Page 327 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol IV

1628 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

History is little more than the register of
the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of
mankind. • Edward Gibbon
(1737–1794)

With military victory now the sole means of legiti- persecuted sect to the object of imperial patronage
mating imperial authority, the emperors became sub- endowed the emperors with a new source of legitimacy
stantially more bellicose.Warfare became the norm with independent of both the army and the civil bureaucracy.
the advent of sustained attacks on the empire’s borders The association of the one God with the one emperor
along several fronts, most threateningly by Germanic provided an effective justification for the divinely insti-
peoples along the north and Persians along the east. An tuted authority of imperial rule.
emperor’s defeat on the battlefield was likely to lead to The reforms of Diocletian and Constantine, which
his assassination, and a victory won by one of his gen- transformed the Roman state legally and institutionally
erals proved almost as dangerous.The situation was not into an absolute monarchy, also brought about cultural
conducive to maintaining internal order or external revival and economic recovery.The theologian Augustine
defenses, and both suffered.Among the threats to Rome’s of Hippo, the historian Ammianus Marcellinus, the villas
territorial integrity, the most dramatic was the revolt of whose archaeological remains dot all the former territo-
Zenobia, queen of Palmyra. She managed to rule over ries of the empire, the numerous monumental Christian
Syria, Anatolia, and Egypt for several years before being churches that survive intact, and the codifications of
defeated by the emperor Aurelian in 272 CE. The years Roman law under Theodosius II (reigned 408–450 CE)
between 211 CE and 284 CE included a succession of and Justinian (reigned 527–565 CE) are just a few promi-
some twenty emperors, averaging four years per reign. nent examples of the artistic, literary, and intellectual
The situation stabilized under the rule of Diocletian accomplishments produced by both pagans and Chris-
(reigned 284–305 CE).Although he came to power as yet tians between the fourth and sixth centuries.
another military strongman, he managed to reorganize
and thereby stabilize the structure of the Roman state. The Fall of Rome
The most enduring of his reforms included the division In spite of these achievements, the same period included
of the empire into eastern (Greek-speaking) and western a political fragmentation conventionally labeled “the fall
(Latin-speaking) administrative units, the introduction of Rome.” The organization of the empire into adminis-
of centralized planning to the Roman economy, and the trative halves created, alongside the political divide, an
dramatic expansion of the imperial household staff into increasingly pronounced linguistic and cultural separation
a civil bureaucracy that supplanted the obsolete republi- between the Greek east and the Latin west.When a new
can magistracies and served as wave of external invasions
an effective counterweight to commenced during the final
the power of the army. Con- decades of the fourth century,
stantine (reigned 306–337 CE) the eastern Roman empire cen-
cemented the success of Dio- tered in Constantinople man-
cletian’s reforms with two rev- aged to survive. The western
olutionary innovations of his Roman empire, however, lost
own. The founding of the city its territorial integrity and legal
of Constantinople (modern identity during the 400s as
Istanbul, Turkey) provided the Germanic leaders established
eastern half of the empire with new kingdoms in Italy, France,
a capital that possessed legal England, and north Africa.
and symbolic parity with However,historians have come
Rome. The transformation of A sculpture of a Roman wolf from to prefer to describe this
Christianity, in turn, from a the classical period. process as a “transformation”