head of the judicial administration, who composed the orations and edicts of the emperor;-the public treasurer, or Count of the sacred largesses;-the Private Treasurer of the revenues of the imperial estates;—and the two Counts of the Domestics, who commanded the imperial body-guard, and thus represented the prætorian prefects of the early empire.

The taxes required to support this vast machine were raised in part by the old methods, but chiefly by a tribute, assessed on the whole empire in a manner which has perpetuated the name as one of the landmarks of chronology. The Indiction was properly the edict, bearing the imperial sign-manual in purple ink, for the collection of the tribute at intervals of fifteen years.*

At the head of this system stood the imperial family, which received its most important addition by the birth of Julian, in the very year after the dedication of Constantinople (A.D. 331). Two years later, Constans, the youngest son of Constantine, received the rank of Cæsar, to which his brothers had already been raised (A.D. 333). At the celebration of his Tricennalia in A.D. 335, Constantine bestowed the same rank on his nephew Dalmatius, and conferred on his other nephew Hannibalianus the special title of Nobilissimus, making a new division of the provinces among the five young princes (A.D. 335). Meanwhile, the peace which had been generally preserved on the frontier for twenty years was broken by a bloody war between the Sarmatians and Goths. Constantine took the field in person, with his son Constantine, and gained a great victory over the Goths (A.D. 332). But subsequent hostilities between the hostile tribes resulted in a disastrous defeat of the Sarmatians, who sought refuge within the Roman empire; and no less than 300,000 obtained settlements in Illyricum and Italy (A.D. 334). Constantine was already engaged in preparing for a new Persian war, provoked by the ambition of *For further particulars of the form in which the tribute was collected, see Gibbon, c. xvii.

In chronology the Epoch of the Indictions is September 1st, A.D. 312; but when a certain indiction is mentioned, it denotes the year in some period of fifteen years, without saying which period. From the twelfth century, however, the term indiction was applied to the periods themselves, which were reckoned from the actual birth of Christ, or rather from the beginning of the ensuing year, which was B.C. 3; and thus Constantine's first indiction (the twenty-second Christian) was made to date from the first day of A.D. 313 (for 3+312=21 x 15). The "Roman indiction" of our almanacks signifies the particular year of the current indiction, and is the remainder found by adding 3 to the number of the year and dividing by 15. Thus (1865 +3) 15-124 with remainder 8; that is, 1865 is the 8th year of the 125th Christian indiction, or the 104th of Constantine.

Sapor II., when he died at the age of sixty-four, at his palace in the suburbs of Nicomedia, on the 22nd of May, A.D. 337.

As if to complete the precedent he had established for the forms of later monarchies, his body was laid in state amidst all the accustomed ceremonials of the court. The pageant answered the purpose formerly served by concealing the death of an emperor. Time was gained for excluding Dalmatius and Hannibalianus from any share in the succession; and Constantius, who was on the spot, included them, with five others of his cousins, his two uncles, the patrician Optatus, and the prefect Ablavius, in a massacre, the more odious as it was committed under the pretended authority of a scroll, which Eusebius, the Bishop of Nicomedia, produced as the writing of the emperor whom he had just baptized upon his deathbed. Gallus and Julian, the two sons of Julius Constantius, were alone saved by their tender age and the care of their protectors. The share of Constantius in this tragedy may have been exaggerated by the common hatred with which he was regarded both by Christians and pagans.

The three surviving sons of Constantine, CONSTANTINUS II., CONSTANTIUS II., and CONSTANS, now succeeded to the empire; and they ratified in a personal interview the division based on that last made by their father. Constantine, who was twenty-one years old, retained the prefecture of the Gauls; Constans, who was seventeen, added to the Italian prefecture the province of Greece, which had become vacant by the murder of Dalmatius: while Constantius, who was twenty years old, and the ablest of the three, kept Thrace and the East, acknowledging, however, his elder brother's right to the capital. On Constantius fell the burthen of the Persian War, which never entirely ceased during his long reign. Sapor II., surnamed the Great, succeeded to the throne as a posthumous son in A.D. 310, and his reign and life lasted for the almost unequalled period of seventy-one years (to 381).* On the death of Constantine, he began the effort to wrest from Rome the countries beyond the Euphrates, in which he finally succeeded by the defeat of Julian (A.D. 363). His progress against Constantius was chiefly checked by the resistance of Nisibis, from which he was thrice repulsed, after sieges of 60, 80, and 100 days (A.D. 338, 346, 350). Meanwhile, an invasion of the Massagetæ lost him the opportunity of profiting by the civil war that soon broke out among the sons of Constantine.

Constantine II., dissatisfied with his share of the empire, * Louis XIV. of France reigned for seventy-two years.

required Constans to yield up Africa. Not content with this, he crossed the Julian Alps at the head of a disorderly band; fell into an ambush; and was slain (A.D. 340). The empire of the West, thus gained, was held by Constans for ten years, during which he carried on war with the Franks upon the Rhine, and with the Picts and Scots in Britain. But his time was chiefly spent in the society of his eunuchs, and his vices and tyranny at length provoked an insurrection in Gaul. MAGNENTIUS, an ignorant barbarian, assumed the purple at Augustodunum (Autun), and Constans was endeavouring to escape to a sea-port, when he was overtaken and put to death at the foot of the Pyrenees (A.D. 350). Magnentius was now acknowledged through the prefectures of Gaul and Italy; and Nepotianus, the son of Eutropia, who had been proclaimed at Rome, was put to death by Marcellinus, the lieutenant of Magnentius, after a reign of twenty-eight days. In Illyricum, however, the prefect VETRANIO declared his firm adherence to the house of Constantine. But the voice of his troops, and the persuasions of Constantina, the widow of Hannibalianus, decided him also to assume the purple in Pannonia, and to make common cause with Magnentius.

The news of these events reached Constantius while he was still crippled by his great defeat at Singara in 348. He called forth his cousin Gallus from the honourable confinement in which he had been brought up, and sent him to command at Antioch, while he marched to the West. Vetranio was enticed to a conference at Sardica, where his troops deserted to Constantius, who permitted the usurper to retire to Prusa in Bithynia (Dec. 350). The contest with Magnentius lasted through the following summer, and was at length decided by the great battle of Mursa on the Drave, near its confluence with the Danube, where 54,000 men are said to have fallen (Sep. 28, A.D. 351).* Magnentius fled to Aquileia; but, finding his cause abandoned by the Italians, he crossed the Alps into Gaul, where he was defeated by Constantius, and put an end to his own life (A.D. 353).

Meanwhile Gallus, on whom Constantius had conferred the title of Cæsar and the hand of his sister Constantina (A.D. 351), had begun to govern the East with the most cruel tyranny; and Constantius despatched the Oriental prefect, Domitian, to reform the administration. Gallus resisted his authority; and Domitian was murdered, with the quæstor Montius, by the populace of

* Mursa, now Essek, the capital of Slavonia, is famed for its bridge of boats, five miles long.

Antioch. Constantius dissembled his anger, and induced Gallus, by pressing letters, to come to him at Milan. On his arrival at Petovio in Pannonia, the Cæsar was hurried away a prisoner to Pola, where he soon after followed the fate of Crispus (Dec., A.D. 354).

His brother Flavius Claudius Julianus, who was now twentythree years old, was brought from Ionia to Milan as a prisoner. The intercession of the empress Eusebia, followed up by the ability with which Julian pleaded his own cause before the emperor, procured him an honourable exile to Athens, a residence doubly congenial to the young philosopher who had already secretly returned to the pagan faith. Here he had for his fellow students the celebrated Christian fathers, Gregory of Nazianzus and Basil of Cæsarea. The same year witnessed the decision, as it was vainly supposed, of the great ecclesiastical controversy of the age. The very prince who had presided over the Council of Nicæa had shown during his later years a leaning to Arianism, and had been baptized in extremis by Eusebius, the Arian bishop of Nicomedia. Two years before his death, ATHANASIUS, the unflinching champion of orthodoxy, deposed by the council of Tyre, appealed to Constantine, who sent him into an honourable banishment at Treves, but kept the see of Alexandria vacant. Restored on the death of Constantine, and again expelled by the council of Antioch (A.D. 338), Athanasius lived in the West under the protection of Constans. His sentence was revoked by the Council of Sardica (A.D. 347), and Constantius, yielding to his brother's threats, suffered him to return to Alexandria (A.D. 349).

And now, as sole master of the empire, Constantius avenged himself for this compliance by summoning a council of 300 bishops at Milan, to confirm the sentence passed at Tyre (A.D. 355). Thus condemned by the Western as well as the Eastern Church, Athanasius was only driven from his see by force (A.D. 356). For six years he was concealed in the desert, never ceasing by his writings to encourage the orthodox and to brand the emperor as Antichrist. Restored by Julian in A.D. 362, he had just time to renew the peace of the Church, and to receive back most of the leading Arians, at the Council of Alexandria, when he was again exiled. Another gleam of favour, under the orthodox Jovian (A.D. 363), was eclipsed by the accession of Valens, a zealous Arian, and Athanasius sought refuge in his father's tomb (A.D. 364). But his removal excited a rebellion at Alexandria, and the emperor prudently permitted Athanasius to return in peace. After

one more confirmation of the orthodox doctrine by a council held at Alexandria in A.D. 369, the archbishop quietly ended (about A.D. 372 or 373) that wondrous life which verified the motto, Athanasius contra Mundum.*

Julian had only spent six months at Athens, when Constantius found his own attention distracted by the renewed attacks of the Persians in the East, of the Sarmatians on the Danube, and of the Franks and Alemanni. The Gauls, whom he had himself invited across the Rhine to fight against Magnentius, had committed the most terrible devastations, sacked all the famous cities, such as Treves, Cologne, Mayence, Strasburg, and devastated a wide belt of land on the left bank of the Rhine. Constantius summoned Julian to Milan, declared him Cæsar, and sent him into Gaul (Nov. 6, A.D. 355), while he himself undertook the war upon the Danube. The young prince, teazed for the first time with military details, exclaimed, “O Plato, Plato, what a task for a philosopher!" but none the less did he aspire to martial fame. In four campaigns, he drove the Germans beyond the Rhine, carried the Roman arms into their territory, and restored order to the province he had saved (A.D. 356-359). Meanwhile Constantius, after securing the frontier of Rhætia, and paying one visit to Rome (April 28, A.D. 357), had passed the Danube into the country of the Quadi, when he was summoned to meet a new invasion of Mesopotamia by Sapor, who took Amida on the Tigris after an obstinate siege (A.D. 359–360). The desire to obtain the use of the veteran legions of the West concurred with his jealousy of Julian, to suggest the same policy by which he had before weakened Gallus. In his winter-quarters at Paris, Julian received an order to dispatch four legions, with 300 chosen youths from each of the others, to the East. The Cæsar had made preparations for real or affected obedience, when the troops assembled for their departure took the matter into their own hands by saluting him as Augustus. He wrote to Constantius, asking his confirmation of the title, while he denied all complicity in the revolt, and modestly signed himself Cæsar. Finding his overtures scornfully rejected, he made a masterly movement down the Danube, of which the first information conveyed to Constantius at Antioch was that Sirmium had surrendered to his cousin. Though it was the depth of winter, the emperor at once began his march; but he died at Mopsucrene, twelve miles beyond Tarsus in Cilicia, on the 3rd of November,

The "Athanasian Creed" is not found among his writings, and is probably a production of the fifth century.