THE INVASION OF ITALY
The tragic end of his old colleague must have raised many disquieting
thoughts in the mind of Diocletian, already beginning to be anxious lest
his successors should think that he was living too long. While Galerius
flourished he was sure of a protector, but Galerius died in 311. In the
eighteenth year of his rule he had been stricken with an incurable and
loathsome malady, into the details of which Lactantius enters with a
morbid but lively enjoyment, affecting to see in the torture of the
dying Emperor the visitation of an angry Providence. He describes
minutely the progress of the cancer and the “appalling odour of the
festering wound which spread not only through the palace but through the
city.” He shews us the unhappy patient raising piercing cries and
calling for mercy from the God of the Christians whom he had persecuted,
vowing under the stress of physical anguish that he would make
reparation; and, finally, when at the very point of death (_jam
deficiens_), dictating the edict which stayed the persecution and gave
the Christians full liberty to worship in their own way. It will be more
convenient to discuss in another place this remarkable document, the
forerunner, so to speak, of the famous Edict of Milan. It was
promulgated at Nicomedia on the thirtieth of April, 311, and a few days
later Galerius’s torments were mercifully ended by death.
The death of Galerius gave another blow to the already tottering system
of Diocletian. It had been his intention to retire, as Diocletian had
done, at the end of his twentieth year of sovereignty, and make way for
a younger man, and there can be little doubt that he would have been as
good as his word. Galerius has not received fair treatment at the hands
of posterity. Lactantius, his bitter enemy, describes him as a violent
ruffian and a hectoring bully, an object of terror and fear to all
around him in word, deed, and aspect. Lactantius belittles the
importance of his victory over Narses, the Persian King, by saying that
the Persian army marched encumbered with baggage and that victory was
easily won. He makes Galerius the leading spirit of the Persecution;
represents him as having goaded Diocletian into signing the fatal
edicts; accuses him of having fired the palace at Nicomedia in order to
work on the terrors of his chief; charges him with having invented new
and horrible tortures; and declares that he never dined or supped
without whetting his appetite with the sight of human blood. No one
would gather from Lactantius that Galerius was a fine soldier, a
hard-working and capable Emperor, and a loyal successor to a great
political chief. Eutropius does him no more than justice when he
describes him as a man of high principle and a consummate general.[38]
Aurelius Victor fills in the light and shade. Galerius was, he says, a
Prince worthy of all praise; just if unpolished and untutored; of
handsome presence; and an accomplished and fortunate general. He had
risen from the ranks; in his young days he had been a herd boy, and the
name of _Armentarius_ clung to him through life. This rough and ready
Pannonian spent too energetic and busy a career to have time for
culture. He came from a province where, in the forceful phrase of one of
the Panegyrists, “life was all hard knocks and fighting.”[39]
-----
Footnote 38:
_Vir et probe moratus et egregius re militari._
Footnote 39:
_In quibus omnis vita militia est._
-----
Galerius had already nominated Licinius as his successor, but Licinius
was far away in Pannonia and did not cross over at once into Asia to
take command of Galerius’s army—no doubt because it was not safe for him
to leave his post. In the meantime, Maximin Daza, the Augustus of Syria
and Egypt, had been preparing to march on Nicomedia as soon as Galerius
breathed his last, for he claimed, as we have seen, that by seniority of
rule he had a better right than Licinius to the title of senior
Augustus. While, therefore, Licinius remained in Europe, Maximin Daza
advanced from Syria across the Taurus and entered Bithynia, where, to
curry favour with the people, he abolished the census. It was expected
that the two Emperors would fight out their quarrel, but an
accommodation was arrived at, and they agreed that the Hellespont should
form the boundary between them. Maximin, by his promptitude, had thus
materially increased his sovereignty, and, at the beginning of 312, the
eastern half of the Empire was divided between Licinius and Maximin
Daza, while Constantine ruled in Great Britain, Spain, and Gaul, and
Maxentius was master of Italy and Africa.
Whether or not his position had been recognised by the other Emperors at
the conference of Carnuntum, Maxentius had remained in undisturbed
possession of Italy since the hurried retreat of the invading army of
Galerius. In Africa, indeed, a general named Alexander, who, according
to Zosimus, was a Phrygian by descent, and timid and advanced in years,
raised the standard of revolt. Maxentius commissioned one of his
lieutenants to attack the usurper and Alexander was captured and
strangled. There would have been nothing to distinguish this
insurrection from any other, had it not been for the ruthless severity
with which the African cities were treated by the conqueror. Carthage
and Cirta were pillaged and sacked; the countryside was laid desolate;
many of the leading citizens were executed; still more were reduced to
beggary. The ruin of Africa was so complete that it excited against
Maxentius the public opinion of the Roman world. He had begun his reign,
as will be remembered, as the special champion of the Prætorians and of
the privileges of Rome, but he soon lost his early popularity, and
rapidly developed into a cruel and bloodthirsty tyrant. His profligacy
was shameless and excessive, even for those licentious times. Eusebius
tells the story of how Sophronia, the Christian wife of the city
præfect, stabbed herself in order to escape his embraces, when the
imperial messengers came to summon her to the palace.
If Maxentius had been accused of all the vices only on the authority of
the Christian authors and the official panegyrists of Constantine, their
statements might have been received with some suspicion—for a fallen
Roman Emperor had no friends. Zosimus, however, is almost as severe upon
him as Lactantius, and Julian, in the _Banquet of the Cæsars_, excludes
him from the feast as one utterly unworthy of a place in honourable
society. According to Aurelius Victor, he was the first to start the
practice of exacting from the senators large sums of money in the guise
of free gifts (_munerum specie_) on the flimsiest pretexts of public
necessity, or as payment for the bestowal of office or civil
distinction. Moreover, knowing that, sooner or later, he would find
himself at war with one or other of his brother Augusti, Maxentius
amassed great stores of corn and wealth and took no heed of a morrow
which he knew that he might not live to witness. He despoiled the
temples,—says the author of the Ninth Panegyric,—butchered the Senate,
and starved the people of Rome. The Praetorians—who had placed and kept
him on the throne—ruled the city. Zosimus tells the curious story of
how, in the course of a great fire in Rome, the Temple of Fortune was
burned down and one of the soldiers looking on spoke blasphemous and
disrespectful words of the goddess. Immediately the mob attacked him.
His comrades went to his assistance and a serious riot ensued, during
which the Prætorians would have massacred the citizens had they not been
with difficulty restrained. All the authorities, indeed, agree that a
perfect reign of terror prevailed at Rome after Maxentius’s victory over
Alexander in Africa, while Maxentius himself is depicted as a second
Commodus or Nero.
One of the most vivid pictures of the tyrant is given in the Panegyric
already quoted. The orator speaks of Maxentius as a “stupid and
worthless wild-beast” (_stultumet nequam animal_) skulking for ever
within the walls of the palace and not daring to leave the precincts.
Fancy, he exclaims, an indoor Emperor, who considers that he has made a
journey and achieved an expedition if he has so much as visited the
Gardens of Sallust! Whenever he addressed his soldiers, he would boast
that, though he had colleagues in the Empire, he alone was the real
Emperor; for he ruled while they kept the frontiers safe and did his
fighting for him. And then he would dismiss them with the three words:
“_Fruimini! Dissipate! Prodigite!_” Such an invitation to drunkenness,
riot, and debauch would not be unwelcome to the swaggering Prætorians
and to the numerous bands of mercenaries which Maxentius had collected
from all parts of the world.
We ought not, perhaps, to take this scathing invective quite literally.
For all his vices, Maxentius was probably not quite the hopeless
debauchee he is represented to have been. It is at least worth remark
that it was this Emperor, of whom no one has a charitable word to say,
who restored to the Christians at Rome the church buildings and property
which had been confiscated to the State by the edicts of Diocletian and
Galerius. Neither Eusebius nor Lactantius mentions this, but the fact is
clear from a passage in St. Augustine, who says that the first act of
the Roman Christians on regaining possession of their cemetery was to
bring back the body of Bishop Eusebius, who had died in exile in Sicily.
Nor did Maxentius’s political attitude towards the other Augusti betray
indications of incompetence or want of will. He was ambitious—a trait
common to most Roman Emperors and certainly shared by all his
colleagues. There was no cohesion among the four Augusti; there was no
one much superior to the others in influence and prestige. Constantine
and Maxentius feared and suspected each other in the West, just as
Licinius and Maximin Daza feared and suspected each other in the East.
When the two latter agreed that the Hellespont should divide their
territories, Licinius, who had lost Asia Minor by the bargain, made
overtures of alliance to Constantine. It was arranged that Licinius
should marry Constantia, the sister of the Augustus of Gaul. Naturally,
therefore, Maximin Daza turned towards Maxentius and sent envoys asking
for alliance and friendship. Lactantius adds the curious phrase that
Maximin’s letter was couched in a tone of familiarity[40] and says that
Maxentius was as eager to accept as Maximin had been to offer. He hailed
it, we are told, as a god-sent help, for he had already declared war
against Constantine on the pretext of avenging his father’s murder.
-----
Footnote 40:
_Scribit etiam familiariter._
-----
The outbreak of this war, which was fraught with such momentous
consequences to the whole course of civilisation, found the Empire
strangely divided. The Emperor of Italy and Africa was allied with the
Emperor of Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor, against the rulers of the
armies of the Danube and the Rhine. We shall see that the alliance
was—at any rate, in result—defensive rather than offensive. Licinius and
Maximin never moved; they simply neutralised one another, though the
advantage clearly lay with Constantine and Licinius, for Maxentius was
absolutely isolated, so far as receiving help on the landward side was
concerned. We need not look far to find the real cause of quarrel
between Constantine and Maxentius, whatever pretexts were assigned.
Maxentius would never have risked his Empire for the sake of a father
whom he detested; nor would Constantine have jeopardised his throne in
order to avenge an insult. Each aspired to rule over the entire West;
neither would acquiesce in the pretensions of the other. Both had been
actively preparing for a struggle which became inevitable when neither
took any radical steps to avoid it. We have already seen that
Constantine kept the larger part of the army of Gaul stationed in the
south near Arelate and Lugdunum, in order to watch the Alpine passes; we
shall find that Maxentius had also posted his main armies in the north
of Italy from Susa on the one side, where he was threatened by
Constantine, to Venice on the other, where he was on guard against
Licinius. There is a curious reference in one of the authorities to a
plan formed by Maxentius of invading Gaul through Rhaetia,—no doubt
because Constantine had made the Alpine passes practically
unassailable,—while Lactantius tells us that he had drawn every
available man from Africa to swell his armies in Italy.
Constantine acted with the extreme rapidity for which he was already
famous. He hurried his army down from the Rhine, and was through the
passes and attacking the walled city of Susa before Maxentius had
certain knowledge of his movements. That he was embarking on an
exceedingly hazardous expedition seems to have been recognised by
himself and his captains. The author of the Ninth Panegyric says quite
bluntly that his principal officers not only muttered their fears in
secret, but expressed them openly,[41] and adds that his councillors and
haruspices warned him to desist. A similar campaign had cost Severus his
life and had been found too hazardous even by Galerius. Superiority of
numbers lay not with him, but with his rival. Constantine was gravely
handicapped by the fact that he had to safeguard the Rhine behind him
against the Germanic tribes, which he knew would seize the first
opportunity to pass the river. Zosimus gives a detailed account[42] of
the numbers which the rivals placed in the field. Maxentius, he says,
had 170,000 foot and 18,000 horse under his command, including 80,000
levies from Rome and Italy, and 40,000 from Carthage and Africa.
Constantine, on the other hand, even after vigorous recruiting in
Britain and Gaul, could only muster 90,000 foot and 8000 horse. The
author of the Ninth Panegyric, in a casual phrase, says that Constantine
could hardly employ a fourth of his Gallic army against the 100,000 men
in the ranks of Maxentius, on account of the dangers of the Rhine.
Ancient authorities, however, are never trustworthy where numbers are
concerned; we only know that Maxentius had by far the larger force, and
that Constantine’s army of invasion was probably under 40,000 strong.
Whether the numerical supremacy of the former was not counterbalanced by
the necessity under which Maxentius laboured of guarding against
Licinius, is a question to which the historians have paid no heed.
-----
Footnote 41:
_Non solum tacite mussantibus sed eteiam aperte timentibus._—_Pan.
Vet._, ix., 2.
Footnote 42:
Zosimus, ii., 15.
-----
Marching along the chief military highroad from Lugdunum to Italy, which
crossed the Alps at Mont Cenis, Constantine suddenly appeared before the
walls of Susa, a strongly garrisoned post, and took it by storm,
escalading the walls and burning the gates. The town caught fire;
Constantine set his soldiers to put out the flames, a more difficult
task, says Nazarius, than had been the actual assault. From Susa the
victor advanced to Turin, which opened its gates to him after the
cavalry of Maxentius had been routed in the plains. These were troops
clad in ponderous but cleverly jointed armour, and the weight of their
onslaught was calculated to crush either horse or foot upon which it was
directed. But Constantine disposed his forces so as to avoid their
charge and render their weight useless, and when these horsemen fled for
shelter to Turin they found the gates closed against them and perished
almost to a man. Milan, by far the most important city in the
Transpadane region, next received Constantine, who entered amid the
plaudits of the citizens, and charmed the eyes of the Milanese ladies,
says the Panegyrist, without causing them anxieties for their virtue.
Milan, indeed, welcomed him with open arms; other cities sent
deputations similar to the one which, according to the epitomist
Zonaras, had already reached him from Rome itself, praying him to come
as its liberator. It seemed, indeed, that he had already won not only
the Transpadane region, but Rome itself.[43]
-----
Footnote 43:
_Pan. Vet._, ix., 7.
-----
Constantine, however, had still to meet and overthrow the chief armies
of Maxentius in the north of Italy. These were under the command of
Ruricius Pompeianus, a general as stubborn as he was loyal, and of
well-tried capacity. Pompeianus held Verona in force. He had thrown out
a large body of cavalry towards Brescia to reconnoitre and check
Constantine’s advance, but these were routed with some slaughter and
retired in confusion. If we may interpret the presence of Pompeianus at
Verona as indicating that Maxentius had feared attack by Licinius more
than by Constantine, this would explain the comparative absence of
troops in Lombardy and the concentration in Venetia, though it is
strange that we do not hear of Licinius taking any steps to assist his
ally. Verona was a strongly fortified city resting upon the Adige, which
encircled its walls for three-quarters of their circumference.
Constantine managed to effect a crossing at some distance from the city
and laid siege in regular fashion. Pompeianus tried several ineffectual
sorties, and then, secretly escaping through the lines, he brought up
the rest of his army to offer pitched battle or compel Constantine to
raise the siege. A fierce engagement followed. We are told[44] that
Constantine had drawn up his men in double lines, when, noticing that
the enemy outnumbered him and threatened to overlap either flank, he
ordered his troops to extend and present a wider front. He distinguished
himself that day by pressing into the thickest of the fight, “like a
mountain torrent in spate that tears away by their roots the trees on
its banks and rolls down rocks and stones.” The orator depicts for us
the scene as Constantine’s lieutenants and captains receive him on his
return from the fray, panting with his exertion and with blood dripping
from his hands. With tears in their eyes, they chide him for his
rashness in imperilling the hopes of the world. “It does not beseem an
Emperor,” they say, “to strike down an enemy with his own sword. It does
not become him to sweat with the toil of battle.[45]” In simpler
language, Constantine fought bravely at the head of his men and won the
day. Pompeianus was slain; Verona opened her gates, and so many
prisoners fell into the hands of the conqueror that Constantine made his
armourers forge chains and manacles from the iron of the captives’
swords. In accordance with his usual policy, he conciliated the favour
of those whom he had defeated by sparing the city from pillage, and
shewed an equal clemency to Aquileia and the other cities of Venetia,
all of which speedily submitted on the capitulation of Verona.
-----
Footnote 44:
_Pan. Vet._, ix., 9.
Footnote 45:
_Immo non decet laborare._
-----
With the entire north of Italy thus wrested from Maxentius, Constantine
could turn his face towards Rome. He encountered no opposition on the
march. Maxentius did not even contest the passage of the Apennines; the
Umbrian passes were left open; and if the historians are to be
trusted—and they speak with unanimity on the point—the Italian Emperor
simply waited for his doom to come upon him, as Nero had done, and made
no really serious effort to defend his throne. This slave in the purple
(_vernula purpuratus_), as the author of the Ninth Panegyric calls him,
cowered trembling in his palace, paralysed with fear because he had been
deserted by the Divine Intelligence and the Eternal Majesty of Rome,
which had transferred themselves from the tyrant to the side of his
rival. We are told, indeed, that a few days before the appearance of
Constantine, Maxentius quitted the palace with his wife and son and took
up his abode in a private house, not being able to endure the terrible
dreams that came to him by night and the spectres of the victims which
haunted his crime-stained halls. Constantine moved swiftly down from the
north of Italy along the Flaminian Way, and in less than two months
after the fall of Verona, he was at Saxa Rubra, only nine miles from
Rome, with an army eager for battle and confident of victory. There he
found the troops of Maxentius drawn up in battle array, but posted in a
position which none but a fool or a madman would have selected. The
probabilities are that Maxentius could not trust the citizens of Rome
and therefore dared not stand a siege within the ramparts of Aurelian.
Then, having decided to offer battle, he allowed his army to cross the
Tiber and take up ground whence, if defeated, their only roads of escape
lay over the narrow Milvian Bridge and a flimsy bridge of boats, one
probably on either flank.
It is said that Maxentius had not intended to be present in person when
the issue was decided. He was holding festival within the city,
celebrating his birthday with the usual games and pretending that the
proximity of Constantine caused him no alarm. The populace began to
taunt him with cowardice, and uttered the ominous shout that Constantine
was invincible. Maxentius’s fears grew as the clamour swelled in volume.
He hurriedly called for the Sibylline Books and ordered them to be
consulted. These gave answer that on that very day the enemy of the
Romans should perish—a characteristically safe reply. Such ambiguity of
diction had usually portended the death of the consulting Prince, but
Lactantius says that the hopes with which the words inspired Maxentius
led him to put on his armour and ride out of Rome.
[Illustration:
THE BATTLE OF THE MILVIAN BRIDGE, BY RAPHAEL.
IN THE VATICAN. PHOTOGRAPH BY ALINARI.
]
The issue was decided at the first encounter. Constantine charged at the
head of his Gallic horse—now accustomed to and certain of victory—into
the cavalry of Maxentius, which broke and ran in disorder from the
field. Only the Prætorians made a gallant and stubborn resistance and
fell where they had stood, knowing that it was they who had raised
Maxentius to the throne and that their destruction was involved in his.
While these fought valiantly with the courage of despair, their comrades
were crowding in panic towards the already choked bridges. At the
Milvian Bridge the passage was jammed, and the pursuers wrought great
execution. The pontoon bridge collapsed, owing to the treachery of those
who had cut or loosened its supports. All the reports agree that there
was a sickening slaughter, and that hundreds were drowned in the Tiber
in their vain effort to escape. Among the victims was Maxentius himself.
He was either thrust into the river by the press of frenzied fugitives
or was drowned in trying to scale the high bank on the opposite shore,
when weighed down by his heavy armour. His corpse was recovered later
from the stream, which the Panegyrists hailed in ecstatic terms as the
co-saviour of Rome with Constantine and the partner of his triumph.[46]
-----
Footnote 46:
_Pan. Vet._, ix., 18.
-----
The victor entered Rome. He had won the prize which he sought—the
mastery of the West—and, like scores of Roman conquerors before him, he
marched through the famous streets. His triumphal procession was graced,
says Nazarius, not by captive chiefs or barbarians in chains, but by
senators who now tasted the joy of freedom again, and by consulars whose
prison doors had been opened by Constantine’s victory—in a word, by a
Free Rome.[47] Only the head of Maxentius, whose features still wore the
savage, threatening look which even death itself had not been able to
obliterate, was carried on the point of a spear behind Constantine amid
the jeers and insults of the crowd. Another Panegyrist gives us a very
lively picture of the throngs as they waited for the Emperor to pass,
describing how they crowded at the rear of the procession and swept up
to the palace, almost venturing to cross the sacred threshold itself,
and how, when Constantine appeared in the streets on the succeeding
days, they sought to unhorse his carriage and draw it along with their
hands. One of the conqueror’s first acts was to extirpate the family of
his fallen rival. Maxentius’s elder son, Romulus, who for a short time
had borne the name of Cæsar, was already dead; the younger son, and
probably the wife too, were now quietly removed. There were other
victims, who had committed themselves too deeply to Maxentius’ fortunes
to escape. Rome, says Nazarius,[48] was reconstituted afresh on a
lasting basis by the complete destruction of those who might have given
trouble. But still the victims were comparatively few, so few, in the
estimation of public opinion, that the victory was regarded as a
bloodless one, and Constantine’s clemency was the theme and admiration
of all. When the people clamoured for more victims—doubtless the most
hated instruments of Maxentius’s tyranny—and when the informer pressed
forward to offer his deadly services, Constantine refused to listen. He
was resolved to let bygones be bygones. The laws of the period
immediately succeeding his victory, as they appear in the Theodosian
Code, amply confirm what might otherwise be the suspect eulogies of the
Panegyrists. A general act of amnesty was passed, and the ghastly head
of Maxentius was sent to Africa to allay the terrors of the population
and convince them that their oppressor would trouble them no more.
There, it is to be supposed, it found a final burial-place.
-----
Footnote 47:
_Pan. Vet._, x., 31.
Footnote 48:
_Ibid._, x., 6.
-----
Another early act of Constantine was to disband the Prætorians, thus
carrying out the intention and decrees of Galerius. The survivors of
these long-famous regiments were marched out of Rome away from the
Circus, the Theatre of Pompeius, and the Baths, and were set to do their
share in the guarding of the Rhine and the Danube. Whether they bore the
change as voluntarily as the Panegyrist suggests[49] is doubtful, and we
may question whether they so soon forgot in their rude cantonments the
fleshpots and “_deliciæ_” of the capital. But the expulsion was final.
The Prætorians ceased to exist. Rome may have been glad to see the empty
barracks, for the Prætorians had been hated and feared. But the vacant
quarters also spoke eloquently of the fact that Rome was no longer the
mistress of the world. The “_domina gentium_,” the “_regina terrarum_”
without her Prætorians, was a thing unthinkable.
-----
Footnote 49:
_Pan. Vet._, ix., 21.
-----
Constantine only stayed two months in Rome, but in that short time, says
Nazarius, he cured all the maladies which the six years’ savage tyranny
of Maxentius had brought upon the city. He restored to their confiscated
estates all who had been exiled or deprived of their property during the
recent reign of terror. He shewed himself easy of approach; his ears
were the most patient of listeners; he charmed all by his kindliness,
dignity, and good humour. To the Senate he shewed unwonted deference.
Diocletian, during his solitary visit to Rome just prior to his
retirement, had treated the senators with brusqueness, and hardly
concealed his contempt for their mouldy dignities. Constantine preferred
to conciliate them. According to Nazarius, he invested with senatorial
rank a number of representative provincials, so that the Senate once
more became a dignified body in reality as well as in name, now that it
consisted of the flower of the whole world.[50] Probably this signifies
little more than that Constantine filled up the vacancies with
respectable nominees, spoke the Senate fair, and swore to maintain its
ancient rights and privileges. The Emperor certainly entertained no such
quixotic idea as that of giving the Senate a vestige of real governing
power or a share in the administration of the Empire. In return for his
consideration, the Senate bestowed upon him the title of Senior
Augustus, and a golden statue, adorned, according to the Ninth
Panegyrist (c. 25), with the attributes of a god, while all Italy
subscribed for the shield and the crown.
-----
Footnote 50:
_Cum ex totius orbis flore constaret._
-----
[Illustration:
THE ARCH OF CONSTANTINE AT ROME.
PHOTOGRAPH BY ALINARI.
]
The Senate also instituted games and festivals in honour of
Constantine’s victory, and voted him the triumphal arch which still
survives as one of the most imposing ruins of Imperial Rome and a
lasting monument to the outrageous vandalism which stripped the Arch of
Titus of its sculptures to grace the memorial of his successor. Under
the central arch on the one side is the dedication, “To the Liberator of
the City,” on the other, “To the Founder of Our Repose” (_Fundatori
quietis_). Above stands the famous inscription[51] in which the Senate
and people of Rome dedicate this triumphal arch to Constantine “because,
at the suggestion of the divinity (_instinctu divinitatis_), and at the
prompting of his own magnanimity, he and his army had vindicated the
Republic by striking down the tyrant and all his satellites at a single
blow.” “At the suggestion of the divinity!” The words lead us naturally
to discuss the conversion of Constantine and the Vision of the Cross.
-----
Footnote 51:
The inscription on the Arch of Constantine runs as follows:
“_Imp. Cæs. Fl. Constantino Maximo
P. F. Augusto S. P. Q. R.
Quod instinctu divinitatis mentis
Magnitudine cum exercitu suo
Tam de tyranno quam de omni ejus
Factione uno tempore justis
Rempublicam ultus est armis
Arcum triumphis insignem dicavit._”
-----
[Illustration]