VIIY of the rising generation; requesting, in religious CHA P. hymus, that according to the faith of their ans cient oracles, they would still maintain the virtue, the felicity, and the empire of the Roman people* The magnificence of Philip's shows and entertainments dazzled the eyes of the multitude. The devout were employed in the rites of superstition, whilst the reflecting few revolved in their anxious minds the past history and the future fate of the empire.cooled the Roman empire. Since Romulus, with a small band of shepherds Decline of and outlaws, fortified himself on the hills near the Tyber, ten centuries had already elapsed f. During the four first ages, the Romans, in the laborious school of poverty, had acquired the virtues of war and government: By the vigorous exertion of those virtues, and by the assistance of fortune, they had obtained, in the course of the three succeeding centuries, an absolute empire over many countries of Europe, Asia, and Africa. The last three hundred years had been consumed in apparent prosperity and internal decline. The nation of soldiers, magistrates, and legislators, who composed the thirty-five tribes of the Roman people, was dissolved into the common mass of mankind, and confounded with the millions of servile provincials, who had received the name, without * The idea of the secular games is best understood from the poem of Horace, and the description of Zosimus, l. ii. p. 167, &c. + The received calculation of Varro assigns to the foundation of Rome, an æra that corresponds with the 754th year before Christ. But so little is the chronology of Rome to be depended on, in the more early ages, that Sir Isaac Newton has brought the same event as low as the year 627. VII. CHA P. without adopting the spirit of Romans. A mercenary army, levied among the subjects and barbarians of the frontier, was the only order of men who preserved and abused their independence by their tumultuary election, a Syrian, a Goth, or an Arab, was exalted to the throne of Rome, and invested with despotic power over the conquests and over the country of the Scipios The limits of the Roman empire still extended from the Western Ocean to the Tigris, and from · Mount Atlas to the Rhine and the Danube. To the undiscerning eye of the vulgar, Philip appeared a monarch no less powerful than Hadrian or Augustus had formerly been. The form was still the same, but the animating health and vigour were fled. The industry of the people was discouraged and exhausted by a long series of oppression. The discipline of the legions, which alone, after the extinction of every other virtue, had propped the greatness of the state, was corrupted by the ambition, or relaxed by the weakness, of the emperors. The strength of the frontiers, which had always consisted in arms rather than in fortifications, was insensibly undermined; and the fairest provinces left exposed to the rapaciousness or ambition of the barbarians, who soon discovered the decline of the Roman empire. CHAP! CHAP. VIII. Of the State of Persia after the restoration of the W The barba the North. HENEVER Tacitus indulges himself in c H A P. those beautiful episodes, in which he VIII. relates some domestic transaction of the Germans or of the Parthians, his principal object is to re- rians of the lieve the attention of the reader from a uniform East and of scene of vice and misery. From the reign of Augustus to the time of Alexander Severus, the enemies of Rome were in her bosom; the tyrants, and the soldiers; and her prosperity had a very distant and feeble interest in the revolutions that might happen beyond the Rhine and the Euphrates. But when the military order had levelled, in wild anarchy, the power of the prince, the laws of the senate, and even the discipline of the camp, the barbarians of the north and of the east, who had long hovered on the frontier, boldly attacked the provinces of a declining monarchy. Their vexatious inroads were changed into formidable irruptions, and after a long vicissitude of mutual calamities, many tribes of the victorious invaders established themselves in the provinces of the Roman empire. To obtain a clearer knowledge of these great events, we shall endeavour to form a previous idea of the character, forces, and designs of those nations who avenged the cause of Hannibal and Mithridates. Revolutione of Asia. CHAP. In the more early ages of the world, whilst the VIII. forest covered Europe afforded a retreat to a few wandering savages, the inhabitants of Asia were already collected into populous cities, and reduced under extensive empires, the seat of the arts, of luxury, and of despotism. The Assyrians reigned over the east *, till the sceptre of Ninus and Semiramis dropt from the hands of their enervated successors. The Medes and the Babylonians divided their power, and were themselves swallowed up in the monarchy of the Persians, whose arms could not be confined within the narrow limits of Asia, Followed, as it is said, by two millions of men, Xerxes, the descendant of Cyrus, invaded Greece. Thirty thousand soldiers, under the command of Alexander, the son of Philip, who was intrusted by the Greeks with their glory and revenge, were sufficient to subdue Persia. The princes of the house of Seleucus usurped and lost the Macedonian command over the East. About the same time, that, by an ignominious treaty, they resigned to the Romans the country on this side Mount Taurus, they were driven by the Parthians, an obscure hōrde of Scythian origin, from all the provinces of Upper Asia. The formidable power of the Par thians, 17 * An ancient chronologist quoted by Velleius Paterculus (1. i. c. 6.) observes, that the Assyrians, the Medes, the Persians, and the Macedonians, reigned over Asia one thousand nine hundred and ninety-five years, from the accession of Ninus to the defeat of Antiochus by the Romans. As the latter of these great events happened 289 years before Christ, the former may be placed 2184 years before the same æra. The Astronomical Observations, found at Babylon by Alexander, went fifty years higher. thians, which spread from India to the frontiers chap. ន of Syria, was in its turn subverted by Ardshir, or VIII. 5 Artaxerxes; the founder of a new dynasty, which, under the name of Sassanides, governed Persia till the invasion of the Arabs. This great revolution, whose fatal influence was soon experienced by the Romans, happened in the fourth year of Alexander Severus, two hundred and twenty-six years after the Christian æra *. Artaxerxes had served with great reputation in the armies of Artaban, the last king of the Parthians, and it appears that he was driven into exile and rebellion by royal ingratitude, the customary reward for superior merit. His birth was obscure, and the obscurity equally gave room to the aspersions of his enemies, and the flattery of his adherents. If we credit the scandal of the former, Artaxerxes sprang from the illegitimate commerce of a tanner's wife with a common soldier †. The latter represent him, as descended from a branch of the ancient kings of Persia, though time and misfortune had gradually reduced his ancestors to the humble station of pri vate * In the five hundred and thirty-eighth year of the æra of Seleucus. See Agathias, l. ii. p. 63. This great event (such is the carelessness of the Orientals) is placed by Eutychius, as high as the tenth year of Commodus; and by Moses of Chorene, as low as the reign of Philip. Ammianus Marcellinus has so servilely copied (xxiii. 6.) his ancient materials, which are indeed very good, that he describes the family of the Arsacides as still seated on the Persian throne in the middle of the fourth century. + The tanner's name was Babec; the soldier's, Sassan: from the former Artaxerxes obtained the surname of Babegan; from the latter, all his descendants have been styled Sassanides. The Per sian mo narchy re stored by Artaxerxes. |