Empire failing from within 409 



made it impossible to maintain them. Again, we see that in addition 

 to the normal jealousy of neighbours the competition for imperial favour 

 was an influence tending to hinder rather than promote cohesion : 

 tending in fact to weaken the fabric now menaced by the tribal bar- 

 barians. Above all, this affair strongly suggests the partiality of the 

 central government to town populations. The farmers of the municipal 

 territories were certainly liable to the land-burdens, and were the ulti- 

 mate basis of imperial finance : but of them there is not a word. Lastly, 

 we may suppose that inter-municipal disputes such as this were not 

 of very frequent occurrence : but we have no reason to believe that 

 this Campanian case was unique. 



LIV. AMMIANUS. 



In Ammianus Marcellinus (about 330 to 400) we have an oriental 

 Greek from Antioch who passed a great part of his life in the military 

 service of the empire. He had travelled much, campaigned in Gaul 

 and the East, and was an observant man of wide interests, and in his 

 history impartial to the best of his power. Whether in deliberate 

 criticisms, or in casual references, he is an exceptionally qualified and 

 honest witness as to the state of things in the empire. On one important 

 point his evidence is of special value. All through the surviving portion 

 of his work (353-378) he leaves us in no doubt that the internal evils 

 of the empire were weakening it more than the pressure of barbarians 

 from without. He does not argue this in a section devoted to the topic, 

 but he takes occasion to notice the abuses that impaired the prosperity 

 of the Provinces or led directly to grave disasters. The corruption 

 jealousy greed cruelty and general misrule of officials high and low 

 was no secret to him. That the ultimate sufferers from their misdeeds 

 were the poor, and more particularly the poor farmers, may be gathered 

 from many passages. That the centre of this all-pervading disease lay 

 in the imperial court, a focus of intrigue and jobbery that the very 

 best of emperors could never effectively check, he was surely aware. 

 At least it is only on this assumption that we get the full flavour of 

 his references to court-intrigues and his criticisms of emperors, his 

 balanced discussions of their good and bad qualities and the effects of 

 their policy and practice. In truth the whole system was breaking 

 down. It lasted longer in the East than in the West, because the 

 eastern peoples were more thoroughly tamed. They had been used 

 to despotic government long before the coming of Rome. And the 

 assaults of external enemies were more formidable and persistent in 

 the North and West than in the South and East. Yet, so long as the 

 empire held together, imperial despotism was inevitable. Neither 

 Ammianus nor any other writer of that age did or could offer a possible 



