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by J. B. Bury Macmillan & Co., Ltd., 1923 PREFACE The first of these two volumes might be entitled the "German Conquest of Western Europe," and the second the "Age of Justinian." The first covers more than one hundred and twenty years, the second somewhat less than fifty. This disparity is a striking illustration of the fact that perspective and proportion are unavoidably lost in an attempt to tell the story of any considerable period of ancient or early medieval history as fully as our sources allow. Perspective can be preserved only in an outline. The fifth century was one of the most critical periods in the history of Europe. It was crammed with events of great moment, and the changes which it witnessed transformed Europe more radically than any set of political events that have happened since. At that time hundreds of people were writing abundantly on all kinds of subjects, and many of their writings have survived; but among these there is no history of contemporary events, and the story has had to be pieced together from fragments, jejune chronicles, incidental references in poets, rhetoricians, and theologians. Inscribed stones which supply so much information for the first four centuries of the Roman Empire are rare. Nowhere, since the time of Alexander the Great, do we feel so strongly that the meagreness of the sources flouts the magnitude of the events. Battles, for instance, were being fought continually, but no full account of a single battle is extant. We know much more of the Syrian campaigns of Thothmes III in the fifteenth century B.C. than we know of the campaigns of Stilicho or Aetius or Theoderic. The Roman emperors, statesmen, and generals are dim figures, some of them mere names. And as to the barbarian leaders who were forging the destinies of Europe — Alaric, Athaulf, Wallia, Gaiseric, Attila, and the rest — we can form little or no idea of their personalities; toi\ de\ skiai\ a)i/ssousin. Historians of the Church are somewhat better off. The personalities of Augustine and Jerome, for instance, do emerge. Yet here, too, there is much obscurity. To understand the history of the Ecumenical Councils, we want much more than the official Acts. We want the background, and of it we can only see enough to know that these Councils resembled modern political conventions, that the arts of lobbying were practised, and that intimidation and bribery were employed to force theological arguments. Although we know little of the details of the process by which the western provinces of the Empire became German kingdoms, one fact stands out. The change of masters was not the result of anything that could be called a cataclysm. The German peoples, who were much fewer in numbers than is often imagined, at first settled in the provinces as dependents, and a change which meant virtually conquest was disguised for a shorter or longer time by their recognition of the nominal rights of the Emperor. Britain, of which we know less than of any other part of the Empire at this period, seems to have been the only exception to this rule. The consequence was that the immense revolution was accomplished with far less violence and upheaval than might have been expected. This is the leading fact which it is the chief duty of the historian to make clear. When we come to the age of Justinian we know better how and why things happened, because we have the guidance of a gifted contemporary historian whose works we possess in their entirety, and we have a large collection of the Emperor's laws. The story of Justinian's Italian wars was fully related by my friend the late Mr. Hodgkin in his attractive volume on the Imperial Restoration; and, more recently, Justinian and the Byzantine Civilisation of the Sixth Century have been the subject of a richly illustrated book by my friend M. Charles Diehl. I do not compete with them; but I believe that in my second volume the reader will find a fuller account of the events of the reign than in any other single work. I have endeavoured to supply the material which will enable him to form his own judgment on Justinian, and to have an opinion on the "question" of Theodora, of whom perhaps the utmost that we can safely say is that she was, in the words used by Swinburne of Mary Stuart, "something better than innocent." The present work does not cover quite half the period which was the subject of my Later Roman Empire, published in 1889 and long out of print, as it is written on a much larger scale. Western affairs have been treated as fully as Eastern, and the exciting story of Justinian's reconquest of Italy has been told at length. I have to thank my wife for help of various kinds; Mr. Ashby, the Director of the British School at Rome, for reading the proof-sheets of Vol. I; and Mr. Norman Baynes for reading those of some chapters of Vol. II. I must also record my obligations, not for the first time, to the readers of Messrs. R. and R. Clark, whose care and learning have sensibly facilitated the progress of the book through the press. J. B. BURY CHAPTER I THE CONSTITUTION OF THE MONARCHY The continuity of history, which means the control of the present and future by the past, has become a commonplace, and chronological limits, which used to be considered important, are now recognised to have little significance except as convenient landmarks in a historical survey. Yet there are what we may call culminating epochs, in which the accumulating tendencies of the past, reaching a certain point, suddenly effect a visible transformation which seems to turn the world in a new direction. Such a culminating epoch occurred in the history of the Roman Empire at the beginning of the fourth century. The reign of Constantine the Great inaugurated a new age in a much fuller sense than the reign of Augustus, the founder of the Empire. The anarchy of the third century, when it almost seemed that the days of the Roman Empire were numbered, had displayed the defects of the irregular and heterogeneous system of government which Augustus had established to administer his immense dominion. His successors had introduced modifications and improvements here and there, but events made it clearer and clearer that a new system, more centralised and more uniform, was required, if the Empire was to be held together. To Diocletian, who rescued the Roman world at the brink of the abyss, belongs the credit of having framed a new system of administrative machinery. Constantine developed and completed the work of Diocletian by measures which were more radical and more far-reaching. The foundation of Constantinople as a second Rome inaugurated a permanent division between the Eastern and Western, the Greek and the Latin, halves of the Empire — a division to which events had already pointed — and p2affected decisively the whole subsequent history of Europe. Still more evidently and notoriously did Constantine mould the future by accepting Christianity as the State religion. In the present work the history of the Roman Empire is taken up at a point about sixty years after Constantine's death, when the fundamental changes which he introduced have been firmly established and their consequences have emerged into full evidence. The new system of government has been elaborated in detail, and the Christian Church has become so strong that no enemies could prevail against it. Constantinople, created in the likeness of Rome, has become her peer and will soon be fully equipped for the great rôle which she is to play in Europe and Hither Asia for more than a thousand years. She definitely assumes now her historical position. For after the death of Theodosius the Great, who had ruled alone for a short time over a dominion extending from Scotland to Mesopotamia, the division of the Empire into two geographical portions, an [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |
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