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THE REMOVAL TO CONSTANTINOPLE

As the memory of the old liberties of Rome died out, a nearer approach was made to the ostentatious despotism of the East. Aurelian, in 270, was the first Emperor who encircled his head wit ha diadem; and Dioclatian, in 284, formed his court on the model of the most gorgeous royalties of Asia. On admission into his presence, the Roman senator, formerly the equal of the ruler, prostrated himself at his feet. Titles of the most unmanly adulation were lavished on the fortunate slave or herdsman who had risen to the supreme power. He was clothed in robes of purple and violet, and loaded with an incalculable wealth of jewels and gold. There was now, therefore,seated on the throne, which was shaken by every commotion a personage assuming more majestic rank, and affecting far loftier state and dignity, than Augustus had ventured on while the strenght of the old Republic gave irresistible force to the new Empire, or than the Antonines had dreamt of when the prosperity of Rome was apparently at its height.
But there was still some feeling, if not of self-respect, at least of resistance to pretension, in the populace and senators of the capital. we are not, therefore, to feel surprised that an orientalised authority sought its natural seat in the land of ancient despotisms, and that many of the Emperors had cast longing eyes on the beautiful towns of Asia Minor, and even on the far-off cities of Mesopotamia, as more congenial localities for their barbaric splendors. By a sort of compromise between his European origin and Asiatic tastes, the Emperor Constantine transferred the seat of the empire from Rome, to a city he had built on the extreme limits of Europe, and only divided from Asia by a narrow sea. To this magnificent city Constantine removed the throne in 329, and for nearly a thousand years after that, while Rome was sacked in innumerable invasions, and all the capitals of Europe were successfully occupied by contending armies, Constantinople, safe in her two narrow outlets, and rich in her command of the two continents, continued unconquered, and even unassailed.
Rome was stripped, that Constantinople might be filled. All the wealth of Italy was carried across the Aegean. The Roman senator was invited to remove his establishment. He found, on arriving at his new home, that by a complimentary attention of the Emperor, a fac-simile of his Roman palace had been prepared for him on the Propontis. The seven hills of the new capital responded to the seven hills of the old. There were villas for retirement along the smiling shores of the Dardanelles or of the Bosporus, as fine in climate, and perhaps equal in romantic beauty, to Baiae or Brundusium. There was a capitol, as noble piece of architecture as the one they had left, but without the sanctity of its thousand years of existence, or the glory of its unnumbered triumphs. One mission was the subject of remark and lamentation. The temples were nowhere to be seen. The images of the gods were left at Rome in the solitude of their deserted shrines, for Constantine had determined that Constantinople should, from its very foundation, be the residence of a Christian people. Churches were built, and a priesthood appointed.
His mother Helena made a journey to Jerusalem, and was rewarded for the pious pilgrimage by the discovery of the True Cross. Chapels and altars were raised upon all the places famous in Christian story; relics were collected from all quarters, and we are early led to fear that the simplicity of the Gospel was endangered by its approach to the throne, and that Constantine's object was rather to raise and strenghten a hierarchy of ecclesiastical supporters, than to give full scope to doctrines of truth. But not the less wonderful, not the less by the divine appointment, was this unhoped-for triumph of Christianity, that its advancement formed part of the ambitious scheme of a wordly and unpricipled conqueror.
Rather it may be taken as one among thousand proofs with which history presents us, that the greatest blessings to mankind are produced irrespective of the character or qualities of the apparent author. A warrior is raised in the desert when required to be the loose upon a worn-out society as the scourge of God; a blood-stained soldier is placed on the throne of the world when the time has come for the earthly predominance of the Gospel. But neither is Attila to be blamed, nor Constantine to be praised. WHITE
The death of Maximian was followed, in the year 811, by that of Galerius, whose loathsome disease was by the Christians ascribed with grim satisfaction to a divine visitation. On his death-bed, indeed, he repealed the edict of persecution which he had extorted from Diocletian, but this tardy reparation did not avail to soften the detestation in which his name continued to be held by the believers whom he had so signally oppressed. Severus had died a few years earlier, and Galerius had supplied his place by appointing to the Illyrian provinces an officer of his own, by birth a Daciau
peasant, named Liciuius. For a short time the empire was shared by five sovereign princes, but on the decease of Galerius Licinius took possession of the East, and the four rulers, Licinius and Maximin, Constantino and Maxentius, divided the Roman world between them, nor would any one. of them surrender the superior title of Augustus. Licinius and "Constantino were both able aud ambitious, while their two colleagues were haughty, indeed, but indolent. Licinius had the discretion to enter into an alliance with Constantino, but he contrived to leave his new confederate to conduct hostilities against Maxentius alone, while he watched himself from a distance the issue of the contest. Scarcely, indeed, was Galerius dead before the rulers of Gaul and Italy rushed into deadly conflict with one another. Constantino was the prompter and more vigorous, lie was the first to cross the Alps, and lie gained three brilliant victories in rapid succession, at Turin, at Veroua, and lastly at the Milvian bridge, three miles from Home Maxentius, routed utterly in this final engagement, was drowned in recrossing the Tiber, which ho had imprudently placed in his rear. Constantino OTitcrod Home towards the end of the year 312. He was received with acclamations, due more to the popular hatred of the late tyrant than to any special admiration for the conqueror. lie was acknowledged as chief of the empire by Italy and Africa, as well as by the provinces comprised in his own government. He liad already issued from Milan the famous decree which gave the imperial license to the religion of the Christians, and assured them of his favor as well as his protection.
At a later period ho announced, confirming his assertion with a solemn oath, that on his march from Gaul ho had beheld
the vision of a brilliant cross in the heavens, inscribed with the legend, " By this conquer." Doubtless Constantino was a man of strong imagination, exalted by wonderful successes. It is not necessary to believe that the vision ho related was either a miracle or an imposture.
Constantino had little sympathy for the name of Rome or for the Senate which represented it, to both of which he had been through life an entire stranger. Nevertheless, on entering in triumph the ancient home of the Ciesars, he affected to restore the consideration of the illustrious order. lie conformed to the traditions of the empire by assuming the place of Chief Pontiff of the old national religion ; on the arch of triumph which he erected in the city he placed statues of some of the deities of Olympus, while he enveloped his own personal faith in studied ambiguity by representing his victory to have been gained by the " inspiration of divinity." Пе took vigorous measures to prevent the city fromever again giving laws to the empire by disbanding the praetorian guards, and destroying their fortified camp. With this military institution the imperial power departed finally from Rome, and the seat of government was from henceforth formally established
wherever the emperor chose to set up his own permanent residence...