II.—­The Division of East and West

The unity of the empire was again destroyed by the three sons of Constantine.  A massacre of their kinsmen preceded the separation of the Roman world between Constantius, Constans, and Constantine.  Within three years, civil war eliminated Constantine.  The conflict among the emperors resulted in a doubtful war with Persia, and the almost complete extinction of the Christian monarchy which had been founded for fifty-six years in Armenia.

Constantius was left sole emperor in 353.  He associated with himself successively as Caesars the two nephews of the great Constantine, Gallus and Julian.  The first, being suspected, was destroyed in 354; the second succeeded to the purple in 361.

Trained in the school of the philosophers, and proved as a commander in a series of successful campaigns against the German hordes, Julian brought to the throne a genius which, in other times, might have effected the reformation of the empire.  The sufferings of his youth had associated in a mind susceptible of the most lively impressions the names of Christ and of Constantius, the ideas of slavery and religion.  At the age of twenty he renounced the Christian faith, and boldly asserted the doctrines of paganism.  His accession to the supreme power filled the minds of the Christians with horror and indignation.  But instructed by history and reflection, Julian extended to all the inhabitants of the Roman world the benefits of a free and equal toleration, and the only hardship which he inflicted on the Christians was to deprive them of the power of tormenting their fellow subjects, whom they stigmatised with the odious titles of idolaters and heretics.

While re-establishing and reforming the old pagan system and attempting to subvert Christianity, he held out a hand of succour to the persecuted Jews, asked to be permitted to pay his grateful vows in the holy city of Jerusalem, and was only prevented from rebuilding the Temple by a supposed preternatural interference.  He suppressed the authority of George, Archbishop of Alexandria, who had infamously persecuted and betrayed the people under his spiritual care, and that odious priest, who has been transformed by superstition into the renowned St. George of England, the patron of arms, of chivalry, and of the Garter, fell a victim to the just resentment of the Alexandrian multitude.

The Persian system of monarchy, introduced by Diocletian, was distasteful to the philosophic mind of Julian; he refused the title of lord and master, and attempted to restore in all its pristine simplicity the ancient government of the republic.  In a campaign against the Persians he received a mortal wound, and died on June 26, 363.

The election of Jovian, the first of the domestics, by the acclamation of the soldiers, resulted in a disgraceful peace with the Persians, which aroused the anger and indignation of the Roman world, and the new emperor hardly survived this act of weakness for nine months (February 17, 364).  The throne of the Roman world remained ten days without a master.  At the end of that period the civil and military powers of the empire solemnly elected Valentinian as emperor at Nice in Bithynia.