal in der Spätantike ( 1 9 3 9 ) .

2 O f c o u r s e , fo r m a g ist ra te s o f n o n -s e n a to r ia l o r ig in th e e m p e r o r r e s e r v e d th e tr a d i­
tio n a l r ig h t to r e c e iv e th e m b y m e a n s o f adlectio in to th e s e n a te ( C . Th. V I , 4 , 1 0 ) . A
c h a r a c t e r is t ic a s p e c t o f th e in c r e a s e d a u t h o r it y o f th e s e n a te is th e f o l lo w in g : u n d e r
T r a ja n th e s u b s titu te c o n s u ls ‘ e le c t e d ’ b y th e s e n a te w e r e ‘ m a d e ’ b y th e e m p e r o r
t o g e th e r w ith th e o r d in a r y c o n s u ls , b e fo r e th e b e g in n in g o f th e ir y e a r o f o ffic e ( P l in y ,
P a n . , 6 1 , 5 ) ; b u t in th e la te e m p ir e , s in c e th e e m p e r o r lim ite d h i m s e lf to ‘ a c c e p t i n g ’
( S y m m a c h u s , ep , X , 4 5 ) th e d a te o f th e s e ss io n fo r th e n o m in a t io n o f th e consules
suffecti n o lo n g e r fa lls b e fo r e th e b e g in n in g o f th e ir y e a r o f o ffic e (it is p la c e d in f a c t
o n 9 J a n u a r y , p e r h a p s th e d a t e o f th e c o n to r n ia te o f T h a l a s i u s , o n w h i c h s e e S . M a z z a ­
r in o , Enciclopedia d e ll'A rte Antica, I I ( 1 9 5 9 ) , u n d e r Contorniati). O n th e i m p o r ta n c e
o f th e s e n a te in th e la t e - R o m a n p e r io d se e S t r o h e k e r , Der senatorische A d e l im spät­
antiken Gallien ( 1 9 4 8 ) ; Orpheus ( 1 9 5 4 ) , p . 6 8 .
I7 1
 The Institutional Problem
Outside the ancient idea o f libertas,* the Christianity o f the persecu­
tions had elaborated a new ideal o f liberty. We should not forget
that it was a revolution contra vetustatem. W hile in G reek democratic
theory. the-ithnii-uLUberty-dcmocracy had been evolved by contrast
with the life uQ hc sla v c^ fo r the Christian o f the age o f the perse­
cutions, on the othcTliand, the new ideal o f libertàt was rjie common
inheritance o f both frrrmiMi nnd s It t t In the Passion o f Perpetua
and Felicitas-o n e o f the most significant documents o f Christianity
in the age o f Septimius Severus-libertas is mentioned. But it is not
the libertas o f the ancient Roman republic. It is the common inheri­
tance o f slaves and freemen both o f whom arc present in the group
o f five martyrs (two slaves and three freemen). T h e religious ideal o f
libertas could find analogous juridical forms only within narrow
limits in the late empire, and these limits mark the most significant
aspect o f the late-Roman crisis.3

1 W ir s / .u b s k i, L ib e r ia s ( I t a li a n t r a n sla tio n w it h s u p p le m e n t b y M o m ig li a n o ) ( 1 9 5 7 ) .
* A r i s t o t le , P o l ., V I , 2 , 7 .
* I n th e s a m e w a y a s C h r i s t ia n lib er ta s is d is t in g u is h e d f r o m a n c ie n t lib er ta s, C h r i s t ia n
d ig n ita s ho m in is is d is t in g u is h e d fr o m th e a n c ie n t i d e a , c . g . , o f s e n a to ria l d ig n it a s ; G a r i n ,
I m R in a s c ila ( 1 p p . 1 0 2 IT. ; D i ir is , R e a lle x ik o n f ü r A n t i k e u n d C h r is te n tu m , p p . 1 0 2 4

ff. ( 1 9 5 7 ) .

I72
 !3

Decadence and Continuity

Little by little the twilight o f Rome came to appear to many his­

torians between 1920 and 1930 as almost a page o f contemporary
history. T he reference, which was then very frequent, to the events
o f our own time remains an implication from which it is still
difficult today to free ourselves. T his is not to be wondered at, for
the idea o f decadence has always had, more or less, a contemporary
reference. When Thucydides in a famous page declared that during
the plague ‘ no one was disposed any longer to devote himself to the
ideal {toi doxanti kaloi)'1 he was presenting to us a process o f moral
disintegration which struck Athens at the heart in a moment o f
extreme tension. But there he is describing contemporary events
and he speaks o f a disintegration which was quite limited and cir­
cumscribed in time. He does not compare it with other events o f a
distant age. Plato on the other hand can do this. He makes use o f a
tradition, which he calls Egyptian,2 about events nine millennia
earlier: the fall o f Atlantis. Atlantis had been extended into the sea

1 T h u c y d id e s , I I , 5 3 , 3.
1 P r o b a b l y th e y r e a lly w e r e . I n th e S a i t e p e r io d E g y p t i a n c u lt u r e w a s p e n e tr a te d ,
t h r o u g h th e p r ie s t ly c la s s b y L i b y a n e le m e n t s a n d th e L i b y a n s c o u ld h a v e ( e v e n i f it
s e e m s a t fir s t s ig h t s t r a n g e ) p r e s e r v e d a n o b s c u r e id e a o f th e c a ta s tr o p h e w h i c h , a s w e
k n o w t o d a y , b r o u g h t a b o u t th e e n d o f th e P a le o lith ic a g e . I n th is c a s e th e P la t o n ic
a c c o u n t w o u ld r e fle c t tr a d itio n s c o n n e c te d w it h th e g r e a te s t c a ta s tr o p h e o f p r e h is t o r y .
F o r P l a t o o f c o u r s e th e c a ta s tr o p h e o f A t la n t i s w a s d u e to th e ‘ d e c a d e n c e * ( e x ile lus
egene to ) o f th e d iv in e c le m e n t a m o n g its in h a b ita n ts .

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 Decadence and Continuity
and he contrasts this with Athens in very early times, which had
lived entirely on the mainland. T hus a leap into mythical prehistory
enables him not only to illustrate a cyclical theory but also to give
a contemporary significance, in harmony with his conception o f the
ideal state, to the apocalyptic collapse o f a very distant world. What
Plato is giving us is a comparison, but one which is only hinted at
and hidden, one might say, under the weight o f those 9,000 years
which stretch into prehistory. After Plato the idea o f decadence is
given contemporary significance amongst the ancients, in a manner
which we might call sociological, in the Aristotelian idea o f the
corruption which strikes at the ideal forms o f the state. We find it
applied for instance to the case o f Rome in a bitter page o f Polybius.
And also the idea that states grow old, as a man grows old, always
had a contemporary significance.
In the M iddle Ages on the other hand the historiographical cate­
gory o f G od’s Judgments gave the element o f necessity, conïïnûilly
driven from the past towards the future, to the notion o f the end o f
the empire as the end o f the world. T he humanists redefined this
concept which had been recurrent in ancient history, spoke o f the
inclinatio o f the Roman empire and gradually evolved the sixteenth-
century idea o f conversiones which appear in the histories o f all states
(Bodin) and that o f tempora fatalia o f decadence (Löwenklav). A
common concept o f the eighteenth century was that o f the ‘A b­
nahme’ or ‘waning’ o f various political organisms, to be found for
instance in the writings o f Herder. T his is however connected in
various ways with the different concept o f the tree o f life always
springing to life again, with many branches, a concept which has a
flavour o f Dante. Still the idea o f ‘Abnahme’ in Herder was a living
idea. It remained a living idea in the nineteenth century with the
various theories o f phases o f culture, the apocalytic forecasts o f
Lasaulx (inspired by Polybius), and the pessimistic attitude o f men
like Taine or Seeck or even Wilamowitz. But it was above all in the
twentieth century, after the First World War, that the ancient world
was transformed into a universe whose death must be regarded as a
warning to contemporary society. Wilamowitz had said in 1897:
‘Civilization can die, because it has already died once’ . In 1926
Rostovtzeff’s History, which is certainly the masterpiece o f recent
historiography, went so far, in putting that ancient death o f civiliza­
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 Decadence and Continuity
tion into a contemporary frame o f reference, as to make it an arche­
type for our problems. He ended with the words : ‘T he evolution of
the ancient world has a lesson and a warning for us.’ On the other
hand forty years ago the Spenglerian conception o f historical uni­
verses,1 closed in upon themselves almost like platonic ideas but
subject to births and fatal deaths, revealed an almost morbid desire
to relive the end o f vanished cultures to the last agony.

Would our grandfathers in the nineteenth century2 have under­

stood this anxiety? T hey too, as we have just said, felt Herder’s old
problem o f ‘Abnahme’ and o f the various cultures which spring up
almost as branches o f the ancient tree o f human life. T hey experi­
enced a great revolutionary period, sometimes infected in some o f its
extreme manifestations by disappointment and sadness. But they
never managed to shut up the ancient world in an ideal sarcophagus
to contemplate its death with the fear o f uncovering there the image
o f every irreparable disintegration. On the contrary they saw a new
life rising from the death o f an epoch, in dialectical continuity, as
they loved to put it. In Spengler’s theory the cycle which closes sur­
vives only in forms o f pseudomorphosis; that is to say that it
vanishes definitively leaving no traces which are not, in the last
analysis, illusory or purely exterior. F or nineteenth-century men,
on the other hand, even for the most pessimistic o f them, the life o f
the spirit continued to stretch forth towards the future. T h e idea o f
decadence did not exclude for them the certainty, more than the
consolation, o f a relative continuity. Amongst the poets o f the nine­
teenth century one especially reached, in his contemplation o f his­
torical cycles, the summit o f bitterness and even o f scepticism; Imre
Madâch. Nevertheless, in his famous A z ember trage'diaja (‘T he
Tragedy o f M an’) published in 1862, the victory o f the barbarians
over classical civilization is seen in terms o f the great Christian
imperative, love.3 He sees new delusions and new errors returning
in historical cycles, beginning with the triumph o f hate in the new
1 T h e ‘ c o n flic t a b o u t S p e n g l e r ’ ( S c h r o e t e r , D er Streit um Spengler. K ritik seiner
K ritiker ( 1 9 2 2 ) ) is a n in te r e s tin g e p is o d e in E u r o p e a n c u lt u r e in th e p o s t - w a r p e r io d .
S p e n g l e r h a d a n e n o r m o u s in flu e n c e o n b o th h is a d m ir e r s a n d h is c r i t i c s , o n E d u a r d
M e y e r a s w e ll a s V o n S o d e n .
2 A c h a r a c t e r is t ic a s p e c t o f th e n i n e t e e n t h - c e n t u r y id e a o f d e c a d e n c e is n o w illu s ­
tr a te d b y P a v a n , Rivista Storica Italiana ( 1 9 5 8 ) , p p . 3 3 3 ff.
3 O n M a d â c h s e e e s p e c ia lly V o jn o v ic h , M adâch Im re es a z Ember Tragédiâja ( 1 9 1 4 ) .

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 Decadence and Continuity
Christian society itself. In the end M adâch’s Adam rejects suicide
because life, with its possibility o f regeneration, is always stronger
than death. T h e Roman Adam, called Sergiolus in the tragedy, feels
like his Eve (Julia), that the imperial age has, through its own refined
weariness (what Spengler would call ‘civilization’), reached the
extreme limit o f historical possibility. A new world reveals itself to
them when they hear the cry o f martyrdom o f Christians suffering
crucifixion. What Madâch wanted to emphasize was the profound
contradiction which marks the first three centuries o f the empire.
T h e plague also plays a part in his tragedy, and here again he brings
out a fact o f great historical significance. T h e plague-w hich, as we
saw, struck terribly at the empire o f M arcus Aurelius and Corn-
m odus-is itself an agent o f renewal. Madâch brings the Christian
spiritual revolution into the scene in the person o f the Apostle
Peter. While everyone is fleeing, overcome by terror o f the plague,
Peter proclaims the message o f conversion which will give a new face
to ancient civilization and a vision o f the barbarian migrations
which will trample over the lands o f high culture. Nowadays we
prefer to express these elements in sociological terms. T oyn bee1 for
example would speak o f a majority which would no longer allow
itself to be led and thus, as an internal proletariat, discovered the
higher religion, that is Christianity. Similarly, the barbarians, whom
Madâch saw trampling down the cultivated fields o f classical civiliza­
tion, would become for Toynbee an uncreative majority, which had
however arrived at the stage in which the charm o f civilization had
come to an end and the ‘external proletariat’ could give ‘victorious
responses’ . Sociological formulations o f this kind seem up-to-date to
modern men who accept the theory o f cultural cycles subject to an
inevitable collapse. T hey would have been more difficult to conceive
in a society like that o f the nineteenth century, which had not
abandoned the idea o f progress even in the midst o f the desolation
o f Adam ’s many unsuccessful efforts. Still, Toynbee is not Spengler.
T he fourth decade o f this century and after has something which
distinguishes it, in spite o f the tragedy o f the Second World War,
from the first post-war period. We cannot, and we never shall again,
recover the sense o f continuity without reserve; but our faith in

1 T h e r e is a v a s t lite r a tu r e o n T o y n b e e , a s o n S p e n g le r . L e t it s u ffic e h e r e to r e c a ll
V o g t , S a e c u lu m ( 1 9 5 1 ) , p p . 5 5 7 ff.

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 Decadence and Continuity
man’s creative energy has returned. Today, especially. We tend to
oppose to the idea o f decadence a new image o f what one might call
continuity accompanied by a conditional decadence. T h e condition
o f it is precisely the new issue, that is the gravity o f the encounter
with the barbarians who had become soldiers and yet were hated by
many members o f the Roman ruling class.

When Madäch published The Tragedy o f Man in 1862 the prob­

lem o f the continuity between the classical world and the M iddle
Ages was far from new. But, as we have said, it was not a matter o f
deciding whether there had or had not been a landslide which must
have buried the classical world for ever. T h is would have seemed an
extreme statement o f the problem to nineteenth-century men. T hey
asked themselves rather whether medieval institutions could be
made to go back to the great edifice o f classical civilization. M any
believed that the barbarians, just because they were barbarians,
could not have contributed anything really new. These were ques­
tions which sometimes arose from a more or less conscious basis o f
romantic nationalism, but they were questions which were always o f
some importance when they were raised by such a man as, for
instance, Thierry. Hegel’s son devoted his life to them and decided
for the originality o f medieval institutions. In 1873 Fustel de
Coulanges put forward the opposite thesis. H e did this at a time
which was still coloured for him by the defeat o f Sédan. He thought
he could demonstrate that the barbarian invasions were o f small
importance and that Roman continuity was at the source o f the
institutions o f France. According to him, it was not the decadence
and weakness o f the empire which had brought about the catas­
trophe but, on the contrary, the weakness o f the Germans. Roman
life, in compensation, continued. Something o f the same sort was
then maintained, as far as continuity was concerned, by L . M .
Hartmann. In our century the study o f this problem reached a
climax between the First and Second World Wars. T w o outstanding
scholars, and their schools, maintained that the barbarian migra­
tions did not offer any solution to the problem o f continuity. These
were the Austrian Dopsch and the Belgian Pirenne.1 It is an

1 D o p sch , Th e E c o n o m ic a n d S o c i a l F o u n d a tio n s o f E u r o p e a n C iv ilis a t io n ( 1 9 3 7 ) ;

P ir e n n e , M o h a m m e d a n d C h a r le m a g n e ( 1 9 3 9 ) .

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 Decadence and Continuity
interesting, and, at first sight, also strange phenomenon that the first
post-war period expressed in these two medievalists the tendency to
postpone the end o f the ancient world until the age o f Charlemagne
or at least until the Arab invasion, while at the same time em­
phasizing, in the work o f ancient historians like Rostovtzeff
or philosophers o f history like Spengler, the existence o f a
crisis o f the ancient world as early as the Roman imperial
epoch.1
How do we see this problem o f continuity today ?
T he first thing to be said in reply is that we have to make a dis­
tinction, indeed many distinctions. I f one speaks o f continuity as
such, in a general way, one cannot follow the changing complexity
o f the phenomena which presents themselves to the eye o f the his­
torian. In a general sense the great estate and the ‘vassalage’ o f the
late empire (the vassi are the Gallic peasants who take refuge in the
patronage o f lords) continue, o f course, with new Germanic struc­
tures, in the feudal society o f the West. But, in terms o f concrete
examples, where the Germanic settlement was comparatively heavy,
it was just the villas that were abandoned, while cities and fortified
settlements continued to drag out their life. One finds that such cities
as Colonia, Vangiones, Nemetes and Argentoratum continue to lead
an active life, in a space which has now been narrowed down, though
it had already become narrow after the third century invasions. One
calls Nemetes by the name Speyer and one prefers Strasburg to
Argentoratum, but they are still the same old cities. T h e old lords
however have abandoned their villas in these regions o f the old
Roman province o f Germania. In southern Gaul, on the other hand,
life continued without any real break o f continuity. T h is continuity
was already emphasized by the Byzantine historian Agathias in the
age o f Justinian; and the same was true o f course o f Italy also. In the
Danube provinces however continuity was broken several times.
L ife sometimes withdrew from the city, where this survived, into
the suburbs, a phenomenon which occurs also in the cities o f the old
Roman Germania.2 Pannonia was now stripped o f its peasants who,

1 A n a n a lo g o u s o b s e r v a t io n , w i t h a p e n e t r a t in g e x p la n a t io n o f th is h is to r io g r a p h ic a l
c o n f u s io n , is m a d e b y S t r a u b , Historia ( 1 9 5 0 ) , p . 5 3 .
2 E w i g , Congresso Intem azionale delle Scien ze Storiche , Relazioni , VI (1955), p p .
561 ff . (e sp e c ia lly , p p . 588 f f . ) ; S z é k e l y , Tanulmànyok Budapest M ùltyàb ó l (1957),
P- 7 -
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 Decadence and Continuity
as rebels, had united themselves with the barbarians to move
against Gaul in 406. T o a great extent it had to construct its
life anew, with different blood in the old veins, to use the words
o f Madâch.

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 H

Criticism of the Idea of Decadence

From the end o f the nineteenth century onwards the idea o f deca­
dence became, so to speak, bivalent. On the one side it bore with
it a desolate picture o f decline, following the long tradition which
runs from the humanists to the romantics. Today, however, the idea
o f decadence also contains a suggestion o f sympathy for all the
refined and complex things which the great civilizations can produce
in their late epochs. T h is second aspect o f the old idea is in a sense
a revelation made by modern poetry. It asserts itself especially in
the last decades o f the nineteenth century. A t that time, while his­
torians like Taine and Seeck were excited by the great tragedies o f
humanity and Seeck was speaking o f the 'elimination o f the best*,
poets, without being aware o f it themselves, were pointing out a new
way. Ten years before Seeck published his History, the end o f the
Roman Empire inspired in Verlaine his famous manifesto for a new
literary movement, the sonnet entitled Langueur which begins with
the line J e suis VEmpire à la fin de la décadence. Verlaine saw the
‘white barbarians’ overturn the Roman empire by their bloody acts
o f war, and art at the same time withdrawing into its solitude-the
almost abstract, as it were, form o f a luminous civilization.
J e suis l'Empire à la fin de la décadence,
Q ui regarde passer les grands Barbares blancs
En composant des acrostiches indolents
D'un style d'or où la langueur du soleil danse.
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 Criticism o f the Idea o f Decadence
V âm e seulette a mal au coeur d'un ennui dense.
Là-bas on dit qu'il est de longs combats sanglants.
0 n'y pouvoir, étant si faible aux voeux si lents,
0 n'y vouloir fleurir un peu cette existence!

0 n'y vouloir, ô n'y pouvoir mourir un peu !

Ah ! tout est bu ! Bathylle, as-tu fin i de rire ?
A h ! tout est bu, tout est mangé! Plus rien à d ire!

Seul, un poème un peu niais qu'on jette au feu,

Seul, un esclave un peu coureur qui vous néglige,
Seul, un ennui d'on ne sait quoi qui vous afflige!

T his supreme utterance o f ‘décadentisme’ came from 1883. T he

word ‘décadentisme’ did not greatly please Verlaine and his friends
- a s is well known it was abbreviated to ‘décadisme’ . It encouraged
in fact the idea o f a decadence full o f contradictions and melancholy
but almost proud o f itself. These were the perplexities o f an old
conception introduced into a world which was looking for a new
experience. T he centuries-old pessimistic idea o f decline had seemed
to be an unalterable inheritance; but Verlaine, who had written
amongst other things about the martyrdom o f the Christians strug­
gling against the old paganism (‘the red ecstasy o f the first Christian
under the ravening teeth’), could not accept, without more or less
unconscious limitations, the idea that the Christian empire had been
an age o f decline. Not only his Catholicism but also his poetic in­
tuition rebelled against this idea. T he ‘white barbarians’, towards
whom Verlaine saw the dying empire turning its eyes, were the same
as the barbares blancs aux yeux bleus, whom he had also in another
composition contrasted with the ‘tender’ Ovid, an illustrious exile in
the midst o f barbarians who drive fabulous herds.
T h e decadence o f the Roman empireTas Verlaine saw it in 1883,
was made up then not only o f weariness but also o f the superior
consciousness o f a civilization which is not unworthy o f itself. Ver­
laine was looking, as he said in the celebrated letter to Anatole Baju,
for something which would set aside the idée abaissante de décadence.
Nevertheless, in spite o f these convictions, his poetic theory led, in
the developments which he would often have condemned, to sym­
bolism and to disharmony made into music. T he appeal to the end o f
18 1
 Criticism o f the Idea o f Decadence
the Roman empire is interesting just for this: that the idea o f deca­
dence vanished before the approval with which the poet exalted the
superiority o f ancient culture in its last golden style. ‘Everything has
been drunk’ and there is nothing more to say, but that late-Roman
languor is the languor o f the sun and it takes its place aristocratically
among the acrostics from the golden style. (As early as 562, indeed,
the Byzantine poet Paulus Silentiarius had said that ‘the golden
mosaic o f St. Sophia shines so brightly as almost to make
us see the midday sun in spring when it gilds every mountain
peak.’)
Nowadays we understand w ell enough this exaltation o f the late-
Roman light in works o f representational art and, as Verlaine wanted
to emphasize, o f poetic creation in general. From humanistic times
onwards, up to the time in which Verlaine was writing, the culture
o f the late empire had appeared to be qualitatively inferior to that o f
the preceding ages o f high Roman culture. For Lorenzo Valla the
decline o f the empire was already synonymous with the decline o f
the arts. In 1787 Friedrich August W olf thought to find in the pro­
gressive loss o f poetic ‘simplicity’ the cause o f the Roman literary
crisis after Hadrian. Bernhardy said something similar again in
1830, with the important correction that the crisis began in the age
of lom m odus / 180-02Ì about ha lf 0 Even the
great Burckhardt did not appreciate the literature o f the late empire.
As everyone knows, the tendency to underestimation has sur­
vived even to the present day through the influence o f text­
books or through conventional prejudices. T he ‘decadentist’ liter­
ary movement, which exalted the golden style in which the languor
o f the sun dances, therefore brought about a radical change o f
attitude. A new era in the interpretation o f late-Roman poetry began.
Des Esseintes, Huysman’s hero, loves the powerful primitiveness o f
the greatest Christian poet o f the third centuryT Commodian. T he
art o f the decadents itself has some similarity with the requirements
o f the late empire, striving for liberation from the quantitative
schemes which savour o f the logos. Even if it does not strike us so,
the revision o f the traditional schemes in late-Roman literature was
therefore analogous to the new poetic art o f decadentism. It is now
a scholarly revision, which is officially accepted and has penetrated
into the university lecture-rooms. Who could remain unmoved
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 Criticism o f the Idea o f Decadence
today before a page o f Commodian or Ammianus or St. Augustine ?
A ll the voices o f the ‘decadent’ Roman world, pagan or Christian,
from the third to the fifth centuries, have been made accessible to us.
T h e cultivated Des Esseintes, in 1883, was a pioneer o f the evalua­
tion which today seems obvious.
T he same may be said (in this case we are revealing nothing
unexpected since the comparison was made long ago) o f the rela­
tion between contemporary representational arts and the modern
evaluation o f late-Roman painting, sculpture and architecture.
A t any rate no one could dissociate the rebellious climate o f
modern expressionism from the mastering o f late-Roman aesthetic
values in the wrork o f Alois Riegl and in that o f Franz Wickhoff.
After the writings o f these two Austrian masters and the more
recent elaborations o f their theories, we now recognize a stylistic
sensibility in late-Roman art as lively as any other and also quite
new and revealing: ‘the representation’ said Riegl, ‘o f the individual
form in infinite space’ . We mav conclude that decadentism and
expressionism and other categories o f modern literary and art
criticism are oaths o f understanding which lead to the late-Roman
world. ‘Decadence’ , said R iegl, ‘does nor evisf.*
Lovers o f pure form and o f rational perspective will o f course
continue to prefer classical to late-Roman art. Ludw ig Curtius may
be taken as a representative o f them. But it may also be added that
the conflict between the classicists like Curtius and the followers o f
Riegl is not irreconcilable. On the contrary, the drawing together o f
ourselves and the late-Roman world, in so far as both epochs express
disturbance and irreparable uncertainty, is a point on which all can
agree. Let us imagine a conversation with an unyielding classicist.
He will point out, for instance, that the walls o f besieged cities do
not fall to the ground at the push o f a soldier, as seems to happen
in a scene on the arch o f Constantine. Criticisms o f this kind do not
seem new because we hear similar ones every day in relation to some
painting or other by Chagall or Picasso. At bottom we all know that
the traditionalists have a reason for their enjoyment o f the old pro­
portions. And in the same way the artists on the other hand have to
give expression to their own time even to the extent o f discovering
an apparently absurd perspective. In the age which saw the decline
o f ancient culture there were also, in poetry and in the figurai arts,
183
 Criticism o f the Idea o f Decadence
classicizing ‘shapers’, like the poet Claudian1 in some o f his composi­
tions or certain masters o f jewellery, who could produce creations
which still stir our admiration. But the new age expressed itself in a
sort o f structural abstractionism which resulted, o f course, from the
abolition of 2 We have no right to impose on an age the
representational standards which were proper to another.
How far can the revaluation o f late-Roman poetry and art be
extended to the social and political manifestations o f the late empire ?
Our own age has undoubtedly acquired an aesthetic sensibility
which is receptive to the new creative forms expressed in the mosaics
o f the Piazza Armerina or in the colossal head o f Constantine in the
Museo dei Conservatori. Still we must not forget that if we extend
these presuppositions to the expressions o f the whole o f late-Roman
life we run the risk o f missing the central point o f one o f our prob­
lems : the barbarization o f the western part o f Roman empire a hour
the sixth century and the loss n f Syria and Egypt in the sevenrh
century. We may, and perhaps we ought to, reject the word ‘ deca­
dence’, as far as the literature and art o f the late empire are con­
cerned, and we may be persuaded by a certain pruderie to avoid using
that terminology for the other phenomena o f late-Roman life. But
we have no right to condemn without a hearing rfi™ * higfnrians
who insist on the crisis o f the empire in the political and social
field
T he fall o f the empire in the west is always there to remind us
that late-Roman Spain, Gaul and Italy were succeeded bv a world
o f Goths. Merovingians and Lombards. Undoubtedly there was a
discontinuity as violent as a clash o f continents. I f one places an
extreme emphasis upon the gravity o f this clash, one may go on to
the conclusion that it was only barbarian violence, rather than any
internal crisis, which could destroy the solid structure o f ancient
civilization. T h is extreme solution o f the problem, a solution which
however can illuminate only one aspect o f it, has been put forward
in a book by André Piganiol which has now become a classic.
1 K l in g n e r , Römische Geisteswelt ( 1 9 4 3 ) , p p . 3 5 9 f f . ; S c h m i d , Reallexikon f ü r A n tike
und Christentum , I I I ( 1 9 5 5 ) , p p . 1 5 5 ff. C f . f u r t h e r th e ju d g m e n t o f H u y s m a n s , A
Rebours , p p . 4 6 - 7 .
2 T h e in te r e s t o f la t e - R o m a n p e o p le in th e n o v e l h a s b e e n c o m p a r e d w it h th e m o d e m
in t e r e s t b y A l t h e i m , Roman und Dekadenz ( 1 9 5 1 ) ( c f . B r e lic h , Gnomon ( 1 9 5 2 ) , p . 1 6 3 ) .
S o m e s e n tim e n t s o f l a t e - R o m a n C h r i s t ia n p o e t r y a r e c o m p a r e d w i t h o u r e x is te n tia lis m
b y E . R a p i s a r d a , M ise. S tu d i Lett. C rist, ant., I l l ( 1 9 5 1 ) , p p . 1 3 6 ff.

184
 Criticism o f the Idea o f Decadence
*It is a mistake to say that Rome was decadent. Plundered and dis­
figured by the barbarian invaders o f the third century ir mse again
from its ruins. A t the same time and at the cost o f a great crisis it
carried through a labour o f internal transformation. A new con­
ception o f imperial power was formed, the Byzantine; a new con­
ception o f truth and beauty, the medieval: a new conception o f col-
lective and joint work in the service o f society. N one o f the ills from
which the empire suffered, the fiscal exactions, the subversion o f the
fortunes o f the social classes, originated in this fruitful travail o f
change. T hey all derived from the continual war carried on by dis­
organized bands o f Germans who had managed to live for centuries
and centuries on the frontiers o f the empire still without becoming
civilized. It is too easy to suppose that when the barbarians got into
the empire everything was dead and that is was a powerless body, a
corpse soaked in blood, [these are Herder’s famous words] or
indeed that the Roman empire o f the West was not destroyed by a
brutal attack and simply dozed off. Roman civilization did not die a
natural death. It was murdered. La civilisation romaine n'est pas
morte de sa belle mort. Elle a été assassinéeI 1
These words o f Piganiol take us back to the beginning o f every
inquiry into Roman decadence and indeed every inquiry into
decadence in general. Polybius said that two causes o f death struck
at states, the interior cause and the exterior cause. He had also fore­
seen both these causes operating for Rom e; the first, he thought,
already definable, the second indefinable. We are used to describing
as decadence what Polybius called the internal cause. While the first
post-war period predominantly laid stress on the internal deca­
dence (for example in the philosopher Spengler and the historian
Rostovtzeff) and was only occasionally inclined to dwell on the
barbarian mainmise, the second post-war period in contrast has
issued through Piganiol a general denial o f the idea o f decadence
similar to that which had been supported for the aesthetic aspects
by Riegl. According to this conception the barbarians tore to pieces
an empire which was still full o f life. T h e idea o f a fatal outcome
following barbarian violence is substituted for the idea o f a crisis.
We have already said that Piganiol’s formula in certain respects

1 P i g a n io l, L 'E m p i r e C h r é tie n ( 1 9 4 7 ) , p p . 4 2 1 - 2 , in c o n flic t w it h S u n d w a ll, W es t­

rö m isch e S t u d ie n ( 1 9 1 5 ) , p . 1 9 . C f . E n s s l i n , G n o m o n ( 1 9 4 9 ) , p . 2 5 3 .

l8S
 Criticism o f the Idea o f Decadence
hits the truth. We may repeat that the age o f the death o f R ome
threw up individuals o f great stature, sometimes friants: Constan­
tine, lulian the Apostate. Stilicho, Technical innovations and the
application o f centuries-old discoveries, which had heen npgWrpd
up to that time, make it clear that we are not dealing with a world
that has fallen asleep. But this is not enough to disperse the shadows
which lie over the social structure o f rhp pmpirp in that latp epoch.
Men felt themselves oppressed by the bureaucracy. T he peasants
did not love the state to which they belonged. T hey took refuge in
jh e patronage o f powerful men to e^flpp fr»™ rhe trihntpg T h e
invasion o f the barbarians is thus inseparable from the internal
difficulties. T hey are a single phenomenon with two faces. T he
criticism o f the idea o f decadence may then be incorporated into our
theory by making a distinction. We can say that there is no deca­
dence where the spirit o f late-Roman man moves more freely, in the
fields o f poetry or art or religious life, and also perhaps in the
intimate recesses o f his home life and its effects. There is however a
crisis in those things which concern the state, the res publica exinan­
ita as the men o f Julian ’s circle called it. T h e literature and art o f
the late empire are, as we have seen, expressions o f an intuitive
sensibility o f a high order which can still move or exalt us. But there
was a political and social crisis even i f there was not a general
decadence. T h e great creators lived in the midst o f a civilization
which left them solitary or which felt weary, although it displays to
us infinite spiritual resources. T h e Roman.empire was struck dead
by the barbarians. B u t only structures which are already cracking
give up w earily under a blow struck violently from without.

Polybius was substantially right when he proposed two causes for

the fall o f the Roman state and for the fall o f states in general. We
may replace ‘causes’ by ‘aspects’ , or some similar word which is
more acceptable to modern ways o f thought, but in any case the ruin
o f the Roman empire appears to us in this double sense. From
Flavio Biondo onwards for five centuries there were frequent
attempts to give prominence to the ‘ internal cause’ which almost
forgot that the barbarians too did play a part in the collapse and in
the transformation o f the empire. Now that the myth o f late-
Roman artistic decadence may be regarded as exploded, our insight
iS 3
 Criticism o f the Idea o f Decadence
is fuller. T he ruin o f the ancient world is a tragedy with many voices.
We are watching the failure o f balance between the requirements of
supranatinr^1 rpr,tTiil;yint^ r> an^ productive inadequacy, the separa­
tion o f certain Nations’, and the related victory o f barbarians o f
many races in regions which classical civilization had attached to the
Greco-Rom ?" ampirp Only if we hold all these pheno­
mena in our minds can we grasp the theme which gives the drama
its unity.

On both the chronological and the cultural planes the final col­
lapse o f the Roman empire in the west was preceded by the forma-
tion and collapse of another empire which may also be called
supranational. Attììa’s empire o f the Huns. T h is however was a
supranational empire o f nomads, in contrast to the great sedentary
civilization o f the classical peoples. T h e Hun empire occupied Pan­
nonia, a great area which had formerly been Roman, and outside the
old Roman empire its dominion stretched in astonishing vastness
from the Volga to the Rhine. T h e Romans were greatly impressed
by its supranational character. In 451 the great federation o f tribes
ruled by the Huns moved like an unexpected tornado towards G aul.
A Roman poet described it in this way :
‘T he whole barbarian world is coming together from the North,
the aggressive Rugii together with the Geloni and followed by the
truculent Gepidi, the Scythians, Burgundians, Huns, the Bellonoti,
the Neuri, the Bastarnae, the Thuringians, the Bructeri, the Franks
who are washed by the waves o f the Neckar in which seaweed
grows. T he wild Hercynian Forest, torn by the battle-axe, has been
transformed into rafts and has filled the Rhine with planks.’
Attila himself, the leader o f this horde, understood the historical
significance o f his attempt at a supranational creation, but he was
too bound to the nomadic premises o f its creation. T h e genius o f
this terrible and yet human man was equal to the boldest encounters.
In 4 51, he withdrew from the Gallic campaign after the battle o f the
Catalaunian Plains but in 452 he fell upon Italy and cruelly plun­
dered Aquileia. He reached Milan. In that city he saw a painting
which represented the two Roman emperors, Valentinian I I I and
Marcian, on thrones o f gold with the Huns defeated and lying at
their feet. M ilan was the symbol o f that vitality which makes us
187
 Criticism o f the Idea o f Decadence
doubtful about ‘decadence’ and, in spite o f the Hun menace, there
were still painters in that industrious city. Impressed by the sight o f
this representation, which seemed to him like an insult, Attila had
another picture painted in which he was enthroned and the Roman
emperors were bringing gold to his feet. T h is whimsical pride,
however, did not even then suggest to him a political plan o f broad
historical significance. He never imagined the possibility o f replac­
ing the empire o f the Romans with the empire o f the Huns.
His imagination was dominated by gold but could not advance
beyond this. It did not occur to him that he could use his gold to
construct the economy o f his state on a civic basis. He remained to
the end the man who had dreamt o f conquering the gold o f the
Rhine and who had ordered the Milanese painters to represent the
Roman emperors bearing gold to the lord o f the Huns. After his
death, which occurred in 453, some o f the subject peoples rebelled
and with the battle o f the Nedâo (a river in Pannonia) the nomad
empire o f the Huns disappeared.
Some very recent studies1 have attempted to investigate more
deeply the phenomenon o f this meteoric Hun empire which vanished
with its extraordinary leader. One striking aspect o f the Hun crisis
is the difficulty o f founding a nomad supranational state in com­
petition, so to speak, with the Roman state, at a time when the latter
(based on an age-old bureaucratic centralization) was giving way in
the west to centrifugal forces o f demonic intensity.
Forty years earlier the Visigoth A taulf had renounced the forma­
tion o f a Gothia in place o f Romania and had established, though he
was the successor o f Alaric and the husband o f Galla Placidia, a sort
o f national Gothic state. Now in 453, the death o f Attila, who had
also not thought o f replacing the old Romania with a new Hunnia,
revealed to his successors the contradictions in a very obscure
situation. It was possible to strike at the Roman supranational state
at vital points but it was preposterous to found a barbarian supra­
national state on a permanent basis. On the other hand the Huns had
the additional difficulty o f creating a Hun national state, a difficulty
which the Goths did not have to face. A federation o f tribes could

1 Thom pson, A H is t o r y o f A t t i l a a n d th e H u n s ( 1 9 4 8 ) ; A lt h e i m , A t t i l a u n d d ie
H u n n e n ( 1 9 5 1 ) ; H a r m a t t a , R e c h e rc h e s In te r n a tio n a le s à ta lu m iè re d u M a r x i s m e ( M a i -
J u i n 1 9 5 7 ) , p p . 1 7 9 ff.
 Criticism o f the Idea o f Decadence
dissolve but a compact national unity could provide, as it did in the
case o f the Goths, the nucleus for the construction o f a solid and
permanent state.
Thp pnliriral dissolution o f the Roman empire, which began at the ^
end o f the fourth century and was already plain in the fifth, the
century o f Ataulf. Genserie. Attila. Odoacer and Theodoric. was
completed in the seventh century bv the Arabs. In the course o f this
long series o f events, stretching over more than 200 years, the
empire was dispossessed o f Pannonia, Gaul, Spain, the Lombard
regions in Italy, Syria, Egypt and Africa. Nothing stirs the imagina­
tion o f the historian so much as the reduction o f a vast political unit
to manageable proportions. T h e Roman empire, in its immense
extent from the Euphrates to the Atlantic and from the Danube to
the Sahara, had accustomed men for centuries to a reality in which
the division between the possible and the impossible was not
recognized.

189
 Essential Bibliography

T h e following list contains, in chronological order (of the dates o f

first publication, not o f the editions cited here), comprehensive
works relating to the late empire or to the idea o f decadence.
References to works dealing with particular problems are given in
the footnotes to the body o f the book.

G odefroy (G othofredus), Codex Theodosianus cum perpetuis

commentariis Johannis Gothofredi, ed. Ritter (1736 ff.).
T illemont , Histoire des Emperors et des Autres Princes, I - V I (on
the late Empire in the strict sense, IV -V I) (1690 ff.).
I æbeau , Histoire du Bas-Empire, I - X X V I I I (1752 ff.).
G ibbon, The History o f the Decline and F a ll o f the Roman Empire,
ed. Bury (1909-14).
S eeck, Geschichte des Untergangs der antiken Welt, I - V I (1921).
V asiliev , History o f the Byzantine Empire, 3 2 4 -14 5 3 , English trans.,
second edition (1952).
S pengler , The Decline o f the West, trans. C. F. Atkinson (1926).
JtoSTOVTZEFF, Social and Economic History o f the Roman Empire,
second edition, revised by P. M . Fraser (1957).
,L ot, The End o f the Ancient World and the Beginnings o f the M iddle
Ages, English trans. (19 3 1); Les Invasions Germaniques (1935).
S tein , Geschichte des spätrömischen Reiches (1928); French trans, as
Histoire du Bas Empire by J.-R . Palanque (1949-59).
R ehm, Der Untergang Roms in abendländischen Denken (1930).
S olari, I l Rinnovamento deWImpero Romano, I—II (1938).
W erner , Der Untergang Roms, Studien zum Dekadenzproblem in der
Antiken Geistesgeschichte (1939).
Ostrogorsky, History o f the Byzantine State, trans. J . M . Hussey
(1956).
191
 Essential Bibliography
Paribeni, Da Diocleziano alla Caduta deWImpero d yOccidente
(1941).
T oynbee , A Study o f History (1934-54).
PiGANiOL, U Em pire Chrétien (1947).

T he most recent survey o f problems o f the late Empire has been

provided by Vogt, Speculum (1958) and the most recent studies o f
the idea o f decadence by Pavan, Rivista Storica Italiana (1958) and
Sasso, Ibid. (pp. 333 ff.). T h e most recent work on the history o f the
concept o f the barbarian migrations and on the migrations them­
selves is Helbling, Goten und Wandalen (1957). T h e reader should
o f course consult the big general works such as The Cambridge
Ancient History, X I I , and The Cambridge M edieval History, I ; the
Reallexikon fu r Antike und Christentum (19 4 1 ff.); general histories o f
Rome which include the late empire, e.g., Piganiol, Histoire de
Romey Mashkin (now available in Germ an translation), Kovaliov
(now in Italian translation), Giannelli-Mazzarino, Aymard, etc. A
deeper study o f the third century is essential because this period, or
rather the period from Commodus onwards, may be regarded on
the cultural plane as late empire. See the general works o f Besnier
and Calderini and Altheim’s, Niedergangs I—II. Also histories o f
Rome which do not include the late empire are useful for the prob­
lem o f the crisis o f the ancient world. I should like to close this
book, indeed, with a passage taken from the epilogue to Ferra-
bino’s Nuova Storia di Roma (I—I I I , 1942-7, up to Trajan) which
expresses clearly the modern sensitivity to the theme o f Roman
decadence.
‘At that time [a .d. ioo] there was a dual feeling o f a perfection
which had been achieved and o f an inevitable decadence. . . . T he
Patricians were blamed for an excess o f wars and the excess o f
riches : the middle class for an excess o f peace which had become a
fault and an evil. Who pronounced these judgments ? Classical cul­
ture in the name o f the conscience o f hum anity-not so that con­
demnation should follow the judgment but so that its own capacity
for perpetuation and redemption should outweigh the guilt’ (Ferra­
bino, op. cit., I l l , 666 ff.).

192
 Index

Abercius, inscription of, 117 Ammianus Marcellinus, 54-5, 112 ,

Abgar IX, King, 160-1, 161 ». i ” 3
Ablavius, 68 Anonymous author, on social and
‘Abnahme’ , ‘waning’, 174, 175 economic conditions, 48-52, 54,
Abrittus, battle of, 44 55
Acilius Glabrio, patrician, 134-5 Anonymous Christian oracular poet
Adrianople, battle of, 52, 54-5, o f c. A.D. 180, 37-8, 39, 159-60
60 Antiochus III, the Great, 25
Aemilia Lepida, 128 Apollinarius, 48
Aemilianus, Cornelius Scipio, 22 Arabs and their invasions, 74, 75,
Agathias, 178 164
Agostino, Antonio, Bp. of Lerida, Arcadius, Emperor, 63, 80
86, 167 Army, 51, 67, 155, 156
Agriculture, 25-6, 26 ». 1, 3 2 ,13 7 - recruitment of, 155
139 Arnold, Gottfried, 112 - 13
Akkad, 17, 18, 19 Astrology, 28
Alans, the, 53, 75 Ataulf, Gothic King, 60, 188
Alarie, 56, 60, 68-9, 70, 7 1, 72, 79, Attila, King of the Huns, 65, 66-7,
84, 87, io i, 17 1 83, 87, 187-8
Alemanni, Nicola, 102, 103, 104, Augustine of Hippo, St., 19, 59,62,
105 69-70» 72, 73. 98
Alexander the Great, 19, 122 Augustulus, Emperor, 83
Alexander the Minorite, 72 Augustus, Emperor, 28, 29, 3 1,4 0 ,
Amalasunta, Ostrogothic Queen, 71 78, 85, 124
Ambrose, St., 53, 58, 74, 169-70 Aurelius Victor, 48
193
 Index
Bactria, 24, 25, 30 Cicero, 22, 26-7, 30, 31, 78, 79
Baluze, Etienne, n o Citizenship, Roman, 26 ». 1,2 9 and
Barbarization, Barbarians, 24, 25, ». i, 160
30 45 5 52 56
29 ». i , , » i» , , 58, , 59 Claudian, poet, 5 6 ,6 0 ,6 2 ,113 ,114
60, 6 1, 63, 65, 66, 67, 68, 80, 85, 184
88, 100, 123, 137, 145, 146, 176, Claudius, Emperor, 65
184-5, ï 86, 187 Cleander, praetorian prefect, 152
Bardesanes, 160, 16 1-2 Coinage, 151 ff.
Baron, Hans, 77 aureus, 153
Baronio, Cardinal, Annali of, 103 denarius, 15 1, 152, 153
Benedict of Nursia, St., 7 1-2 solidus, 154
Bernhardy, Gottfried, 182 tremisses, 154
Biondo, Flavio, 77 f f ., 82, 120 Cola di Rienzo, 82
Bodin, Jean, 90-1, 174 Coloni, 19, 138, 139, 14 1, 143, i44>
Bolingbroke, 109 146, 147, 158
Book of Daniel, the, 36, 40, 47-8, Columella, 33
59 Commentary on Habbakuk, 34-5
fourth monarchy of, 89, 90 Commodian, 44, 46-7, 65, 182
Bracciolini, Poggio, 82 Carmen Apologeticum, 44-5
Bruni Aretino, Leonardo, 77, 82-3, Commodus, Emperor, 38-9, 41,
84 1 18, 1 5 1-3 , 160
Burckhardt, Jacob, 3 1, 115 , 12 1, Constantia, sister of Constantine,
122, 123, 182 95
Byzantium, 75, 81, 155 Constantine the Great, 48, 59-60,
63, 7 3 ,8 1-2 , 8 4 - 5 ,9 2 ^ , 103,
Callistus, St., Pope, 117 -18 , 119, 1 10-16, 133, 153-4, 164, 171
1 3 1 , 132, 1 50-1, 169 Constitutum of, 73
Calpurnius Piso, 27 Donation of, 84-5
Camillus, 28 and ». 1, 31 Constantius II, Emperor, 48, 51,
Capelianus, 156 54 93 96
, . , 163 n. 2
Caracalla, Emperor, 29 ». 1, 160, Constantius Chlorus, 95, 133
161 Copernicus, 90
Carmen de providentia, 57, 58 Corculum, Cornelius Scipio Nasica,
Carpophorus, 117 , 118, 119 , 150 22
Carthage, 22, 143, 156 Corsi (Cursius), Pietro, 88
Cassiodorus, 68-9, 71 Coulanges, Fustel de, 177
Cassius, 142-3 Crisis or ruin, internal and external
Cato, 22, 73, 141 causes, 23, 25, 53 et passim
Carzaeus, Aur., 160 Crispus, eldest son of Constantine,
Christianity, 35, 63, 67, 93, 96, 63, . 95 96
9 8 ^ , 102-3, w o ff., w $ f f , 129, Culti, the, 85, 100
132, 133, 1 6 9 ^ Curtius, Ludwig, 183
Christians, 39-43, 44-5, 46-7, 48, Cyprian, St., 41-2, 121
53-4, 63, 68, 81-2, 150, 162-4
chrysargyron, 93-4, 94 ». 1. Damasus, Pope, 170
194
 Index
Davies, Oliver, 137 Germans, the, 46, 47, 54, 89, n o ,
Decadence: idea of, 18, 19, 20 ff., 123, 155, 164, 177, 185
30, 3 1. 33 49
ff-> , 56, 5 8 # , Gibbon, Edward, 92, 97, 98, 106,
6 1-2,7 5 , 9°>9I > m , 121, 173, 114 -16 , 167
74
/ , 175, 177, 180^;, 186 Gildo, the Moor, 56, 147, 171
origin of, 54, 84 Godefroy, Jacques, 106, n o
sense of, 73, 106, 122 Gold, 49, 137, 153, 154, 188
Decius, Emperor, 41, 44, 157 Gordian I, Emperor (Gordianus M.
Delbrück, Richard, 136-7 Antonius), 156
Demetrius I, Seleucid King, 24 Goths, the, 25,44, 46-7, 52, 53, 60,
Democracy, 23, 40, 167 64, 65, 67, 68-9, 70, 74, 83, 88,
Des Esseintes, 182, 183 10 0 , IOI
Dexippus, 65, 66, 67 Grégoire, 116 and n. 1
Dio Cassius, 39, 119 Gregory the Great, St., 69, 7 1-2
Dionysius, Bp. of Alexandria, 47, Gregory of Nazianzus, St., 96
158 Grotius, Hugo, 66, 99-100, 101-2,
Domaszewski, von A., 156 102 n. i, 104
Dungal, 120 Guicciardini, Francesco 86
Durry, Marcel, 126
Hansen, Georg, 124
Eichel, Joannes, 104-5 Hartmann, L. M., 177
Elagabalus, Emperor, 13 1, 161 n. 1 Heichelheim, Fritz, 151
Eliade, Mircea, 31 Heitland, W. E., 166
Empedocles, 22 Heraclius, 52 and n. 1, 76
Erasmus, 88 Herder, J. G., 99, 174, 175, 185
Eratosthenes, 45 Herodian, 39, 155, 156, 157
Etruria, 20, 25, 28, 3 1, 143 Hildebert of Le Mans, 115
Eusebius of Caesarea, historian, poems by, 74
48, 63, 96, 109, n o , 133-4, 158 Hippolytus, St., 39-40,41 n. 1 ,1 1 8 ,
Euthydemus, King, 24, 25 13 1, 158, 163
Expositio totius mundi, 145-6, 147 Historia Augusta, 62, 68, 88, 131
Honorius, Emperor, 60, 61, 80
Fausta, wife of Constantine, 63, Horace, 27
95 Hosius, Bp. of Cordova, 63
Ferrabino, Aldo, 28, 191 Hrosvitha, 73, 114 , 115
Ferrerò, Guglielmo, 79, 166, 167, Huns, the, 25, 53, 54, 68, 187, 188
171
Fleury, 113 , 115 Ibn Khaldun, 75-6
Freedmen, 128, 129 Inclinatio, Inclinata, ‘decline’, 27,
marriage of, 130 34, 77, 86, 87, 91, io o -i, 120
Frigidus, battle of, 60 causes of, 79-80
Irenaeus, St., 163
Gaul, 56, 75, 134, 146, 152, 178
Gauls, the, 28, 81 James, St., epistle of, 35-6, 158
Genserie, the Vandal, 66, 67, 72 Jerome, St., 4 8,6 0,72,14 6 ,16 3 n. 1
195
 Index
Joannes Magnus, Bp. of Uppsala, Methodius of Olympus, 48
IO O-I Mickwitz, Gunnar, 149, 15 j
John Chrysostom, St., 63, 163 n. 1 Minerals and mines, 136-7
Jordanes, 69, 7 1, 74 Montanus, 39
Jovian, Emperor, 63, 64, 98 Montesquieu, 106, 136, 168
Julia, daughter of Augustus, 128 Muratori, L . Antonio, 89
Julia Domna, 129, 130
Julian the Apostate, 48, 51, 54,64, Nicholas Cusanus, 30, 77, 84
73» 92> 93» 95» 96,97-8, m - 1 2 ,
4
” » 133 Odoacer, King of Italy, 68, 72 83
Julius Caesar, 28, 8 1, 170 84, 87
Justinian, Emperor, 85, 100, 102 Otkos, 139, 140, 14 1, 147, 148, 149
and n. 1, 103, 104, 105, 112 Orientius, 56
Juvenal, 34 Commonitorium, 56, 58
Orosius, 58 ff., 63, 67, 69, 70 -1,
Kniva, King of the Goths, 45 73, 79, 80, 81, 84, 1 13, 1 14
Ortega y Gasset, Jose, 166, 1 6 7 ^
Laeti, 145, 157 Otto of Freising, 74
Languages, 159, 163, 164 Ovid, 32, 33, 181
Lasaulx, Ernest von, 30, 174
Law and laws, 100, 10 1-2 Pannonia, 75, 145-6, 178-9, 187
Leo I, Pope, 87, 170 Paulus Silentiarius, 182
Leo of Vercelli, 73 Peasantry, peasants, Roman, 2 0 ,2 1,
Le Sueur, Jean, 1 10 -12, 113 39
Leucippus, 22 Persians, the, 24, 58, 59, 64, 98
Libanius, 154 Persson, Axel, 166
Liberty, 23, 68, 120, 159 ff., 166-8 Petrarch, 77, 79, 84, 120
Livius Drusus, 25-6, 26 n. i Petronius quoted, 144
Livy, 27, 28 n. i Petrus Pictor, 73-4
Löwenklav(Leunclavius),Johannes, Peutinger, Conrad, 87, 89
9 1 , 9 2 # , 9 7 # , 103, 105, 1 16 Philip the Arab, Emperor, 41
Lucretius, 21-2, 26, 3 1, 32 Piganiol, André, 137, 15 1, 184-5
Pirenne, Henri, 74, 177
Machiavelli, 55, 86-7 Plato, 173-4
Madâch, Imre, 175-6, 177-9 Pliny, 34
Marcia, concubine of Commodus, Calpurnia, wife of, 129
38, 41, 117 , 118 , 152, 153 Plutarch, 21
Marcus Aurelius, 37,38,39,130,159 on oracles, 119
Marriage, elimination of the best Polybius, 22 ff., 29, 30, 3 1, 53, 64,
and, 120 ff. 67, 76, 84, 123, 174, 186
Mauretania, 146, 147 Histories, 25
Maximinus Thrax, Emperor, 62, Porphyry, 47-8
68, 155, 157 Poseidonius, 27, 45
Melanchthon, 89 Prévost-Paradol, Lucien-Anatole,
Metellus, 124, 125 123
196
 Index
Prices, 1 5 1, 152, 153 Sextus Julius Africanus, 118
Priscus, 65, 66-7 Slaves, slave economy, 19, 138-9,
Probus, Emperor, 88 1 4 1 ^ » 153
Procopius of Caesarea, 75, 82, 83, Etruscan, 21
84, 104, 105 labour of, 142-3
Anekdota (Secret History) of, manumission, 141
75, 102, 103, 104, 105 price of, 153
Pytheas, 45 servus, 139
vilicuSy 138, 142
Quintilian, 34 Sleidanus, 89
Quodvultdeus, Bp. of Carthage, 67 Soaemias, Empress, 130 and n. 1,
131
Radagaisus, the Ostrogoth, 56, 60, Society, two ruling classes,
80 Roman aristocracy, 129 ff.
Renaissance, 62, 78, 86, 90, 91 Sorel, Georges, 164, 166-7
Renaudet, 88 Spanheim, Ezechiel, 112
Revelation of St. John, 36-7, 47, Spengler, Oswald, 168, 175 and n.
100, h i i, 176
Rhenanus, Beatus, 87-8, 89 Stilicho, 56, 60, 62, 64, 68, 80, 87,
Rheticus, 90, 91 101, 112 , 113 -14 , 147, 171
Riegl, Alois, 183, 185 Straub, Johannes, 53 n. 1, 122
Rodbertus, 137 Sulpicius Severus, 56
Rodrigo of Toledo, 74 Sumerian states, the, 18, 19
Rolevinck, Werner, 86 Sybel, H. von, 123
Rome, 69 Synesius, 63
decadence of, 22, 26, 53
‘fall’ of, 23, 72, 81, 98, 99 Tacitus, 45, 86
See also Decadence; Inclinatio Taine, H. A., 123, 180
Romulus, Emperor, 68 Taxation, 54, 65, 136, 149 ff.y 154
Rostovtzeff, Michael, 140, 145, adaeratioy 149, 150, 154
155-7» 159* i 65. 166, i68» ! 74-5 payment in kind, 149, 150
Rutilius, 62-3, 134 Tertullian, 39, 118 , 164
Themistius, 52, 122
Sallust, 27, 28, 30, 3 1, 56, 78 Theodora, Empress, 95, 103
Salvian of Marseilles, 68 Theodoric, Ostrogoth, 68
Satyrus, St., 52 Theodosius the Great, Emperor,
Seeck, Otto, 34, 79, 120, 123, 124, 52» 55» 60, 63, 65
126, 2 1 7 ,1 2 9 ,1 3 2 ,13 3 ,1 3 4 ,1 3 7 , Thucydides, 20, 173
157, 180 Tillemont, Abbé, 6 3 ,10 6 ,1 1 3 ,1 1 4 ,
Seleucid state, the, 24, 25, 47 “ 5
Seneca the Elder, 33, 34 and n. 1, Totila, King of Italy, 69, 71, 72
45» 121» I25 Toynbee, Arnold, 53, 176
Septimius Severus, 118 , 152, 153, Tradition, 34, 117 , 119 , 129, 168,
155 169
Severi, the, 39, 119 , 13 1, 162 Tribonianus, 86, 102, 167
197
 Index
Umma, 18 Villani, Giovanni, 90
Urukagina, ruler of Lagash, i8, 19, Victor, Pope, 118
31 Victor, Bp. of Vita, 68
Visigoths, the, 46, 56, 67, 71
Valens, Emperor, 52, 60, 64, 74-5, Volcacius, 28
163 . .
Valentinian III, Emperor, 83 Walafrid Strabo, n o
Valerian, Emperor, 44, 64 Weber, Max, 137-48, 149
Valla, Lorenzo, 84, 85, 182 Westermann, W. L ., 145
Vallia, Gothic King, 60, 61 Wickhoff, Franz, 183
Vandals, the, 67-8, 74, 75, 83 Wolf, Friedrich August, 182
Varro, 34, 142 Women, senatorial, 1 2 6 ^ , 126«. I
Vassi or dediticii, 154, 178 130 n. i
Vegetius, 55 Aemilia Lepida, 128
‘Vegoic’ books, the, 20 -1, 25 Poppaea, 129
Velleius, 27
Verlaine, Paul, 180-2 Yarmuk, battle of, 7 5 ^
Langueur quoted, 180-1
Vettius, 28, 40 Zosimus, historian, 6 3 -^
Vettius Agorius Praetestatus, 133, 9 9 ,10 4 - 5 ,113
170 New History, 63
 A N ote about the Author

SA N TO M A Z Z A R I N O , th e d istin gu ish ed P r o fe sso r o f

A n c i e n t H i s t o r y at the U n iv e r s it y o f C a tan ia an d h o ld e r o f
m a n y o th e r p o sitio n s o f im p o rta n ce in the a c a d e m ic and in ­
tellectu al w o r ld , is the a u th o r o f six m a jo r h isto rical w o rk s
on G r e e k , R o m a n , and M e d ite rra n e a n h isto ry b esides T h e
E n d o f the A n cien t W orld, e d ito r o f t w o learn ed jo u rn als,
and a lead in g m e m b e r o f m a n y learn ed societies. H e w a s
b o rn in C a ta n ia , Ita ly , in 1 9 1 6 , an d e d u ca te d th e re at the
C lassical S c h o o l and the U n iv e r s ity , fro m w h ic h he re c e iv e d
his d e g re e o f “ L a u re a te in L e tte rs and P h ilo s o p h y ” in 19 36 .
P ro fe sso r M a z z a rin o liv es in R o m e an d C a ta n ia w ith his
w ife , the fo r m e r L a d y V e ra S ta lte ri, and t w o c h ild re n .

A p r il 1966
 T h e text o f this book is set in M o n otype E h rhard t N o . 453
Printed in offset b y H allid ay Lithograph Co rp., W e st H ano ver, Mass.
Bound b y T h e B ook Press, Brattleboro, V t.