212 TRIUMPH OF AURELIAN. Bactriana, India, and, it is added, China, attracted attention by their rich and singular dresses. Aurelian himself, in a chariot that had belonged to a Gothic king, accompanied by the chief magistrates, officers, and senators, closed the procession. The emperor treated Tetricus and his son as generously as Zenobia; he restored to them their senatorial rank and fortune, and gave to Tetricus the government of a district in Italy. It is related that he built a magnificent palace near Rome, and when it was finished invited his benefactor to supper. Aurelian was flattered and surprised by seeing at his entrance a picture representing the singular history of his host. Tetricus and his son being painted in the act of offering to Aurelian the sceptre of Gaul, while he gave them in return their senatorial robes. The rest of Aurelian's reign was marked by cruelty, as he governed with severity the people whom he had apparently saved from ruin. It is said, the prisons were crowded and the executioners fatigued with their work: but it is certain crime and iniquity of every kind abounded, and it was no easy thing to execute judgment and to do justly in such times. The great object of Aurelian's adoration was the sun: his mother had been an inferior priestess in the temple of the sun, and he believed that he owed his success to the favour of this imaginary god. Thus, when all the temples in Rome shone with his offerings, that of the sun received fifteen thousand pounds of gold as a proof of his devotion. His passionate idolatry would have led him to persecute the Christians, but his death prevented the execution of his designs.* In October, A. D. 274, Aurelian led his armies into the East, with the intention of renewing the war with Persia; but while he was in the neighbourhood of Byzantium he was killed under the following circumstances. He had threatened one of his secretaries with death as the punishment of his extortion; and this officer, knowing that his master rarely threatened in vain, determined to save his own life at the expense of the emperor's. Counterfeiting Aurelian's handwriting, he drew out a long list of persons devoted to death, including the chief officers of the army; and this paper he presented to them, pretending he had accidentally discovered it. * Aurelian had so far favoured the Christians at the time of his conquests in the East, that when they referred to him the case of Paul of Samosata, he desired the bishops to settle the matter as they thought right, and the heretic was consequently expelled. MURDER OF AURELIAN. 213 As he expected, they immediately plotted together to destroy Aurelian, and he fell by the hand of a general whom he had loved and trusted. This was in January, A.D. 275. The artifice of the secretary was soon discovered, and the deceived officers caused him to be executed; and showed their sorrow in bitter lamentations over the murdered emperor. The funeral honours were celebrated with extraordinary pomp; and it was agreed to send a letter to Rome to the following effect: The brave and fortunate armies to the senate and people of Rome. The crime of one man and the error of many have deprived us of the late emperor. May it please you, venerable lords and fathers, to place him in the number of the gods, and to appoint a successor whom your judgment shall declare worthy of the purple. None of those whose guilt or misfortune have contributed to our loss shall ever reign over us." This letter was written in February; and during eight months the senate refused to appoint, and the army to elect, a successor to the empire. Such a singular contest had never taken place before. An historian has remarked, it seemed as if all parties were tired of contest and afraid to excite fresh disturbances. Though the Roman world was without a master, the generals and magistrates went on with their usual duties as if they had been under the control of Aurelian, and no one attempted to obtain sovereign power. It seemed as if no mind towered above the rest; or, it may be, the violent deaths of so many emperors, kept down the desires of the most aspiring. CHAP. XXXVI. - COMMERCE. REMARKS ON ROMAN ROADS. -PROGRESS OF CIVILIZATION. ANCIENT DURING this singular interval of tranquillity we can take a general survey of the empire, as we have before looked at the capital. The public highways issuing from the Forum, the great place of public business in the centre of Rome, were carried through Italy and the provinces, even to the frontiers of the empire; and no country was considered thoroughly subdued till this means of communication was established, and the passage of the legions made easy. The Roman roads generally ran in a straight line from city to city, with little regard for public or private property, or any obstacle that lay in the way. The middle part of the road was raised by several layers of sand and gravel, and paved with large stones strongly cemented together; indeed, so solid was the structure of these highways, that they may now be traced, even in our own country, after a lapse of fifteen centuries. It is calculated that the line of communication through the empire, from the north-western point, the wall of Antoninus, to the south-eastern point, Jerusalem, extended four thousand and eighty Roman miles. The road was marked by mile-stones; and post-houses were built at regular intervals of five or six miles: at these, horses were always kept in readiness; and by means of such relays the emperor's messengers could easily travel a hundred miles a day. Private persons were sometimes permitted to use these helps in making a journey. The imperial mandates were almost as easily conveyed by sea. Vessels were in waiting at the port of Ostia, only sixteen miles from Rome; and with a favourable wind they might reach Alexandria in nine or ten days. The light of civilization and of Christianity appears to have passed, like the light of the natural sun, from the east to the west part of the countries included in the Roman empire. For when Britain was in a state of barbarism and heathen darkness, Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt were highly civilized, and in the bright light of the morning of Christianity; and now, whilst we are catching the brightest of the evening rays of the Gospel, these countries are in midnight gloom. Even the ruins of Roman architecture, which are seen in Turkey, Arabia, and Africa, appear like super-human works to the present indolent inhabitants, who see them scattered over their fields and plains. The arts and luxuries of life had been known for ages before their introduction into Europe; and it was commerce with Asia and Egypt that gave to the Romans the productions of warmer climates, and the fruits of the industry of more ingenious nations. Eastern commerce was chiefly carried on by means of an Egyptian fleet sent yearly to Ceylon, where the Asiatic merchants brought their goods: but as the Arabians and Indians were contented with the produce and manufactures of their own countries, the Romans were obliged to give them gold and silver for their merchandise. A pound of silk was valued at a pound of gold, and immense sums were spent in the purchase of precious stones, and the great variety of aromatic drugs consumed in heathen worship, or at funerals. Babylonian carpets, and other costly manufactures, were also brought from the East to adorn the Roman palaces. Almost all our flowers, herbs, and fruits, came from the eastern regions; and as the apple was the familiar fruit of Italy, the Romans gave the common name of apple (poma) to the apricot, peach, pomegranate, citron, and orange, distinguishing them by the names of the country from which they came. Homer mentions the vine as growing wild in Sicily in his days; and the art of making wine was so perfected a thousand years after, that Pliny remarks two-thirds of the best wines were from the vineyards of Italy. The vine was introduced into Gaul by the Romans; and it is supposed the vineyards of Burgundy were first planted in the days of the Antonines. The olive was not known in Italy till two hundred years after the foundation of Rome; but after being naturalized there, it was carried by the conquering Romans into Spain and Gaul. In the time of the Cæsars, Asia Minor contained five hundred populous cities, enriched by the good providence of God and adorned by the arts of man. Eleven of these cities disputed with each other the honour of building a temple to Tiberius, for all of them had independent revenues. The senate decided that four of them, including Laodicea, were unequal to the burden : yet the wealth of Laodicea is proved by the ruins that remain, and by the fact that a private citizen left to the treasury £400,000 shortly before the contest. The prosperity of this city, indeed, seems to have been prejudicial to the church planted there, and it declined sooner than any of the churches of Asia. Pergamus, Smyrna, and Ephesus each pretended to the title of the capital of Asia; but these cities were very inferior to Antioch and Alexandria: in fact the capitals of Syria and Egypt almost equalled Rome itself. The wealth of the Romans was often calculated by the number of slaves they could employ; and in a single palace in 216 SLAVES AND SLAVERY. Rome four hundred such servants were often to be seen. These slaves consisted originally of the captives taken in war; and while the supply was great, by reason of foreign conquests, their lives were considered of little value, and they were often treated with great cruelty. But if a slave made himself useful or agreeable to his master he might be rewarded with freedom in a few years, though the disgrace of servitude was not forgotten till the third or fourth generation. The laws of Adrian and the Antonines greatly improved the condition of slaves; and the decrease of the supply from abroad made them more valuable property. The freed slave might obtain the rights of a private citizen, but was shut out from any civil or military office; and his sons, however great their wealth or talents, could not obtain a seat in the senate. It is said that a freedman in the reign of Augustus, after he had lost a good part of his fortune in the civil wars, left behind him 3600 yoke of oxen, 250,000 head of smaller cattle, and 4116 slaves. Slavery is one among the multitude of proofs that it is not in man to love his neighbour as himself: for there is nothing perhaps that the human mind so naturally rebels against as servitude. Man was originally given dominion over every living thing, but not over his fellow. After the fall, the husband was to rule over the wife (Gen. iii. 16), and the elder over the younger (iv. 7). The object of this kind of rule was to be blessing, the stronger being more fitted to rule the weaker. But in the first mention we have of slavery, we find it is the consequence of a curse on account of sin (ix. 25). Canaan had sinned, and was to be the servant or slave of his brethren. Israel too, as the peculiar people of God, the holy nation, were permitted to buy bondmen and bondmaids of the heathen round about them. And if they were faithfully walking as God's people, their service was a privilege and not a hardship; and their slaves were brought into circumstances of peculiar blessing. The permission given to Israel, therefore, to buy slaves of the heathen, can be no more taken as a general authority for man to enslave his fellow, than the wars of Israel, as God's righteous executioners, can be taken as an argument for the lawfulness of war. Yet as God, in his good providence, loves to bring good out of evil, so it appears that the great evil of slavery prevented the greater evil of the careless destruction of human life for in ancient times war would have been far more bloody |