972 UNIVERSAL HISTORY—THE ANCIENT WORLD.

a complete forgetfulness of the cares of state. When he was urged by an embassy to reassume the duties of sovereignty he invited the envoys to admire the size and symmetry of some of the vegetables which he had lately .produced. The god Hortus smiled in the face of Mars, and the latter retired in astonishment to think that a mind should find more pleasure in radishes than bloodshed. During the reign of Diocletian the Empire

was disturbed not a little by labor-insurrections. The old system of slavery in Italy still existed without legal modification; but the importance of the slave population had relatively declined. A new class of society, known as coloni, had in great measure taken the place of the chattel slaves. The coloni were free peasants, but were so attached to the estates on which they lived as to become serfs. Upon this class of population the exactions of the Empire rested most heavily. Every

colonus was registered, and any escape from the horrors of the tax-gathering system adopted by the Roman governors was next to impossible. In vain did the mayors and councilmen of cities, the curiales and duumvirs, struggle to save their people from perennial robbery.

The first insurrection of the coloni occurred in Gaul. Short crops and merciless exactioris had left the country in a state of semi-famine. The peasants rose and took by force the means of subsistence. Politically the movement had little significance. For several years the larger part of Gaul was ravaged by her own peasant banditti. The chief objects of attack were the towns; for in these were accumulated whatever stores the tax-gatherers and sycophants had not taken away. After the insurrection had exhausted itself it ceased rather from the natural subsidence of the mobs than from the repression of force. The principal damage done by the insurgents was inflicted in the sack of Autun, then the prindpal seat of the culture and art of the Gallic nations.

The Christian Fathers assume in their writings that the coloni had accepted the new faith, and that the severity with which they were treated both before and after the revolt was attributable to the fact of their renunciation of paganism. It is, however, the opinion of Merivale and others that the position is untenable. and that the colonic revolt originated in social rather than religious conditions.

But it is undeniable that the time had now come when the question was to be dedded whether Christianity should rule the Empire, or the Empire Christianity. The followers of Christ had greatly multiplied in Italy, and indeed throughout the Roman dominions. They had been winnowed by many preceding persecutions. Those who adhered became more and more defiant, more and more intolerant of the doctrines of paganism. To Rome, paganism was essential. There was thus an irrepressible conflict. The two Augusti and the two Caesars of the era which we are here considering, took up the question of extirpating the new belief by exterminating its Enter your footer here