anniversary of the imperial city’s foundation, was about to break up and be resolved into its component parts. At one moment two great princesses, Victoria and Zenobia, worthy even by the avowal of Romans to wear the Roman diadem, were on the point of establishing the one an empire of the Gauls in the West, the other an empire of the East embracing just those countries which Antony had ruled with Cleopatra at his side. A succession of great generals, all from the province of Illyricum, at last saves the empire and reasserts its unity. But the forty-nine years following the murder of Alexander Severus are filled by the struggles of twenty sovereigns and nineteen pretenders to sovereignty, scarcely any of whom reign so much as five years. Many of them are rulers of great ability and remarkable energy. Claudius, Aurelian, Probus, and Carus, and perhaps Decius, required but happier circumstances to be emperors whose fame would have matched that of Trajan or Hadrian: but their short tenure of power, occupied with the vast effort to restore unity and beat back the barbarian, prevented their doing more than preserve the imperial power and the empire itself. This whole time, then, in civil society was one of fluctuation, anxiety, disaster, alarms from beyond the frontiers and anarchy within them. The Roman peace seemed departing, and the majesty of the empire irreparably violated. Men could not tell what the morrow would bring forth. The fairest cities of the Roman world, Alexandria and Antioch, narrowly escaped perishing through internal discord or hostile surprise. Greece and Asia Minor, after reposing for centuries under the safeguard of the Roman name, found themselves swept through and desolated by barbarian hordes. Italy itself was in imminent danger of the same lot. Towards the end of this period the senate by the election of Tacitus seems to make what may be termed its final effort to assert itself as the depository of legitimate power, the representative of civil society: and this time of confusion issues in a rejection of any such claim, and the establishment of unlimited despotism in the empire as reconstituted by Diocletian. To these straits, then, the first great and haughty enemy of the Christian Church was reduced, so that the power which a century before could look down with proud indifference on the sufferings of Christians now seemed to tremble for its own existence. And in such a condition of human society the great advance of the Church was carried on.