order, were burned in the Forum of Trajan." In an age when the principles of commerce were so imperfectly understood, the most desirable end might perhaps be effected by harsh and injudicious means; but a temporary grievance of such a nature can scarcely excite and support a serious civil war. The repetition of intolerable taxes, imposed either on the land or on the necessaries of life, may at last provoke those who will not, or who cannot, relinquish their country. But the case is far otherwise in every operation which, by whatsoever expedients, restores the just value of money. The transient evil is soon obliterated by the permanent benefit, the loss is divided among multitudes; and if a few wealthy individuals experience a sensible diminution of treasure, with their riches they at the same time lose the degree of weight and importance which they derived from the possession of them. However Aurelian might choose to disguise the real cause of the insurrection, his reformation of the coin could furnish only a faint pretence to a party already powerful and discontented. Rome, though deprived of freedom, was distracted by faction. The people, towards whom the emperor, himself a plebeian, always expressed a peculiar fondness, lived in perpetual dissension with the senate, the equestrian order, and the Prætorian guards." Nothing less than the firm though secret conspiracy of those orders, of the authority of the first, the wealth of the second, and the arms of the third, could have displayed a strength capable of contending in battle with the veteran legions of the Danube, which, under the conduct of a martial sovereign, had achieved the conquest of the West and of the East.

Whatever was the cause or the object of this rebellion, imputed with so little probability to the workmen of the mint, Aurelian used his victory with unrelenting rigor." He was

90 Hist. August. p. 222. [Vopisc. Aurel. c. 39.] Aurel. Victor. [de Cæsar. 35.] 91 It already raged before Aurelian's return from Egypt. See Vopiscus, who quotes an original letter. Hist. August. p. 244. [Vopisc. Firmus, c. 5.] 92 Vopiscus in Hist. August. p. 222. [Aurel. c. 39.] The two Victors. tropius, lx. 14 [9]. Zosimus (1. i. p. 43) mentions only three senators, and places their death before the Eastern war.

Eu

Cruelty of

naturally of a severe disposition. A peasant and a soldier, his nerves yielded not easily to the impressions of sympaAurelian. thy, and he could sustain without emotion the sight of tortures and death. Trained from his earliest youth in the exercise of arms, he set too small a value on the life of a citizen, chastised by military execution the slightest offences, and transferred the stern discipline of the camp into the civil administration of the laws. His love of justice often became a blind and furious passion; and, whenever he deemed his own or the public safety endangered, he disregarded the rules of evidence and the proportion of punishments.

The unprovoked rebellion with which the Romans rewarded his services exasperated his haughty spirit. The noblest families of the capital were involved in the guilt or suspicion of this dark conspiracy. A hasty spirit of revenge urged the bloody prosecution, and it proved fatal to one of the nephews of the emperor. The executioners (if we may use the expression of a contemporary poeta) were fatigued, the prisons were crowded, and the unhappy senate lamented the death or absence of its most illustrious members." Nor was the pride of Aurelian less offensive to that assembly than his cruelty. Ignorant or impatient of the restraints of civil institutions, he disdained to hold his power by any other title than that of the sword, and governed by right of conquest an empire which he had saved and subdued."

He marches into the

It was observed by one of the most sagacious of the Roman princes, that the talents of his predecessor Aurelian were better suited to the command of an army than to the government of an empire." Conscious of the character in which nature and experience had en

East, and is assassinated.

93

Nulla catenati feralis pompa senatus

Carnificum lassabit opus; nec carcere pleno

Infelix raros numerabit curia Patres.-Calpurn. Eclog. i. 60.

94 According to the younger Victor [Epitome, c. 35], he sometimes wore the diadem. Deus and Dominus appear on his medals.

95 It was the observation of Diocletian. See Vopiscus in Hist. August. p. 224. [Aurel. c. 44.]

a See note on p. 606.-S.

A.D. 274.
October.

abled him to excel, he again took the field a few months after his triumph. It was expedient to exercise the restless temper of the legions in some foreign war; and the Persian monarch, exulting in the shame of Valeri. an, still braved with impunity the offended majesty of Rome. At the head of an army, less formidable by its numbers than by its discipline and valor, the emperor advanced as far as the Straits which divide Europe from Asia. He there experienced that the most absolute power is a weak defence against the effects of despair. He had threatened one of his secretaries who was accused of extortion, and it was known that he. seldom threatened in vain. The last hope which remained for the criminal was to involve some of the principal officers of the army in his danger, or at least in his fears. Artfully counterfeiting his master's hand, he showed them, in a long and bloody list, their own names devoted to death. Without suspecting or examining the fraud, they resolved to secure their lives by the murder of the emperor. On his march, between Byzantium and Heraclea, Aurelian was suddenly attacked by the conspirators, whose stations gave them a right

A.D. 275. January.

[March.]

to surround his person, and, after a short resistance, fell by the hand of Mucapor, a general whom he had always loved and trusted. He died regretted by the army, detested by the senate, but universally acknowledged as a warlike and fortunate prince, the useful though severe reformer of a degenerate State."

96 Vopiscus in Hist. August. p. 221. [Aurel. c. 35 seq.] Zosimus, l. i. [c. 62] p. 57. Eutrop. ix. 15 [9]. The two Victors.

CHAPTER XII.

Conduct of the Army and Senate after the Death of Aurelian.-Reigns of Taci tus, Probus, Carus, and his Sons.

Extraordi

nary contest

between the

army and the

senate for

the choice of

an emperor.

SUCH was the unhappy condition of the Roman emperors, that, whatever might be their conduct, their fate was commonly the same. A life of pleasure or virtue, of severity or mildness, of indolence or glory, alike led to an untimely grave; and almost every reign is closed by the same disgusting repetition of treason and murder. The death of Aurelian, however, is remarkable by its extraordinary consequences. The legions admired, lamented, and revenged their victorious chief. The artifice of his perfidious secretary was discovered and punished. The deluded conspirators attended the funeral of their injured sovereign with sincere or well-feigned contrition, and submitted to the unanimous resolution of the military order, which was signified by the following epistle: "The brave and fortunate armies to the senate and people of Rome.—The crime of one man, and the error of many, have deprived us of the late Emperor Aurelian. May it please you, venerable lords and fathers! to place him in the number of the gods, and to appoint a successor whom your judgment shall declare worthy of the imperial purple! None of those whose guilt or misfortune have contributed to our loss shall ever reign over us." The Roman senators heard, without surprise, that another emperor had been assassinated in his camp; they secretly rejoiced in the fall of Aurelian; but the modest and dutiful address of the legions, when it was communicated in full assembly by the consul, diffused the most pleasing aston

1 Vopiscus in Hist. August. p. 222. [Aurel. c. 41.] Aurelius Victor mentions a formal deputation from the troops to the senate.

ishment. Such honors as fear and perhaps esteem could extort they liberally poured forth on the memory of their deceased sovereign. Such acknowledgments as gratitude could inspire they returned to the faithful armies of the republic, who entertained so just a sense of the legal authority of the senate in the choice of an emperor. Yet, notwithstanding this flattering appeal, the most prudent of the assembly declined exposing their safety and dignity to the caprice of an armed multitude. The strength of the legions was, indeed, a pledge of their sincerity, since those who may command are seldom reduced to the necessity of dissembling; but could it naturally be expected that a hasty repentance would correct the inveterate habits of fourscore years? Should the soldiers relapse into their accustomed seditions, their insolence might disgrace the majesty of the senate and prove fatal to the object of its choice. Motives like these dictated a decree by which the election of a new emperor was referred to the suffrage of the military order.

A.D. 275.
Feb. 3.a

The contention that ensued is one of the best attested but most improbable events in the history of mankind.' The troops, as if satiated with the exercise of power, again conjured the senate to invest one of its own terregnum of body with the imperial purple. The senate still eight months. persisted in its refusal, the army in its request. The reciprocal offer was pressed and rejected at least three times, and, whilst the obstinate modesty of either party was

A peaceful in

2 Vopiscus, our principal authority, wrote at Rome sixteen years only after the death of Aurelian; and, besides the recent notoriety of the facts, constantly draws his materials from the Journals of the Senate and the original papers of the Ulpian library. Zosimus and Zonaras appear as ignorant of this transaction as they were in general of the Roman constitution.

This is the date in Vopiscus, "III. Non. Febr." (Aurel. c. 41); but as it is in opposition to other authorities, which make the interregnum between the death of Aurelian and the elevation of Tacitus only six months (not eight, as Gibbon says), it is proposed to read "III. Non. Apr." instead of "III. Non. Febr.," which will place the death of Aurelian at the end of March. Tacitus was elected the 25th of September. During the interregnum Severina, the widow of Aurelian, appears to have been acknowledged as empress at Alexandria, since her Alexandrian coins bear only the years 6 and 7, and Aurelian died in the sixth year of his reign. See Eckhel, vol. vii. p. 488; Clinton, Fasti Rom. vol. i. p. 312, 313.-S.