I must leave aside any consideration of the classical roots of this aspect of Gibbon’s art: I content myself with the suggestion that he owes more to Thucydides, and even to Tacitus, than is generally recognized. And I set aside for the moment the most famous of those historical phenomena that Gibbon divorced from ‘‘the natural order of events’’ (DF i. 363), namely the rise of Christianity, whose existence (but not whose name) is acknowledged and dismissed first in a footnote, as being ‘‘well known,’’ but whose importance, he concedes in a later note, ‘‘will require a distinct chapter of this work’’ (DF i. 53 n. 83; 57n. 3). For it is my contention that the pattern set by Gibbon in his first volume, of segregating and then postponing inquiry into Christianity, established a paradigm that he followed throughout - in separating Constantine’s and Licinius’ meeting in Milan from any mention of their famous ‘‘Edict’’ by 299 pages, in his treatment of Constantine’s conversion, and in his study of monasticism. I also contend that Gibbon so treated Christianity for two reasons. First, thus separating its history from that of the empire allowed him both to respect and to upend two distinct traditions within ecclesiastical historiography: that developed between the time of Origen and the time of Augustine, both of whom saw the Christian community as a separate polity; and that represented by Protestants of Gibbon’s own day, who believed the Church to have been corrupted by its association with the world in the aftermath of Constantine’s conversion (DFi. 732). Second, by construing the Christian community of that period as a polity, Gibbon was able to invite his readers to see its history as analogous to that of the empire itself, even in the period of its persecution. We therefore have to appreciate the relationship Gibbon posits between political form and political virtue, insofar as these are connected in the history of decline and fall, before we can see how that relationship structured his account of both the intrinsic character and the historical development of Christianity.
Gibbon animates his account of political virtue and its fortunes under the empire using a set of polarities that are both structural and historical: contrasts between east
And west, center and periphery, past and present, freedom and despotism. I call these both structural and historical, because Gibbon describes events and eras in which Asia and Europe collide, for example, but the polarity between the characters of Europe and Asia informs his depiction of Roman manners even when no conflict with Parthia or Islam is involved. The constituents that animate that contrast between east and west receive their clearest articulation at the close of chapter 2, in which Gibbon attempted to explain ‘‘in what manner the most civilized provinces of Europe, Asia, and Africa were united under the dominion of one sovereign, and gradually connected by the most intimate ties of laws, of manners, and of language’’ (DF i. 499):
Domestic peace and union were the natural consequences of the moderate and comprehensive policy embraced by the Romans. If we turn our eyes towards the monarchies of Asia, we shall behold despotism in the centre, and weakness in the extremities; the collection of the revenue, or the administration of justice, enforced by the presence of an army; hostile barbarians established in the heart of the country, hereditary satraps usurping the dominion of the provinces, and subjects inclined to rebellion, though incapable of freedom. But the obedience of the Roman world was uniform, voluntary, and permanent. The vanquished nations, blended into one great people, resigned the hope, nay, even the wish, of resuming their independence, and scarcely considered their own existence as distinct from the existence of Rome. (DFi. 70)
But the unification of the Roman Empire, which might be qualified as a good when contrasted with the mere dominion over unwilling subjects exercised by ‘‘the monarchies of Asia,’’ occupied a rather different position in the history of Roman manners, internally regarded. In that story, ‘‘in proportion as the public freedom was lost in extent of conquest, war was gradually improved into an art, and degraded into a trade’’ (DFi. 38).
Gibbon here alludes to events and changes outside the scope of his work, to the replacement of citizen legionaries by mercenaries from the provinces and, beyond that, to the professionalization of the citizen army in late republican Rome. ‘‘In a civilized state,’’ such as Rome of the mid-republic may have been, ‘‘every faculty of man is expanded and exercised; and the great chain of mutual dependence connects and embraces the several members of society’’ (DF i. 237; cf. 240). The virtue of the citizen at such a time consisted above all in service to the commonwealth, by the common man in the army or ‘‘in constant and useful labour,’’ and by ‘‘the select few, placed by fortune above that necessity’’ (DF i. 237), ‘‘in the offices of the state, and the ceremonies of religion’’ (DFi. 607). Moreover, as Gibbon understood it, Rome of the mid-republic had succeeded in overthrowing the dominance of blood and the institutions ofvassalage ‘‘so incompatible with the spirit ofafree people’’ (DF i. 607). Those institutions had maintained the privileges of the patricians, and so had come as close as might be to rely on ‘‘distinctions of personal merit’’ (DF i. 603). But Gibbon’s interest in republican citizenship went further still. For, though his topic required him repeatedly to contrast the loyalty of‘‘legionaries, who enjoyed the title and privileges of Romans [and] were enlisted for the general defence of the republic,’’ with that of ‘‘mercenary troops, [who] heard with cold indifference the antiquated names of the republic and of Rome’’ (DF i. 832), he crucially understood legionaries to have been citizens too: ‘‘That public virtue, which among the ancients was denominated patriotism, is derived from a strong sense of our own interest in the preservation and prosperity of the free government of which we are members’’ (DF i. 39). One privilege and consequence of membership in a commonwealth was ‘‘some share in enacting those laws, which it was their interest as well as duty to maintain’’ (DF i. 38). Not for nothing did Gibbon liken the study of Roman law to ‘‘breath[ing] the pure and invigorating air of the republic’’ (DFii. 779). Precisely because he understood the law to condition and express a society’s manners in accordance with the wishes of its sovereign members, he declared ‘‘the laws of a nation [to] form the most instructive portion of its history’’ (DF ii. 779).
But an empire could not be a republic. ‘‘There is nothing perhaps more adverse to nature and reason than to hold in obedience remote countries and foreign nations, in opposition to their inclination and interest’’ (DF iii. 142). Roman policy may have aimed to make Romans of their subjects, and indeed, ‘‘as long as Rome and Italy were respected as the centre of government, a national spirit was preserved by the ancient, and insensibly imbibed by the adopted, citizens’’ (DFi. 186). But this system proved impossible to sustain. There was first the problem, apparent already in antiquity and stated clearly by Ammianus (19. 11. 7), ‘‘that [citizens] will pay dearly to spare their bodies’’ from military service, ‘‘which ambition has often harmed the Roman state.’’ Even then, for so long as ‘‘the principal commands of the army were filled by men who had received a liberal education, were well instructed in the advantages of laws and letters, and who had risen, by equal steps, through the regular succession of civil and military honours,’’ the legions displayed a ‘‘modest obedience’’ (DFi. 186). But this system rested on an unsustainable paradox: Romans and Italians who ceased to serve defaulted on their claim to ‘‘the national spirit’’; but it was not clear how barbarian subjects could form a citizen army (DF i. 345). If, at one time, ‘‘Spain, Gaul, Britain, and Illyricum [had] supplied the legions with excellent soldiers, and constituted the real strength of the monarchy,’’ their populations as a whole ‘‘no longer possessed that public courage which is nourished by the love ofindependence, the sense of national honour, the presence of danger, and the habit of command. They received laws and governors from the will of their sovereign, and trusted for their defence to a mercenary army’’ (DF i. 83). Citizens of a republic, with the capacity for virtue, do not so much receive as enact laws; in that respect, and in others, the Romanization of provinces could only remain partial. ‘‘[T]he sovereignty of the capital was gradually annihilated in the extent of conquest; the provinces rose to the same level, and the vanquished nations acquired the name and privileges, without imbibing the partial affections, of Romans’’ (DF i. 384).
For Ammianus, who knew only monarchs, the unwillingness of provincial citizens to bear arms was a moral failure and required no further explanation. For Gibbon, however, that loss of virtue had a history that reached back into the republic, one that could not be told apart from the history of politics. For as service in arms was a preeminent expression of patriotism, so, Gibbon implies, the end of republican government will have dissolved that sense of membership that ‘‘rendered the legions of the Republic almost invincible’’ (DF i. 39). Gibbon did not tell that story, though he famously repented ‘‘not hav[ing] given the history of that fortunate period that was interposed between the two Iron ages’’ or having ‘‘deduced the decline of the Empire from the civil Wars, that ensued after the fall of Nero or even from the tyranny which succeeded the reign of Augustus’’ (marginalia to Gibbon’s copy ofvol. 1, p. 1; reprinted in DF iii. 1093). To do so would have required him to explain how the exercise of republican virtue had acquired for Rome an empire by which the liberty of its citizens was threatened and its virtue corrupted, and to sustain which the Roman republic was obliged to transform itself into a monarchy and so to surrender its freedom and virtue altogether. But if Gibbon did not relate the causes why Rome became ‘‘an absolute monarchy disguised by the forms of a commonwealth,’’ he worked assiduously to explain the effects of that transformation, in which ‘‘the distinctions of personal merit and influence, so conspicuous in a republic, so feeble and obscure under a monarchy, were abolished by the despotism of the emperors’’ (DF i. 603).
Gibbon’s history of monarchy at Rome develops in two directions at once: it charts the irrational character of authoritarian power and studies the way in which the loss of freedom and the consequent inability to exercise civic virtue affected Roman society. Gibbon knew that there had been good kings, but he could not define monarchy without imagining its corruption:
The obvious definition of a monarchy seems to be that of a state, in which a single person, by whatsoever name he may be distinguished, is intrusted with the execution of the laws, the management of the revenue, and the command of the army. But, unless public liberty is protected by intrepid and vigilant guardians, the authority of so formidable a magistrate will soon degenerate into despotism. (DFi. 85)
Gibbon’s concern derived from the pattern of history. In his view, ‘‘[t]he true interest of an absolute monarch generally coincides with that of his people. Their numbers, their wealth, their order, and their security are the best and only foundations of his real greatness; and were he totally devoid of virtue, prudence might supply its place, and would dictate the same rule of conduct’’ (DF i. 144); but the ‘‘united reigns’’ of Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and Marcus were ‘‘possibly the only period in history in which the happiness of a great people was the sole object of government’’ (DF i. 101-2). At other times, the effect of monarchy was to concentrate power in the hands of individuals, even the most able of whom could not have ‘‘subdue[d] millions of followers and enemies by their own personal strength’’ (DF i. 139). At the death of Commodus, for example, Gibbon remarks, ‘‘Such was the fate of the son of Marcus, and so easy was it to destroy a hated tyrant, who, by the artificial powers of government, had oppressed, during thirteen years, so many millions of subjects, each of whom was equal to their master in personal strength and personal abilities’’ (DF i. 120). Likewise, ‘‘the most important care of [Julia] Mamaea and her wise counsellors, was to form the character of the young emperor,’’ Alexander Severus, ‘‘on whose personal qualities the happiness or misery of the Roman world must ultimately depend’’ (DF i. 172). Nor was an emperor’s capacity to work harm limited by his caprice. Whether by mere proximity or by delegation, under the empire all manner of individuals came to wield derivative and ‘‘arbitrary’’ power (DFi. 161). And indeed, Gibbon’s remarks on one such office, the praetorian prefecture - that it was originally found to be ‘‘incompatible with public freedom,’’ but ‘‘as the sense of liberty became less exquisite, the advantages of order were more clearly understood’’ - are the closest he comes to explaining the end of democracy at Rome (DF i. 611-12).
In Gibbon’s view, the success of the Augustan system rested on its employment of the Senate as an ‘‘intermediate power, however imaginary, between the emperor and the army’’ (DFi. 147; see also 93, 96), and so long as it persisted, ‘‘princes were in some measure obliged to assume the language and behavior suitable to the general and first magistrate of the republic’’ (DF i. 387). The system was unsustainable, on two grounds. First, the stationing of an elite corps in the capital ‘‘taught them to perceive their own strength, and the weakness of the civil government; to view the vices of their masters with familiar contempt, and to lay aside that reverential awe, which distance only, and mystery, can preserve towards an imaginary power’’ (DF i. 128); and second, removed from any meaningful opportunity to exercise traditional forms of elite virtue, the would-be governing class in Rome and Italy dissipated its strength and sank into torpor. Their decline was made most manifest when the emperor Gallienus, in fear that the Senate might one day ‘‘rescue the public from domestic tyranny as well as foreign invasion,’’ published an edict prohibiting senators from military commands and even from approaching legionary camps. His fear that the senators would object was, according to Gibbon, groundless. ‘‘The rich and luxurious nobles, sinking into their natural character, accepted, as a favour, this disgraceful exemption from military service; and as long as they were indulged in the enjoyment of their baths, their theatres, and their villas, they cheerfully resigned the more dangerous cares of empire to the rough hands of peasants and soldiers’’ (DF i. 273).
But the collapse of the empire’s governing class had begun much earlier, and took place on two levels. One was that of culture, and derives (like the ‘‘imaginary’’ powers of government) from some failure of correspondence between action, ability, apprehension, and reality. For the educated class in the provinces, like that of Italy, looked ever to the literary models generated in a world unlike their own. ‘‘[T]rained by a uniform artificial foreign education, [they] were engaged in a very unequal competition with those bold ancients, who, by expressing their genuine feelings in their native tongue, had already occupied every place of honour’’ (DF i. 84). It was this system of education that inspired the culture of belatedness that Gibbon so often described and deplored. The other level is that ofvirtue, and on that level the collapse had advanced far already in the second century, and is clearly visible even in Gibbon’s most famous panegyric to the Antonine empire:
If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world, during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus. The vast extent of the Roman empire was governed by absolute power, under the guidance of virtue and wisdom. The armies were restrained by the firm but gentle hand of four successive emperors, whose characters and authority commanded involuntary respect. The forms of the civil administration were carefully preserved by Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and the Antonines, who delighted in the image of liberty, and were pleased with considering themselves as the accountable ministers of the laws. Such princes deserved the honour of restoring the republic, had the Romans of their days been capable of enjoying a rational freedom. (DFi. 103)
In their incapacity for freedom, the Romans of the second century resemble none so much as the provincial subjects of the monarchies of Asia (see DF i. 70, quoted above). Such was the power of government, so high the price of empire.
World History
