provoked rebellion with which the Romans reward. CHAP. ed his services, exasperated his haughty spirit. The XI. noblest families of the capital were involved in the guilt or suspicion of this dark conspiracy. A hasty spirit of revenge urged the bloody prosecution, and it proved fatal to one of the nephews of the emperor. The executioners (if we may use the expression of a contemporary poet) were fatigued, the prisons were crowded, and the unhappy senate lamented the death or absence of its most illustrious members93. Nor was the pride of Aurelian less offensive to that assembly than his cruelty. Ignorant or impatient of the restraints of civil institutions, he disdained to hold his power by any other title than that of the sword, and governed by right of conquest an empire which he had saved and subdued94.

es into the

October.

It was observed by one of the most sagacious of He marchthe Roman princes, that the talents of his predecessor East, and Aurelian, were better suited to the command of an is assassiarmy, than to the government of an empire". Con-nated. scious of the character in which Nature and experience had enabled him to excel, he again took the field a few months after his triumph. It was expedient to A. D. 274. exercise the restless temper of the legions in some foreign war, and the Persian monarch, exulting in the shame of Valerian, still braved with impunity the offended majesty of Rome. At the head of an army, less formidable by its numbers than by its discipline and valour, the emperor advanced as far as the Streights which divide Europe from Asia. He there experienced, that the most absolute power is a weak defence against the effects of despair. He had threatened one of his secretaries who was accused of extortion; and it was known that he seldom threatened in vain. The last hope which remained for the criminal, was to in

93 Nulla catenati feralis pompa senatûs Carnificum lassabit opus; nec carcere pleno Infelix raros numerabit curia Patres.

Calphurn. Eclog. i. 60.

94 According to the younger Victor, he sometimes wore the diadem. Deus and Dominus appear on his medals.

95 It was the observation of Diocletian. See Vopiscus in Hist. August. P. 224.

XI.

CHAP. volve some of the principal officers of the army in his danger, or at least in his fears. Artfully counterfeiting his master's hand, he shewed them, in a long and bloody list, their own names devoted to death. Without suspecting or examining the fraud, they resolved to secure their lives by the murder of the emperor. On his march, between Byzantium and Heraclea, Aurelian was suddenly attacked by the conspirators, whose stations gave them a right to surround his person, and, after a short resistance, fell by the hand of Mucapor, A. D. 275. a general whom he had always loved and trusted. He January. died regretted by the army, detested by the senate, but universally acknowledged as a warlike and fortunate prince, the useful though severe reformer of a degenerate state 96.

96 Vopiscus in Hist. August. p. 221. Zosimus, I. i. p. 57. Eutrop. ix. 15. The two Victors.

Extraordi

test be

CHAPTER XII.

Conduct of the Army and Senate after the death of Aurelian.-Reigns of Tacitus, Probus, Carus, and his Sons.

SUCH was the unhappy condition of the Roman nary con- emperors, that, whatever might be their conduct, their tween the fate was commonly the same. A life of pleasure or army and virtue, of severity or mildness, of indolence or glory, the senate alike led to an untimely grave; and almost every choice of reign is closed by the same disgusting repetition of treaan empe- son and murder. The death of Aurelian, however, is

for the

ror.

remarkable by its extraordinary consequences. The legions admired, lamented, and revenged, their victorious chief. The artifice of his perfidious secretary was discovered and punished. The deluded conspirators attended the funeral of their injured sovereign, with sincere or well-feigned contrition, and submitted to the unanimous resolution of the military order, which was signified by the following epistle. "The "brave and fortunate armies to the senate and people

XII.

"of Rome. The crime of one man, and the error of CHAP. "many, have deprived us of the late emperor Aure"lian. May it please you, venerable lords and fa"thers! to place him in the number of the gods, and "to appoint a successor whom your judgment shall de"clare worthy of the Imperial purple! None of those, "whose guilt or misfortune have contributed to our "loss, shall ever reign over us'." The Roman senators heard, without surprise, that another emperor had been assassinated in his camp: they secretly rejoiced in the fall of Aurelian; but the modest and dutiful address of the legions, when it was communicated in full assembly by the consul, diffused the most pleasing astonishment. Such honours as fear and perhaps esteem could extort, they liberally poured forth on the memory of their deceased sovereign. Such acknowledgments as gratitude could inspire, they returned to the faithful armies of the republic, who entertained so just a sense of the legal authority of the senate in the choice of an emperor. Yet, notwithstanding this flattering appeal, the most prudent of the assembly declined exposing their safety and dignity to the caprice of an armed multitude. The strength of the legions was, indeed, a pledge of their sincerity, since those who may command are seldom reduced to the necessity of dissembling; but could it naturally be expected, that a hasty repentance would correct the inveterate habits of fourscore years? Should the soldiers relapse into their accustomed seditions, their insolence might disgrace the majesty of the senate, and prove fatal to the object of its choice. Motives like these dictated a decree, by which the election of a new emperor was referred to the suffrage of the military order.

The contention that ensued is one of the best attest- A. D. 275.

Feb. 3.

ed, but most improbable events in the history of man- A peacekind'. The troops, as if satiated with the exercise of ful inter

1 Vopiscus in Hist. August. p. 222. Aurelius Victor mentions a formal deputation from the troops to the senate.

2 Vopiscus, our principal authority, wrote at Rome, sixteen years only after the death of Aurelian; and, besides the recent notoriety of the facts, constantly draws his materials from the journals of the Senate, and the original papers of the Ulpian library. Zosimus and Zonaras appear as ignorant of this transaction as they were in general of the Roman constitution.

regnum of eight

months.

XII.

CHAP. power, again conjured the senate to invest one of its own body with the Imperial purple. The senate still persisted in its refusal; the army in its request. The reciprocal offer was pressed and rejected at least three times, and whilst the obstinate modesty of either party was resolved to receive a master from the hands of the other, eight months insensibly elapsed: an amazing period of tranquil anarchy, during which the Roman world remained without a sovereign, without an usurper, and without a sedition. The generals and magistrates appointed by Aurelian continued to execute their ordinary functions; and it is observed, that a proconsul of Asia was the only considerable person removed from his office, in the whole course of the interregnum.

An event somewhat similar, but much less authentic, is supposed to have happened after the death of Romulus, who, in his life and character, bore some affinity with Aurelian. The throne was vacant during twelve months, till the election of a Sabine philosopher, and the public peace was guarded in the same manner, by the union of the several orders of the state. But, in the time of Numa and Romulus, the arms of the people were controlled by the authority of the Patricians; and the balance of freedom was easily preserved in a small and virtuous community3. The decline of the Roman state, far different from its infancy, was attended with every circumstance that could banish from an interregnum the prospect of obedience and harmo ny: an immense and tumultuous capital, a wide extent of empire, the servile equality of despotism, an army of four hundred thousand mercenaries, and the experience of frequent revolutions. Yet, notwithstanding all these temptations, the discipline and memory of Aurelian still restrained the seditious temper of the troops, as well as the fatal ambition of their leaders. The flower of the legions maintained their stations on the banks of the Bosphorus, and the Imperial standard awed the less powerful camps of Rome and of the provinces.

S Liv. i. 17. Dionys. Halicarn. 1. ii. p. 115. Plutarch in Numa, p. 60. The first of these writers relates the story like an orator, the second like a lawyer, and the third like a moralist, and none of them probably without some intermixture of fable.

XII.

A generous though transient enthusiasm seemed to ani- CHAP. mate the military order; and we may hope that a few real patriots cultivated the returning friendship of the army and the senate, as the only expedient capable of restoring the republic to its ancient beauty and vigour.

The con

senate.

On the twenty-fifth of September, near eight months A. D. 275. after the murder of Aurelian, the consul convoked an Sept. 25. assembly of the senate, and reported the doubtful and sul assemdangerous situation of the empire. He slightly insinu- bles the ated, that the precarious loyalty of the soldiers depended on the chance of every hour, and of every accident; but he represented, with the most convincing eloquence, the various dangers that might attend any farther delay in the choice of an emperor. Intelligence, he said, was already received, that the Germans had passed the Rhine, and occupied some of the strongest and most opulent cities of Gaul. The ambition of the Persian king kept the East in perpetual alarms; Egypt, Africa, and Illyricum; were exposed to foreign and domestic arms, and the levity of Syria would prefer even a female sceptre to the sanctity of the Roman laws. The consul then addressing himself to Tacitus, the first of the senators, required his opinion on the important subject of a proper candidate for the vacant throne.

4

If we can prefer personal merit to accidental great- Character ness, we shall esteem the birth of Tacitus more truly of Tacitus noble than that of kings. He claimed his descent from the philosophic historian, whose writings will instruct the last generations of mankind'. The senator Tacitus was then seventy-five years of age". The long period of his innocent life was adorned with wealth and honours. He had twice been invested with the consular dignity', and enjoyed with elegance and sobriety his

4 Vopiscus (in Hist. August. p. 227.) calls him "primæ sententiæ consularis; and soon afterwards Princeps senatûs. It is natural to suppose, that the monarchs of Rome, disdaining that humble title, resigned it to the most ancient of the senators.

5 The only objection to this genealogy is, that the historian was named Cornelius, the emperor, Claudius. But under the lower empire, surnames were extremely various and uncertain.

6 Zonaras, 1. xii. p. 637. The Alexandrian Chronicle, by an obvious. mistake, transfers that age to Aurelian.

7 In the year 273, he was ordinary consul. But he must have been Suffectus many years before, and most probably under Valerian.