XXII.

CHAP. manner, the confirmation of the title of Augustus. He acknowledges the irregularity of his own election, while he justifies, in some measure, the resentment and violence of the troops which had extorted his reluctant consent. He allows the supremacy of his brother Constantius; and engages to send him an annual present of Spanish horses, to recruit his army with a select number of Barbarian youths, and to accept from his choice a Prætorian præfect of approved discretion and fidelity. But he reserves for himself the nomination of his other civil and military officers, with the troops, the revenue, and the sovereignty of the provinces beyond the Alps. He admonishes the emperor to consult the dictates of justice; to distrust the arts of those venal flatterers, who subsist only by the discord of princes; and to embrace the offer of a fair and honourable treaty, equally advantageous to the republic, and to the house of Constantine. this negociation Julian claimed no more than he already possessed. The delegated authority which he had long exercised over the provinces of Gaul, Spain, and Britain, was still obeyed under a name more independent and august. The soldiers and the people rejoiced in a revolution which was not stained even with the blood of the guilty. Florentius was a fugitive; Lupicinus a prisoner. The persons who were dissaffected to the new government were disarmed and secured; and the vacant offices were distributed, according to the recommendation of merit, by a

In

prince

prince who despised the intrigues of the palace, CHAP. and the clamours of the soldiers *.

XXII.

His fourth

and fifth ex

pedition be

yond the Rhine,

361.

The negociations of peace were accompanied and supported by the most vigorous preparations for war. The which Julian held in reaarmy, diness for immediate action, was recruited and A. D. S60, augmented by the disorders of the times. The cruel persecution of the faction of Magnentius had filled Gaul with numerous hands of outlaws and robbers. They cheerfully accepted the offer of a general pardon from a prince whom they could trust, submitted to the restraints of military discipline, and retained only their implacable hatred to the person and government of Constantiust. As soon as the season of the year permitted Julian to take the field, he appeared at the head of his legions; threw a bridge over the Rhine in the neighbourhood of Cleves; and prepared to chastise the perfidy of the Attuarii, a tribe of Franks, who presumed that they might ravage, with impunity, the frontiers of a divided empire. The difficulty, as well as glory, of this enterprise, consisted in a laborious. march; and Julian had conquered, as soon as he could penetrate into a country, which former VOL. IV. princes

C

See the first transactions of his reign, in Julian ad S. P. Q. Athen. p. 285, 286. Ammianus, xx. 5. 8. Liban. Orat.

Parent. c. 49, 50. p. 273-275.

+ Liban. Orat. Parent. c. 50. p. 275, 276. A strange disorder, since it continued above seven years. In the factions of the Greek republics, the exiles amounted to 70,000 persons; and Isocrates assures Philip, that it would be easier to raise an army from the vagabonds than from the cities. See Hume's Essays, tom. i. p. 126, 427.

XXII.

CHAP. princes had considered as inaccessible. After he had given peace to the Barbarians, the emperor carefully visited the fortifications along the Rhine from Cleves to Basil; surveyed, with peculiar attention, the territories which he had recovered from the hands of the Alemanni, passed through Besançon*, which had severely suffered from their fury, and fixed his head-quarters at Vienna for the ensuing winter. The barrier of Gaul was improved and strengthened with additional fortifications; and Julian entertained some hopes, that the Germans, whom he had so often vanquished, might, in his absence, be restrained, by the terror of his name. Vadomair † was the only prince of the Alemanni whom he esteemed or feared; and while the subtle Barbarian affected to observe the faith of treaties, the progress of his arms threatened the state with an unseasonable and dangerous war. The policy of Julian condescended to surprise the prince of the Alemanni by his own arts; and Vadomair, who, in the character of a friend, had incautiously accepted an invitation from the Roman governors, was seized in the midst of the entertainment, and sent away prisoner into the heart of Spain. Before

* Julian (Epist. xxxviii. p. 414.) gives a short description of Vesontio, or Besançon ; a rocky peninsula almost encircled by the river Doux; once a magnificent city, filled with temples, &c. now reduced to a small town, emerging however from its

ruins.

+ Vadomair entered into the Roman service, and was promoted from a Barbarian kingdom to the military rank of duke of Phænicia. He still retained the same artful character (Ammian. xxi. 4.): but, under the reign of Valens, he signalized his valour in the Armenian war (xxix. 1.)

XXII.

Before the Barbarians were recovered from their CHAP. amazement, the emperor appeared in arms on the banks of the Rhine, and, once more crossing the river, renewed the deep impressions of terror and respect which had been already made by four preceding expeditions *.

The ambassadors of Julian had been instructed

to execute, with the utmost diligence, their important commission. But, in their passage through Italy and Illyricum, they were detained by the tedious and affected delays of the provincial governors; they were conducted by slow journeys from Constantinople to Cæsarea in Cappadocia ; and when at length they were admitted to the presence of Constantius, they found that he had already conceived, from the dispatches of his own officers, the most unfavourable opinion of the conduct of Julian, and of the Gallic army. The letters were heard with impatience; the trembling messengers were dismissed with indignation and contempt; and the looks, the gestures, the furious language of the monarch, expressed the disorder of his soul. The domestic connection, which might have reconciled the brother and the husband of Helena, was recently dissolved by the death of that princess, whose pregnancy had been several times fruitless, and was at last fatal to herself t. The empress Eu

C 2

Ammian. xx. 16. xxi. S. 4, Zosimus, 1. iii. p. 155.

sebia

Her remains were sent to Rome, and interred near those of her, sister Constantina, in the suburb of the Via Nomentana, Ammian. xxi. 1. Libanius has composed a very weak apology

to

Fruitless declaration A. D. 361.

treaty and of war,

XXII.

CHAP. sebia had preserved, to the last moment of her life, the warm and even jealous affection which she had conceived for Julian; and her mild influence might have moderated the resentment of a prince, who, since her death, was abandoned to his own passions, and to the arts of his eunuchs. But the terror of a foreign invasion obliged him to suspend the punishment of a private enemy; he continued his march towards the confines of Persia, and thought it sufficient to signify the conditions which might entitle Julian and his guilty followers to the clemency of their offended sovereign. He required, that the presumptuous Cæsar should expressly renounce the appellation and rank of Augustus, which he had accepted from the rebels; that he should descend to his former station of a limited and dependent minister; that he should vest the powers of the state and army in the hands of those officers who were appointed by the imperial court; and that he should trust his safety to the assurances of pardon, which were announced by Epictetus, a Gallic bishop, and one of the Arian favourites of Constantius. Several months were ineffectually consumed in a treaty which was negociated at the distance of three thousand miles

between

to justify his hero from a very absurd charge; of poisoning his wife, and rewarding her physician with his mother's jewels. (See the seventh of seventeen new orations, published at Venice 1754, from a MS. in St Mark's library, p. 117-127.). Elpidius, the Prætorian præfect of the East, to whose evidence the accuser of Julian appeals, is arraigned by Libanius, as effeminate and ungrateful; yet the religion of Elpidius is praised by Jerom (tom. i. p. 219.), and his humanity by Ammianus (xxi. 6.).