A.D. 274. 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 Valerian, 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. [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, 1. 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 Tacitus, Probus, Carus, and his Sons. Extraordi between the senate for 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 nary contest severity or mildness, of indolence or glory, alike led army and the to an untimely grave; and almost every reign is the choice of 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 de ceased 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. The contention that ensued is one of the best attested but most improbable events in the history of mankind. A.D. 275. A peaceful in 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 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 eight months. 9 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 UIpian library. Zosimus and Zonaras appear as ignorant of this transaction as they were in general of the Roman constitution. a 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. resolved to receive a master from the hands of the other, eight months insensibly elapsed; an amazing period of tran quil anarchy, during which the Roman world remained without a sovereign, without a usurper, and without a sedition. The generals and magistrates appointed by Aurelian continued to execute their ordinary functions; and it is observed that a proconsul of Asia was the only considerable person removed from his office in the whole course of the interregnum. An event somewhat similar but much less authentic is supposed to have happened after the death of Romulus, who, in his life and character, bore some affinity with Aurelian. The throne was vacant during twelve months, till the election of a Sabine philosopher, and the public peace was guarded in the same manner by the union of the several orders of the State. But, in the time of Numa and Romulus, the arms of the pecple were controlled by the authority of the Patricians; and the balance of freedom was easily preserved in a small and virtuous community. The decline of the Roman State, far different from its infancy, was attended with every circumstance that could banish from an interregnum the prospect of obedience and harmony: an immense and tumultuous capital, a wide extent of empire, the servile equality of despotism, an army of four hundred thousand mercenaries, and the experience of frequent revolutions. Yet, notwithstanding all these temptations, the discipline and memory of Aurelian still restrained the seditious temper of the troops, as well as the fatal ambition of their leaders. The flower of the legions maintained their stations on the banks of the Bosphorus, and the imperial standard awed the less powerful camps of Rome and of the provinces. A generous though transient enthusiasm seemed to animate the military order; and we may hope that a few real patriots cultivated the returning friendship of the army and the senate as the only expedient capable of restoring the republic to its ancient beauty and vigor. 3 Liv. i. 17. Dionys. Halicarn. 1. ii. [c. 57] p. 115. Plutarch in Numa [c. 2], p. 60. The first of these writers relates the story like an orator, the second like a lawyer, and the third like a moralist, and none of them probably without some intermixture of fable. A.D. 275. Sept. 25. The consul assembles the senate. On the twenty-fifth of September, near eight months after the murder of Aurelian, the consul convoked an assembly of the senate, and reported the doubtful and dangerous situation of the empire. He slightly insinuated that the precarious loyalty of the soldiers depended on the chance of every hour and of every accident; but he represented, with the most convincing eloquence, the various dangers that might attend any further delay in the choice of an emperor. Intelligence, he said, was already received that the Germans had passed the Rhine and occupied some of the strongest and most opulent cities of Gaul. The ambition of the Persian king kept the East in perpetual alarms; Egypt, Africa, and Illyricum were exposed to foreign and domestic arms; and the levity of Syria would prefer even a female sceptre to the sanctity of the Roman laws. The consul then, addressing himself to Tacitus, the first of the senators,' required his opinion on the important subject of a proper candidate for the vacant throne. Character of Tacitus. If we can prefer personal merit to accidental greatness, we shall esteem the birth of Tacitus more truly noble than that of kings. He claimed his descent from the philosophic historian whose writings will instruct the last generations of mankind. The senator Tacitus was then seventy-five years of age. The long period of his innocent. life was adorned with wealth and honors. He had twice been invested with the consular dignity, and enjoyed with elegance and sobriety his ample patrimony of between two and three millions sterling. The experience of so many princes, 8 4 Vopiscus (in Iist. August. p. 227 [Tacit. c. 4] calls him "primæ sententiæ consularis," and soon afterwards "princeps senatûs." It is natural to suppose that the monarchs of Rome, disdaining that humble title, resigned it to the most ancient of the senators. 5 The only objection to this genealogy is, that the historian was named Cornelius, the Emperor Claudius. But under the Lower Empire surnames were extremely various and uncertain. Zonaras, 1. xii. [c. 28] p. 637 [edit. Paris; p. 608, edit. Bonn]. The Alexandrian Chronicle, by an obvious mistake, transfers that age to Aurelian. In the year 273 he was ordinary consul. But he must have been Suffectus many years before, and most probably under Valerian. 8 Bis millies octingenties. Vopiseus in Hist. August. p. 229. [Tacit. c. 10.] |