Galerius was furious when he heard what had happened, for he wanted to be sole emperor. But he was afraid of the northern army. He sent his royal messenger to Constantine, with an imperial mandate, allowing the young man to take command of the troops of Gaul, but forbidding him to take the title of Caesar.
To this Constantine and his soldiers would not agree. War followed. Different Caesars were raised up by different armies, till at one time six emperors were reigning in the empire, of whom Constantine and Galerius were only two. However, Constantine marched with a small but experienced army over the Alps, and defeated a great host in North Italy. He had now the chance of marching on Rome. The Aemilian and Flaminian roads stretched before him, from Milan running south. But he had not yet defeated all his enemies.
At last, the armies in Italy were all broken. In 312 Constantine came to Rome, the great mother-city, and was hailed as emperor. To make friends for himself, he wisely pronounced an act of oblivion, stating that all the deeds of enmity committed by the Romans against him in the past should be considered as forgotten, buried in oblivion. This reassured many frightened people, who fully expected to lose their lives for having sided against the conqueror, and it brought many to his side. He then destroyed the Praetorian Camp, the stronghold of hostile and insolent Roman guards. He also issued an edict of religious toleration, in 313, which allowed all Romans to worship as they pleased. This was a great boon to the trembling Christians.
There were still hostile armies, however. It was necessary to march against the troops of Licinius, on the Danube, then down from the Danube to the Bosphorus. There Constantine besieged the gate-town of Byzantium, a strong fortification. Licinius fled into Asia. Constantine pursued him, defeated him, and at last executed him in Nicomedia.
Thus, in 325, Constantine became master of the world. In the same year he issued letters exhorting his subjects to accept Christianity. But he allowed freedom of worship to all.
Constantine felt himself to be not only the master of the empire, but the founder of a new era: which, indeed, he was. With Constantine the old pagan Rome comes to an end. A new world was to begin, and Constantine wished to give it its new centre. He disliked Rome, the old, terrible mistress of the past. She was too much stained with blood and violence. The Capitol, the very centre of the old world, was crowned with the temples of the old gods, and these old gods could not soon be forgotten. Their spirit filled the old city. Then, too, there had been so much strife, so much violence, so much cruelty and splendour in the Eternal City by the Tiber, the City on the Seven Hills.
The later emperors nearly all disliked Rome. They were strangers, born far off. They depended on far-off armies. They found the Romans conceited and impudent and troublesome. Diocletian would not live in the capital. He preferred even Milan. And he loved Nicomedia, just in Asia. He retired away into Dalmatia, near the further coasts of the Adriatic, to die.
Constantine determined to build a new capital, so that he need not trouble about Rome any more. He wanted a city of his own, where a new life should begin, more peaceful, more congenial, less masterful. So he cast round in his mind for a site. It delighted him to think of raising his own new bright city. He knew the empire from end to end. And he chose Byzantium, at the gate of Europe and Asia, on the Bosphorus.
Constantine said that when he was besieging Byzantium, in the war against Licinius, he had dreamed a curious dream. An old woman came to him and stood by his side. He turned and looked at her, wondering who she was, when suddenly, under his gaze, she was transformed into a young, lovely girl, and he found himself placing the tiara of royalty on her head.
This dream he took to be a sign that the old Greek fortress-town of Byzantium should become a lovely and imperial city at his hands. He told the dream to his attendants. And he went out on the hills to look.
He looked towards Asia, and saw himself almost surrounded by waters. In front of him, looking east, the land narrowed to a blunt point, past which ran the swift blue waters of the Bosphorus, pouring rapidly through winding straits from the Black Sea into the Sea of Marmora, towards the Mediterranean. On his right-hand side, southwards, lay the waters of the Sea of Marmora, then called the Propontis, washing the sunny foot of the land; and on his left-hand side, a mile or two away, like a wide river, curved the beautiful inlet from the Bosphorus, now called the Golden Horn, the harbour to the town, shining and clear, receiving a little river from the hills. In the harbour lay the winged ships, near the steep walls of the fortified Byzantium. And far off to the south he could see broad, dark, and white, and ruddy sails winging away to the Isles of Greece, across the space of the Pro- pontis, whilst down the blue, winding waters in front of him to the north, came ships from the Black Sea, with corn from the Danube.
Behind him lay Europe, unseen. At his feet lay the hills and orchards and field patches, surrounding the little fortress-town, that held the ships to its side. Everywhere temples and shrines rose from the trees by the sea. And across, shining gold in the afternoon light, were the slopes of Asia, the pillared temples among the trees, the white, glittering walls of the opposite port, the white roads winding away among the olive-trees and vineyards, and past the corn of the valleys, on towards Nicomedia, to Ephesus, to Antioch, to Jerusalem. That was the East, where Jesus was born, the East, that loves to be still and dreamy, dreaming of the past. There was a grey dimness of olive trees, and a glitter of white and pink villas, a golden soil, faint tufts of palm-trees, dark groves of orange and lemon and myrtle.
Here Constantine determined to build his city, the centre of the new world, looking to Asia. He was getting old. This was the year 326, and he was born in 272. He had spent his life in the camp, and in moving from province to province. Now he would make a new centre for a new world, and have peace.
Constantine appointed a day for tracing the boundaries of the city. On two sides were the arms of the sea, enclosing the wide, blunt angle of the land. Clothed in the purple, with a lance in his hand, and at the head of a glittering throng, Constantine set out to trace the third side, the base of this wide triangle. He moved slowly forward, drawing the line with his lance. Attendants followed, surveyors, taking accurate mark. Then came the great throng of courtiers and people and soldiers, for it was high holiday. On and on went Constantine, past fields and orchards and vineyards, olive woods, and groves of laurel and pine, over little brooks and up the hillside. The people followed slowly, amazed at the immense space Constantine was enclosing. They murmured among themselves, and at last one ventured to remark that already the Emperor had enclosed more space than was necessary for the most ample city. ‘ I shall go on,’ replied Constantine, ‘ till He, the invisible Guide, who marches before me, thinks proper to stop.’ Thus he continued towards the sea again, enclosing five hills within his line.
And now, immediately, the great work began. Millions of slaves were at work. In the little isle of Proconessus blocks of white marble stood by the shore, the boats deep in the water with their heavy white cargo steered away to the Golden Horn, to the quays of the town, whilst from the North came the timber boats of the Black Sea. There was a great smoke of kilns burning lime for the mortar, and a great sound of thousands of slaves digging, carrying, levelling. Surveyors and architects moved here and there, the builders worked quickly, served by slaves. And the Emperor, in person, wearing his imperial cloak of deep crimson, went to the harbour to see the ships unlade, thousands of men heaving and hauling, or to the hills to see the foundations dug, or to the level places to see the first streets laid out, or to the river to see the aqueduct begun, or to the outskirts to see the deep foss dug out for the city walls. Ship after ship came from Africa with corn, from the isles with grapes and cattle, from Asia with fruits and oil. There were great kitchens, great meals of thousands of busy, excited workmen and women.
The great walls, with their gates, began slowly to rise. On the second hill, where Constantine had pitched his tent outside Byzantium, in the siege, there the chief Forum or market-pla
ce was laid out, a vast oval. He longed to see the two great arches, at the opposite ends of the oval space, rise up and be finished in their magnificence, to see the lovely pillared porticoes complete round about the open, elliptical market-place. Then came slow wagons toiling with mysterious heavy objects carefully packed and wrapped in cloths. These were unpacked, and proved to be lovely statues, brought from old Greece or from Asia to set in the porticoes. But most wonderful of all, a sight that thrilled Constantine, was the scaffolding in the centre of this great, grand, elliptical space. There the poles and pulleys rose to a great height, there were masses of slaves and oxen and ropes. And at last, when all the scaffolding was taken away, there stood a huge and lofty naked column, of marble and porphyry, rising a hundred and twenty feet from the ground, and bearing aloft the colossal bronze statue of Apollo, magnificent work of the old, dead masters of Greece.
So the town grew — great circuses, churches, baths, and palaces, marble and sumptuous. Streets were made, with big buildings where the poor would live, each family in one or two rooms. There were open places with fountains, and beautiful gardens with palm-trees, and fine streets leading down to the sea. Unfortunately, such quick building was not very sound, and in a few years’ time several palaces began to fall. But still, it all seemed splendid.
Then, as things began to be ready, Constantine invited rich Roman senators and citizens from the cities of Europe and Asia and Africa, to come and take up their abode in the new palaces. They had to come, at the Emperor’s bidding. They arrived by sea and land, huge trains of slaves and servants, ox-wagons, mules and horses laden with goods. Soon the town was full. The narrow streets were thronged with crowds of people, carriages, horses, mules, litters — there was hardly room to pass. Constantine gave away great quantities of food — African corn and Syrian oil and wine. There was a great profusion and plenty. There were splendid processions, and displays in the circus and theatre. Thousands of people enjoyed the pleasure of a new home, in a new, sunny, lovely climate by the sea, the beginning of a new life.
This removal of the centre of the civilised world, from West to East, from Rome to Constantinople, took place about the year 334. It was the end of the old Rome, and the beginning of Europe. The Byzantine Empire belongs to the East rather than to Europe. Constantinople looks to Asia. Europe was left alone, confused, violent, turbulent, disordered, to face the darkness of her Middle Ages. The real light of culture and civilisation was withdrawn, lapsing back to the East. The West would have to struggle through a long obscure twilight, into her own day, the day of modern Europe.
Rome, the city, lost her power. Later she became the home of the popes, but her empire was really over. Till after the conquest of the Goths there continued a shaky Roman Empire of the West. But it was an empire which could only tumble into nothingness.
The Byzantine Empire continued in Constantinople, however, right into the fifteenth century. It is curious that, though it was a purely Christian state, yet Constantine had really established an oriental form of government. The Emperor was a Christian, yet he accounted himself divine, and supreme above all men. He was as absolute as any Persian tyrant, for he was beyond all laws and all criticism. The people, the state, were at his mercy. And so they continued for a thousand years. This was the way of life the Byzantines preferred. It was a curious form of oriental Christianity, all the pride and glory centring in one man, himself a servant of Jesus. This eastern form of Christianity spread to Russia, where the orthodox Church is the Greek Church. The Greek Church is the Church of Constantinople, for very soon Greek was the language of Constantinople, of emperors and people alike. And this Greek Church keeps much of the mystery of eastern religion, it seems to teach that strange, passionate humility which makes a people prostrate itself before an emperor as before a beautiful god, so that millions willingly leave their lives in the hands of one man. Contrasting with this, there is a savage ferocity which hates the thing or being it has so humbly adored.
So the empire of Constantinople, called the Byzantine Empire, continued for a thousand years after the death of Constantine the Great. Its people were alternately humble to baseness, and inhumanly ferocious, until they were finally destroyed by the Turks in 1453.
Chapter III. Christianity
The Greeks and Romans were pagans. They had many gods — gods of war, of harvest, of health, of marriage, of family, of the hearth and threshold, of the grove and fount and the sea. Everything that was wonderful or important or special had its presiding deity. The mystery of the passion of war was represented in the god Mars, the mystery of the deep, active sea was embodied in the god Neptune. To all the great gods temples were built, beautiful buildings of marble, with pillared fronts, and interiors decorated with carving and with statues, with gold and silver and ivory. There was always the altar, where the fire burned, and sacrifice was offered. Often there was a figure or statue of the god of the temple, sometimes exposed, sometimes veiled. The hill of temples in Rome was the Capitol. Here, on the Capitoline Hill, was the temple of Capitoline Jove, the greatest of the Roman gods. But the lesser gods had simple shrines, perhaps just a niche in the rock by a stream, or a plain altar among the trees of a grove.
There were really no settled priests in the pagan world. Some influential man in the neighbourhood was given the charge of a temple or sacred building, which he often had to take care of at his own expense. He had also to perform the sacred rites, as we nowadays get an important personage to perform the rite of laying a foundation-stone. Some very rich man was usually given the responsibility for the great games — which often cost him large sums of money — so there was no sacred profession, no special beings were set apart, like our clergy. All were men alike, none was more sacred than another. The richest and most important man in any district usually was responsible for the temple, that was all. There were certain servants of the temple, who attended to funerals and so on. But these were not priests — they were just servants of a different sort.
Thus there was no preaching, no praying, no talk about sin or salvation, no service at all. The people just came to the temple by themselves; or on special days they came to see the rites performed, the sacrifices offered, the acts of the ritual gone through. After the sacrifice the officiating priests — priests for the moment — might sprinkle the crowds with water, or the blood of the offerings, as a sign of purification. And then there was usually dancing and festivity, or perhaps public mourning. On feast days the people were crowned with flowers, or with leaves, or with ears of corn, according to the god of the day. People just cast a few grains of incense on the fire, in token of offering. And on certain days they made gay processions, the dancers going in front, dancing for the gods. And of course the great games were an offering to the gods also; there was a special ritual sacrifice and special songs were sung. But it was all part of the active, actual, everyday, normal life — not something apart. In the country the peasant people loved to take flowers, or a little cake, or a gift, to the shrine of some nymph by the fountain, to the god Pan among the trees, to Priapus in the orchard, to some fauns or nymphs in a cave. There would perhaps be a statue of Pan, with a stone altar; perhaps only an altar; perhaps a mere stone; or simply a tree or grove or spring of water; and offerings would be hung on the trees or laid on the rocks around. But there was no priest. It simply pleased the people to visit these little sacred places, and sometimes to make processions through the fields, the women carrying garlands and corn, one leading the kid that would be sacrificed, the boys playing on flutes or whistles, and dancing in front. Then when they came to the sacred place they imagined a god or nymph was hidden there, inside the trees or deep in the running spring. So they offered gifts and made little songs or speeches or dances to the hidden deity.
Since everything that was wonderful had its god, the Greeks and Romans were not jealous of strange gods. Rather they were anxious to sacrifice on the altars of strange gods also, for this would bring an added blessing. They would leave out no deity
if they could help it. St. Paul tells how he saw an altar in Athens inscribed to the Unknown God. This was so that no god, lacking an altar, should in anger take revenge on the remiss men of the town. The Romans did not hate the Ephesian Diana, the Asiatic many-breasted mother, or the bull-slaying Persian sun god. They even welcomed them to Rome, these strange deities, and built them new temples.
But, if they freely respected all gods, they expected the same free reverence for their own shrines from all strangers. If the Romans exterminated the Druids of Gaul, it was because the Druids were a curious, special priesthood, who inflamed the people to rebellion, not because of their worship. The Romans, indeed, never understood the worship of the Druids, which was a worship of the mysterious tree of life, the dark, inhuman mysteries of the beginning of creation. The Romans could only understand human things. They could not comprehend the Druid inhuman creed, and they were filled with vague horror. They disliked the secret, powerful priests, who had such power over the people. In their own pagan world it was different. If there were priests in Egypt or Syria, they were no longer very important. There was an amiable equality between diverse gods. Only the Druids were a hostile priesthood. And only the God of the Jews was a jealous God. Only the Jews showed their hatred and horror of the free-and-easy pagan worship. Augustus very politely gave orders and gifts to have sacrifices made in the temple of Jerusalem to Jehovah, that Jehovah might not forget him, Augustus Caesar. This was very flattering to the Jews, to think that the Roman emperor acknowledged their God. None the less they scorned even Augustus for worshipping his own great Jove on the Capitol of Rome. They thought even Augustus an abomination, an idolater, one not fit to live in the sight of Jehovah. Continually, when in Palestine the Romans celebrated the festivals of their own gods, the Jews, looking on with black hatred and horror, could not refrain from breaking out into fury, trying to stone to death these hated idolaters and their idols. It inflamed the Jews to such fury, to see the temples and shrines of the strange gods in their land, and to see the Roman processions, with their flute-playing and their garlands and their dancers and their dressing-up, moving in the streets of Jerusalem, that they rose again and again, great crowds of Jews killing the surprised Romans, and breaking the altars. When Caligula tried to put his statue in the Temple of Jerusalem, the Jews turned as one man, and it was taken away by the wise Roman governors. But while ever there were idols in Zion, no Jew could rest, insurrections were continual.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 893