what would have been in Tacitus one of the bitterest of epigrams, is in Ammianus no epigram at all. Imperialis verecundia, the chastity of an emperor, was the great phenomenon of the fourth and fifth centuries whose emperors, whatever else they may have been, were in this matter above the breath of slander. There is a beautiful picture of the triumphal entry of Constantius into Rome*. He was a little man, long in the body and short and rather bandy in the legs, but "He nothing common did nor mean Upon that memorable scene." He rode in a golden chariot, and for all the noise and applause never flinched, but stood immovable; but "on passing through lofty gateways he would bow his little person; and as if his neck were fortified he kept his gaze straight in front of him, and looked neither right nor left, as if he had been a dummy; the shaking of the wheels did not make him nod, and he was not seen to spit or wipe his mouth or his nose, or move his hand throughout." A grim humour hangs about the coronation of Procopius,t who, after months in hiding, blossomed out as an Emperor. He appeared before the soldiers without a cloak, and so emaciated as to look as if he had risen from the dead and all the purple he could muster was his boots and a rag he waved in his left hand :-"you would have thought him some figure on the stage, or some ridiculous burlesque that had popped through the curtain." His procession was hardly a success; for the soldiers were afraid of being assailed with tiles from the roofs, and marched along holding their shields over their heads. Of his residence in Rome we have many reminders, some of very great interest, some very amusing. His description of the city on the occasion of Constantius' visit, shews the hold Rome still had on the world's • xvi. 10. † xxvi. 6, 15. imagination. "Whatever he saw first he thought supreme above all." There was the temple of Tarpeian Jove, the baths as big as provinces, the solid mass of the amphitheatre built of Tiburtine stone, to whose top the human eye could hardly reach, and so forth. "But when he came to Trajan's forum-a structure, I suppose, unique under heaven, which even the gods would agree with us in admiring-he stood in amazement."* Rome was the one thing in the world about which exaggeration was impossible. The Emperor was so much impressed that he determined to add his item to the ornaments of the Eternal City, and sent an obelisk from Egypt. Of this and the inscription it bore, and its journey and arrival, Ammianus gives us a most interesting account.† But more entertaining are his digressions on Roman manners, which abound in sketches as good as Juvenal's. The snobbery and extravagance of the great men of Rome may not have been more excessive than such things are elsewhere, but the grandee who with the greatest dignity (though no one has asked) extols to the skies his patrimony and the income it yields, how fertile it is, how far it reaches; the noble gentleman who welcomes you, though an utter stranger, as if he had been yearning for you, asks you endless questions till you have to lie, and makes you regret that you did not settle in Rome ten years earlier, but next day has no idea who or what or whence you are; the fashionable people, who loathed sensible and well-educated men like the plague, and learning like poison, all impressed Ammianus to such an extent that he has left them gibbeted for ever in his pages. The troops of slaves and eunuchs (his particular abhorrence), the luxury of the banquets, the Roman preference for the musician rather than the philosopher, the organs and lyres as big as waggons, the libraries closed like the tomb, the absurd fear of infection that has the slave washed after he has been to inquire for a sick friend before he is allowed into the house again' the gambling and horse racing, the effeminancy and the slang of Rome waken disgust in this old soldier as well they might. The rabble that will fight for Damasus or Ursinus, and riot if the corn ships are late or wine is not forthcoming, are no better than the nobles. The most absurd figure of all, perhaps, is Lampadius, who was at one time prefect-"a man who would be indignant if he should so much as spit without being complimented on being adept at it above the rest of mankind." But even in Rome there were good men and true, such as Symmachus "who is to be named among the most illustrious examples of learning and decorum." If this is comedy there is tragedy enough in book XIV. Gallus Cæsar is in the midst of a career of tyranny and bloodshed in the East,† when he is summoned to Italy. To disarm his suspicion he is bidden to bring his wifea helpmeet indeed for him, "a death-dealing Megaera, the constant inflamer of his rage, as greedy of human blood as her spouse "-a lady who listens from behind a curtain to keep him up to the mark. She did not feel easy about the invitation, yet thought she would risk it, but she died of fever in Bithynia on her journey, and Gallus felt more nervous than ever, for he knew Constantius and "his particular tendency to destroy his kin." He knew his own staff hated him, and were afraid of Constantius, for wherever civil strife was involved the "luck" of Constantius was proverbial. A tribune was sent to lure him to his ruin; “and as the senses of men are dulled and blunted when Destiny lays a hand on them, with quickened hopes he left Antioch, under the guidance of an unpropitious power, to jump as they say from the frying pan into the fire." When on his journey he gave horse races at Per te ille discat. Even his brother Julian admits "fierce and savage" elements in his character. Ep. ad Athen, 271 D. Constantinople, the Emperor's rage was more than human. A guard of honour (and espionage) accompanied him. From Adrianople he was hurried on with fewer attendants, and now he saw how he stood and "cursed his rashness with tears." The ghosts of his victims haunted his dreams. At Petobio he was made a prisoner, and at Histria he was beheaded, and all of him that reached Constantius was his boots, which a creature of the Court hauled off to post off to the Emperor with this glorious spoil. What is the general impression left on the mind by the history of Ammianus? One cannot read him through without a growing conviction of his absolute truthfulness and a growing admiration of his power, and the two together present the Roman Empire to the mind exactly as it was. He makes no predictions, he expresses no regrets, and apart from observations on the characters of his people, he leaves the reader to form his own opinions on the Empire. Nobody foresaw that in twenty years after his death Rome would have fallen to the Goth, that the Empire as an effective power in the West was nearing its end, but yet, wise after the event, we can see in his pages that it is all coming. There were, we learn, strong men and honest men to stave it off and delay it, who, if they could not save Rome, did save Europe in virtue of those ideals of law and order the younger peoples of the North found in the majestic fabric of Roman administration. Ammianus lets us see the exhaustion of the Roman world, the ruin of the middle classes under an oppressive system, and often still more oppressive agents of taxation, the weakness all along the frontier, Rhine, Danube, Euphrates, and African desert, caused by bad principles of government within as much as by attacks from without, and the crying need of men which led to the army being filled with barbarians, who did not quite lose all their barbarism and brutality at once, and were often as terrible to those they protected as to the enemy they were supposed to keep off; and at the same time we read in him the grandeur and the glory of Rome, who had welded the world into one and made the nations members one of another, had humanized and civilized them with law and culture in her train wherever she went, and was even now training in her armies the men who should overthrow her, and then, as it were in horror at their own work, should set her on high once more, and keep her in her place as the world's Queen for a thousand years. T. R. G. LOVE'S IMMORTALITY. LOVE that buys a pretty face And to passion falsely founded. C. E. BYLES. |