His treat

ment of Tet

ricus and Zenobia.

Aurelian might indulge his pride, he behaved towards them with a generous clemency which was seldom exercised by the ancient conquerors. Princes who, without success, had defended their throne or freedom were frequently strangled in prison as soon as the triumphal pomp ascended the Capitol. These usurpers, whom their defeat had convicted of the crime of treason, were permitted to spend their lives in affluence and honorable repose. The emperor presented Zenobia with an elegant villa at Tibur, or Tivoli, about twenty miles from the capital; the Syrian queen insensibly sunk into a Roman matron, her daughters married into noble families, and her race was not yet extinct in the fifth century." Tetricus and his son were reinstated in their rank and fortunes. They erected on the Cælian hill a magnificent palace, and, as soon as it was finished, invited Aurelian to supper. On his entrance he was agreeably surprised with a picture which represented their singular history. They were delineated offering to the emperor a civic crown and the sceptre of Gaul, and again receiving at his hands the ornaments of the senatorial dignity. The father was afterwards invested with the government of Lucania, and Aurelian, who soon admitted the abdicated monarch to his friendship and conversation, familiarly asked him, Whether it were not more desirable to administer a province of Italy than to reign beyond the Alps? The son long continued a respectable member of the senate; nor was there any one of the Roman nobility more esteemed by Aurelian, as well as by his successors.

83

84

So long and so various was the pomp of Aurelian's triumph, that, although it opened with the dawn of day, the slow majesty of the procession ascended not the Capitol be

82 Vopiscus in Hist. August. p. 199 [xxx. Tyranni, Zenobia, c. 29]. Hieronym. in Chron. Prosper in Chron. Baronius supposes that Zenobius, Bishop of Florence in the time of St. Ambrose, was of her family.

83 Vopisc. in Hist. August. p. 222. [Aurel. c. 39.] Eutropius, ix. 13 [9]. Victor junior. But Pollio, in Hist. August. p. 196 [xxx. Tyranni, de Tetrico, sen. c. 23], says that Tetricus was made corrector of all Italy.

84 Hist. August. p. 197. [Vopisc. xxx. Tyranni, de Tetrico jun. c. 24.]

His magnificence and devotion.

fore the ninth hour; and it was already dark when the emperor returned to the palace. The festival was protracted by theatrical representations, the games of the circus, the hunting of wild beasts, combats of gladiators, and naval engagements. Liberal donatives were distributed to the army and people, and several institutions, agreeable or beneficial to the city, contributed to perpetuate the glory of Aurelian. A considerable portion of his Oriental spoils was consecrated to the gods of Rome; the Capitol, and every other temple, glittered with the offerings of his ostentatious piety; and the Temple of the Sun alone received above fifteen thousand pounds of gold." This last was a magnificent structure, erected by the emperor on the side of the Quirinal Hill, and dedicated, soon after the triumph, to that deity whom Aurelian adored as the parent of his life and fortunes. His mother had been an inferior priestess in a chapel of the Sun; a peculiar devotion to the God of Light was a sentiment which the fortunate peasant imbibed in his infancy; and every step of his elevation, every victory of his reign, fortified superstition by gratitude."

He suppress

at Rome.

66

The arms of Aurelian had vanquished the foreign and do mestic foes of the republic. We are assured that, by his salutary rigor, crimes and factions, mischievous arts es a sedition and pernicious connivance, the luxuriant growth of a feeble and oppressive government, were eradicated throughout the Roman world." But if we attentively reflect how much swifter is the progress of corruption than its cure, and if we remember that the years abandoned to public disorders exceeded the months allotted to the martial reign of Aurelian, we must confess that a few short intervals

85 Vopisc. in Hist. August. p. 222. [Aurel. c. 39.] Zosimus, 1. i. [c. 61, p. 53] p. 56. He placed in it the images of Belus and of the Sun, which he had brought from Palmyra. It was dedicated in the fourth year of his reign (Euseb. in Chron. [an. CCLXXV.]), but was most assuredly begun immediately on his accession.

86 See in the Augustan History, p. 210 [Vopisc. Aurel. c. 5], the omens of his fortune. His devotion to the sun appears in his letters, on his medals, and is mentioned in the Cæsars of Julian. Commentaire de Spanheim, p. 109.

87 Vopisc. in Hist. August. p. 221. [Aurel. c. 37.]

of peace were insufficient for the arduous work of reformation. Even his attempt to restore the integrity of the coin was opposed by a formidable insurrection. The emperor's vexation breaks out in one of his private letters: "Surely," says he, "the gods have decreed that my life should be a perpetual warfare. A sedition within the walls has just now given birth to a very serious civil war. The workmen of the mint, at the instigation of Felicissimus, a slave to whom I had intrusted an employment in the finances, have risen in rebellion. They are at length suppressed; but seven thousand of my soldiers have been slain in the contest, of those troops whose ordinary station is in Dacia and the camps along the Danube." Other writers, who confirm the same fact, add likewise that it happened soon after Aurelian's triumph; that the decisive engagement was fought on the Cælian Hill; that the workmen of the mint had adulterated the coin; and that the emperor restored the public credit by delivering out good money in exchange for the bad, which the people was commanded to bring into the treasury."

upon it.

We might content ourselves with relating this extraordinary transaction, but we cannot dissemble how much, in its Observations present form, it appears to us inconsistent and incredible. The debasement of the coin is indeed well suited to the administration of Gallienus; nor is it unlikely that the instruments of the corruption might dread the inflexible justice of Aurelian. But the guilt, as well as the profit, must have been confined to a few; nor is it easy to conceive by what arts they could arm a people whom they had injured against a monarch whom they had betrayed. We might naturally expect that such miscreants should have shared the public detestation with the informers and the other ministers of oppression; and that the reformation of the coin should have been an action equally popular with the destruction of those obsolete accounts which, by the emperor's

88 Hist. August. p. 222. [Vopisc. Aurel. c. 38.] Aurelian calls these soldiers Hiberi, Riparienses, Castriani, and Dacisci.

89 Zosimus, 1. i. [c. 61, p. 53] p. 56. Eutropius, ix. 14 [9]. Aurel. Victor. [de Cæsar. 35].

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 workinen 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. Entropius, lx. 14 [9]. Zosimus (1. i. p. 43) mentions only three senators, and places their death before the Eastern war.

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 poet") 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 senatûs

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.]

See note on p. 606.-S.