At that time the Stoic Sect [a] was expanding and gaining favor in the empire. It seemed that human nature had made an effort to produce this admirable sect out of itself -- like those plants the earth brings forth in places the heavens have never seen.

The Romans owed their best emperors to it. Nothing can make us forget the first Antoninus except the man he adopted -- Marcus Aurelius. We feel a secret pleasure within ourselves in speaking of this emperor; we cannot read his life without experiencing a kind of tenderness. Such is the effect it produces that we have a better opinion of ourselves because we have a better opinion of men.

The wisdom of Nerva, the glory of Trajan, the valor of Hadrian, and the virtue of the two Antonines commanded the respect of the soldiers. But, when new monsters took their place, the abuses of military government appeared in all their excesses; and the soldiers, who had sold the empire, assassinated the emperors in order to obtain a new price for it.

We hear that somewhere in the world a prince [b] has been working for fifteen years to abolish civil government in his states and establish military government. I have no wish to make odious reflections on this design. I shall only say that, by the nature of things, two hundred guards can give security to the life of a prince, but not eighty thousand; besides which, it is more dangerous to oppress an armed people than one that is not armed.

Commodus succeeded Marcus Aurelius, his father. He was a monster who indulged all his passions and all those of his ministers and courtesans. Those who rid the world of him put in his place a venerable old man named Pertinax, whom the praetorian guards immediately massacred.

They put the empire up for auction, and Didius Julianus won it with his promises. Everyone was indignant at this, for although the empire had been bought before, it had never been haggled over. Pescennius Niger, Severus, and Albinus were acclaimed emperors; and Julianus was Abandoned by the soldiers because he could not pay the immense sums he had promised.

Severus defeated Niger and Albinus. He had great qualities, but gentleness -- that prime virtue of princes -- was lacking in him.

The power of the emperors could more easily appear tyrannical than the power of the princes of our own day. Their office was a collection of all the Roman magistracies. As dictators under the name of emperors, as tribunes of the people, proconsuls, censors, grand pontiffs, and -- when they wished -- consuls, they often dispensed distributive justice [c]. They could therefore easily arouse the suspicion that they had oppressed those they had condemned -- for the people usually judge the abuse of power by the greatness of power. But the kings of Europe, who are legislators and not executors of the law, princes and not judges, have divested themselves of the part of authority that can be odious. And while granting favors themselves, they have committed to special magistrates the meting out of punishments.

Hardly any emperors were more jealous of their authority than Tiberius and Severus. Yet both let themselves be governed in a contemptible fashion, the one by Sejanus, the other by Plautian.

The unfortunate practice of proscription, introduced by Sulla, continued under the emperors; and it was even necessary for a prince to possess some virtue in order not to follow it. For his ministers and favorites immediately envisioned a vast number of confiscations, and they spoke to him only of the need for punishing and the perils of clemency.

The proscriptions of Severus caused many of Niger's soldiers [1] to take refuge among the Parthians [2]. They taught the Parthians what was lacking in their military art, including the use of Roman arms and even their manufacture. Because of this, these peoples, who had usually been content to defend themselves, afterwards were almost always aggressors [3].

In this series of civil wars which arose continually, it remarkable that those who had the support of the European legions almost always vanquished those supported by the Asian legions [4]. And we find in the history of Severus that he could not take the city of Atra in Arabia because the European legions had mutinied, forcing him to use those of Syria.

This difference was evident ever since troop levies were begun in the provinces [5]; and it existed among legions as among peoples themselves, who, by nature and education, are unequally suited for war.

These levies made in the provinces had another effect. Since the emperors were usually drawn from the army, they were nearly all foreigners and sometimes barbarians. Rome was no longer master of the world, but it received laws from the entire world.

Each emperor brought to it something from his country, whether by way of manners, morals, public order, or religion. And Heliogabalus went so far as to want to destroy all of Rome's objects of veneration and remove all the gods from their temples in order to place his own there.

Apart from the secret means God chose to use and which He alone knows, this did much for the establishment of the Christian religion. For there was no longer anything foreign in the empire, and people were prepared to accept all the customs an emperor might wish to introduce.

We know the Romans accepted the gods of other countries into their city. They accepted them as conquerors, and had them carried in the triumphs; but when foreigners themselves came to establish their gods, they were repressed at once. We know, moreover, that the Romans had the custom of giving foreign gods the names of those of their own gods who were most closely related to them. But when the priests of other countries wanted to have their gods worshiped at Rome under their own names, they were not permitted to do so; and this was one of the great obstacles the Christian religion encountered.

Caracalla could be called the destroyer of men rather than a tyrant. Caligula, Nero, and Domitian limited their cruelties to Rome; Caracalla proceeded to extend his frenzy to the whole world.

Severus had employed the exactions of a long reign and the proscriptions of those who had belonged to the party of his competitors to amass immense treasures.

Having begun his reign by killing his brother, Geta, with his own hand, Caracalla used these riches to persuade the soldiers to tolerate his crime; for they loved Geta and said they had taken an oath to both children of Severus, not to one alone.

The treasures amassed by princes almost never have anything but grievous effects. They corrupt the prince's successor, who is dazzled by them; and if they do not corrupt his heart, they corrupt his mind. He immediately plans great enterprises with a power that is accidental, that cannot endure, that is not natural, and that is inflated rather than enlarged.

Caracalla increased the pay of the soldiers. Macrinus wrote the senate that this increase came to seventy million [6] drachmas [7]. It appears this prince exaggerated. If we compare the expense of paying our soldiers today with the rest of the public expenses, and follow the same proportion for the Romans, we see that this sum would have been enormous.

It is necessary to inquire what the pay of the Roman soldier was. We learn from Orosius that Domitian increased the established pay by one quarter [8]. It appears from the speech of a soldier in Tacitus [9] that at Augustus' death it was ten ounces of copper. We find in Suetonius [10] that Caesar had doubled the pay in his time. Pliny [11] says that in the Second Punic War it had been reduced by a fifth. It was therefore about six ounces of copper in the First [12] Punic War, five ounces in the Second [13], ten under Caesar, and thirteen and a third under Domitian [14]. Here I shall present some reflections.

The pay the republic easily provided when it was only a small state, waged a war every year, and every year received spoils, it could not -- without incurring debt -- keep up during the First Punic War, when it extended its arms beyond Italy and had to sustain a long war and support large armies.

In the Second Punic War the pay was reduced to five ounces of copper; and this decrease could be effected without danger, at a time when most of the citizens blushed to accept payment at all and wanted to serve at their own expense.

The treasures of Perseus and so many other kings that were continually brought to Rome put an end to taxes there [15]. Amid public and private opulence, the Romans had the wisdom not to increase the pay of five ounces of copper.

Although from this pay a deduction was made for grain, clothing, and arms, it was sufficient because only citizens who had a patrimony were enrolled.

After Marius had enrolled men without a patrimony, and because his example was followed, Caesar was forced to increase the pay.

Since this increase was continued after Caesar's death, the government was compelled, under the consulate of Hirtius and Pansa, to reestablish taxes.

When Domitian's weakness made him increase the pay by a quarter, he dealt a great blow to the state, for the prevalence of luxury -- while not itself a misfortune -- becomes one if it occurs under conditions which, by the nature of things, call for having only physical necessities. Finally, once Caracalla had granted a new increase, the empire was placed in a situation where it could not endure without soldiers and could not endure with them.

To diminish the horror at the murder of his brother, Caracalla placed him in the rank of the gods, and, oddly enough, this was the treatment he himself received from Macrinus. After having had him stabbed, Macrinus wanted to appease the praetorian guards, who had become desperate at the death of a prince who had given them so much. He had a temple built to him and established flaminian priests [d] in his honor.

This was why Caracalla's memory was not stigmatized, and why, since the senate did not dare judge him, he was not placed in the rank of the tyrants, like Commodus, who did not deserve it more than he [16].

Of two great emperors, Hadrian and Severus [17], one established military discipline, and the other relaxed it. The effects correspond directly to the causes: the reigns following Hadrian's were happy and tranquil; those following Severus full of horrors.

The gifts Caracalla lavished on the soldiers had been immense; and he had very faithfully followed his dying father's counsel to enrich the military and not bother about anyone else.

But this policy could hardly be good for more than one reign. The succeeding emperor, unable to maintain the same expenses, was immediately massacred by the army, so that the wise emperors were always put to death by the soldiers, and the wicked ones by the plots or decrees of the senate.

When a tyrant gave himself over to the military and left the citizens exposed to its violence and rapine, the situation could not last more than one reign; for the soldiers, by their destruction, went so far as to strip themselves of the sources of their own pay. It therefore became necessary to think of reestablishing military discipline -- an enterprise which always cost the life of whoever dared attempt it.

When Caracalla had been killed in a trap laid by Macrinus, the soldiers were desperate at having lost a prince who dispensed without limit, and ejected Heliogabalus [18]. The latter, occupied only with his obscene pleasures, let them live as they fancied; and when they could no longer tolerate him, they massacred him. In the same way they killed Alexander, who wanted to reestablish discipline and spoke of punishing them [19].

Thus a tyrant, who made sure not of his life but of his power to commit crimes, perished with the grievous advantage that anyone wishing to do better would perish after him.

After Alexander, Maximin, the first emperor of barbarian origin, was elected. His gigantic height and his physical strength had made him well known.

He and his son were killed by the soldiers. The first two Gordians perished in Africa. Maximus, Balbinus, and the third Gordian were massacred. Philip, who had had the young Gordian killed, was himself killed with his son; and Declus, who was elected in his place, perished in turn by the treason of Gallus [20].

What was called the Roman empire, in this century, was a kind of irregular republic, much like the aristocracy of Algeria, where the army, which has sovereign power, makes and unmakes a magistrate called the dey. And perhaps it is rather general rule that military government is, in certain respects, republican rather than monarchical.

And let it not be said that the soldiers took part in the government only by their disobedience and revolts. Did not the harangues the emperors delivered to them belong, in the last analysis, to the genre of those the consuls and tribunes had formerly delivered to the people? And although the armies did not have one particular place in which to assemble, although they did not conduct themselves according to certain forms, although they were not usually coolheaded -- being given to little deliberation and much action -- did they not as sovereigns dispose of the public estate? And what was an emperor except the minister of a violent government, elected for the special benefit of the soldiers?

When the army made Philip a partner in the imperial power [21], he was the praetorian prefect of the third Gordian. The latter asked that the entire command be left in his hands, but could not get it. He harangued the army to make them both equal in power, and did not succeed in that either. He begged that the title of Caesar be left to him, and was refused. He asked to be praetorian prefect, and his entreaties were rejected. Finally, he spoke for his life. In its various judgments here, the army was exercising the supreme magistracy.

The barbarians, who at first were unknown to the Romans, then only inconvenient, had become dangerous to them. By the most extraordinary set of circumstances, Rome had so completely annihilated all peoples that, when Rome itself was conquered, it seemed that the earth had given birth to new peoples to destroy it.

The princes of great states usually have few neighboring countries that can become the object of their ambition. If any had existed, they would already have been enveloped in the course of conquest. Such states are therefore bounded by seas, mountains, and vast deserts, the destitution of which causes them to be scorned. Thus, the Romans left the Germans in their forests, and the people of the north in their icefields; and nations were preserved, or even formed, there by which the Romans themselves were finally subjugated.

In Gallus' reign, a great number of nations which afterwards became better known ravaged Europe; and the Persians, after invading Syria, only forsook their conquests to preserve their booty.

These swarms of barbarians who once came out of the north no longer appear today. The violence of the Romans had made the peoples of the south withdraw to the north. While the force containing them lasted, they stayed there; when it was weakened, they spread out in every direction [22]. The same thing happened several centuries later. The conquests of Charlemagne and his tyrannical acts had made the peoples of the south retreat to the north a second time, and as soon as this empire was weakened, they moved from north to south a second time. And if some prince committed the same ravages in Europe today, the nations repulsed to the north, backed against the limits of the world, would hold firm there until the moment when they would inundate and conquer Europe a third time.

As the terrible disorder in the succession to the empire reached its height, one saw thirty different pretenders appear at the end of Valerian's reign and during that of his son, Gallienus. They destroyed each other, for the most part, after very short reigns, and were proclaimed tyrants.

With Valerian captured by the Persians, and his son neglecting affairs, the barbarians penetrated everywhere. The empire found itself in the same condition as it did about a century later in the west [23], and it would have been destroyed then and there had not a happy concurrence of circumstances given it new life.

Odaenathus, prince of Palmyra -- an ally of the Romans -- drove back the Persians, who had invaded almost all of Asia. The city of Rome created an army of its citizens which warded off the barbarians who came to pillage it. An immense army of Scythians, which crossed the sea with six thousand vessels, perished from shipwreck, wretched conditions, famine and its own size. And after Gallienus was killed, Claudius, Aurelian, Tacitus, and Probus -- four great men, who, by a great stroke of luck, succeeded each other -- reestablished an empire that was about to perish.