XIV. of Iberia and Armenia worshipped the CHAP. r protector; and their subjects, who have preserved the name of Christians, soon cred and perpetual connexion with their thren. The Christians of Persia were time of war of preferring their religion ntry; but as long as peace subsisted bewo empires, the persecuting spirit of the fectually restrained by the interposition ne. The rays of the Gospel illurninated India. The colonies of Jews who had nto Arabia and Ethiopia opposed the Christianity; but the labour of the was in some measure facilitated by a owledge of the Mosaic revelation; and ill reveres the memory of Frumentius, ime of Constantine devoted his life to n of those sequestered regions. F Γ 1 1 THE DECLINE AND FALL CHAP. of Constan tine. CHAPTER XV. Character of Constantine. -Gothic War. Death of Con- THE character of the prince who removed the seat of empire, and introduced such important changes Character into the civil and religious constitution of his country, has fixed the attention, and divided the opinions, of mankind. By the grateful zeal of the Christians, the deliverer of the church has been decorated with every attribute of a hero, and even of a saint; while the discontent of the vanquished party has compared Constantine to the most abhorred of those tyrants, who, by their vice and weakness, dishonoured the Imperial purple. The same passions have in some degree been perpetuated to succeeding generations, and the character of Constantine is considered, even in the present age, as an object either of satire or of panegyric. panegyric. By the impartial union of those defects which are confessed by his warmest admirers, and of those virtues which are acknowledged by his most implacable enemies, we might hope to delineate a just portrait of that extraordinary man, which the truth and candour of history should adopt without a blush. But it would soon appear, that the vain attempt to blend such discordant colours, and to reconcile such inconsistent qualities, must produce a figure monstrous rather than human, unless it is viewed in its proper and distinct lights, by a careful separation of the different periods of the reign of Constantine. on, as well as the mind, of Constantine CHAP. riched by nature with her choicest en XV. His stature was lofty, his countenance His virtues. deportment graceful; his strength and displayed in every manly exercise, and iest youth, to a very advanced season of erved the vigour of his constitution by a nce to the domestic virtues of chastity nce. He delighted in the social interiliar conversation; and though he might dulge his disposition to raillery with less was required by the severe dignity of the courtesy and liberality of his manthe hearts of all who approached him. of his friendship has been suspected; 1, on some occasions, that he was not a warm and lasting attachment. The of an illiterate education had not preom forming a just estimate of the value and the arts and sciences derived some t from the munificent protection of In the despatch of business, his dililefatigable; and the active powers of almost continually exercised in reador meditating, in giving audience to and in examining the complaints of Even those who censured the propriety s were compelled to acknowledge, that agnanimity to conceive, and patience e most arduous designs, without being by the prejudices of education, or by f the multitude. In the field, he inintrepid spirit into the troops, whom with the talents of a consummate geis abilities, rather than to his fortune, the signal victories which he obtained n and domestic foes of the republic. XV. CHAP. He loved glory, as the reward, perhaps as the motive, of his labours. The boundless ambition, which, from the moment of his accepting the purple at York, appears as the ruling passion of his soul, may be justified by the dangers of his own situation, by the character of his rivals, by the consciousness of superior merit, and by the prospect that his success would enable him to restore peace and order to the distracted empire. In his civil wars against Maxentius and Licinius, he had engaged on his side the inclinations of the people, who compared the undissembled vices of those tyrants, with the spirit of wisdom and justice which seemed to direct the general tenor of the administration of Constantine*. His vices. A. D. 323-337. Had Constantine fallen on the banks of the Tyber, or even in the plains of Hadrianople, such is the character which, with a few exceptions, he might have transmitted to posterity. But the conclusion of his reign (according to the moderate and indeed tender sentence of a writer of the same age) degraded him from the rank which he had acquired among the most deserving of the Roman princes. In the life of Augustus, we behold the tyrant of the republic, converted, almost by imperceptible degrees, into the father of his country and of human kind. In that of Constantine, we may contemplate a hero, who had so long inspired his subjects with love, and his enemies with terror, degenerating into a cruel and dissolute monarch, corrupted by his fortune, or raised by conquest above the necessity of dissimulation. The general peace which he maintained during the last fourteen years of his reign was a period of apparent splendour rather than of real prosperity; and the old age of Constantine was disgraced by the * The virtues of Constantine are collected for the most part from Eutropius, and the younger Victor, two sincere pagans, who wrote after the extinction of his family. Even Zosimus, and the Emperor Julian, acknowledge his personal courage and military achievements. reconcileable vices of rapaciousness and The accumulated treasures found in of Maxentius and Licinius were lavishly the various innovations introduced by r were attended with an increasing excost of his buildings, his court, and his uired an immediate and plentiful supoppression of the people was the only could support the magnificence of the His unworthy favourites, enriched by s liberality of their master, usurped with privilege of rapine and corruption. A iversal decay was felt in every part of ministration, and the emperor himself, ill retained the obedience, gradually n, of his subjects. The dress and mantowards the decline of life, he chose ved only to degrade him in the eyes The Asiatic pomp, which had been ne pride of Diocletian, assumed an air effeminacy in the person of Constanrepresented with false hair of various usly arranged by the skilful artists of liadem of a new and more expensive ofusion of gems and pearls, of collars and a variegated flowing robe of silk, embroidered with flowers of gold. In scarcely to be excused by the youth lagabalus, we are at a loss to discover an aged monarch, and the simplicity veteran. A mind thus relaxed by indulgence was incapable of rising nimity which disdains suspicion, and CHAP. XV. |