'cania", and Adrelian, who soon admitted the abdisscated monarch to his friendship and conversation, familiarly asked him, Whether it were not more desirable to administer a province of Italy, than to reign beyond the Alps? The son long continued a respectable member of the senate z nor was there any one of the Roman nobility more'esteemed- by Aurelian, as well as by his successors '4. '

So long and so various was the pomp of Aurelian's triumph, that although it opened with the dawn of day, the slow majesty of the procession ascended not the Capitol before the ninth hoursi; and it was already dark when the emperor return d to the palace. The festival was pro. tractez? by vtheatrical representations, the games of the circus, the hunting of wild beasts, com, bats of gladiators, and naval engagements. Liberal donatives were distributed to the army and people, and several institutions, agreeable or beneficial to the city, contributed to perpetuate the glory of Aurelian. A considerable portion of his oriental spoils was consecrated to the gods of Rome; the Capitol, and every other temple, glittered with the offerings of his ostentatious piety z and the temple of the Sun alone received

of' reformation.

integrity of the coin, was opposed by a' formid- , ' ,

able insurrection. The emperor's vexation breaks out in one of his private letters. a Surely," says he, V the gods have decreed that my life " should be a perpetual warfare. A sedition " within the walls has just now given birth to a very serious ct'iril war. The workmen of the mint, at the instigation of Felicifiimus, a fiave to whom I had intrusted an employment in the finances, have risen in rebellion. _They are at length suppressed; but seven thousand of my soldiers have been slain in the contest, of those troops whose ordinary station is in Dacia, and the camps along the Danube"." Other writers, 'who confirm the same fact, add likewise, that it happened soon after Aurelian's *triu z that the decisiveengagement was fought on the Caelian hill; that the workmen of the mintt had adulterated the coin; and that the emperor restored the public credit, by deliver. ing out'good money in exchange for the bad, which the people was commanded to bring into the treasury '9.

We might content ourselves with relating this extraordinary transaction, but we cannot dissemble how much in its present form it appears to us inconfistent and incredible. The debasement of the coin is indeed Well suited t0'the admini. stration of Gallienus ; nor is it unlikely that the