From Marcus Aurelius to Diocletian stretches an evil century. The rocks upon which Rome was finally to be shipwrecked began to show their heads. Government again became a prey instead of a service. The “barrack emperors”--“the thirty tyrants” cursed the imperial chair. The German barbarians began to press hard upon the borders of the empire. Pestilence, imported from the East, thinned the already weakened population. The army came to be almost wholly recruited, and in a large degree officered by Germans. It was almost as if Great Britain depended solely for her defense upon Hindoo troops, for lack of men and mettle among the English themselves. Then came the spasm of reform under Aurelian. And meantime the barbarians by scores of thousands at first, and soon by hundreds of thousands, came drifting down from the north and east. Their comings were quiet enough at the first. They simply moved in where Romans had largely died out. We might compare it in some ways to what would happen if our country should allow a free immigration of Orientals into our Pacific slope. Reorganization. The fourth century saw the great reforms under Diocletian and Constantine. The empire was reorganized and, for the time being, strengthened. But the new vigor was vicious in type. It was oriental despotism thinly disguised, as shown by the strange new garb of the emperors, no longer great generals and first citizens; and by the horde of office-holders with novel, high-sounding titles fitted to the various grades of the new bureaucracy. A line of cleavage was developed by the establishment of the double capital and the joint emperors. East and West began to separate. The division was in part dictated by the difficulty of administering the vast empire from one center in a period when communication was incredibly slow as compared with our modern facilities of steam and electricity. And in this division was a double seed. From one kernel was to spring disaster for Italy and the West. From the other was to germinate the Eastern Empire, destined to be the fortunate and stupid conservator of culture and learning throughout the dark ages. Christianity.