asserted, that the governors of the church had instigated and directed the fanaticism of a domestic assassin. 138 Above sixteen years after the death of Julian, the charge was solemnly and vehemently urged, in a public oration, addressed by Libanius to the emperor Theodosius. His suspicions are unsupported by fact or argument; and we can only esteem the generous zeal of the sophist of Antioch for the cold and neglected ashes of his friend. 139

Julian

It was an ancient custom in the funerals, as well as in the and funeral of triumphs, of the Romans, that the voice of praise should be corrected by that of satire and ridicule; and that, in the midst of the splendid pageants, which displayed the glory of the living or of the dead, their imperfections should not be concealed from the eyes of the world.140 This custom was practised in the funeral of Julian. The comedians, who resented his contempt and aversion for the theatre, exhibited, with the applause of a Christian audience, the lively and exaggerated representation of the faults and follies of the deceased emperor. His various character and singular manners afforded an ample scope for pleasantry and ridicule.1 141 In the exercise of his uncommon talents, he often descended below the majesty of his rank. Alexander was transformed into Diogenes; the philosopher was degraded into a priest. The purity of his virtue was sullied by excessive vanity: his superstition disturbed the peace, and endangered the safety, of a mighty empire; and his irregular sallies were the less entitled to indulgence, as they appear to be the laborious efforts of art, or even of affectation. The remains of Julian were interred at Tarsus in Cilicia; but his stately tomb which arose in that city, on the banks of the cold and limpid Cydnus,142 was displeasing to the faithful friends, who loved and

133 Οστις ἐντολὴν πληρῶν τῷ σφῶν αὐτῶν ἀρχοντι. This dark and ambiguous expression may point to Athanasius, the first, without a rival, of the Christian clergy (Libanius de ulcis. Jul. nece, c. 5, p. 149. La Bléterie, Hist. de Jovien, t. i. p. 179).

139 The Orator (Fabricius, Bibliot. Græc. tom. vii. p. 145-179) scatters suspicions, demands an inquiry, and insinuates that proofs might still be obtained. He ascribes the success of the Huns to the criminal neglect of revenging Julian's death. 140 At the funeral of Vespasian, the comedian who personated that frugal emperor anxiously inquired, how much it cost?-Fourscore thousand pounds (centies).-Give me the tenth part of the sum, and throw my body into the Tiber. Sueton. in Vespasian. c. 19, with the notes of Casaubon and Gronovius.

141 Gregory (Orat. iv. p. 119, 120 [v., c. 16]) compares this supposed ignominy and ridicule to the funeral honours of Constantius, whose body was chaunted over mount Taurus by a choir of angels.

142 Quintus Curtius, i. iii. c. 4. The luxuriancy of his descriptions has been often censured. Yet it was almost the duty of the historian to describe a river, whose waters had nearly proved fatal to Alexander.

530 DECLINE & FALL OF ROMAN EMPIRE

revered the memory of that extraordinary man. The philosopher expressed a very reasonable wish that the disciple of Plato might have reposed amidst the groves of the academy: 148 while the

soldiers exclaimed in bolder accents that the ashes of Julian should have been mingled with those of Cæsar, in the field of Mars, and among the ancient monuments of Roman virtue.144 The history of princes does not very frequently renew the example of a similar competition.

143 Libanius, Orat. Parent. c. 156. p. 377. Yet he acknowledges with gratitude the liberality of the two royal brothers in decorating the tomb of Julian (de ulcis. Jul. nece, c. 7, p. 152).

144 Cujus suprema et cineres, si qui tunc juste consuleret, non Cydnus videre deberet, quamvis gratissimus amnis et liquidus: sed ad perpetuandam gloriam recte factorum praeterlambere Tiberis, intersecans urbem aeternam divorumque veterum monumenta praestringens. Ammian. xxv. 10.

APPENDIX

ADDITIONAL NOTES BY THE EDITOR

1. AUTHORITIES

[By an inadvertency it was not mentioned in vol. i. p. 443, that C. de Boor has shown it to be highly probable (Byzantinische Zeitschrift, i. p. 13 sqq.) that the Anonymous Continuer of Dion is identical with Peter the Patrician (who lived in the sixth century under Justinian).—It should also be added to the notice of Rufus Festus, on p. 448, that this writer should be simply called Festus (as C. Wagener observes in his Jahresbericht on Eutropius, in Philologus, 42, p. 521), as the addition " Rufus" appears only in inferior Mss. It is highly unsafe to speak, as some writers do, of Rufius Festus," on the strength of a guess of Mommsen (Hermes, 16, p. 605) that the author of the Breviarium is identical with the Rufius Festus Avienus of C. I. L., 6, 103.-I am also bound to state that E. hohde (Byz. Ztsch., 5, p. 1 sqq.) and C. Neumann (in the same number of the same journal) agree in ascribing to the tenth cent. the Philopatris, which, with Crampe, I assigned to the seventh in vol. i. p. 340; and they urge weighty arguments against Crampe's view.]

The DE MORTIBUS PERSECUTORUM, which was briefly noticed in vol i., Appendix 1, calls for some further observations here. It always seemed clear that it was ascribed to Lactantius before the end of the fourth century, and possible that L. Cæcilius (the name of the author in the unique Ms. found at Moissac, and now in the Bibl. Nationale) might be a mistake for L. Cælius, the name of Firmianus Lactantius; accordingly, fortified by the judgments of Teuffel and Ebert, I am inclined (with Schiller, Burckhardt, and others) to accept the identification, and suppose that the difference of style (justly noticed by Gibbon, ch. xx. n. 40) may be explained by difference of subject. Yet a study of the exhaustive investigation of Brandt might go far to convince one that Lactantius was not the author of the Mortes, and that Gibbon's hesitation was thoroughly justified. The arguments of Ebert, the chief champion of the Lactantian authorship (Ueber den Verfasser des Buches de M. P., Ber. der sächs. Ges. der Wissensch., phil.-hist. Cl. 1870), have been assailed with force by Brandt, the greatest living authority on Lactantius, in his essay Ueber die Entstehungsverhältnisse der Prosaschr. des Lact. und des Buches de M. P. (Sitzungsber. der Wiener Akad., vol. cxxv., Abh. vi. 1892).

(1) There is a serious chronological argument, which in itself (if the facts were correct) would be almost conclusive (first urged by P. Meyer in Quæst. Lactant. particula prima, 1878). The author of the Mortes was an eye-witness of the persecutions at Nicomedia, where he wrote after the middle of 313 A.D. (cp. xii. 2; xiii. 1; xxxv. 4; xlviii. 1; and xlviii. 13; xlix. ; lii. 4). But the Divine Institutions, which was finished before 310 (Brandt has shown, p. 12 sqq., that it was almost certainly completed in 307-8), though begun at Nicomedia, was finished at Trier, whither Lactantius must have gone before 310. Therefore, the writer who describes as an eye-witness the persecutions after 310 cannot have been Lactantius.

(2) There are peculiarities in style in the Mortes which cannot be explained by the nature of the subject; e.g., 'more or less strong vulgarisms, Græcisms, (531)

&c., where Lactantius writes correctly" (p. 58, e.g., misereri with dat., idolum, &c.).

(3) Advocates of the Lactantian authorship appeal to numerous passages which are verbally identical with, or echoes of, passages of Lactantius. But Brandt urges that these must be the work of an inferior imitator, and are in fact a strong argument against the Lactantian authorship. Especially instructive is a comparison of Mort. xxxviii. 1 (which Ebert is forced to regard as an interpolation) with Div. Inst. vi. 23, § 10-12.

(4) Brandt also insists that the author of the Mortes (whose want of bona fides is glaringly exhibited in his exaggerated descriptions of Maximin's lust, e.g, or the cruelty of Galerius; xxxviii. 4; xxi. 5) stands on a lower ethical level than the Lactantius whom we know from his undoubted writings.

(5) The weak argument which rests on the fact that the Mortes is dedicated to "Donatus confessor," and that Lactantius inscribed his De Ira Dei to Donatus, is turned by Brandt into an argument on the other side. While the mere identity of a most common name proves nothing, what we know of the two Donati forbids the identification. The Donatus of the Mort. was imprisoned in 305 (cf. 16; 35), and underwent the stress of the persecution; but the only thing that Lactantius has to say to his Donatus is to warn him against trusting the authority of philosophers. There is not a hint in the De Ira Dei that the person addressed was undergoing imprisonment, which, whether the De Ira Dei was prior to 311 (as Brandt has tried to show) or subsequent (as Ebert held), is an argument against the identification of the two Donati.

On the other hand the Mortes was ascribed to Lactantius in the course of the fourth century, for Jerome had a copy in 393 A.D., on which doubtless the name of Lactantius was inscribed; De Vir. Ill. c. 80, habemus (I possess) eius-de persecutione librum unum. And Brandt has corroborated this view of Jerome's statement by showing that the person who (c. 370 or not many years later) interpolated the Divine Institutions with the addresses to the Emperors (see Brandt, die Kaiseranreden, Sitzungsber. der W. Ak. 119, 1889), made use of the Mortes, supposing it to be Lactantian. This false ascription of the treatise, the work perhaps of a pupil of Lactantius, to Lactantius himself is accounted for by Brandt by the hypothesis that it was published anonymously, and the public, anxious to discover the authorship, were led by the Lactantianisms and the Nicomedian origin to fix on the well-known writer of the Divine Institutions. L. Cæcilii would be, on this hypothesis, probably a mistake for L. Cælii (i.e. Lactantii), and not the name of the true author.

As for the date (discussed by Görres in Philologus, xxxvi. p. 597 sqq., 1877), Brandt narrows it down to a short period between the end of 314 A.D. and the middle of 315 (p. 111). The Epitome of the Divine Institutions (its Lactantian authorship has been vindicated, p. 2-10) was used in the Mortes, and was written between the middle of 313 A.D. and the conclusion of the Mortes. Seeck (who accepts from Idatius 316 as date of Diocletian's death) makes the limits 317 and 321.

On Brandt's arguments I would observe that all except (1) have little cogency. (4) is especially weak; we have a much more glaring example of such inconsistency in the case of Procopius the historian. In regard to (1), Seeck urges (Gesch. des Unterg. der ant. Welt, p. 428) Jerome's statement that L. taught Crispus as Cæsar, i.e. after 317 A.D.; Constantine would not before his conversion (312, at earliest) have chosen a Christian preceptor for his son; in 308 Crispus was not more than two years old. There seems indeed to be no reason for supposing that L. went to Trier much before 317; therefore he could be in Nicomedia in 313; and the chief argument against the Lactantian authorship of the Mortes breaks down. It may be added that no argument, except one favourable to the identification, can be based on the difference between the names in the Mss.-Cælius and Cæcilius,in view of the fact that L. Cæcilius Firmianus is found in a Numidian inscription (C. I. L. 8, 7241); and Lactantius belonged to the African Diocese (Seeck, ib. 426). On the life of Lactantius see Brandt, Ueber das Leben des L., Sitzungsber. der

W. Akad., cxx., 1890; and on the interpolations in the Divine Inst. (see above chap. xx. n. 2) his two papers, Die dualistischen Zusätze, ib. cxviii., 1889, and Die Kaiseranreden, ib. cxix., 1889.

To understand the historical work of EUSEBIUS of Cæsarea, we must glance at the "Chronographies" of Sextus Julius Africanus, who flourished in the early part of the third century and wrote his chronographical work between 212 and 221 A.D. All that is known about him and his work will be found in the invaluable study of H. Gelzer, Sextus Julius Africanus und die byzantinische Chronographie (1880). He is the founder of Byzantine chronography. His system is determined by the Jewish idea of a world-epoch of 6000 years; and he divides this into two parts at the death of Phalek. He is concerned to prove that the Incarnation took place in the year 5500 (=2 B.C.); after which there are 500 years of waiting till the end of the world and the beginning of the millennium or the World-Sabbath. The date of Moses was fixed at 1020 years before the first olympiad by Justus of Tiberias, and this view, to which the apologist Justin gave currency, is maintained by Africanus, who puts Moses in 3707-8 and the first olympiad first year of Ahaz in 4727-8. A contemporary of Africanus, Hippolytus of Rome, also wrote a chronicle of the world, which Gelzer (ii. 23) designates as a very feeble performance, in erudition far inferior to that of Africanus.

The chronicle of Eusebius, translated into Latin by Jerome, threw that of Africanus into the background. Gelzer (ii. 42 897.) gives him the credit which he deserves for his excellent critical discussion of the number of years between the Exodus and the building of Solomon's temple. Here we have a contradiction between. St. Paul and the Book of Judges on one hand, and the Books of Kings on the other. Eusebius does not hesitate to criticize the inspired numbers with masterly ability, just as if they occurred in profane documents, and rejects the statement of the apostle Paul. In later patristic literature we find nothing similar. The Greek Church was perfectly speechless at the boldness which treated the chronological sketch of the apostle like that of a profane author' (Gelzer, ii. 47).

Again the historical instinct of Eusebius is shown in the choice of his era. While Africanus began with Adam, this instinct taught Eusebius that all Hebrew events before Abraham were prehistoric," and so he dated events by the years of Abraham, whom he places in 2017 B.C., whereas the date of Africanus was 2300. But this was little compared with his boldness in rejecting the received date of Moses, whom he placed in 1512 B.C. instead of 1795 B.c.

In the Ecclesiastical History, the Panegyric on Constantine, and the Life of Constantine (a Denkschrift rather than a regular biography; Ranke), the guiding idea of Eusebius is the establishment of a Christian empire, for which Constantine was the chosen instrument. See Ranke's short suggestive essay in Weltgeschichte, ii. 2, 249 sqq.; one of his points is that we must not press some deviations in the Life, written after Constantine's death, from the earlier works. But we must agree with the remark of O. Seeck: "Nichts hat dem Andenken des grossen Kaisers mehr geschadet als das Lügenbuch des Eusebios". Seeck declines to make any use of the documents contained in it. P. Meyer, de Vita Const. Eusebiana, 1883; V. Schultze, Quellen-untersuchungen zur Vita Const. des Eus., in Zeitsch. für Kirchengesch., xiv. p. 503 sqq., 1894; Amedeo Crivellucci, Della fede storica di Eusebio nella vita di Constantino, 1888 (Livorno); Görres, Z. f. wiss. Theol., xx. 215 sqq.; xxi. 35 sqq.; xxxiii. 124 8qq.

Two historical fragments, one covering A.D. 293-337, the other A.D. 474-526, first printed by H. Valois at the end of his edition of Ammian (from a Ms. belonging to J. Sirmond, which afterwards passed into the Phillipps collection, and was translated in 1887 from Cheltenham to Berlin), are generally described under the name ANONYMUS VALESII. This title is misleading, by its suggestion that the two fragments belong to the same work, whereas they have nothing to do with each other; but it is still convenient to refer to them under the old title. Though they have nothing to do with Ammianus, Gardthausen, following the example of Valois, printed them at the end of his edition. The authoritative edition is now Mommsen's in the Chronica Minora (M. G. H.); the first which concerns