XX

itis A censor may maintain, he can never restore, Ċ HA P. the morals of a state. It is impossible for such a magistrate to exert his authority with benefit, or even with effect, unless he is supported by a quick sense of honour and virtue in the minds of the people; by a decent reverence for the public opinion, and by a train of useful prejudices combating on the side of national manners. In a period when these principles are annihilated, the censorial jurisdiction must either sink into empty pageantry, or be converted into a partial instrument of vexatious oppression *. It was easier to vanquish the Goths, than to eradicate the public vices; yet, even in the first of these enterprises, Decius lost his army and his life.

"death of

The Goths were now on every side surrounded Defeat and and pursued by the Roman arms. The flower Decius and of their troops had perished in the long siege of his son. Philippopolis, and the exhausted country could no longer afford subsistence for the remaining multitude of licentious barbarians. Reduced to this extremity, the Goths would gladly have purchased, by the surrender of all their booty and prisoners, the permission of an undisturbed retreat. But the emperor confident of victory, and resolving, by the chastisement of these invaders, to strike a salutary terror into the nations of the North, refused to listen to any terms of accommodation. The high-spirited barbarians preferred death to slavery. An obscure Dd2 town

*Such as the attempts of Augustus towards a reformation of

X.

CHA P. town of Mæsia, called Forum Terebronii *, was the scene of the battle.. The Gothic army was drawn up in three lines, and, either from choice or accident, the front of the third line was covered by a morass. In the beginning of the action, the son of Decius, a youth of the fairest hopes, and already associated to the honours of the purple, was slain by an arrow, in the sight of his afflicted father; who, summoning all his fortitude, admonished the dismayed troops, that the loss of a single soldier was of little importance to the republic +. The conflict was terrible; it was the combat of despair against grief and rage. The first line of the Goths at length gave way in disorder; the second, advancing to sustain it, shared its fate; and the third only remained entire, prepared to dispute the passage of the morass, which was imprudently attempted by the presumption of the enemy. "Here the "fortune of the day turned, and all things be"came adverse to the Romans: The place deep. "with ooze, sinking under those who stood,

66

slippery to such as advanced; their armour

heavy, the waters deep; nor could they wield, "in that uneasy situation, their weighty javelins. "The barbarians, on the contrary, were enured "to encounters in the bogs, their persons tall, "their spears long, such as could wound at a "distance."

* Tillemont, Histoire des Empereurs, tom. iii. p. 598. As Zosimus and some of his followers mistake the Danube for the Tanais, they place the field of battle in the plains of Scythia.

+ Aurelius Victor allows two distinct actions for the deaths of the two Decii; but I preferred the account of Jornandes.

X..

"distance" In this morass the Roman army, CHA P. after an ineffectual struggle, was irrecoverably lost; nor could the body of the emperor ever be found. Such was the fate of Decius, in the fiftieth year of his age; an accomplished prince, active in war, and affable in peace ; who together with his son, has deserved to be compared, both in life and death, with the brightest examples of ancient virtue §.

December.

This fatal blow humbled, for a very little time, Election of the insolence of the legions. They appear to A. D. 251. have patiently expected, and submissively obeyed, the decree of the senate which regulated the succession to the throne. From a just regard for the memory of Decius, the Imperial title was conferred on Hostilianus, his only surviving son; but an equal rank, with more effectual power, was granted to Gallus, whose experience and ability seemed equal to the great trust of guardian to the young prince and the distressed empire ||. The first care of the new emperor was to deliver the Illyrian provinces from

Dd 3

* I have ventured to copy from Tacitus (Annal. i. 64.) the picture of a similar engagement between a Roman army and a German tribe.

↑ Jornandes, c. 18. Zosimus, l. i. p. 22. Zonaras, 1. xii. p. 627. Aurelius Victor.

The Decii were killed before the end of the year two hundred and fifty-one, since the new princes took possession of the consulship on the ensuing calends of January.

Hist. August. p. 223. gives them a very honourable place among the small number of good emperors who reigned between Augustus and Diocletian.

Hec ubi Patres comperere Cæsaribus,

A. D. 252.

the Goths.

CHAP from the intolerable weight of the victorious X Goths. He consented to leave ainetheir hands the rich fruits of their invasion, ban immense booty, and what was still more disgraceful, są great number of prisoners of the highest merit Retreat of and quality. He plentifully supplied their camp with every convenience that could assuage their angry spirits, or facilitate their so much wishedfor departure; and he even promised to pay them annually a large sum of gold, on condition they should never afterwards infest the Roman territories by their incursions *.

Gallus purchases peace

In the age of the Scipios, the most opulent by the pay kings of the earth, who courted the protection ment of an of the victorious commonwealth, were gratified

annual tri

bute.

with such trifling presents as could only derive a value from the hand that bestowed them; an ivory chair, a coarse garment of purple, an inconsiderable piece of plate, or a quantity of copper coint. After the wealth of nations had centred in Rome, the emperors displayed their greatness, and even their policy, by the regular exercise of a steady and moderate liberality towards the allies of the state. They relieved the poverty of the barbarians, honoured their merit, and recompensed their fidelity. These voluntary marks of bounty were understood to flow, not from the fears, but merely from the generosity

or

品

Zonaras, 1. xii. p. 628.

A Sella, a Toga, and a golden Petera of five pounds weight, were accepted with joy and gratitude by the wealthy king of Egypt. (Livy, xxvii. 4.) Quinia Millia Æris, a weight of copper, in value about eighteen pounds sterling, was the usual present made to foreign ambassadors. (Livy, xxxi. 9.)

or the gratitude of the Romans; and whilst preì CHAP. sents and subsidies were liberally distributed among friends and suppliants, they were sternly -Popular refused to such as claimed them as a debt *. discontent. But this stipulation of an annual payment to a victorious enemy, appeared without disguise in the light of an ignominious tribute; the minds of the Romans were not yet accustomed to ac cept such unequal laws from a tribe of barba rians; and the prince, who, by a necessary concession, had probably saved his country, became the object of the general contempt and aversion. The death of Hostilianus, though it happened in the midst of a raging pestilence, was interpreted as the personal crime of Gallus†; and even the defeat of the late emperor was ascribed by the voice of suspicion to the perfidious counsels of his hated successor. The tranquillity which the empire enjoyed during the first year of his administration §, served rather to inflame than to appease the public discontent; and, as soon as the apprehensions of war were removed, the infamy of the peace was more deeply and more sensibly felt.

See the firmness of a Roman general so late as the time of Alexander Severus, in the Excerpta Legationum, p. 25. Ed. Louvre For the plague, see Jornandes, c. 19. and Victor in Cæsari

bus.

These improbable accusations are alledged by Zosimus, l. i. p. 23, 24.

Jornandes, c. 19. The Gothic writer at least observed the peace which his victorious countrymen had sworn to Gallus. i