XVIII.

CHAP by the death of Dalmatius. The want of sincerity, which Constantine experienced in a tedious and fruitless negociation, exasperated the fierceness of his temper; and he eagerly listened to those favourites, who suggested to him that his honour, as well as his interest, was concerned in the prosecution of the quarrel. At the head of a tumultuary band, suited for rapine rather than for conquest, he suddenly broke into the dominions of Constans, by the way of the Julian Alps, and the country round Aquileia felt the first effects of his resentment. The measures of Constans, who then resided in Dacia, were directed with more prudence and ability. On the news of his brother's invasion, he detached a select and disciplined body of his Illyrian troops, proposing to follow them in person, with the remainder of his forces. But the conduct of his lieutenants soon terminated the unnatural contest. By the artful appearances of flight, Constantine was betrayed into an ambuscade, which had been concealed in a wood, where the rash youth, with a few attendants, was surprised, surrounded, and slain. His body, after it had been found in the obscure stream of the Alsa, obtained the honours of an imperial sepulchre; but his provinces transferred their allegiance to the conqueror, who, refusing to admit his elder brother Constantius to any share in these new acquisitions, maintained the undisputed possession of more than twothirds of the Roman empire.

2 The causes and the events of this civil war are related with much perplexity and contradiction. I have chiefly followed Zo

naras,

X VIII

A. D. 350.

The fate of Constans himself was delayed about CHA P.. ten years longer, and the revenge of his brother's death was reserved for the more ignoble hand of Murder of a domestic traitor. The pernicious tendency of Constan the system introduced by Constantine was dis- February. played in the feeble administration of his sons; who, by their vices and weakness, soon lost the esteem and affections of their people. The pride assumed by Constans, from the unmerited success of his arms, was rendered more contemptible by his want of abilities and application. His fond partiality towards some German captives, distinguished only by the charms of youth, was an object of scandal to the people; and Magnentius, an ambitious soldier, who was himself of barbarian extraction, was encouraged by the public discontent to assert the honour of the Roman name." The chosen bands of Jovians and Herculians, who acknowledged Magnentius as their leader, maintained the most respectable and important

naras, and the younger Victor. The monody (ad calcem Eutrop. edit. Havercamp.) pronounced on the death of Constantine, might have been very instructive; but prudence and false taste engaged the orator to involve himself in vague declamation.

a Quarum (gentium) obsides pretio quæsitos pueros venustiores, quod cultius habuerat, libidine hujusmodi arsisse pro certo habetur. Had not the depraved taste of Constans been publicly avowed, the elder Victor, who held a considerable office in his brother's reign, would not have asserted it in such positive terms.

Victor in Epi

b Julian. Orat. i, and ii. Zosim, 1. ii, p. 134. tome. There is reason to believe that Magnentius was born in one of those barbarian colonies which Constantius Chlorus had established in Gaul, (see this history, vol. ii, p. 132). His behaviour may remind us of the patriot earl of Leicester, the famous Simon de Montfort, who could persuade the good people of England, that he, a Frenchman by birth, had taken arms to deliver them from foreign favourites.

CHA P. station in the imperial camp. The friendship of XVIII. Marcellinus, count of the sacred largesses, sup

As

plied with a liberal hand the means of seduction.
The soldiers were convinced by the most specious
arguments, that the republic summoned them to
break the bonds of hereditary servitude; and, by
the choice of an active and vigilant prince, to re-
ward the same virtues which had raised the an-
cestors of the degenerate Constans from a pri-
vate condition to the throne of the world.
soon as the conspiracy was ripe for execution,
Marcellinus, under the pretence of celebrating
his son's birth-day, gave a splendid entertainment
to the illustrious and honourable persons of the court
of Gaul, which then resided in the city of Autun.
The intemperance of the feast was artfully pro-
tracted till a very late hour of the night; and the
unsuspecting guests were tempted to indulge
themselves in a dangerous and guilty freedom of
conversation. On a sudden the doors were
thrown open, and Magnentius, who had retired
for a few moments, returned into the apartment,
invested with the diadem and purple. The con-
spirators instantly saluted him with the titles of
Augustus and emperor. The surprise, the ter-
ror, the intoxication, the ambitious hopes, and
the mutual ignorance of the rest of the assembly,
prompted them to join their voices to the general
acclamation. The guards hastened to take the
oath of fidelity; the gates of the town were shut ;
and before the dawn of day, Magnentius became
master of the troops and treasure of the palace and
city of Autun. By his secrecy and diligence he

XVIII.

entertained some hopes of surprising the person CHAP. of Constans, who was pursuing in the adjacent forest his favourite amusement of hunting, or perhaps some pleasures of a more private and criminal nature. The rapid progress of fame allowed him, however, an instant for flight, though the desertion of his soldiers and subjects deprived him of the power of resistance. Before he could reach a sea-port in Spain, where he intended to embark, he was overtaken near Helena, at the foot of the Pyrenees, by a party of light cavalry whose chief, regardless of the sanctity of a temple, executed his commission by the murder of the son of Constantine.d

tius and

assume the

March 1.

As soon as the death of Constans had decided Magnenthis easy but important revolution, the example of Vetranio the court of Autun was imitated by the provinces purple, of the West. The authority of Magnentius was A. D. 350. acknowledged through the whole extent of the two great prefectures of Gaul and Italy; and the usurper prepared, by every act of oppression, to collect a treasure, which might discharge the obligation of an immense donative, and supply the expences of a civil war. The martial countries

This ancient city had once flourished under the name of Illiberis (Pomponius Mela, ii, 5). The munificence of Constantine gave it new splendour, and his mother's name. Helena (it is still called Elne) became the seat of a bishop, who long afterwards transferred his residence to Perpignan, the capital of modern Rousillon. See d'Anville Notice de l'Ancienne Gaule, p. 380. Longuerué Description de la France, p. 223, and the Marca Hispanica, 1. i, c. 2. d Zosimus, l. ii, p. 119, 120. Zonaras, tom. ii, 1. xiii, p. 13, and the Abbreviators.

XVIII.

war.e

CHAP. of Illyricum, from the Danube to the extremity of Greece, had long obeyed the government of Vetranio, an aged general, beloved for the simplicity of his manners, and who had acquired some reputation by his experience and services in Attached by habit, by duty, and by gratitude, to the house of Constantine, he immediately gave the strongest assurances to the only surviving son of his late master, that he would expose, with unshaken fidelity, his person and his troops, to inflict a just revenge on the traitors of Gaul. But the legions of Vetranio were seduced rather than provoked by the example of rebellion; their leader soon betrayed a want of firmness or a want of sincerity; and his ambition derived a specious pretence from the approbation of the princess Constantina. That cruel and aspiring woman, who had obtained from the great Constantine her father the rank of Augusta, placed the diadem with her own hands on the head of the Illyrian general; and seemed to expect from his victory the accomplishment of those unbounded hopes, of which she had been disappointed by the death of her husband Hannibalianus. Perhaps it was without the consent of Constantina, that the new emperor formed a necsesary, though dishonourable, alliance with the usurper of the West,

e Eutropius (x, 10) describes Vetranio with more temper, and probably with more truth, than either of the two Victors. Vetranio was born of obscure parents in the wildest parts of Mæsia; and so much had his education been neglected, that, after his elevation, he studied the alphabet.