Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

with that royally personal title, was the acknow ledged supreme governor. Such being the case,,

his friend and admirer Libanius: for, in addressing the Emperor, he accosts him, as & ẞariλev. Liban. pro Arist. ad Imp. Julian. Oper. vol. ii. p. 217.

IV. We find the same style employed also by the ecclesiastical historian Socrates; for he remarks, that the Baoiλevs Julian satirised, in his Casars, πάντας τοὺς πρὸ αὐτοῦ βασιλεῖς of the Romans. Hist. Eccles. lib. iii. c. 1.

V. If, from the time of Julian, we follow the downward stream of chronology, we shall still find the same nomenclature equally prevalent.

1. Pope Gregory, in his first epistle to the Emperor Leo Isauricus, addresses him as your god-defended kingship ; τñç ὑμετέρας θεοφρουρήτου βασιλείας : speaks of his royal predecessors ; τῶν πρὸ σοῦ βασιλευσάντων: exhorts him to act as becomes the King of the Christians ; βασιλεῖ Χριστιανῶν: and thence, conformably, salutes him with the vocative title of Ba λe. Greg. Epist. i. ad Imp. Leon. apud Labb. Concil. vol. vii. p. 8, 16.

[ocr errors]

Precisely the same style is observed also in his second epistle. The Emperor is still vocatively addressed, as ßaviλev : and Constantine, Theodosius, Valentinian, and Constantine the father of Justinian, are jointly celebrated, on the ground that οὗτοι οἱ βασιλεῖς θεοπροπῶς ἐβασίλευσαν. Greg. Epist. ii. ad Imp. Leon. apud Labb. Concil. vol. vii. p. 24, 25, 28.

2. The same strain is observed in the proceedings of the second Nicene Council; where we may be sure, that every thing would be conducted with due regard to imperial decorum.

We find the Patriarch Tarasius styling Constantine and Irenè πιστοὶ βασιλεῖς ἡμῶν, and τοῖς εὐσεβέσιν ἡμῶν βασιλεύσι, and τῶν εὐσεβεστάτων καὶ ὀρθοδόξων βασιλέων ἡμῶν : and, not to multiply examples even to satiety, in the first action of the Council, the Emperor and Empress are officially styled the faithful Kings of the Romans; Κωνσταντῖνος καὶ Εἰρήνη πιστοὶ Baoiλeis 'Pwμaiwr. Labb. Concil. vol. vii. p. 33, 36, 49.

the five heads, which in the time of St. John had fallen, were the Consulate, the Dictatorship, the Decemvirate, the Military Tribunate, and the Triumvirate while the head, which then existed, was the Roman Kingship or Emperorship or Princedom, recently awakened to political activity by the successful ambition of Octavian or Augustus Cesar. In a word, Tacitus and St. John are alike accurate in their respective statements: for their apparent discrepance is occasioned solely by the difference of phraseology which they severally employ. Tacitus asserts, that six forms of Roman government had subsisted prior to the merging of the second Tri

3. In a similar manner, so far as my memory serves me after a lapse of well nigh thirty years (for I have no present opportunity of verifying my remark), the Emperors are, with the Byzantine writers, perpetually Bariλeis; while the Empire itself is Baoiλɛía: and I am the less inclined to believe that my memory has proved treacherous, because I find Laonicus Chalcocondyles, who survived the siege of Constantinople in the year 1453, intimating, that, from first to last, the long line of the Greek Emperors bore the style and title of Ῥωμαίων βασιλεῖς τε καὶ αὐτοKрáторeç. Laon. Chalc. lib. i. p. 3. cited by Gibbon in Hist. of Decline, vol. x. p. 155. The style is remarkable, as mingling together indifferently, as it were in one compound title, the two synonymous appellations of Kings and Autocrats of the Romans. I may also adduce, as my voucher for the continuance of the nomenclature during the period in which the Byzantine writers flourished, the lexicographer Suidas, who lived about the year 1100. Speaking of the Emperor Julian, he calls him 'Popalov βασιλεὺς, Κωνσταντίνου τοῦ μεγάλου βασιλέως ἀνεψιός : and he remarks, that he comprehends within his Work called the Caesars, τοὺς ἀπὸ Αὐγούστου Ῥωμαίων βασιλεῖς. Suid. Lex. in voc. Ἰουλιανός.

umvirate in the Emperorship. St. John no where controverts this assertion, which, in truth, rests upon naked matter of fact: but he declares, that, in his time, only five forms had fallen or had become extinct. The two statements are by no means incompatible. On the contrary, they are both strictly true. In the abstract, it does not follow, that, because six forms of government had been in existence anterior to any given epoch, therefore at that epoch they must all have fallen: in the concrete, six forms of Roman government had actually been in existence anterior to the time of St. John; but, out of those six, five only had then become extinct.

It is not unworthy of note, that the singularly accurate language of the Apocalypse perfectly ac cords with the present arrangement.

Five kings have fallen, and ONE is. The interpreting angel does not say; Five kings have fallen, and THE SIXTH is: for, had such been his phraseology, he would have required us to pronounce, in plain opposition to historical testimony, that the Roman Emperorship was the sixth head of the wildbeast. But he says; Five kings have fallen, and ONE is; a mode of expression, which precisely corresponds with literal matter of fact: for, though five had fallen, the then existing king was the first; not the sixth. As the angel speaks, ONE is: not The SIXTH is1.

For the historical remark, that the Triumvirate cannot but be deemed a form of Roman polity, I beg to acknowledge my

[merged small][ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

. I may now, without further difficulty, enumerate, in the regular chronological order of their rise, all the seven heads of the wild-beast or all the seven

supreme forms of Roman polity.

(1.) The chronologically first ruling head was the Roman Kingship or Emperorship or Princedom or Basileïs.

This arose with Romulus, in the year A. C. 753 or 748 or 627, according as we prefer the reckoning of Varro or Fabius Pictor or Sir Isaac Newton; sank into a state of quiescence or abeyance, in the year A. C. 508; awoke to renewed activity, in the year A. C. 27; and fell not finally, until the year

P. C. 1806.

(2.) The chronologically second ruling head was the Consulate.

This arose with Brutus and Collatinus, in the year A. C. 508: and, after many vicissitudes of quiescence and action, produced by the appearance and disappearance of other polities, it effectively fell, though its bare name and shadow may have been still preserved, when, by the expergefaction of the Imperial Roman Kingship, it was, in the year A. C. 27, for ever stripped of its dominant authority.

(3.) The chronologically third ruling head was the Dictatorship.

This arose with Titus Lartius, in the year A. C.

obligation to a gentleman with whom I have not the advantage of being personally acquainted. In his communication to me on that subject, Mr. Lowe is perfectly correct.

497: and, like the Consulate, sometimes active and sometimes quiescent, it fell at length, in the year A. C. 27, by absorption into the Regal Emperorship.

(4.) The chronologically fourth ruling head was the Decemvirate.

This commenced, in the year A. C. 451, on the motion of Appius Claudius, that ten persons, to be chosen out of the body of the Senate, should, for one year reckoned from the day of their nomination, be invested, for the government of the State, with an authority from which there should lie no appeal, the Consulate with all other magistracies being suppressed during that space of time: and it fell, in consequence of the lamentable fate of Virginia, by the death or self-banishment of the last decemvirs, in the year A. C. 448.

(5.) The chronologically fifth ruling head was the Military Tribunate.

This arose, in the year A. C. 444, by the temporary suppression of the Consulate, and by the creation of certain officers denominated military tribunes who were to exercise the same functions and to enjoy the same authority as the Consuls: and it fell, in the year A. C. 366, on the fifth appointment of Camillus to the Dictatorship.

(6.) The chronologically sixth ruling head was the Triumvirate.

This arose, with Pompey and Crassus and Julius Cæsar, in the year A. C. 59; sank into quiescence

« AnteriorContinuar »