and Gaul.

Iedged in tine, and their impetuous levity had already Britain seated him on the throne, before they perA. D. 407. ceived his incapacity to sustain the weight of that glorious appellation. Yet the authority of Constantine was less precarious, and his government was more successful, than the transient reigns of Marcus and of Gratian. The danger of leaving his inactive troops in those camps, which had been twice polluted with blood and sedition, urged him to attempt the reduction of the western provinces. He landed at Boulogne with an inconsiderable force; and after he had reposed himself some days, he summoned the cities of Gaul, which had escaped the yoke of the barbarians, to acknowledge their lawful sovereign. They obeyed the summons without reluctance. The neglect of the court of Ravenna had absolved a deserted people from the duty of allegiance; their actual distress encouraged them to accept any circumstance of change, without apprehension, and, perhaps, with some degree of hope; and they might flatter themselves, that the troops, the authority, and even the name, of a Roman emperor, who fixed his residence in Gaul, would protect the unhappy country from the rage of the barbarians. The first successes of Constantine against the detached parties of the Germans, were magnified by the voice of adulation into splendid and decisive victories; which the reunion and insolence of the enemy soon reduced to their just value. His negotiations procured a short and precarious truce; and if some tribes of the barbarians were engaged, by the liberality of his gifts and promises, to undertake the defence of the Rhine, these expensive and uncertain treaties, instead of restoring the pristine vigour of the Gallic frontier, served only to disgrace the majesty of the prince, and to exhaust what yet remained of the

d Cum in Constantino inconstantiam...execrarentur. (Sidonius Appollinaris, lib. 5. epist. 9. p. 139. edit. second. Sirmond.) Yet Sidonius might be tempted, by so fair a pun, to stigmatize a prince who had disgraced his grandfather.

treasures of the republic. Elated, however, with this imaginary triumph, the vain deliverer of Gaul advanced into the provinces of the south, to encounter a more pressing and personal danger. Sarus the Goth was ordered to lay the head of the rebel at the feet of the emperor Honorius; and the forces of Britain and Italy were unworthily consumed in this domestic quarrel. After the loss of his two bravest generals, Justinian and Nevigastes, the former of whom was slain in the field of battle, the latter in a peaceful but treacherous interview, Constantine fortified himself within the walls of Vienna. The place was ineffectually attacked seven days; and the imperial army supported, in a precipitate retreat, the ignominy of purchasing a secure passage from the freebooters and outlaws of the Alps. Those

mountains now separated the dominions of two rival monarchs; and the fortifications of the double frontier were guarded by the troops of the empire, whose arms would have been more usefully employed to maintain the Roman limits against the barbarians of Germany and Scythia.

He reduces

Spain.

On the side of the Pyrenees, the ambition of A.D. 408. Constantine might be justified by the proximity of danger; but his throne was soon established by the conquest, or rather submission, of Spain; which yielded to the influence of regular and habitual subordination, and received the laws and magistrates of the Gallic prefecture. The only opposition which was made to the authority of Constantine, proceeded not so much from the powers of government, or the spirit of the people, as from the private zeal and interest of the family of Theodosius. Four brothers' had obtained, by the favour of their kinsman, the deceased emperor, an honour

* Bagaude is the name which Zosimus applies to them; perhaps they deserved a less odious character. (See Dubois, Hist. Critique, tom. 1. p. 203. and this History, vol. 2. p. 7. We shall hear of them again.

Verinianus, Didymus, Theodosius, and Lagodius, who, in modern courts, would be styled princes of the blood, were not distinguished by any rank or privileges above the rest of their fellow-subjects.

g

able rank, and ample possessions, in their native country: and the grateful youths resolved to risk those advantages in the service of his son. After an unsuccess◄ ful effort to maintain their ground at the head of the stationary troops of Lusitania, they retired to their estates; where they armed and levied, at their own expense, a considerable body of slaves and dependants, and boldly marched to occupy the strong posts of the Pyrenean mountains. This domestic insurrection alarmed and perplexed the sovereign of Gaul and Britain; and he was compelled to negotiate with some troops of barbarian auxiliaries, for the service of the Spanish war. They were distinguished by the title of Honorians, a name which might have reminded them of their fidelity to their lawful sovereign; and if it should candidly be allowed that the Scots were influenced by any partial affection for a British prince, the Moors and the Marcomanni could be tempted only by the profuse liberality of the usurper, who distributed among the barbarians the military, and even the civil, honours of Spain. The nine bands of Honorians, which may be easily traced on the establishment of the western empire, could not exceed the number of five thousand men; yet this inconsiderable force was sufficient to terminate a war, which had threatened the power and safety of Constantine. The rustic army of the Theodosian family was surrounded and destroyed in the Pyrenees; two of the brothers had the good fortune to escape by sea to Italy, or the east; the other two, after an interval of suspense, were executed at Arles; and if Honorius could remain insensible of the public disgrace, he might perhaps be affected by the personal misfortunes of his generous kinsmen. Such were the feeble arms which decided the possession of the western provinces of Eu

These Honoriani, or Honoriaci, consisted of two bands of Scots, or Attacotti two of Moors, two of Marcomanni, the Victores, the Ascarii, and the Gallicani. (Notitia Imperii, sect. 38. edit. Lab.) They were part of the sixty-five Auxilia Palatina, and are properly styled, ev тn auλn Tage, by Zosimus. (lib. 6. p. 574.)

rope, from the walls of Antoninus to the columns of Hercules. The events of peace and war have undoubtedly been diminished by the narrow and imperfect view of the historians of the times, who were equally ignorant of the causes, and of the effects, of the most important revolutions. But the total decay of the national strength had annihilated even the last resource of a despotic government; and the revenue of exhausted provinces could no longer purchase the military service of a discontented and pusillanimous people.

Negotia

tion of

Stilicho.

A. D. 404

The poet, whose flattery has ascribed to the Alaric and Roman eagle the victories of Pollentia and Verona, pursues the hasty retreat of Alaric, -408. from the confines of Italy, with a horid train of imaginary spectres, such as might hover over an army of barbarians, which was almost exterminated by war, famine, and disease. In the course of this unfortunate expedition, the king of the Goths must indeed have sustained a considerable loss; and his harassed forces required an interval of repose to recruit their numbers. and revive their confidence. Adversity had exercised, and displayed, the genius of Alaric; and the fame of his valour invited to the Gothic standard the bravest of the barbarian warriors; who, from the Euxine to the Rhine, were agitated by the desire of rapine and conquest. He had deserved the esteem, and he soon accepted the friendship, of Stilicho himself. Renouncing the service of the emperor of the east, Alaric concluded, with the court of Ravenna, a treaty of peace and alliance, by which he was declared master-general of the Roman armies throughout the prefecture of Illyricum; and it was claimed, according to the true and ancient limits, by the minister of Honorius. The execution of the

h

-Comitatur euntem

Pallor, et atra fames; et saucia lividus ora

Luctus; et inferni stridentes agmine morbi.

Claudian in 6. Cons. Hon. 321. &c.

These dark transactions are investigated by the Count de Buat, (Hist. des Peuples de l'Europe, tom. 7. c. 38. p. 69-206.) whose laborious accuracy may sometimes fatigue a superficial reader.

ambitious design, which was either stipulated, or implied, in the articles of the treaty, appears to have been suspended by the formidable irruption of Radagaisus; and the neutrality of the Gothic king may perhaps be compared to the indifference of Cæsar, who, in the conspiracy of Catiline, refused either to assist, or to oppose, the enemy of the republic. After the defeat of the Vandals, Stilicho resumed his pretensions to the provinces of the east; appointed civil magistrates for the administration of justice, and of the finances; and declared his impatience to lead to the gates of Constantinople, the united armies of the Romans and of the Goths. The prudence, however, of Stilicho, his aversion to civil war, and his perfect knowledge of the weakness of the state, may countenance the suspicion, that domestic peace, rather than foreign conquest, was the object of his policy; and that his principal care was to employ the forces of Alaric at a distance from Italy. This design could not long escape the penetration of the Gothic king, who continued to hold a doubtful, and perhaps a treacherous correspondence with the rival courts; who protracted, like a dissatisfied mercenary, his languid operations in Thessaly and Epirus, and who soon returned to claim the extravagant reward of his ineffectual services. From his camp near Amona, on the confines of Italy, he transmitted, to the emperor of the west, a long account of promises, of expenses, and of demands; called for immediate satisfaction, and clearly intimated the consequences of a refusal. Yet if his conduct was hostile, his language was decent and dutiful. He humbly professed himself the friend of Stilicho, and the soldier of Honorius; offered his person and his troops to march without delay, against the usurper of Gaul; and solicited, as a permanent retreat for the

k

k See Zosimus, lib. 5. p. 334, 355. He interrupts his scanty narrative, to relate the fable of Emona, and of the ship Argo; which was drawn overland from that place to the Hadriatic. Sozomen (lib. 8. c. 25. lib. 9. c. 4.) and Socrates (lib. 7. c. 10.) cast a pale and doubtful light; and Orosius (lib. 7. c. 58. p. 571.) is abominably partial.