In the age of the Antonines, the Goths were still seated in

Prussia. About the reign of Alexander Severus, the Roman province

of Dacia had already experienced their proximity by frequent and

destructive inroads. In this interval, therefore, of about

seventy years we must place the second migration of the Goths

from the Baltic to the Euxine; but the cause that produced it

lies concealed among the various motives which actuate the

conduct of unsettled barbarians. Either a pestilence or a famine,

a victory or a defeat, an oracle of the gods or the eloquence of

a daring leader, were sufficient to impel the Gothic arms on the

milder climates of the south. Besides the influence of a martial

religion, the numbers and spirit of the Goths were equal to the

most dangerous adventures. The use of round bucklers and short

swords rendered them formidable in a close engagement; the manly

obedience which they yielded to hereditary kings, gave uncommon

union and stability to their councils; and the renowned Amala,

the hero of that age, and the tenth ancestor of Theodoric, king

of Italy, enforced, by the ascendant of personal merit, the

prerogative of his birth, which he derived from the _Anses_, or

demigods of the Gothic nation.

The fame of a great enterprise excited the bravest warriors from

all the Vandalic states of Germany, many of whom are seen a few

years afterwards combating under the common standard of the

Goths. The first motions of the emigrants carried them to the

banks of the Prypec, a river universally conceived by the

ancients to be the southern branch of the Borysthenes. The

windings of that great stream through the plains of Poland and

Russia gave a direction to their line of march, and a constant

supply of fresh water and pasturage to their numerous herds of

cattle. They followed the unknown course of the river, confident

in their valor, and careless of whatever power might oppose their

progress. The Bastarnæ and the Venedi were the first who

presented themselves; and the flower of their youth, either from

choice or compulsion, increased the Gothic army. The Bastarnæ

dwelt on the northern side of the Carpathian Mountains: the

immense tract of land that separated the Bastarnæ from the

savages of Finland was possessed, or rather wasted, by the

Venedi; we have some reason to believe that the first of these

nations, which distinguished itself in the Macedonian war, and

was afterwards divided into the formidable tribes of the Peucini,

the Borani, the Carpi, &c., derived its origin from the Germans.

* With better authority, a Sarmatian extraction may be assigned

to the Venedi, who rendered themselves so famous in the middle

ages. But the confusion of blood and manners on that doubtful

frontier often perplexed the most accurate observers. As the

Goths advanced near the Euxine Sea, they encountered a purer race

of Sarmatians, the Jazyges, the Alani, and the Roxolani; and they

were probably the first Germans who saw the mouths of the

Borysthenes, and of the Tanais. If we inquire into the

characteristic marks of the people of Germany and of Sarmatia, we

shall discover that those two great portions of human kind were

principally distinguished by fixed huts or movable tents, by a

close dress or flowing garments, by the marriage of one or of

several wives, by a military force, consisting, for the most

part, either of infantry or cavalry; and above all, by the use of

the Teutonic, or of the Sclavonian language; the last of which

has been diffused by conquest, from the confines of Italy to the

neighborhood of Japan.

Chapter X: Emperors Decius, Gallus, Æmilianus, Valerian And

Gallienus.—Part II.

The Goths were now in possession of the Ukraine, a country of

considerable extent and uncommon fertility, intersected with

navigable rivers, which, from either side, discharge themselves

into the Borysthenes; and interspersed with large and lofty

forests of oaks. The plenty of game and fish, the innumerable

bee-hives deposited in the hollow of old trees, and in the

cavities of rocks, and forming, even in that rude age, a valuable

branch of commerce, the size of the cattle, the temperature of

the air, the aptness of the soil for every species of grain, and

the luxuriancy of the vegetation, all displayed the liberality of

Nature, and tempted the industry of man. But the Goths withstood

all these temptations, and still adhered to a life of idleness,

of poverty, and of rapine.

The Scythian hordes, which, towards the east, bordered on the new

settlements of the Goths, presented nothing to their arms, except

the doubtful chance of an unprofitable victory. But the prospect

of the Roman territories was far more alluring; and the fields of

Dacia were covered with rich harvests, sown by the hands of an

industrious, and exposed to be gathered by those of a warlike,

people. It is probable that the conquests of Trajan, maintained

by his successors, less for any real advantage than for ideal

dignity, had contributed to weaken the empire on that side. The

new and unsettled province of Dacia was neither strong enough to

resist, nor rich enough to satiate, the rapaciousness of the

barbarians. As long as the remote banks of the Niester were

considered as the boundary of the Roman power, the fortifications

of the Lower Danube were more carelessly guarded, and the

inhabitants of Mæsia lived in supine security, fondly conceiving

themselves at an inaccessible distance from any barbarian

invaders. The irruptions of the Goths, under the reign of Philip,

fatally convinced them of their mistake. The king, or leader, of

that fierce nation, traversed with contempt the province of

Dacia, and passed both the Niester and the Danube without

encountering any opposition capable of retarding his progress.

The relaxed discipline of the Roman troops betrayed the most

important posts, where they were stationed, and the fear of

deserved punishment induced great numbers of them to enlist under

the Gothic standard. The various multitude of barbarians

appeared, at length, under the walls of Marcianopolis, a city

built by Trajan in honor of his sister, and at that time the

capital of the second Mæsia. The inhabitants consented to ransom

their lives and property by the payment of a large sum of money,

and the invaders retreated back into their deserts, animated,

rather than satisfied, with the first success of their arms

against an opulent but feeble country. Intelligence was soon

transmitted to the emperor Decius, that Cniva, king of the Goths,

had passed the Danube a second time, with more considerable

forces; that his numerous detachments scattered devastation over

the province of Mæsia, whilst the main body of the army,

consisting of seventy thousand Germans and Sarmatians, a force

equal to the most daring achievements, required the presence of

the Roman monarch, and the exertion of his military power.

Decius found the Goths engaged before Nicopolis, one of the many

monuments of Trajan’s victories. On his approach they raised the

siege, but with a design only of marching away to a conquest of

greater importance, the siege of Philippopolis, a city of Thrace,

founded by the father of Alexander, near the foot of Mount Hæmus.

Decius followed them through a difficult country, and by forced

marches; but when he imagined himself at a considerable distance

from the rear of the Goths, Cniva turned with rapid fury on his

pursuers. The camp of the Romans was surprised and pillaged, and,

for the first time, their emperor fled in disorder before a troop

of half-armed barbarians. After a long resistance, Philippopolis,

destitute of succor, was taken by storm. A hundred thousand

persons are reported to have been massacred in the sack of that

great city. Many prisoners of consequence became a valuable

accession to the spoil; and Priscus, a brother of the late

emperor Philip, blushed not to assume the purple, under the

protection of the barbarous enemies of Rome. The time, however,

consumed in that tedious siege, enabled Decius to revive the

courage, restore the discipline, and recruit the numbers of his

troops. He intercepted several parties of Carpi, and other

Germans, who were hastening to share the victory of their

countrymen, intrusted the passes of the mountains to officers of

approved valor and fidelity, repaired and strengthened the

fortifications of the Danube, and exerted his utmost vigilance to

oppose either the progress or the retreat of the Goths.

Encouraged by the return of fortune, he anxiously waited for an

opportunity to retrieve, by a great and decisive blow, his own

glory, and that of the Roman arms.

At the same time when Decius was struggling with the violence of

the tempest, his mind, calm and deliberate amidst the tumult of

war, investigated the more general causes that, since the age of

the Antonines, had so impetuously urged the decline of the Roman

greatness. He soon discovered that it was impossible to replace

that greatness on a permanent basis without restoring public

virtue, ancient principles and manners, and the oppressed majesty

of the laws. To execute this noble but arduous design, he first

resolved to revive the obsolete office of censor; an office

which, as long as it had subsisted in its pristine integrity, had

so much contributed to the perpetuity of the state, till it was

usurped and gradually neglected by the Cæsars. Conscious that the

favor of the sovereign may confer power, but that the esteem of

the people can alone bestow authority, he submitted the choice of

the censor to the unbiased voice of the senate. By their

unanimous votes, or rather acclamations, Valerian, who was

afterwards emperor, and who then served with distinction in the

army of Decius, was declared the most worthy of that exalted

honor. As soon as the decree of the senate was transmitted to the

emperor, he assembled a great council in his camp, and before the

investiture of the censor elect, he apprised him of the

difficulty and importance of his great office. “Happy Valerian,”

said the prince to his distinguished subject, “happy in the

general approbation of the senate and of the Roman republic!

Accept the censorship of mankind; and judge of our manners. You

will select those who deserve to continue members of the senate;

you will restore the equestrian order to its ancient splendor;

you will improve the revenue, yet moderate the public burdens.

You will distinguish into regular classes the various and

infinite multitude of citizens, and accurately view the military

strength, the wealth, the virtue, and the resources of Rome. Your

decisions shall obtain the force of laws. The army, the palace,

the ministers of justice, and the great officers of the empire,

are all subject to your tribunal. None are exempted, excepting

only the ordinary consuls, the præfect of the city, the king of

the sacrifices, and (as long as she preserves her chastity

inviolate) the eldest of the vestal virgins. Even these few, who

may not dread the severity, will anxiously solicit the esteem, of

the Roman censor.”

A magistrate, invested with such extensive powers, would have

appeared not so much the minister, as the colleague of his

sovereign. Valerian justly dreaded an elevation so full of envy

and of suspicion. He modestly argued the alarming greatness of

the trust, his own insufficiency, and the incurable corruption of

the times. He artfully insinuated, that the office of censor was

inseparable from the Imperial dignity, and that the feeble hands

of a subject were unequal to the support of such an immense

weight of cares and of power. The approaching event of war soon

put an end to the prosecution of a project so specious, but so

impracticable; and whilst it preserved Valerian from the danger,

saved the emperor Decius from the disappointment, which would

most probably have attended it. A censor may maintain, he can

never restore, the morals of a state. It is impossible for such a

magistrate to exert his authority with benefit, or even with

effect, unless he is supported by a quick sense of honor and

virtue in the minds of the people, by a decent reverence for the

public opinion, and by a train of useful prejudices combating on

the side of national manners. In a period when these principles

are annihilated, the censorial jurisdiction must either sink into

empty pageantry, or be converted into a partial instrument of

vexatious oppression. It was easier to vanquish the Goths than to

eradicate the public vices; yet even in the first of these

enterprises, Decius lost his army and his life.

The Goths were now, on every side, surrounded and pursued by the

Roman arms. The flower of their troops had perished in the long

siege of Philippopolis, and the exhausted country could no longer

afford subsistence for the remaining multitude of licentious

barbarians. Reduced to this extremity, the Goths would gladly

have purchased, by the surrender of all their booty and

prisoners, the permission of an undisturbed retreat. But the

emperor, confident of victory, and resolving, by the chastisement

of these invaders, to strike a salutary terror into the nations

of the North, refused to listen to any terms of accommodation.

The high-spirited barbarians preferred death to slavery. An

obscure town of Mæsia, called Forum Terebronii, was the scene of

the battle. The Gothic army was drawn up in three lines, and

either from choice or accident, the front of the third line was

covered by a morass. In the beginning of the action, the son of

Decius, a youth of the fairest hopes, and already associated to

the honors of the purple, was slain by an arrow, in the sight of

his afflicted father; who, summoning all his fortitude,

admonished the dismayed troops, that the loss of a single soldier

was of little importance to the republic. The conflict was

terrible; it was the combat of despair against grief and rage.

The first line of the Goths at length gave way in disorder; the

second, advancing to sustain it, shared its fate; and the third

only remained entire, prepared to dispute the passage of the

morass, which was imprudently attempted by the presumption of the

enemy. “Here the fortune of the day turned, and all things became

adverse to the Romans; the place deep with ooze, sinking under

those who stood, slippery to such as advanced; their armor heavy,

the waters deep; nor could they wield, in that uneasy situation,

their weighty javelins. The barbarians, on the contrary, were

inured to encounter in the bogs, their persons tall, their spears

long, such as could wound at a distance.” In this morass the

Roman army, after an ineffectual struggle, was irrecoverably

lost; nor could the body of the emperor ever be found. Such was

the fate of Decius, in the fiftieth year of his age; an

accomplished prince, active in war and affable in peace; who,

together with his son, has deserved to be compared, both in life

and death, with the brightest examples of ancient virtue.

This fatal blow humbled, for a very little time, the insolence of

the legions. They appeared to have patiently expected, and

submissively obeyed, the decree of the senate which regulated the

succession to the throne. From a just regard for the memory of

Decius, the Imperial title was conferred on Hostilianus, his only

surviving son; but an equal rank, with more effectual power, was

granted to Gallus, whose experience and ability seemed equal to

the great trust of guardian to the young prince and the

distressed empire. The first care of the new emperor was to

deliver the Illyrian provinces from the intolerable weight of the

victorious Goths. He consented to leave in their hands the rich

fruits of their invasion, an immense booty, and what was still

more disgraceful, a great number of prisoners of the highest

merit and quality. He plentifully supplied their camp with every

conveniency that could assuage their angry spirits or facilitate

their so much wished-for departure; and he even promised to pay

them annually a large sum of gold, on condition they should never

afterwards infest the Roman territories by their incursions.

In the age of the Scipios, the most opulent kings of the earth,

who courted the protection of the victorious commonwealth, were

gratified with such trifling presents as could only derive a

value from the hand that bestowed them; an ivory chair, a coarse

garment of purple, an inconsiderable piece of plate, or a

quantity of copper coin. After the wealth of nations had centred

in Rome, the emperors displayed their greatness, and even their

policy, by the regular exercise of a steady and moderate

liberality towards the allies of the state. They relieved the

poverty of the barbarians, honored their merit, and recompensed

their fidelity. These voluntary marks of bounty were understood

to flow, not from the fears, but merely from the generosity or

the gratitude of the Romans; and whilst presents and subsidies

were liberally distributed among friends and suppliants, they

were sternly refused to such as claimed them as a debt. But this

stipulation, of an annual payment to a victorious enemy, appeared

without disguise in the light of an ignominious tribute; the

minds of the Romans were not yet accustomed to accept such

unequal laws from a tribe of barbarians; and the prince, who by a

necessary concession had probably saved his country, became the

object of the general contempt and aversion. The death of

Hostilianus, though it happened in the midst of a raging

pestilence, was interpreted as the personal crime of Gallus; and

even the defeat of the later emperor was ascribed by the voice of

suspicion to the perfidious counsels of his hated successor. The

tranquillity which the empire enjoyed during the first year of

his administration, served rather to inflame than to appease the

public discontent; and as soon as the apprehensions of war were

removed, the infamy of the peace was more deeply and more

sensibly felt.

But the Romans were irritated to a still higher degree, when they

discovered that they had not even secured their repose, though at

the expense of their honor. The dangerous secret of the wealth

and weakness of the empire had been revealed to the world. New

swarms of barbarians, encouraged by the success, and not

conceiving themselves bound by the obligation of their brethren,

spread devastation through the Illyrian provinces, and terror as

far as the gates of Rome. The defence of the monarchy, which

seemed abandoned by the pusillanimous emperor, was assumed by

Æmilianus, governor of Pannonia and Mæsia; who rallied the

scattered forces, and revived the fainting spirits of the troops.

The barbarians were unexpectedly attacked, routed, chased, and

pursued beyond the Danube. The victorious leader distributed as a

donative the money collected for the tribute, and the

acclamations of the soldiers proclaimed him emperor on the field

of battle. Gallus, who, careless of the general welfare, indulged

himself in the pleasures of Italy, was almost in the same instant

informed of the success, of the revolt, and of the rapid approach

of his aspiring lieutenant. He advanced to meet him as far as the

plains of Spoleto. When the armies came in sight of each other,

the soldiers of Gallus compared the ignominious conduct of their

sovereign with the glory of his rival. They admired the valor of

Æmilianus; they were attracted by his liberality, for he offered

a considerable increase of pay to all deserters. The murder of

Gallus, and of his son Volusianus, put an end to the civil war;

and the senate gave a legal sanction to the rights of conquest.

The letters of Æmilianus to that assembly displayed a mixture of

moderation and vanity. He assured them, that he should resign to

their wisdom the civil administration; and, contenting himself

with the quality of their general, would in a short time assert

the glory of Rome, and deliver the empire from all the barbarians

both of the North and of the East. His pride was flattered by the

applause of the senate; and medals are still extant, representing

him with the name and attributes of Hercules the Victor, and Mars

the Avenger.

If the new monarch possessed the abilities, he wanted the time,

necessary to fulfil these splendid promises. Less than four

months intervened between his victory and his fall. He had

vanquished Gallus: he sunk under the weight of a competitor more

formidable than Gallus. That unfortunate prince had sent

Valerian, already distinguished by the honorable title of censor,

to bring the legions of Gaul and Germany to his aid. Valerian

executed that commission with zeal and fidelity; and as he

arrived too late to save his sovereign, he resolved to revenge

him. The troops of Æmilianus, who still lay encamped in the

plains of Spoleto, were awed by the sanctity of his character,

but much more by the superior strength of his army; and as they

were now become as incapable of personal attachment as they had

always been of constitutional principle, they readily imbrued

their hands in the blood of a prince who so lately had been the

object of their partial choice. The guilt was theirs, * but the

advantage of it was Valerian’s; who obtained the possession of

the throne by the means indeed of a civil war, but with a degree

of innocence singular in that age of revolutions; since he owed

neither gratitude nor allegiance to his predecessor, whom he

dethroned.

Valerian was about sixty years of age when he was invested with

the purple, not by the caprice of the populace, or the clamors of

the army, but by the unanimous voice of the Roman world. In his

gradual ascent through the honors of the state, he had deserved

the favor of virtuous princes, and had declared himself the enemy

of tyrants. His noble birth, his mild but unblemished manners,

his learning, prudence, and experience, were revered by the

senate and people; and if mankind (according to the observation

of an ancient writer) had been left at liberty to choose a

master, their choice would most assuredly have fallen on

Valerian. Perhaps the merit of this emperor was inadequate to his

reputation; perhaps his abilities, or at least his spirit, were

affected by the languor and coldness of old age. The

consciousness of his decline engaged him to share the throne with

a younger and more active associate; the emergency of the times

demanded a general no less than a prince; and the experience of

the Roman censor might have directed him where to bestow the

Imperial purple, as the reward of military merit. But instead of

making a judicious choice, which would have confirmed his reign

and endeared his memory, Valerian, consulting only the dictates

of affection or vanity, immediately invested with the supreme

honors his son Gallienus, a youth whose effeminate vices had been

hitherto concealed by the obscurity of a private station. The

joint government of the father and the son subsisted about seven,

and the sole administration of Gallienus continued about eight,

years. But the whole period was one uninterrupted series of

confusion and calamity. As the Roman empire was at the same time,

and on every side, attacked by the blind fury of foreign

invaders, and the wild ambition of domestic usurpers, we shall

consult order and perspicuity, by pursuing, not so much the

doubtful arrangement of dates, as the more natural distribution

of subjects. The most dangerous enemies of Rome, during the

reigns of Valerian and Gallienus, were, 1. The Franks; 2. The

Alemanni; 3. The Goths; and, 4. The Persians. Under these general

appellations, we may comprehend the adventures of less

considerable tribes, whose obscure and uncouth names would only

serve to oppress the memory and perplex the attention of the

reader.

I. As the posterity of the Franks compose one of the greatest and

most enlightened nations of Europe, the powers of learning and

ingenuity have been exhausted in the discovery of their

unlettered ancestors. To the tales of credulity have succeeded

the systems of fancy. Every passage has been sifted, every spot

has been surveyed, that might possibly reveal some faint traces

of their origin. It has been supposed that Pannonia, that Gaul,

that the northern parts of Germany, gave birth to that celebrated

colony of warriors. At length the most rational critics,

rejecting the fictitious emigrations of ideal conquerors, have

acquiesced in a sentiment whose simplicity persuades us of its

truth. They suppose, that about the year two hundred and forty, a

new confederacy was formed under the name of Franks, by the old

inhabitants of the Lower Rhine and the Weser. * The present

circle of Westphalia, the Landgraviate of Hesse, and the duchies

of Brunswick and Luneburg, were the ancient seat of the Chauci,

who, in their inaccessible morasses, defied the Roman arms; of

the Cherusci, proud of the fame of Arminius; of the Catti,

formidable by their firm and intrepid infantry; and of several

other tribes of inferior power and renown. The love of liberty

was the ruling passion of these Germans; the enjoyment of it

their best treasure; the word that expressed that enjoyment the

most pleasing to their ear. They deserved, they assumed, they

maintained the honorable epithet of Franks, or Freemen; which

concealed, though it did not extinguish, the peculiar names of

the several states of the confederacy. Tacit consent, and mutual

advantage, dictated the first laws of the union; it was gradually

cemented by habit and experience. The league of the Franks may

admit of some comparison with the Helvetic body; in which every

canton, retaining its independent sovereignty, consults with its

brethren in the common cause, without acknowledging the authority

of any supreme head or representative assembly. But the principle

of the two confederacies was extremely different. A peace of two

hundred years has rewarded the wise and honest policy of the

Swiss. An inconstant spirit, the thirst of rapine, and a

disregard to the most solemn treaties, disgraced the character of

the Franks.

Chapter X: Emperors Decius, Gallus, Æmilianus, Valerian And

Gallienus.—Part III.

The Romans had long experienced the daring valor of the people of

Lower Germany. The union of their strength threatened Gaul with a

more formidable invasion, and required the presence of Gallienus,

the heir and colleague of Imperial power. Whilst that prince, and

his infant son Salonius, displayed, in the court of Treves, the

majesty of the empire, its armies were ably conducted by their

general, Posthumus, who, though he afterwards betrayed the family

of Valerian, was ever faithful to the great interests of the

monarchy. The treacherous language of panegyrics and medals

darkly announces a long series of victories. Trophies and titles

attest (if such evidence can attest) the fame of Posthumus, who

is repeatedly styled the Conqueror of the Germans, and the Savior

of Gaul.

But a single fact, the only one indeed of which we have any

distinct knowledge, erases, in a great measure, these monuments

of vanity and adulation. The Rhine, though dignified with the

title of Safeguard of the provinces, was an imperfect barrier

against the daring spirit of enterprise with which the Franks

were actuated. Their rapid devastations stretched from the river

to the foot of the Pyrenees; nor were they stopped by those

mountains. Spain, which had never dreaded, was unable to resist,

the inroads of the Germans. During twelve years, the greatest

part of the reign of Gallienus, that opulent country was the

theatre of unequal and destructive hostilities. Tarragona, the

flourishing capital of a peaceful province, was sacked and almost

destroyed; and so late as the days of Orosius, who wrote in the

fifth century, wretched cottages, scattered amidst the ruins of

magnificent cities, still recorded the rage of the barbarians.

When the exhausted country no longer supplied a variety of

plunder, the Franks seized on some vessels in the ports of Spain,

and transported themselves into Mauritania. The distant province

was astonished with the fury of these barbarians, who seemed to

fall from a new world, as their name, manners, and complexion,

were equally unknown on the coast of Africa.

II. In that part of Upper Saxony, beyond the Elbe, which is at

present called the Marquisate of Lusace, there existed, in

ancient times, a sacred wood, the awful seat of the superstition

of the Suevi. None were permitted to enter the holy precincts,

without confessing, by their servile bonds and suppliant posture,

the immediate presence of the sovereign Deity. Patriotism

contributed, as well as devotion, to consecrate the Sonnenwald,

or wood of the Semnones. It was universally believed, that the

nation had received its first existence on that sacred spot. At

stated periods, the numerous tribes who gloried in the Suevic

blood, resorted thither by their ambassadors; and the memory of

their common extraction was perpetrated by barbaric rites and

human sacrifices. The wide-extended name of Suevi filled the

interior countries of Germany, from the banks of the Oder to

those of the Danube. They were distinguished from the other

Germans by their peculiar mode of dressing their long hair, which

they gathered into a rude knot on the crown of the head; and they

delighted in an ornament that showed their ranks more lofty and

terrible in the eyes of the enemy. Jealous as the Germans were of

military renown, they all confessed the superior valor of the

Suevi; and the tribes of the Usipetes and Tencteri, who, with a

vast army, encountered the dictator Cæsar, declared that they

esteemed it not a disgrace to have fled before a people to whose

arms the immortal gods themselves were unequal.

In the reign of the emperor Caracalla, an innumerable swarm of

Suevi appeared on the banks of the Main, and in the neighborhood

of the Roman provinces, in quest either of food, of plunder, or

of glory. The hasty army of volunteers gradually coalesced into a

great and permanent nation, and, as it was composed from so many

different tribes, assumed the name of Alemanni, * or _Allmen_, to

denote at once their various lineage and their common bravery.

The latter was soon felt by the Romans in many a hostile inroad.

The Alemanni fought chiefly on horseback; but their cavalry was

rendered still more formidable by a mixture of light infantry,

selected from the bravest and most active of the youth, whom

frequent exercise had inured to accompany the horsemen in the

longest march, the most rapid charge, or the most precipitate

retreat.

This warlike people of Germans had been astonished by the immense

preparations of Alexander Severus; they were dismayed by the arms

of his successor, a barbarian equal in valor and fierceness to

themselves. But still hovering on the frontiers of the empire,

they increased the general disorder that ensued after the death

of Decius. They inflicted severe wounds on the rich provinces of

Gaul; they were the first who removed the veil that covered the

feeble majesty of Italy. A numerous body of the Alemanni

penetrated across the Danube and through the Rhætian Alps into

the plains of Lombardy, advanced as far as Ravenna, and displayed

the victorious banners of barbarians almost in sight of Rome.

The insult and the danger rekindled in the senate some sparks of

their ancient virtue. Both the emperors were engaged in far

distant wars, Valerian in the East, and Gallienus on the Rhine.

All the hopes and resources of the Romans were in themselves. In

this emergency, the senators resumed the defence of the republic,

drew out the Prætorian guards, who had been left to garrison the

capital, and filled up their numbers, by enlisting into the

public service the stoutest and most willing of the Plebeians.

The Alemanni, astonished with the sudden appearance of an army

more numerous than their own, retired into Germany, laden with

spoil; and their retreat was esteemed as a victory by the

unwarlike Romans.

When Gallienus received the intelligence that his capital was

delivered from the barbarians, he was much less delighted than

alarmed with the courage of the senate, since it might one day

prompt them to rescue the public from domestic tyranny as well as

from foreign invasion. His timid ingratitude was published to his

subjects, in an edict which prohibited the senators from

exercising any military employment, and even from approaching the

camps of the legions. But his fears were groundless. The rich and

luxurious nobles, sinking into their natural character, accepted,

as a favor, this disgraceful exemption from military service; and

as long as they were indulged in the enjoyment of their baths,

their theatres, and their villas, they cheerfully resigned the

more dangerous cares of empire to the rough hands of peasants and

soldiers.

Another invasion of the Alemanni, of a more formidable aspect,

but more glorious event, is mentioned by a writer of the lower

empire. Three hundred thousand are said to have been vanquished,

in a battle near Milan, by Gallienus in person, at the head of

only ten thousand Romans. We may, however, with great

probability, ascribe this incredible victory either to the

credulity of the historian, or to some exaggerated exploits of

one of the emperor’s lieutenants. It was by arms of a very

different nature, that Gallienus endeavored to protect Italy from

the fury of the Germans. He espoused Pipa, the daughter of a king

of the Marcomanni, a Suevic tribe, which was often confounded

with the Alemanni in their wars and conquests. To the father, as

the price of his alliance, he granted an ample settlement in

Pannonia. The native charms of unpolished beauty seem to have

fixed the daughter in the affections of the inconstant emperor,

and the bands of policy were more firmly connected by those of

love. But the haughty prejudice of Rome still refused the name of

marriage to the profane mixture of a citizen and a barbarian; and

has stigmatized the German princess with the opprobrious title of

concubine of Gallienus.

III. We have already traced the emigration of the Goths from

Scandinavia, or at least from Prussia, to the mouth of the

Borysthenes, and have followed their victorious arms from the

Borysthenes to the Danube. Under the reigns of Valerian and

Gallienus, the frontier of the last-mentioned river was

perpetually infested by the inroads of Germans and Sarmatians;

but it was defended by the Romans with more than usual firmness

and success. The provinces that were the seat of war, recruited

the armies of Rome with an inexhaustible supply of hardy

soldiers; and more than one of these Illyrian peasants attained

the station, and displayed the abilities, of a general. Though

flying parties of the barbarians, who incessantly hovered on the

banks of the Danube, penetrated sometimes to the confines of

Italy and Macedonia, their progress was commonly checked, or

their return intercepted, by the Imperial lieutenants. But the

great stream of the Gothic hostilities was diverted into a very

different channel. The Goths, in their new settlement of the

Ukraine, soon became masters of the northern coast of the Euxine:

to the south of that inland sea were situated the soft and

wealthy provinces of Asia Minor, which possessed all that could

attract, and nothing that could resist, a barbarian conqueror.

The banks of the Borysthenes are only sixty miles distant from

the narrow entrance of the peninsula of Crim Tartary, known to

the ancients under the name of Chersonesus Taurica. On that

inhospitable shore, Euripides, embellishing with exquisite art

the tales of antiquity, has placed the scene of one of his most

affecting tragedies. The bloody sacrifices of Diana, the arrival

of Orestes and Pylades, and the triumph of virtue and religion

over savage fierceness, serve to represent an historical truth,

that the Tauri, the original inhabitants of the peninsula, were,

in some degree, reclaimed from their brutal manners by a gradual

intercourse with the Grecian colonies, which settled along the

maritime coast. The little kingdom of Bosphorus, whose capital

was situated on the Straits, through which the Mæotis

communicates itself to the Euxine, was composed of degenerate

Greeks and half-civilized barbarians. It subsisted, as an

independent state, from the time of the Peloponnesian war, was at

last swallowed up by the ambition of Mithridates, and, with the

rest of his dominions, sunk under the weight of the Roman arms.

From the reign of Augustus, the kings of Bosphorus were the

humble, but not useless, allies of the empire. By presents, by

arms, and by a slight fortification drawn across the Isthmus,

they effectually guarded, against the roving plunderers of

Sarmatia, the access of a country which, from its peculiar

situation and convenient harbors, commanded the Euxine Sea and

Asia Minor. As long as the sceptre was possessed by a lineal

succession of kings, they acquitted themselves of their important

charge with vigilance and success. Domestic factions, and the

fears, or private interest, of obscure usurpers, who seized on

the vacant throne, admitted the Goths into the heart of

Bosphorus. With the acquisition of a superfluous waste of fertile

soil, the conquerors obtained the command of a naval force,

sufficient to transport their armies to the coast of Asia. This

ships used in the navigation of the Euxine were of a very

singular construction. They were slight flat-bottomed barks

framed of timber only, without the least mixture of iron, and

occasionally covered with a shelving roof, on the appearance of a

tempest. In these floating houses, the Goths carelessly trusted

themselves to the mercy of an unknown sea, under the conduct of

sailors pressed into the service, and whose skill and fidelity

were equally suspicious. But the hopes of plunder had banished

every idea of danger, and a natural fearlessness of temper

supplied in their minds the more rational confidence, which is

the just result of knowledge and experience. Warriors of such a

daring spirit must have often murmured against the cowardice of

their guides, who required the strongest assurances of a settled

calm before they would venture to embark; and would scarcely ever

be tempted to lose sight of the land. Such, at least, is the

practice of the modern Turks; and they are probably not inferior,

in the art of navigation, to the ancient inhabitants of

Bosphorus.

The fleet of the Goths, leaving the coast of Circassia on the

left hand, first appeared before Pityus, the utmost limits of the

Roman provinces; a city provided with a convenient port, and

fortified with a strong wall. Here they met with a resistance

more obstinate than they had reason to expect from the feeble

garrison of a distant fortress. They were repulsed; and their

disappointment seemed to diminish the terror of the Gothic name.

As long as Successianus, an officer of superior rank and merit,

defended that frontier, all their efforts were ineffectual; but

as soon as he was removed by Valerian to a more honorable but

less important station, they resumed the attack of Pityus; and by

the destruction of that city, obliterated the memory of their

former disgrace.

Circling round the eastern extremity of the Euxine Sea, the

navigation from Pityus to Trebizond is about three hundred miles.

The course of the Goths carried them in sight of the country of

Colchis, so famous by the expedition of the Argonauts; and they

even attempted, though without success, to pillage a rich temple

at the mouth of the River Phasis. Trebizond, celebrated in the

retreat of the ten thousand as an ancient colony of Greeks,

derived its wealth and splendor from the magnificence of the

emperor Hadrian, who had constructed an artificial port on a

coast left destitute by nature of secure harbors. The city was

large and populous; a double enclosure of walls seemed to defy

the fury of the Goths, and the usual garrison had been

strengthened by a reënforcement of ten thousand men. But there

are not any advantages capable of supplying the absence of

discipline and vigilance. The numerous garrison of Trebizond,

dissolved in riot and luxury, disdained to guard their

impregnable fortifications. The Goths soon discovered the supine

negligence of the besieged, erected a lofty pile of fascines,

ascended the walls in the silence of the night, and entered the

defenceless city sword in hand. A general massacre of the people

ensued, whilst the affrighted soldiers escaped through the

opposite gates of the town. The most holy temples, and the most

splendid edifices, were involved in a common destruction. The

booty that fell into the hands of the Goths was immense: the

wealth of the adjacent countries had been deposited in Trebizond,

as in a secure place of refuge. The number of captives was

incredible, as the victorious barbarians ranged without

opposition through the extensive province of Pontus. The rich

spoils of Trebizond filled a great fleet of ships that had been

found in the port. The robust youth of the sea-coast were chained

to the oar; and the Goths, satisfied with the success of their

first naval expedition, returned in triumph to their new

establishment in the kingdom of Bosphorus.

The second expedition of the Goths was undertaken with greater

powers of men and ships; but they steered a different course,

and, disdaining the exhausted provinces of Pontus, followed the

western coast of the Euxine, passed before the wide mouths of the

Borysthenes, the Niester, and the Danube, and increasing their

fleet by the capture of a great number of fishing barks, they

approached the narrow outlet through which the Euxine Sea pours

its waters into the Mediterranean, and divides the continents of

Europe and Asia. The garrison of Chalcedon was encamped near the

temple of Jupiter Urius, on a promontory that commanded the

entrance of the Strait; and so inconsiderable were the dreaded

invasions of the barbarians that this body of troops surpassed in

number the Gothic army. But it was in numbers alone that they

surpassed it. They deserted with precipitation their advantageous

post, and abandoned the town of Chalcedon, most plentifully

stored with arms and money, to the discretion of the conquerors.

Whilst they hesitated whether they should prefer the sea or land,

Europe or Asia, for the scene of their hostilities, a perfidious

fugitive pointed out Nicomedia, * once the capital of the kings

of Bithynia, as a rich and easy conquest. He guided the march

which was only sixty miles from the camp of Chalcedon, directed

the resistless attack, and partook of the booty; for the Goths

had learned sufficient policy to reward the traitor whom they

detested. Nice, Prusa, Apamæa, Cius, cities that had sometimes

rivalled, or imitated, the splendor of Nicomedia, were involved

in the same calamity, which, in a few weeks, raged without

control through the whole province of Bithynia. Three hundred

years of peace, enjoyed by the soft inhabitants of Asia, had

abolished the exercise of arms, and removed the apprehension of

danger. The ancient walls were suffered to moulder away, and all

the revenue of the most opulent cities was reserved for the

construction of baths, temples, and theatres.

When the city of Cyzicus withstood the utmost effort of

Mithridates, it was distinguished by wise laws, a naval power of

two hundred galleys, and three arsenals, of arms, of military

engines, and of corn. It was still the seat of wealth and luxury;

but of its ancient strength, nothing remained except the

situation, in a little island of the Propontis, connected with

the continent of Asia only by two bridges. From the recent sack

of Prusa, the Goths advanced within eighteen miles of the city,

which they had devoted to destruction; but the ruin of Cyzicus

was delayed by a fortunate accident. The season was rainy, and

the Lake Apolloniates, the reservoir of all the springs of Mount

Olympus, rose to an uncommon height. The little river of

Rhyndacus, which issues from the lake, swelled into a broad and

rapid stream, and stopped the progress of the Goths. Their

retreat to the maritime city of Heraclea, where the fleet had

probably been stationed, was attended by a long train of wagons,

laden with the spoils of Bithynia, and was marked by the flames

of Nice and Nicomedia, which they wantonly burnt. Some obscure

hints are mentioned of a doubtful combat that secured their

retreat. But even a complete victory would have been of little

moment, as the approach of the autumnal equinox summoned them to

hasten their return. To navigate the Euxine before the month of

May, or after that of September, is esteemed by the modern Turks

the most unquestionable instance of rashness and folly.

When we are informed that the third fleet, equipped by the Goths

in the ports of Bosphorus, consisted of five hundred sails of

ships, our ready imagination instantly computes and multiplies

the formidable armament; but, as we are assured by the judicious

Strabo, that the piratical vessels used by the barbarians of

Pontus and the Lesser Scythia, were not capable of containing

more than twenty-five or thirty men we may safely affirm, that

fifteen thousand warriors, at the most, embarked in this great

expedition. Impatient of the limits of the Euxine, they steered

their destructive course from the Cimmerian to the Thracian

Bosphorus. When they had almost gained the middle of the Straits,

they were suddenly driven back to the entrance of them; till a

favorable wind, springing up the next day, carried them in a few

hours into the placid sea, or rather lake, of the Propontis.

Their landing on the little island of Cyzicus was attended with

the ruin of that ancient and noble city. From thence issuing

again through the narrow passage of the Hellespont, they pursued

their winding navigation amidst the numerous islands scattered

over the Archipelago, or the Ægean Sea. The assistance of

captives and deserters must have been very necessary to pilot

their vessels, and to direct their various incursions, as well on

the coast of Greece as on that of Asia. At length the Gothic

fleet anchored in the port of Piræus, five miles distant from

Athens, which had attempted to make some preparations for a

vigorous defence. Cleodamus, one of the engineers employed by the

emperor’s orders to fortify the maritime cities against the

Goths, had already begun to repair the ancient walls, fallen to

decay since the time of Scylla. The efforts of his skill were

ineffectual, and the barbarians became masters of the native seat

of the muses and the arts. But while the conquerors abandoned

themselves to the license of plunder and intemperance, their

fleet, that lay with a slender guard in the harbor of Piræus, was

unexpectedly attacked by the brave Daxippus, who, flying with the

engineer Cleodamus from the sack of Athens, collected a hasty

band of volunteers, peasants as well as soldiers, and in some

measure avenged the calamities of his country.

But this exploit, whatever lustre it might shed on the declining

age of Athens, served rather to irritate than to subdue the

undaunted spirit of the northern invaders. A general

conflagration blazed out at the same time in every district of

Greece. Thebes and Argos, Corinth and Sparta, which had formerly

waged such memorable wars against each other, were now unable to

bring an army into the field, or even to defend their ruined

fortifications. The rage of war, both by land and by sea, spread

from the eastern point of Sunium to the western coast of Epirus.

The Goths had already advanced within sight of Italy, when the

approach of such imminent danger awakened the indolent Gallienus

from his dream of pleasure. The emperor appeared in arms; and his

presence seems to have checked the ardor, and to have divided the

strength, of the enemy. Naulobatus, a chief of the Heruli,

accepted an honorable capitulation, entered with a large body of

his countrymen into the service of Rome, and was invested with

the ornaments of the consular dignity, which had never before

been profaned by the hands of a barbarian. Great numbers of the

Goths, disgusted with the perils and hardships of a tedious

voyage, broke into Mæsia, with a design of forcing their way over

the Danube to their settlements in the Ukraine. The wild attempt

would have proved inevitable destruction, if the discord of the

Roman generals had not opened to the barbarians the means of an

escape. The small remainder of this destroying host returned on

board their vessels; and measuring back their way through the

Hellespont and the Bosphorus, ravaged in their passage the shores

of Troy, whose fame, immortalized by Homer, will probably survive

the memory of the Gothic conquests. As soon as they found

themselves in safety within the basin of the Euxine, they landed

at Anchialus in Thrace, near the foot of Mount Hæmus; and, after

all their toils, indulged themselves in the use of those pleasant

and salutary hot baths. What remained of the voyage was a short

and easy navigation. Such was the various fate of this third and

greatest of their naval enterprises. It may seem difficult to

conceive how the original body of fifteen thousand warriors could

sustain the losses and divisions of so bold an adventure. But as

their numbers were gradually wasted by the sword, by shipwrecks,

and by the influence of a warm climate, they were perpetually

renewed by troops of banditti and deserters, who flocked to the

standard of plunder, and by a crowd of fugitive slaves, often of

German or Sarmatian extraction, who eagerly seized the glorious

opportunity of freedom and revenge. In these expeditions, the

Gothic nation claimed a superior share of honor and danger; but

the tribes that fought under the Gothic banners are sometimes

distinguished and sometimes confounded in the imperfect histories

of that age; and as the barbarian fleets seemed to issue from the

mouth of the Tanais, the vague but familiar appellation of

Scythians was frequently bestowed on the mixed multitude.

Chapter X: Emperors Decius, Gallus, Æmilianus, Valerian And

Gallienus.—Part IV.

In the general calamities of mankind, the death of an individual,

however exalted, the ruin of an edifice, however famous, are

passed over with careless inattention. Yet we cannot forget that

the temple of Diana at Ephesus, after having risen with

increasing splendor from seven repeated misfortunes, was finally

burnt by the Goths in their third naval invasion. The arts of

Greece, and the wealth of Asia, had conspired to erect that

sacred and magnificent structure. It was supported by a hundred

and twenty-seven marble columns of the Ionic order. They were the

gifts of devout monarchs, and each was sixty feet high. The altar

was adorned with the masterly sculptures of Praxiteles, who had,

perhaps, selected from the favorite legends of the place the

birth of the divine children of Latona, the concealment of Apollo

after the slaughter of the Cyclops, and the clemency of Bacchus

to the vanquished Amazons. Yet the length of the temple of

Ephesus was only four hundred and twenty-five feet, about two

thirds of the measure of the church of St. Peter’s at Rome. In

the other dimensions, it was still more inferior to that sublime

production of modern architecture. The spreading arms of a

Christian cross require a much greater breadth than the oblong

temples of the Pagans; and the boldest artists of antiquity would

have been startled at the proposal of raising in the air a dome

of the size and proportions of the Pantheon. The temple of Diana

was, however, admired as one of the wonders of the world.

Successive empires, the Persian, the Macedonian, and the Roman,

had revered its sanctity and enriched its splendor. But the rude

savages of the Baltic were destitute of a taste for the elegant

arts, and they despised the ideal terrors of a foreign

superstition.

Another circumstance is related of these invasions, which might

deserve our notice, were it not justly to be suspected as the

fanciful conceit of a recent sophist. We are told that in the

sack of Athens the Goths had collected all the libraries, and

were on the point of setting fire to this funeral pile of Grecian

learning, had not one of their chiefs, of more refined policy

than his brethren, dissuaded them from the design; by the

profound observation, that as long as the Greeks were addicted to

the study of books, they would never apply themselves to the

exercise of arms. The sagacious counsellor (should the truth of

the fact be admitted) reasoned like an ignorant barbarian. In the

most polite and powerful nations, genius of every kind has

displayed itself about the same period; and the age of science

has generally been the age of military virtue and success.

IV. The new sovereign of Persia, Artaxerxes and his son Sapor,

had triumphed (as we have already seen) over the house of

Arsaces. Of the many princes of that ancient race, Chosroes, king

of Armenia, had alone preserved both his life and his

independence. He defended himself by the natural strength of his

country; by the perpetual resort of fugitives and malecontents;

by the alliance of the Romans, and above all, by his own courage.

Invincible in arms, during a thirty years’ war, he was at length

assassinated by the emissaries of Sapor, king of Persia. The

patriotic satraps of Armenia, who asserted the freedom and

dignity of the crown, implored the protection of Rome in favor of

Tiridates, the lawful heir. But the son of Chosroes was an

infant, the allies were at a distance, and the Persian monarch

advanced towards the frontier at the head of an irresistible

force. Young Tiridates, the future hope of his country, was saved

by the fidelity of a servant, and Armenia continued above

twenty-seven years a reluctant province of the great monarchy of

Persia. Elated with this easy conquest, and presuming on the

distresses or the degeneracy of the Romans, Sapor obliged the

strong garrisons of Carrhæ and Nisibis * to surrender, and spread

devastation and terror on either side of the Euphrates.

The loss of an important frontier, the ruin of a faithful and

natural ally, and the rapid success of Sapor’s ambition, affected

Rome with a deep sense of the insult as well as of the danger.

Valerian flattered himself, that the vigilance of his lieutenants

would sufficiently provide for the safety of the Rhine and of the

Danube; but he resolved, notwithstanding his advanced age, to

march in person to the defence of the Euphrates. During his

progress through Asia Minor, the naval enterprises of the Goths

were suspended, and the afflicted province enjoyed a transient

and fallacious calm. He passed the Euphrates, encountered the

Persian monarch near the walls of Edessa, was vanquished, and

taken prisoner by Sapor. The particulars of this great event are

darkly and imperfectly represented; yet, by the glimmering light

which is afforded us, we may discover a long series of

imprudence, of error, and of deserved misfortunes on the side of

the Roman emperor. He reposed an implicit confidence in

Macrianus, his Prætorian præfect. That worthless minister

rendered his master formidable only to the oppressed subjects,

and contemptible to the enemies of Rome. By his weak or wicked

counsels, the Imperial army was betrayed into a situation where

valor and military skill were equally unavailing. The vigorous

attempt of the Romans to cut their way through the Persian host

was repulsed with great slaughter; and Sapor, who encompassed the

camp with superior numbers, patiently waited till the increasing

rage of famine and pestilence had insured his victory. The

licentious murmurs of the legions soon accused Valerian as the

cause of their calamities; their seditious clamors demanded an

instant capitulation. An immense sum of gold was offered to

purchase the permission of a disgraceful retreat. But the

Persian, conscious of his superiority, refused the money with

disdain; and detaining the deputies, advanced in order of battle

to the foot of the Roman rampart, and insisted on a personal

conference with the emperor. Valerian was reduced to the

necessity of intrusting his life and dignity to the faith of an

enemy. The interview ended as it was natural to expect. The

emperor was made a prisoner, and his astonished troops laid down

their arms. In such a moment of triumph, the pride and policy of

Sapor prompted him to fill the vacant throne with a successor

entirely dependent on his pleasure. Cyriades, an obscure fugitive

of Antioch, stained with every vice, was chosen to dishonor the

Roman purple; and the will of the Persian victor could not fail

of being ratified by the acclamations, however reluctant, of the

captive army.

The Imperial slave was eager to secure the favor of his master by

an act of treason to his native country. He conducted Sapor over

the Euphrates, and, by the way of Chalcis, to the metropolis of

the East. So rapid were the motions of the Persian cavalry, that,

if we may credit a very judicious historian, the city of Antioch

was surprised when the idle multitude was fondly gazing on the

amusements of the theatre. The splendid buildings of Antioch,

private as well as public, were either pillaged or destroyed; and

the numerous inhabitants were put to the sword, or led away into

captivity. The tide of devastation was stopped for a moment by

the resolution of the high priest of Emesa. Arrayed in his

sacerdotal robes, he appeared at the head of a great body of

fanatic peasants, armed only with slings, and defended his god

and his property from the sacrilegious hands of the followers of

Zoroaster. But the ruin of Tarsus, and of many other cities,

furnishes a melancholy proof that, except in this singular

instance, the conquest of Syria and Cilicia scarcely interrupted

the progress of the Persian arms. The advantages of the narrow

passes of Mount Taurus were abandoned, in which an invader, whose

principal force consisted in his cavalry, would have been engaged

in a very unequal combat: and Sapor was permitted to form the

siege of Cæsarea, the capital of Cappadocia; a city, though of

the second rank, which was supposed to contain four hundred

thousand inhabitants. Demosthenes commanded in the place, not so

much by the commission of the emperor, as in the voluntary

defence of his country. For a long time he deferred its fate; and

when at last Cæsarea was betrayed by the perfidy of a physician,

he cut his way through the Persians, who had been ordered to

exert their utmost diligence to take him alive. This heroic chief

escaped the power of a foe who might either have honored or

punished his obstinate valor; but many thousands of his

fellow-citizens were involved in a general massacre, and Sapor is

accused of treating his prisoners with wanton and unrelenting

cruelty. Much should undoubtedly be allowed for national

animosity, much for humbled pride and impotent revenge; yet, upon

the whole, it is certain, that the same prince, who, in Armenia,

had displayed the mild aspect of a legislator, showed himself to

the Romans under the stern features of a conqueror. He despaired

of making any permanent establishment in the empire, and sought

only to leave behind him a wasted desert, whilst he transported

into Persia the people and the treasures of the provinces.

At the time when the East trembled at the name of Sapor, he

received a present not unworthy of the greatest kings; a long

train of camels, laden with the most rare and valuable

merchandises. The rich offering was accompanied with an epistle,

respectful, but not servile, from Odenathus, one of the noblest

and most opulent senators of Palmyra. “Who is this Odenathus,”

(said the haughty victor, and he commanded that the present

should be cast into the Euphrates,) “that he thus insolently

presumes to write to his lord? If he entertains a hope of

mitigating his punishment, let him fall prostrate before the foot

of our throne, with his hands bound behind his back. Should he

hesitate, swift destruction shall be poured on his head, on his

whole race, and on his country.” The desperate extremity to which

the Palmyrenian was reduced, called into action all the latent

powers of his soul. He met Sapor; but he met him in arms.

Infusing his own spirit into a little army collected from the

villages of Syria and the tents of the desert, he hovered round

the Persian host, harassed their retreat, carried off part of the

treasure, and, what was dearer than any treasure, several of the

women of the great king; who was at last obliged to repass the

Euphrates with some marks of haste and confusion. By this

exploit, Odenathus laid the foundations of his future fame and

fortunes. The majesty of Rome, oppressed by a Persian, was

protected by a Syrian or Arab of Palmyra.

The voice of history, which is often little more than the organ

of hatred or flattery, reproaches Sapor with a proud abuse of the

rights of conquest. We are told that Valerian, in chains, but

invested with the Imperial purple, was exposed to the multitude,

a constant spectacle of fallen greatness; and that whenever the

Persian monarch mounted on horseback, he placed his foot on the

neck of a Roman emperor. Notwithstanding all the remonstrances of

his allies, who repeatedly advised him to remember the

vicissitudes of fortune, to dread the returning power of Rome,

and to make his illustrious captive the pledge of peace, not the

object of insult, Sapor still remained inflexible. When Valerian

sunk under the weight of shame and grief, his skin, stuffed with

straw, and formed into the likeness of a human figure, was

preserved for ages in the most celebrated temple of Persia; a

more real monument of triumph, than the fancied trophies of brass

and marble so often erected by Roman vanity. The tale is moral

and pathetic, but the truth of it may very fairly be called in

question. The letters still extant from the princes of the East

to Sapor are manifest forgeries; nor is it natural to suppose

that a jealous monarch should, even in the person of a rival,

thus publicly degrade the majesty of kings. Whatever treatment

the unfortunate Valerian might experience in Persia, it is at

least certain that the only emperor of Rome who had ever fallen

into the hands of the enemy, languished away his life in hopeless

captivity.

The emperor Gallienus, who had long supported with impatience the

censorial severity of his father and colleague, received the

intelligence of his misfortunes with secret pleasure and avowed

indifference. “I knew that my father was a mortal,” said he; “and

since he has acted as it becomes a brave man, I am satisfied.”

Whilst Rome lamented the fate of her sovereign, the savage

coldness of his son was extolled by the servile courtiers as the

perfect firmness of a hero and a stoic. It is difficult to paint

the light, the various, the inconstant character of Gallienus,

which he displayed without constraint, as soon as he became sole

possessor of the empire. In every art that he attempted, his

lively genius enabled him to succeed; and as his genius was

destitute of judgment, he attempted every art, except the

important ones of war and government. He was a master of several

curious, but useless sciences, a ready orator, an elegant poet, a

skilful gardener, an excellent cook, and most contemptible

prince. When the great emergencies of the state required his

presence and attention, he was engaged in conversation with the

philosopher Plotinus, wasting his time in trifling or licentious

pleasures, preparing his initiation to the Grecian mysteries, or

soliciting a place in the Areopagus of Athens. His profuse

magnificence insulted the general poverty; the solemn ridicule of

his triumphs impressed a deeper sense of the public disgrace. The

repeated intelligence of invasions, defeats, and rebellions, he

received with a careless smile; and singling out, with affected

contempt, some particular production of the lost province, he

carelessly asked, whether Rome must be ruined, unless it was

supplied with linen from Egypt, and arras cloth from Gaul. There

were, however, a few short moments in the life of Gallienus,

when, exasperated by some recent injury, he suddenly appeared the

intrepid soldier and the cruel tyrant; till, satiated with blood,

or fatigued by resistance, he insensibly sunk into the natural

mildness and indolence of his character.

At the time when the reins of government were held with so loose

a hand, it is not surprising that a crowd of usurpers should

start up in every province of the empire against the son of

Valerian. It was probably some ingenious fancy, of comparing the

thirty tyrants of Rome with the thirty tyrants of Athens, that

induced the writers of the Augustan History to select that

celebrated number, which has been gradually received into a

popular appellation. But in every light the parallel is idle and

defective. What resemblance can we discover between a council of

thirty persons, the united oppressors of a single city, and an

uncertain list of independent rivals, who rose and fell in

irregular succession through the extent of a vast empire? Nor can

the number of thirty be completed, unless we include in the

account the women and children who were honored with the Imperial

title. The reign of Gallienus, distracted as it was, produced

only nineteen pretenders to the throne: Cyriades, Macrianus,

Balista, Odenathus, and Zenobia, in the East; in Gaul, and the

western provinces, Posthumus, Lollianus, Victorinus, and his

mother Victoria, Marius, and Tetricus; in Illyricum and the

confines of the Danube, Ingenuus, Regillianus, and Aureolus; in

Pontus, Saturninus; in Isauria, Trebellianus; Piso in Thessaly;

Valens in Achaia; Æmilianus in Egypt; and Celsus in Africa. * To

illustrate the obscure monuments of the life and death of each

individual, would prove a laborious task, alike barren of

instruction and of amusement. We may content ourselves with

investigating some general characters, that most strongly mark

the condition of the times, and the manners of the men, their

pretensions, their motives, their fate, and the destructive

consequences of their usurpation.

It is sufficiently known, that the odious appellation of _Tyrant_

was often employed by the ancients to express the illegal seizure

of supreme power, without any reference to the abuse of it.

Several of the pretenders, who raised the standard of rebellion

against the emperor Gallienus, were shining models of virtue, and

almost all possessed a considerable share of vigor and ability.

Their merit had recommended them to the favor of Valerian, and

gradually promoted them to the most important commands of the

empire. The generals, who assumed the title of Augustus, were

either respected by their troops for their able conduct and

severe discipline, or admired for valor and success in war, or

beloved for frankness and generosity. The field of victory was

often the scene of their election; and even the armorer Marius,

the most contemptible of all the candidates for the purple, was

distinguished, however, by intrepid courage, matchless strength,

and blunt honesty. His mean and recent trade cast, indeed, an air

of ridicule on his elevation; * but his birth could not be more

obscure than was that of the greater part of his rivals, who were

born of peasants, and enlisted in the army as private soldiers.

In times of confusion every active genius finds the place

assigned him by nature: in a general state of war military merit

is the road to glory and to greatness. Of the nineteen tyrants

Tetricus only was a senator; Piso alone was a noble. The blood of

Numa, through twenty-eight successive generations, ran in the

veins of Calphurnius Piso, who, by female alliances, claimed a

right of exhibiting, in his house, the images of Crassus and of

the great Pompey. His ancestors had been repeatedly dignified

with all the honors which the commonwealth could bestow; and of

all the ancient families of Rome, the Calphurnian alone had

survived the tyranny of the Cæsars. The personal qualities of

Piso added new lustre to his race. The usurper Valens, by whose

order he was killed, confessed, with deep remorse, that even an

enemy ought to have respected the sanctity of Piso; and although

he died in arms against Gallienus, the senate, with the emperor’s

generous permission, decreed the triumphal ornaments to the

memory of so virtuous a rebel.

The lieutenants of Valerian were grateful to the father, whom

they esteemed. They disdained to serve the luxurious indolence of

his unworthy son. The throne of the Roman world was unsupported

by any principle of loyalty; and treason against such a prince

might easily be considered as patriotism to the state. Yet if we

examine with candor the conduct of these usurpers, it will

appear, that they were much oftener driven into rebellion by

their fears, than urged to it by their ambition. They dreaded the

cruel suspicions of Gallienus; they equally dreaded the

capricious violence of their troops. If the dangerous favor of

the army had imprudently declared them deserving of the purple,

they were marked for sure destruction; and even prudence would

counsel them to secure a short enjoyment of empire, and rather to

try the fortune of war than to expect the hand of an executioner.

When the clamor of the soldiers invested the reluctant victims

with the ensigns of sovereign authority, they sometimes mourned

in secret their approaching fate. “You have lost,” said

Saturninus, on the day of his elevation, “you have lost a useful

commander, and you have made a very wretched emperor.”

The apprehensions of Saturninus were justified by the repeated

experience of revolutions. Of the nineteen tyrants who started up

under the reign of Gallienus, there was not one who enjoyed a

life of peace, or a natural death. As soon as they were invested

with the bloody purple, they inspired their adherents with the

same fears and ambition which had occasioned their own revolt.

Encompassed with domestic conspiracy, military sedition, and

civil war, they trembled on the edge of precipices, in which,

after a longer or shorter term of anxiety, they were inevitably

lost. These precarious monarchs received, however, such honors as

the flattery of their respective armies and provinces could

bestow; but their claim, founded on rebellion, could never obtain

the sanction of law or history. Italy, Rome, and the senate,

constantly adhered to the cause of Gallienus, and he alone was

considered as the sovereign of the empire. That prince

condescended, indeed, to acknowledge the victorious arms of

Odenathus, who deserved the honorable distinction, by the

respectful conduct which he always maintained towards the son of

Valerian. With the general applause of the Romans, and the

consent of Gallienus, the senate conferred the title of Augustus

on the brave Palmyrenian; and seemed to intrust him with the

government of the East, which he already possessed, in so

independent a manner, that, like a private succession, he

bequeathed it to his illustrious widow, Zenobia.

The rapid and perpetual transitions from the cottage to the

throne, and from the throne to the grave, might have amused an

indifferent philosopher; were it possible for a philosopher to

remain indifferent amidst the general calamities of human kind.

The election of these precarious emperors, their power and their

death, were equally destructive to their subjects and adherents.

The price of their fatal elevation was instantly discharged to

the troops by an immense donative, drawn from the bowels of the

exhausted people. However virtuous was their character, however

pure their intentions, they found themselves reduced to the hard

necessity of supporting their usurpation by frequent acts of

rapine and cruelty. When they fell, they involved armies and

provinces in their fall. There is still extant a most savage

mandate from Gallienus to one of his ministers, after the

suppression of Ingenuus, who had assumed the purple in Illyricum.

“It is not enough,” says that soft but inhuman prince, “that you

exterminate such as have appeared in arms; the chance of battle

might have served me as effectually. The male sex of every age

must be extirpated; provided that, in the execution of the

children and old men, you can contrive means to save our

reputation. Let every one die who has dropped an expression, who

has entertained a thought against me, against me, the son of

Valerian, the father and brother of so many princes. Remember

that Ingenuus was made emperor: tear, kill, hew in pieces. I

write to you with my own hand, and would inspire you with my own

feelings.” Whilst the public forces of the state were dissipated

in private quarrels, the defenceless provinces lay exposed to

every invader. The bravest usurpers were compelled, by the

perplexity of their situation, to conclude ignominious treaties

with the common enemy, to purchase with oppressive tributes the

neutrality or services of the Barbarians, and to introduce

hostile and independent nations into the heart of the Roman

monarchy.

Such were the barbarians, and such the tyrants, who, under the

reigns of Valerian and Gallienus, dismembered the provinces, and

reduced the empire to the lowest pitch of disgrace and ruin, from

whence it seemed impossible that it should ever emerge. As far as

the barrenness of materials would permit, we have attempted to

trace, with order and perspicuity, the general events of that

calamitous period. There still remain some particular facts; I.

The disorders of Sicily; II. The tumults of Alexandria; and, III.

The rebellion of the Isaurians, which may serve to reflect a

strong light on the horrid picture.

I. Whenever numerous troops of banditti, multiplied by success

and impunity, publicly defy, instead of eluding, the justice of

their country, we may safely infer that the excessive weakness of

the country is felt and abused by the lowest ranks of the

community. The situation of Sicily preserved it from the

Barbarians; nor could the disarmed province have supported a

usurper. The sufferings of that once flourishing and still

fertile island were inflicted by baser hands. A licentious crowd

of slaves and peasants reigned for a while over the plundered

country, and renewed the memory of the servile wars of more

ancient times. Devastations, of which the husbandman was either

the victim or the accomplice, must have ruined the agriculture of

Sicily; and as the principal estates were the property of the

opulent senators of Rome, who often enclosed within a farm the

territory of an old republic, it is not improbable, that this

private injury might affect the capital more deeply, than all the

conquests of the Goths or the Persians.

II. The foundation of Alexandria was a noble design, at once

conceived and executed by the son of Philip. The beautiful and

regular form of that great city, second only to Rome itself,

comprehended a circumference of fifteen miles; it was peopled by

three hundred thousand free inhabitants, besides at least an

equal number of slaves. The lucrative trade of Arabia and India

flowed through the port of Alexandria, to the capital and

provinces of the empire. * Idleness was unknown. Some were

employed in blowing of glass, others in weaving of linen, others

again manufacturing the papyrus. Either sex, and every age, was

engaged in the pursuits of industry, nor did even the blind or

the lame want occupations suited to their condition. But the

people of Alexandria, a various mixture of nations, united the

vanity and inconstancy of the Greeks with the superstition and

obstinacy of the Egyptians. The most trifling occasion, a

transient scarcity of flesh or lentils, the neglect of an

accustomed salutation, a mistake of precedency in the public

baths, or even a religious dispute, were at any time sufficient

to kindle a sedition among that vast multitude, whose resentments

were furious and implacable. After the captivity of Valerian and

the insolence of his son had relaxed the authority of the laws,

the Alexandrians abandoned themselves to the ungoverned rage of

their passions, and their unhappy country was the theatre of a

civil war, which continued (with a few short and suspicious

truces) above twelve years. All intercourse was cut off between

the several quarters of the afflicted city, every street was

polluted with blood, every building of strength converted into a

citadel; nor did the tumults subside till a considerable part of

Alexandria was irretrievably ruined. The spacious and magnificent

district of Bruchion, * with its palaces and musæum, the

residence of the kings and philosophers of Egypt, is described

above a century afterwards, as already reduced to its present

state of dreary solitude.

III. The obscure rebellion of Trebellianus, who assumed the

purple in Isauria, a petty province of Asia Minor, was attended

with strange and memorable consequences. The pageant of royalty

was soon destroyed by an officer of Gallienus; but his followers,

despairing of mercy, resolved to shake off their allegiance, not

only to the emperor, but to the empire, and suddenly returned to

the savage manners from which they had never perfectly been

reclaimed. Their craggy rocks, a branch of the wide-extended

Taurus, protected their inaccessible retreat. The tillage of some

fertile valleys supplied them with necessaries, and a habit of

rapine with the luxuries of life. In the heart of the Roman

monarchy, the Isaurians long continued a nation of wild

barbarians. Succeeding princes, unable to reduce them to

obedience, either by arms or policy, were compelled to

acknowledge their weakness, by surrounding the hostile and

independent spot with a strong chain of fortifications, which

often proved insufficient to restrain the incursions of these

domestic foes. The Isaurians, gradually extending their territory

to the sea-coast, subdued the western and mountainous part of

Cilicia, formerly the nest of those daring pirates, against whom

the republic had once been obliged to exert its utmost force,

under the conduct of the great Pompey.

Our habits of thinking so fondly connect the order of the

universe with the fate of man, that this gloomy period of history

has been decorated with inundations, earthquakes, uncommon

meteors, preternatural darkness, and a crowd of prodigies

fictitious or exaggerated. But a long and general famine was a

calamity of a more serious kind. It was the inevitable

consequence of rapine and oppression, which extirpated the

produce of the present and the hope of future harvests. Famine is

almost always followed by epidemical diseases, the effect of

scanty and unwholesome food. Other causes must, however, have

contributed to the furious plague, which, from the year two

hundred and fifty to the year two hundred and sixty-five, raged

without interruption in every province, every city, and almost

every family, of the Roman empire. During some time five thousand

persons died daily in Rome; and many towns, that had escaped the

hands of the Barbarians, were entirely depopulated.

We have the knowledge of a very curious circumstance, of some use

perhaps in the melancholy calculation of human calamities. An

exact register was kept at Alexandria of all the citizens

entitled to receive the distribution of corn. It was found, that

the ancient number of those comprised between the ages of forty

and seventy, had been equal to the whole sum of claimants, from

fourteen to fourscore years of age, who remained alive after the

reign of Gallienus. Applying this authentic fact to the most

correct tables of mortality, it evidently proves, that above half

the people of Alexandria had perished; and could we venture to

extend the analogy to the other provinces, we might suspect, that

war, pestilence, and famine, had consumed, in a few years, the

moiety of the human species.

Chapter XI: Reign Of Claudius, Defeat Of The Goths.—Part I.

Reign Of Claudius.—Defeat Of The Goths.—Victories, Triumph, And Death

Of Aurelian.

Under the deplorable reigns of Valerian and Gallienus, the empire

was oppressed and almost destroyed by the soldiers, the tyrants,

and the barbarians. It was saved by a series of great princes,

who derived their obscure origin from the martial provinces of

Illyricum. Within a period of about thirty years, Claudius,

Aurelian, Probus, Diocletian and his colleagues, triumphed over

the foreign and domestic enemies of the state, reëstablished,

with the military discipline, the strength of the frontiers, and

deserved the glorious title of Restorers of the Roman world.

The removal of an effeminate tyrant made way for a succession of

heroes. The indignation of the people imputed all their

calamities to Gallienus, and the far greater part were, indeed,

the consequence of his dissolute manners and careless

administration. He was even destitute of a sense of honor, which

so frequently supplies the absence of public virtue; and as long

as he was permitted to enjoy the possession of Italy, a victory

of the barbarians, the loss of a province, or the rebellion of a

general, seldom disturbed the tranquil course of his pleasures.

At length, a considerable army, stationed on the Upper Danube,

invested with the Imperial purple their leader Aureolus; who,

disdaining a confined and barren reign over the mountains of

Rhætia, passed the Alps, occupied Milan, threatened Rome, and

challenged Gallienus to dispute in the field the sovereignty of

Italy. The emperor, provoked by the insult, and alarmed by the

instant danger, suddenly exerted that latent vigor which

sometimes broke through the indolence of his temper. Forcing

himself from the luxury of the palace, he appeared in arms at the

head of his legions, and advanced beyond the Po to encounter his

competitor. The corrupted name of Pontirolo still preserves the

memory of a bridge over the Adda, which, during the action, must

have proved an object of the utmost importance to both armies.

The Rhætian usurper, after receiving a total defeat and a

dangerous wound, retired into Milan. The siege of that great city

was immediately formed; the walls were battered with every engine

in use among the ancients; and Aureolus, doubtful of his internal

strength, and hopeless of foreign succors already anticipated the

fatal consequences of unsuccessful rebellion.

His last resource was an attempt to seduce the loyalty of the

besiegers. He scattered libels through the camp, inviting the

troops to desert an unworthy master, who sacrificed the public

happiness to his luxury, and the lives of his most valuable

subjects to the slightest suspicions. The arts of Aureolus

diffused fears and discontent among the principal officers of his

rival. A conspiracy was formed by Heraclianus, the Prætorian

præfect, by Marcian, a general of rank and reputation, and by

Cecrops, who commanded a numerous body of Dalmatian guards. The

death of Gallienus was resolved; and notwithstanding their desire

of first terminating the siege of Milan, the extreme danger which

accompanied every moment’s delay obliged them to hasten the

execution of their daring purpose. At a late hour of the night,

but while the emperor still protracted the pleasures of the

table, an alarm was suddenly given, that Aureolus, at the head of

all his forces, had made a desperate sally from the town;

Gallienus, who was never deficient in personal bravery, started

from his silken couch, and without allowing himself time either

to put on his armor, or to assemble his guards, he mounted on

horseback, and rode full speed towards the supposed place of the

attack. Encompassed by his declared or concealed enemies, he

soon, amidst the nocturnal tumult, received a mortal dart from an

uncertain hand. Before he expired, a patriotic sentiment rising

in the mind of Gallienus, induced him to name a deserving

successor; and it was his last request, that the Imperial

ornaments should be delivered to Claudius, who then commanded a

detached army in the neighborhood of Pavia. The report at least

was diligently propagated, and the order cheerfully obeyed by the

conspirators, who had already agreed to place Claudius on the

throne. On the first news of the emperor’s death, the troops

expressed some suspicion and resentment, till the one was

removed, and the other assuaged, by a donative of twenty pieces

of gold to each soldier. They then ratified the election, and

acknowledged the merit of their new sovereign.

The obscurity which covered the origin of Claudius, though it was

afterwards embellished by some flattering fictions, sufficiently

betrays the meanness of his birth. We can only discover that he

was a native of one of the provinces bordering on the Danube;

that his youth was spent in arms, and that his modest valor

attracted the favor and confidence of Decius. The senate and

people already considered him as an excellent officer, equal to

the most important trusts; and censured the inattention of

Valerian, who suffered him to remain in the subordinate station

of a tribune. But it was not long before that emperor

distinguished the merit of Claudius, by declaring him general and

chief of the Illyrian frontier, with the command of all the

troops in Thrace, Mæsia, Dacia, Pannonia, and Dalmatia, the

appointments of the præfect of Egypt, the establishment of the

proconsul of Africa, and the sure prospect of the consulship. By

his victories over the Goths, he deserved from the senate the

honor of a statue, and excited the jealous apprehensions of

Gallienus. It was impossible that a soldier could esteem so

dissolute a sovereign, nor is it easy to conceal a just contempt.

Some unguarded expressions which dropped from Claudius were

officiously transmitted to the royal ear. The emperor’s answer to

an officer of confidence describes in very lively colors his own

character, and that of the times. “There is not any thing capable

of giving me more serious concern, than the intelligence

contained in your last despatch; that some malicious suggestions

have indisposed towards us the mind of our friend and parent

Claudius. As you regard your allegiance, use every means to

appease his resentment, but conduct your negotiation with

secrecy; let it not reach the knowledge of the Dacian troops;

they are already provoked, and it might inflame their fury. I

myself have sent him some presents: be it your care that he

accept them with pleasure. Above all, let him not suspect that I

am made acquainted with his imprudence. The fear of my anger

might urge him to desperate counsels.” The presents which

accompanied this humble epistle, in which the monarch solicited a

reconciliation with his discontented subject, consisted of a

considerable sum of money, a splendid wardrobe, and a valuable

service of silver and gold plate. By such arts Gallienus softened

the indignation and dispelled the fears of his Illyrian general;

and during the remainder of that reign, the formidable sword of

Claudius was always drawn in the cause of a master whom he

despised. At last, indeed, he received from the conspirators the

bloody purple of Gallienus: but he had been absent from their

camp and counsels; and however he might applaud the deed, we may

candidly presume that he was innocent of the knowledge of it.

When Claudius ascended the throne, he was about fifty-four years

of age.

The siege of Milan was still continued, and Aureolus soon

discovered that the success of his artifices had only raised up a

more determined adversary. He attempted to negotiate with

Claudius a treaty of alliance and partition. “Tell him,” replied

the intrepid emperor, “that such proposals should have been made

to Gallienus; _he_, perhaps, might have listened to them with

patience, and accepted a colleague as despicable as himself.”

This stern refusal, and a last unsuccessful effort, obliged

Aureolus to yield the city and himself to the discretion of the

conqueror. The judgment of the army pronounced him worthy of

death; and Claudius, after a feeble resistance, consented to the

execution of the sentence. Nor was the zeal of the senate less

ardent in the cause of their new sovereign. They ratified,

perhaps with a sincere transport of zeal, the election of

Claudius; and, as his predecessor had shown himself the personal

enemy of their order, they exercised, under the name of justice,

a severe revenge against his friends and family. The senate was

permitted to discharge the ungrateful office of punishment, and

the emperor reserved for himself the pleasure and merit of

obtaining by his intercession a general act of indemnity.

Such ostentatious clemency discovers less of the real character

of Claudius, than a trifling circumstance in which he seems to

have consulted only the dictates of his heart. The frequent

rebellions of the provinces had involved almost every person in

the guilt of treason, almost every estate in the case of

confiscation; and Gallienus often displayed his liberality by

distributing among his officers the property of his subjects. On

the accession of Claudius, an old woman threw herself at his

feet, and complained that a general of the late emperor had

obtained an arbitrary grant of her patrimony. This general was

Claudius himself, who had not entirely escaped the contagion of

the times. The emperor blushed at the reproach, but deserved the

confidence which she had reposed in his equity. The confession of

his fault was accompanied with immediate and ample restitution.

In the arduous task which Claudius had undertaken, of restoring

the empire to its ancient splendor, it was first necessary to

revive among his troops a sense of order and obedience. With the

authority of a veteran commander, he represented to them that the

relaxation of discipline had introduced a long train of

disorders, the effects of which were at length experienced by the

soldiers themselves; that a people ruined by oppression, and

indolent from despair, could no longer supply a numerous army

with the means of luxury, or even of subsistence; that the danger

of each individual had increased with the despotism of the

military order, since princes who tremble on the throne will

guard their safety by the instant sacrifice of every obnoxious

subject. The emperor expiated on the mischiefs of a lawless

caprice, which the soldiers could only gratify at the expense of

their own blood; as their seditious elections had so frequently

been followed by civil wars, which consumed the flower of the

legions either in the field of battle, or in the cruel abuse of

victory. He painted in the most lively colors the exhausted state

of the treasury, the desolation of the provinces, the disgrace of

the Roman name, and the insolent triumph of rapacious barbarians.

It was against those barbarians, he declared, that he intended to

point the first effort of their arms. Tetricus might reign for a

while over the West, and even Zenobia might preserve the dominion

of the East. These usurpers were his personal adversaries; nor

could he think of indulging any private resentment till he had

saved an empire, whose impending ruin would, unless it was timely

prevented, crush both the army and the people.

The various nations of Germany and Sarmatia, who fought under the

Gothic standard, had already collected an armament more

formidable than any which had yet issued from the Euxine. On the

banks of the Niester, one of the great rivers that discharge

themselves into that sea, they constructed a fleet of two

thousand, or even of six thousand vessels; numbers which, however

incredible they may seem, would have been insufficient to

transport their pretended army of three hundred and twenty

thousand barbarians. Whatever might be the real strength of the

Goths, the vigor and success of the expedition were not adequate

to the greatness of the preparations. In their passage through

the Bosphorus, the unskilful pilots were overpowered by the

violence of the current; and while the multitude of their ships

were crowded in a narrow channel, many were dashed against each

other, or against the shore. The barbarians made several descents

on the coasts both of Europe and Asia; but the open country was

already plundered, and they were repulsed with shame and loss

from the fortified cities which they assaulted. A spirit of

discouragement and division arose in the fleet, and some of their

chiefs sailed away towards the islands of Crete and Cyprus; but

the main body, pursuing a more steady course, anchored at length

near the foot of Mount Athos, and assaulted the city of

Thessalonica, the wealthy capital of all the Macedonian

provinces. Their attacks, in which they displayed a fierce but

artless bravery, were soon interrupted by the rapid approach of

Claudius, hastening to a scene of action that deserved the

presence of a warlike prince at the head of the remaining powers

of the empire. Impatient for battle, the Goths immediately broke

up their camp, relinquished the siege of Thessalonica, left their

navy at the foot of Mount Athos, traversed the hills of

Macedonia, and pressed forwards to engage the last defence of

Italy.

We still posses an original letter addressed by Claudius to the

senate and people on this memorable occasion. “Conscript

fathers,” says the emperor, “know that three hundred and twenty

thousand Goths have invaded the Roman territory. If I vanquish

them, your gratitude will reward my services. Should I fall,

remember that I am the successor of Gallienus. The whole republic

is fatigued and exhausted. We shall fight after Valerian, after

Ingenuus, Regillianus, Lollianus, Posthumus, Celsus, and a

thousand others, whom a just contempt for Gallienus provoked into

rebellion. We are in want of darts, of spears, and of shields.

The strength of the empire, Gaul, and Spain, are usurped by

Tetricus, and we blush to acknowledge that the archers of the

East serve under the banners of Zenobia. Whatever we shall

perform will be sufficiently great.” The melancholy firmness of

this epistle announces a hero careless of his fate, conscious of

his danger, but still deriving a well-grounded hope from the

resources of his own mind.

The event surpassed his own expectations and those of the world.

By the most signal victories he delivered the empire from this

host of barbarians, and was distinguished by posterity under the

glorious appellation of the Gothic Claudius. The imperfect

historians of an irregular war do not enable us to describe the

order and circumstances of his exploits; but, if we could be

indulged in the allusion, we might distribute into three acts

this memorable tragedy. I. The decisive battle was fought near

Naissus, a city of Dardania. The legions at first gave way,

oppressed by numbers, and dismayed by misfortunes. Their ruin was

inevitable, had not the abilities of their emperor prepared a

seasonable relief. A large detachment, rising out of the secret

and difficult passes of the mountains, which, by his order, they

had occupied, suddenly assailed the rear of the victorious Goths.

The favorable instant was improved by the activity of Claudius.

He revived the courage of his troops, restored their ranks, and

pressed the barbarians on every side. Fifty thousand men are

reported to have been slain in the battle of Naissus. Several

large bodies of barbarians, covering their retreat with a movable

fortification of wagons, retired, or rather escaped, from the

field of slaughter. II. We may presume that some insurmountable

difficulty, the fatigue, perhaps, or the disobedience, of the

conquerors, prevented Claudius from completing in one day the

destruction of the Goths. The war was diffused over the province

of Mæsia, Thrace, and Macedonia, and its operations drawn out

into a variety of marches, surprises, and tumultuary engagements,

as well by sea as by land. When the Romans suffered any loss, it

was commonly occasioned by their own cowardice or rashness; but

the superior talents of the emperor, his perfect knowledge of the

country, and his judicious choice of measures as well as

officers, assured on most occasions the success of his arms. The

immense booty, the fruit of so many victories, consisted for the

greater part of cattle and slaves. A select body of the Gothic

youth was received among the Imperial troops; the remainder was

sold into servitude; and so considerable was the number of female

captives that every soldier obtained to his share two or three

women. A circumstance from which we may conclude, that the

invaders entertained some designs of settlement as well as of

plunder; since even in a naval expedition, they were accompanied

by their families. III. The loss of their fleet, which was either

taken or sunk, had intercepted the retreat of the Goths. A vast

circle of Roman posts, distributed with skill, supported with

firmness, and gradually closing towards a common centre, forced

the barbarians into the most inaccessible parts of Mount Hæmus,

where they found a safe refuge, but a very scanty subsistence.

During the course of a rigorous winter in which they were

besieged by the emperor’s troops, famine and pestilence,

desertion and the sword, continually diminished the imprisoned

multitude. On the return of spring, nothing appeared in arms

except a hardy and desperate band, the remnant of that mighty

host which had embarked at the mouth of the Niester.

The pestilence which swept away such numbers of the barbarians,

at length proved fatal to their conqueror. After a short but

glorious reign of two years, Claudius expired at Sirmium, amidst

the tears and acclamations of his subjects. In his last illness,

he convened the principal officers of the state and army, and in

their presence recommended Aurelian, one of his generals, as the

most deserving of the throne, and the best qualified to execute

the great design which he himself had been permitted only to

undertake. The virtues of Claudius, his valor, affability,

justice, and temperance, his love of fame and of his country,

place him in that short list of emperors who added lustre to the

Roman purple. Those virtues, however, were celebrated with

peculiar zeal and complacency by the courtly writers of the age

of Constantine, who was the great-grandson of Crispus, the elder

brother of Claudius. The voice of flattery was soon taught to

repeat, that gods, who so hastily had snatched Claudius from the

earth, rewarded his merit and piety by the perpetual

establishment of the empire in his family.

Notwithstanding these oracles, the greatness of the Flavian

family (a name which it had pleased them to assume) was deferred

above twenty years, and the elevation of Claudius occasioned the

immediate ruin of his brother Quintilius, who possessed not

sufficient moderation or courage to descend into the private

station to which the patriotism of the late emperor had condemned

him. Without delay or reflection, he assumed the purple at

Aquileia, where he commanded a considerable force; and though his

reign lasted only seventeen days, * he had time to obtain the

sanction of the senate, and to experience a mutiny of the troops.

As soon as he was informed that the great army of the Danube had

invested the well-known valor of Aurelian with Imperial power, he

sunk under the fame and merit of his rival; and ordering his

veins to be opened, prudently withdrew himself from the unequal

contest.

The general design of this work will not permit us minutely to

relate the actions of every emperor after he ascended the throne,

much less to deduce the various fortunes of his private life. We

shall only observe, that the father of Aurelian was a peasant of

the territory of Sirmium, who occupied a small farm, the property

of Aurelius, a rich senator. His warlike son enlisted in the

troops as a common soldier, successively rose to the rank of a

centurion, a tribune, the præfect of a legion, the inspector of

the camp, the general, or, as it was then called, the duke, of a

frontier; and at length, during the Gothic war, exercised the

important office of commander-in-chief of the cavalry. In every

station he distinguished himself by matchless valor, rigid

discipline, and successful conduct. He was invested with the

consulship by the emperor Valerian, who styles him, in the

pompous language of that age, the deliverer of Illyricum, the

restorer of Gaul, and the rival of the Scipios. At the

recommendation of Valerian, a senator of the highest rank and

merit, Ulpius Crinitus, whose blood was derived from the same

source as that of Trajan, adopted the Pannonian peasant, gave him

his daughter in marriage, and relieved with his ample fortune the

honorable poverty which Aurelian had preserved inviolate.

The reign of Aurelian lasted only four years and about nine

months; but every instant of that short period was filled by some

memorable achievement. He put an end to the Gothic war, chastised

the Germans who invaded Italy, recovered Gaul, Spain, and Britain

out of the hands of Tetricus, and destroyed the proud monarchy

which Zenobia had erected in the East on the ruins of the

afflicted empire.

It was the rigid attention of Aurelian, even to the minutest

articles of discipline, which bestowed such uninterrupted success

on his arms. His military regulations are contained in a very

concise epistle to one of his inferior officers, who is commanded

to enforce them, as he wishes to become a tribune, or as he is

desirous to live. Gaming, drinking, and the arts of divination,

were severely prohibited. Aurelian expected that his soldiers

should be modest, frugal, and laborious; that their armor should

be constantly kept bright, their weapons sharp, their clothing

and horses ready for immediate service; that they should live in

their quarters with chastity and sobriety, without damaging the

cornfields, without stealing even a sheep, a fowl, or a bunch of

grapes, without exacting from their landlords either salt, or

oil, or wood. “The public allowance,” continues the emperor, “is

sufficient for their support; their wealth should be collected

from the spoils of the enemy, not from the tears of the

provincials.” A single instance will serve to display the rigor,

and even cruelty, of Aurelian. One of the soldiers had seduced

the wife of his host. The guilty wretch was fastened to two trees

forcibly drawn towards each other, and his limbs were torn

asunder by their sudden separation. A few such examples impressed

a salutary consternation. The punishments of Aurelian were

terrible; but he had seldom occasion to punish more than once the

same offence. His own conduct gave a sanction to his laws, and

the seditious legions dreaded a chief who had learned to obey,

and who was worthy to command.

Chapter XI: Reign Of Claudius, Defeat Of The Goths.—Part II.

The death of Claudius had revived the fainting spirit of the

Goths. The troops which guarded the passes of Mount Hæmus, and

the banks of the Danube, had been drawn away by the apprehension

of a civil war; and it seems probable that the remaining body of

the Gothic and Vandalic tribes embraced the favorable

opportunity, abandoned their settlements of the Ukraine,

traversed the rivers, and swelled with new multitudes the

destroying host of their countrymen. Their united numbers were at

length encountered by Aurelian, and the bloody and doubtful

conflict ended only with the approach of night. Exhausted by so

many calamities, which they had mutually endured and inflicted

during a twenty years’ war, the Goths and the Romans consented to

a lasting and beneficial treaty. It was earnestly solicited by

the barbarians, and cheerfully ratified by the legions, to whose

suffrage the prudence of Aurelian referred the decision of that

important question. The Gothic nation engaged to supply the

armies of Rome with a body of two thousand auxiliaries,

consisting entirely of cavalry, and stipulated in return an

undisturbed retreat, with a regular market as far as the Danube,

provided by the emperor’s care, but at their own expense. The

treaty was observed with such religious fidelity, that when a

party of five hundred men straggled from the camp in quest of

plunder, the king or general of the barbarians commanded that the

guilty leader should be apprehended and shot to death with darts,

as a victim devoted to the sanctity of their engagements. * It

is, however, not unlikely, that the precaution of Aurelian, who

had exacted as hostages the sons and daughters of the Gothic

chiefs, contributed something to this pacific temper. The youths

he trained in the exercise of arms, and near his own person: to

the damsels he gave a liberal and Roman education, and by

bestowing them in marriage on some of his principal officers,

gradually introduced between the two nations the closest and most

endearing connections.

But the most important condition of peace was understood rather

than expressed in the treaty. Aurelian withdrew the Roman forces

from Dacia, and tacitly relinquished that great province to the

Goths and Vandals. His manly judgment convinced him of the solid

advantages, and taught him to despise the seeming disgrace, of

thus contracting the frontiers of the monarchy. The Dacian

subjects, removed from those distant possessions which they were

unable to cultivate or defend, added strength and populousness to

the southern side of the Danube. A fertile territory, which the

repetition of barbarous inroads had changed into a desert, was

yielded to their industry, and a new province of Dacia still

preserved the memory of Trajan’s conquests. The old country of

that name detained, however, a considerable number of its

inhabitants, who dreaded exile more than a Gothic master. These

degenerate Romans continued to serve the empire, whose allegiance

they had renounced, by introducing among their conquerors the

first notions of agriculture, the useful arts, and the

conveniences of civilized life. An intercourse of commerce and

language was gradually established between the opposite banks of

the Danube; and after Dacia became an independent state, it often

proved the firmest barrier of the empire against the invasions of

the savages of the North. A sense of interest attached these more

settled barbarians to the alliance of Rome, and a permanent

interest very frequently ripens into sincere and useful

friendship. This various colony, which filled the ancient

province, and was insensibly blended into one great people, still

acknowledged the superior renown and authority of the Gothic

tribe, and claimed the fancied honor of a Scandinavian origin. At

the same time, the lucky though accidental resemblance of the

name of Getæ, * infused among the credulous Goths a vain

persuasion, that in a remote age, their own ancestors, already

seated in the Dacian provinces, had received the instructions of

Zamolxis, and checked the victorious arms of Sesostris and

Darius.

While the vigorous and moderate conduct of Aurelian restored the

Illyrian frontier, the nation of the Alemanni violated the

conditions of peace, which either Gallienus had purchased, or

Claudius had imposed, and, inflamed by their impatient youth,

suddenly flew to arms. Forty thousand horse appeared in the

field, and the numbers of the infantry doubled those of the

cavalry. The first objects of their avarice were a few cities of

the Rhætian frontier; but their hopes soon rising with success,

the rapid march of the Alemanni traced a line of devastation from

the Danube to the Po.

The emperor was almost at the same time informed of the

irruption, and of the retreat, of the barbarians. Collecting an

active body of troops, he marched with silence and celerity along

the skirts of the Hercynian forest; and the Alemanni, laden with

the spoils of Italy, arrived at the Danube, without suspecting,

that on the opposite bank, and in an advantageous post, a Roman

army lay concealed and prepared to intercept their return.

Aurelian indulged the fatal security of the barbarians, and

permitted about half their forces to pass the river without

disturbance and without precaution. Their situation and

astonishment gave him an easy victory; his skilful conduct

improved the advantage. Disposing the legions in a semicircular

form, he advanced the two horns of the crescent across the

Danube, and wheeling them on a sudden towards the centre,

enclosed the rear of the German host. The dismayed barbarians, on

whatsoever side they cast their eyes, beheld, with despair, a

wasted country, a deep and rapid stream, a victorious and

implacable enemy.