Representative of a cosmopolitan State

If a Cassius still lived he might, pointing to the Master of the Empire, well exclaim, “He doth bestride the narrow world like a Colossus, and we petty men walk under his huge legs, and peep about to find ourselves dishonourable graves. . . . Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods 1 ” That a city which had been sovereign and self centred should remain the head and representative of a cosmopolitan State, and of an autocratic Government, was something incongruous and unnatural nor was this the only respect in which the old order had changed and given place to new. Under Constantine the attitude of the Roman Government towards the Christian Church was the direct opposite of that maintained by his predecessors.

What they had regarded as a hostile organisation, he welcomed as an ally and friend. What they had endeavoured to uproot and destroy, he cultivated and supported. That he entertained a sincere respect for Christianity as a moral and social force, and believed that there was something Divine associated with it, cannot be doubted. And in his opinion, it was the part of true statesmanship to accept the religious and moral revolution that had come into the world, and to utilise it for the welfare of the Empire.

This is not the place to discuss the question how wisely the alliance between Church and State was effected, or to decide how much the parties to the union thereby gained or lost. It is enough for our purpose to recognise that the union introduced as profound a change of policy as can be introduced into the affairs of men, that it widened the breach between the past and the present, and rendered the embodiment of the new system of things in forms peculiar to itself perfectly natural, if not inevitable. This was the more certain to occur, seeing Rome continued to be the centre of opposition to the new faith.

Yet another change in the Roman world which explains the appearance of a new capital was the increased importance and influence of the Eastern part of the Empire. Not only “captured Greece ” but captured Asia also “ led captive her captor.” The centre of gravity was now in the East There commerce was more flourishing, and intellectual life more active. There the population was larger, and grouped in more important cities.

There Christianity had its home. Nor was it only in thought, and ait, and temper that the East exercised an ascendency. It was, moreover, the post of greatest danger. Its frontiers were exposed to the most formidable attacks which the Roman arms were now called to repel. The secular hostility of Persia along the Tigris and Euphrates, the incursions of Goths and Sarmatians across the lower Danube into the Balkan lands, demanded constant vigilance, and involved frequent warfare. The military front of the Empire was turned eastwards. There “ the triumph of barbarism ” was meanwhile to be chiefly contested.