XI.

sion of them. However Aurelian might chuse c H A P. to disguise the real cause of the insurrection, his reformation of the coin could only furnish a faint pretence to a party already powerful and discontented. Rome, though deprived of freedom, was distracted by faction. The people, towards whom the emperor, himself a plebeian, always expressed a peculiar fondness, lived in perpetual dissention with the senate, the equestrian order, and the Prætorian guards *. Nothing less than the firm, though secret conspiracy of those orders, of the authority of the first, the wealth of the second, and the arms of the third, could have displayed a strength capable of contending in battle with the veteran legions of the Danube, which, under the conduct of a martial sovereign, had atchieved the conquest of the West and of the East.

Aurelian.

Whatever was the cause of the object of this Cruelty of rebellion, imputed, with so little probability, to the workmen of the mint, Aurelian used his victory with unrelenting rigour †. He was naturally of a severe disposition. A peasant and a soldier, his nerves yielded not easily to the impressions of sympathy, and he could sustain, without emotion, the sight of tortures and death. Trained, from his earliest youth, in the exercise

* It already raged before Aurelian's return from Egypt. See Vopiscus, who quotes an original letter. Hist. August. p. 244.

Vopiscus in Hist. August. p. 222. The two Victors. Eutropius, ix. 14. Zosimus (l. i. p. 43.) mentions only three senators, and places their death before the eastern war.

XI.

L

CHA P. of arms, he set too small a value on the life of a citizen, chastised by military execution the slightest offences, and transferred the stern discipline of the camp into the civil administration of the laws. His love of justice often became a blind and furious passion; and whenever he deemed his own or the public safety endangered, he disregarded the rules of evidence, and the proportion of punishments. The unprovoked rebellion with which the Romans rewarded his services, exasperated his haughty spirit. The noblest families of the capital were involved in the guilt or suspicion of this dark conspiracy. A hasty spirit of revenge urged the bloody prosecution, and it proved fatal to one of the nephews of the emperor. The executioners (if we may use the expression of a contemporary poet) were fatigued, the prisons were crowded, and the unhappy senate lamented the death or absence of its most illustrious members *. Nor was the pride of Aurelian less offensive to that assembly than his cruelty. Ignorant or impatient of the restraints of civil institutions, he disdained to hold his power by any other title than that of the sword, and governed by right of conquest an empire which he had saved and subdued t.

*Nulla catenati feralis pompa senatus

Carnificum lassabit opus ; nec carcere pleno

Infelix raros numerabit curia Patres.

Calphurn. Eclog. i. 60.

It

According to the younger Victor, he sometimes wore the

diadem. Deus and Dominus appear on his medals.

XI.

He march

is assassi

It was observed by one of the most sagacious c H a p. of the Roman princes, that the talents of his predecessor Aurelian, were better suited to the command of an army, than to the government of an es into the empire*. Conscious of the character in which East, and Nature and experience had enabled him to excel, nated. he again took the field a few months after his triumph. It was expedient to exercise the rest- A. D. 274. less temper of the legions in some foreign war, October. and the Persian monarch, exulting in the shame of Valerian, still braved with impunity the offended majesty of Rome. At the head of an army, less formidable by its numbers than by its discipliné and valour, the emperor advanced as far as the Streights which divide Europe from Asia. He there experienced, that the most absolute power is a weak defence against the effects of despair. He had threatened one of his secretaries who was accused of extortion; and it was known that he seldom threatened in vain. The last hope which remained for the criminal, was to involve some of the principal officers of the army in his danger, or at least in his fears. Artfully counterfeiting his master's hand, he shewed them, in a long and bloody list, their own names devoted to death. Without suspecting or examining the fraud, they resolved to secure their lives by the murder of the emperor. On his march, between Byzantium and Heraclea, Aurelian was suddenly attacked by the conspira

* It was the observation of Diocletian. See Vopiscus in Hist. August. p. 224.

XI.

A. D. 275.

CHA P. tors, whose stations gave them a right to surround his person, and after a short resistance, fell by the hand of Mucapor, a general whom he had always loved and trusted. He died regretted by the January. army, detested by the senate, but universally acknowledged as a warlike and fortunate prince, the useful, though severe reformer of a degenerate state *.

* Vopiscus in Hist. August. p. 221. Eutrop. ix. 15. The two Victors.

Zosimus, l. i. p. 57.

С НА Р.

CHAP. XII.

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

SUCH was

XII.

Extraordi

tween the

for the

an empe

ror.

UCH was the unhappy condition of the Ro- c H A P. man emperors, that, whatever might be their conduct, their fate was commonly the same. A life of pleasure or virtue, of severity or mildness, nary conof indolence or glory, alike led to an untimely test begrave; and almost every reign is closed by the army and same disgusting repetition of treason and murder. the senate The death of Aurelian, however, is remarkable choice of by its extraordinary consequences. The legions admired, lamented, and revenged their victorious chief. The artifice of his perfidious secretary was discovered and punished. The deluded conspirators attended the funeral of their injured sovereign, with sincere or well-feigned contrition, and submitted to the unanimous resolution of the military order, which was signified by the following epistle : "The brave and fortunate "armies to the senate and people of Rome. "The crime of one man, and the error of many, "have deprived us of the late emperor Aurelian.

66

May it please you, venerable lords and fathers! "to place him in the number of the gods, and "to appoint a successor whom your judgment "shall declare worthy of the Imperial purple! "None of those whose guilt or misfortune have

" contri