o aspire. Diocletian, the second founder of
the Empire, was the son of a slave; Justinian--an even greater name--was
the nephew of a Macedonian peasant, who with a sheepskin bag containing
a week's store of biscuit, his only property, tramped down from his
native highlands to seek his fortune in the capital Zeno, as we have
seen, though perhaps better born than either Diocletian or Justinian,
was only a little Isaurian chieftain. Thus the possibilities open to
aspiring ambition were great in the Empire of the Caesars. As any male
citizen of the United States, born between the St. Lawrence and the Rio
Grande, may one day be installed in the White House as President, so any
"Roman" and orthodox inhabitant of the Empire, whether noble, citizen,
or peasant, might flatter himself with the hope that he too should one
day wear the purple of Diocletian, be saluted as Augustus, and see
Prefects and Masters of the Soldiery prostrating themselves before "His
Eternity". This was, in a sense, the better, the democratic side of the
Roman monarchy. Power which was supposed to be conveyed by the will of
the people (as expressed by the acclamations of the army) might be
wielded by the arm of any member of that people. On the other hand there
was an evil in the habit thus engendered in men's minds, of humbling
themselves before mere power without regard to the manner of its
acquirement. When we compare the polity of Rome or Constantinople, where
a century was a long time for the duration of a dynasty, with the far
simpler polities of the Teutonic tribes which invaded the Empire, almost
all of whom had their royal houses, reaching back into and even beyond
the dawn of national history, supposed to be sprung from the loins of
the gods, and rendered illustrious by countless deeds of valour recorded
in song or saga, we see at once that in these ruder states we are in
presence of a principle which the Empire knew not, but which Mediaeval
Europe knew and glorified, the principle of _Loyalty._ This principle,
the same that bound Bayard to the Valois, and Montrose to the Stuart,
has been, with all the follies and even crimes which it may have caused,
an element of strength and cohesion in the states which have arisen on
the ruins of the Roman Empire. The self-respecting but loving loyalty,
with which the Englishman of to-day cherishes the name of the descendant
of Cerdic, of Alfred, and of Edward Plantagenet, who wields the sceptre
of his country,