Problems of State and The rich kept aloof from affairs under earlier empire. appear to-day) believes its duty to consist in the grudging protection of wealth by general order and police, that it may penalise any lucky turn, may seize upon the growing spoils, and find new ways of relieving the adventurous or the fortunate of their surplus. This is not the best education for those who profess to be the rightful heirs of these enterprises and industries. One would hesitate to entrust the practical management of a "going concern" to those who had hitherto contented themselves with exacting "arbitrary fines." Now the Roman Empire, perhaps the wisest of political institutions, had conferred on wealth a recognised place of dignity, while by giving publicity and prestige it had curtailed its mischievous and indirect influence :-for in a modern State the outlets are many for secret manipulation by a powerful class or indeed corporation, suffering, as they suppose, from unjust treatment. The rich were installed in a monopoly of municipal power. The poorer classes were committed to their care and kindly supervision, and taught to look to them for the support of religious festivals, corporate banquets, and the public amusements, which formed the chief business (I will not say, distraction) of urban life. If the wealthy had obvious privileges, they had heavy duties. They had the burden, but not the direction, of affairs. The civil service and the army were recruited from the needy and ambitious. The supreme place seldom lay within the timid grasp of the rich noble; the Gordian family (238–244) is perhaps the only instance where high birth and fastidious luxury are raised to the purple. Yet on the whole this division of labour succeeded. Certainly the classes in their urban centres lived together on amicable terms; the dangers and disabilities of opulence were too conspicuous for envy. The curial system exposed the perils of the smaller owners; and the strangely detached order of Senators (who had never perhaps visited the metropolis or sat in the Curia) was without defence against a prefect The rich kept faced with a deficit. The reigns, for example, of aloof from affairs under Valentinian I., +375, and of Justinian, +565, are earlier marked by merciless official raids against private empire. wealth, of which, perhaps, the emperor himself was culpably ignorant, if not an accomplice. Natural causes and public calamities extinguished the opulent class during the seventh century. When the Iconoclasts began to renew and to reconstruct society, the Church and the official class were alone visible; and below, at an immense interval, were the alien factors. and elements fermenting in obscurity. Code. § 14. Religious prejudice combined with social Legal reforms changes to nullify the legal services of the Iconoclasts. of Isaurians' repealed by The Basilian code (complete c. 900) reverts to the 900. spirit and letter of Justinian; warmly accuses the ill-advised efforts of Leo and Constantine; and in reviving the ancient and Roman text does not even take the trouble to eliminate the anachronistic clauses, which had reference to a state of society long passed away. Criminal law becomes more merciful, the death-sentence infrequent,—and we must compare with shame the Byzantine usage with the careless and savage sentences of our statutebook down to recent memory,-when "men must Mercy in the hang that jurymen may dine." It is suggested, not without reason, that mutilation, which largely took its place, was founded on the Scripture precept, "Cut it off and cast it from thee." The tenderness for human life, noticeable in the tactics and practice of Byzantine war, is now clearly seen in their code; and if this be a test of civilisation, at least as important as the extended suffrage or a complete system of baths and wash-houses, we are afraid that England under George III. must fall behind Russia under Elizabeth or the Eastern empire under John Comnenus. But critics remind us of occasional lapses into terrible and vindictive penalties; and are inclined to refer this respect for life to monkish Code. Mercy in the superstition (right of asylum or leisure for a sinner's repentance) rather than to the truer motives of compassion or humanity. In any case, we must in fairness do justice to a notable improvement in the Roman Empire on an essential matter, at a time when the rest of the world was reverting to savagery and altogether shaking off the restraints of law, while rendering its sanctions more severe. The two last causes contributing to the altered aspect of the reviving empire I have named (4) the settlement of the Iconoclastic controversy, and (5) influx of bullion. Both these may be briefly dismissed; for (4) Revival of my conviction of their serious import is unhappily Ecclesiastical independent of any detailed proof. In the eighth influence. century, at least under the two first "Isaurians," the State, embodied in a masterful personality, was all-powerful. The official hierarchy were reduced to their true status as obedient servants; justice was enforced without respect of persons; and the rivalry of the Church as an independent order in the State was curtailed. The views of Leo, in the preface to his Ecloga, somewhat resemble the doctrine of Dante's De Monarchiâ. The heavenly calling, the theological and religious responsibilities of the emperor are clearly recognised. He claims to be above the monkish orders, not because his aim is secular, but because he is the chief earthly representative of a theocracy. With the settlement of the conflict, by Irene for a time and finally by Theodora, the Church won back much of its direct and indirect influence. It again became a political, social, and territorial force, which claimed independence of control in other realms besides that of preaching and theology. We may here repeat, that a unitary State-government, without counterpoise, must be a necessary if perilous expedient in time of crisis or dissolution, or among peoples just learning the rudiments of political compromise. But in a highly complex and civilised Ecclesiastical society, in a nation scattered over a wide tract of (4) Revival of country and exposed to the errors and inadequacy influence. of centralised administration, the make-weight of independent classes on the land, or in commerce, or in letters, or in spiritual affairs, is essential to a wholesome equilibrium. Let any unhistoric idealist learn from the Roman Empire the evils of government interference and monopoly, however conscientious and well-intentioned. The danger of a republic is not anarchy or even class-warfare (though this most commonly follows any loud announcement of the actual equality), but a conservative stagnation, the decay of charity, fellowfeeling, and lofty aim, a cynical indifference to official corruption, and a unique preoccupation to obtain a place under government. But in the most centralised period of Byzantine rule, the Church interfered with this unitary conception of the State and its duties; set apart a class of men who, living the "immaterial" life of bare need, could not be touched by a government of force; watched over the orthodoxy of the sovereign and rebuked the errors of princes. It is a pity that in recovering this independence and noble frankness, the Church became entangled in worldly concerns. The endowment of new monastic foundations proved, as we have seen, the impoverishment of the country, and implied the disappearance of the yeoman-farmer. (5) The fact of the economic revival of the empire is (5) Revival of undoubted; but it belongs to the specialist to search private for the causes and to trace the development. The vast treasures left by Theophilus and by Theodora, or squandered by Michael III. and Constantine IX., seem incredible. But the whole period from the accession of Leo III. to the death of Constantine X. is marked by a steady recovery, by an accumulation of bullion in the only kingdom which seemed to provide security. Bury well points out the fair distribution of wealth in the capital under the wealth. private wealth. (5) Revival of Isaurians; the later increase of riches was to the advantage of those already well-to-do. Money seeks its like, and while the government hoarded in default of true economic insight, the rich proprietors eluded taxation (as in any other feudal society) and raised up, under a nominal autocracy, an oligarchy of families, which I might term with Lord Beaconsfield "Venetian," were it not on closer inspection almost wholly military. Family of Armenian. C. THE SOVEREIGN AND THE GOVERNING § 15. The marriage of Theophilus has been emTheodora the bellished by legend, but it was an event of capital importance to the empire. One Armenian family had a monopoly of office and captaincy for perhaps thirty-six years, only to be succeeded by another. We read with surprise the boasts of the ancestry of Basil or of Theophobus; to believe myth or the complacent Herald's College of Constantinople, the latter was a Sassanid, and on the salutation of the 30,000 Persian troops at Sinope, revived for a moment a legitimate Persian monarchy (ὡς ἐκ τούτου καὶ τὰ Περσῶν καινίζεσθαι ἔθιμα); the former, more lucky in his fate, traced descent from the rival family of Arsacids. But the house of Theodora represented an Armenian origin, and had settled or obtained a post in Paphlagonia. At this time, the great Armenian race, preserved (or even reviving) in the wreck of the Persian empire and maintained in mountainous fastness against the Caliphate, threw themselves into the arms of Rome. Henceforth the fortunes of our empire are inextricably interwoven with the remoter East; and fall before the Seljuks just 200 years later, because the vigilant frontierdefence of the Armenians had been abandoned, together with their independence. The noble family of the Mamigonians turned to the empire, and gave |