=Society in the Later Empire.=—­The Later Empire is a decisive moment in the history of civilization.  The absolute power of the Roman magistrate is united to the pompous ceremonial of the eastern kings to create a power unknown before in history.  This new imperial majesty crushes everything beneath it; the inhabitants of the empire cease to be citizens and from the fourth century are called in Latin “subjects” and in Greek “slaves.”  In reality all are slaves of the emperor, but there are different grades of servitude.  There are various degrees of nobility which the master confers on them and which they transmit to their posterity.  The following is the series:[172]

  1.  The Nobilissimi (the very noble); these are the imperial
  family;

  2.  The Illustres (the notable)—­the chief ministers of
  departments;

  3.  The Spectabiles (the eminent)—­the high dignitaries;

  4.  The Clarissimi (most renowned)—­the great officials, also
  sometimes called senators;

  5.  The Perfectissimi (very perfect).[173]

Every important man has his rank, his title, and his functions.[174] The only men who are of consequence are the courtiers and officials; it is the regime of titles and of etiquette.  A clearer instance has never been given of the issue of absolute power united with the mania for titles and with the purpose to regulate everything.  The Later Empire exhibits the completed type of a society reduced to a machine and of a government absorbed by a court.  It realized the ideal that is proposed today by the partisans of absolute power; and for a long time the friends of liberty must fight against the traditions which the Later Empire has left to us.

THE CHURCH AND THE STATE

=Triumph of Christianity.=—­During the first two centuries of our era the Christians occupied but a small place in the empire.  Almost all of them were of the lower classes, workmen, freedmen, slaves, who lived obscure lives in the multitude of the great cities.  For a long time the aristocracy ignored the Christians; even in the second century Suetonius in his “Lives of the Twelve Caesars” speaks of a certain Chrestus who agitated the populace of Rome.  When the religion first concerned the world of the rich and cultivated people, they were interested simply to deride it as one only for the poor and ignorant.  It was precisely because it addressed the poor of this world in providing a compensation in the life to come that Christianity made so many proselytes.  Persecution, far from suppressing it, gave it more force.  “The blood of the martyrs,” said the faithful, “is the seed of the church.”  During the whole of the third century conversions continued, not only among the poor, but among the aristocracy as well.  At the first of the fourth century all the East had become Christian.  Helena, the mother