VALERIAN.

[CII. X. revolutions; since he owed neither gratitude nor allegiance to his predecessor whom he dethroned.

Valerian was about sixty years of age* when he was invested with the purple, not by the caprice of the populace, or the clamours of the army, but by the unanimous voice of the Roman world. In his gradual ascent through the honours of the state, he had deserved the favour of virtuous princes, and he had declared himself the enemy of tyrants.+ His noble birth, his mild but unblemished manners, his learning, prudence, and experience, were revered by the senate and people; and if mankind (according to the observation of an ancient writer) had been left at liberty to choose a master, their choice would most assuredly have fallen on Valerian.‡ Perhaps the merit of this emperor was inadequate to his reputation; perhaps his abilities, or at least his spirit, were affected by the languor and coldness of old-age. The consciousness of his decline engaged him to share the throne with a younger and more active associate ;§ the emergency of the times demanded a general no less than a prince; and the experience of the Roman censor might have directed him where to bestow the imperial purple, as the reward of military merit. But instead of making a judicious choice, which would have confirmed his reign, and endeared his memory, Valerian, consulting only the dictates of affection or vanity, immediately invested with the supreme honours his son Gallienus, a youth whose effeminate vices had been hitherto concealed by the obscurity of a private station. The joint government of the father and the son subsisted about seven, and the sole administration of Gallienus continued about eight years. But the whole period was one uninterrupted series of confusion and calamity. As the Roman empire was at the same time, and on every side, attacked by the blind fury of foreign invaders and the wild ambition of domestic usurpers, we shall consult order

* He was about seventy at the time of his accession, or as it is more probable, of his death. Hist. August. p. 173. Tillemont, Hist. des Empereurs, tom. iii, p. 893, note 1. [Clinton (F. R. ii, p. 55) quotes the Chron. Pasch. p. 272, D, which makes Valerian fifty-five at his accession and sixty-one at his captivity.-ED.] + Inimicus Tyrannorum. Hist. August. p. 173. In the glorious struggle of the senate against Maximin, Valerian acted a very spirited part. Hist. August. p. 156. According to the distinction of Victor, he seems to have received the title of Imperator from the army, and that of Augustus from the senate. § From Victor and

and perspicuity, by pursuing, not so much the doubtful arrangement of dates, as the more natural distribution of subjects. The most dangerous enemies of Rome, during the reigns of Valerian and Gallienus, were-1. The Franks. 2. The Allemanni. 3. The Goths: and, 4. The Persians. Under these general appellations, we may comprehend the adventures of less considerable tribes, whose obscure and uncouth names would only serve to oppress the memory, and perplex the attention, of the reader.

I. As the posterity of the Franks composes one of the greatest and most enlightened nations of Europe, the powers of learning and ingenuity have been exhausted in the discovery of their unlettered ancestors. To the tales of credulity have succeeded the systems of fancy. Every passage has been sifted, every spot has been surveyed, that might possibly reveal some faint traces of their origin. It has been supposed that Pannonia,* that Gaul, that the northern parts of Germany,† gave birth to that celebrated colony of warriors. At length the most rational critics, rejecting the fictitious emigrations of ideal conquerors, have acquiesced in a sentiment whose simplicity persuades us of its truth. They suppose that about the year 240,§ a new confederacy was formed under the name of Franks, by the old inhabitants of the Lower Rhine and the Weser. The present circle of Westphalia, the landgraviate of Hesse, and the duchies of Brunswick and Luneburg, were the ancient seat of the Chauci, who, in their inaccessible morasses, defied the Roman arms; of the Cherusci, proud of the fame of Arminius; of the Catti, formidable by their firm and intrepid infantry; and of several other tribes of inferior power and renown.** from the medals, Tillemont (tom. iii, p. 710) very justly infers, that Gallienus was associated to the empire about the month of August of the year 253. * Various systems have been formed to explain a difficult passage in Gregory of Tours, 1. 2, c. 9. The geographer of Ravenna (1, 11) by mentioning Mauringania, on the confines of Denmark, as the ancient seat of the Franks, gave birth to an ingenious system of Leibnitz. See Cluver. Germania Antiqua, 1. 3, c. 20. M. Freret, in the Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions, tom. xviii. § Most probably under the reign of Gordian, from an accidental circumstance, fully canvassed by Tillemont, tom. iii, p. 710, 1181.

Plin. Hist. Natur. 16, 1. The panegyrists frequently allude to the morasses of the Franks. ** Tacit. Germania, c. 30, 37. [The cofederation of the Franks appears to have been formed, 1, of the Chauci; 2, of the Sicambri, who possessed the present Duchy of Berg; 3, of VOL. I.

Y

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THE FRANKS.

[CH. X. The love of liberty was the ruling passion of these Ger mans; the enjoyment of it their best treasure; the word that expressed that enjoyment, the most pleasing to their ear. They deserved, they assumed, they maintained, the honourable epithet of Franks or freemen; which concealed, though it did not extinguish, the peculiar names of the several states of the confederacy.* Tacit consent and mutual advantage dictated the first laws of the union; it was gradually cemented by habit and experience. The league of the Franks may admit of some comparison with the Helvetic body; in which every canton, retaining its independent sovereignty, consults with its brethren in the common cause, without acknowledging the authority of any supreme head, or representative assembly. But the principle of the two confederacies was extremely different. A peace of two hundred years has rewarded the wise and honest policy of the Swiss. An inconstant spirit, the thirst of rapine, and a disregard to the most solemn treaties, disgraced the character of the Franks.

The Romans had long experienced the daring valour of

1

the Attuarii, to the north of the Sicambri, in the principality of Waldeck, between the rivers Diemel and Eder; 4, of the Bructeri, on the banks of the Lippe and in the Hartz Mountains; 5, of the Chamavii (Gambrivii of Tacitus), who came into the country of the Bructeri at the time when the confederation took place; and 6, of the Catti, who dwelt in Hesse.-GUIZOT.] [The league of the Franken comprised, and consisted only of, all the independent tribes that lined the Rhenish frontier of the Roman empire. This position and the name of "the Free," which they assumed, indicate that their object was mutual assistance, defensive and offensive, against their powerful neighbour. The policy of the Romans had been to divide and subdue; experience taught their uncivilized antagonists to unite and conquer, who thus established the most successful and enduring league that can be found in history, for it may be said still to exist in the French descendants of its originators. Not only the Gothic tribes joined it, the Sicambri, who are of Celtic race, swelled its ranks; and the same was probably the descent of the Catti, or Khassi, from whom, by the frequent softening of the guttural into the aspirate, the Hassii, or Hessians, are so designated. Some of those names were locally retained; but the wide adoption of the common appellation is shewn by the frequent recurrence of such as Frankenberg, Frankenstein, Frankfort, Frankenthal, &c., throughout their former territories, and that of the circle of Franconia (Franken), the central point of combination.--ED.]

* In a subsequent period, most of those old names are occasionally mentioned See some vestiges of them in Cluver. Germ. Antiq. 1. 3. Simler de Republica Helve, cum notis Fuselin.

the people of lower Germany. The union of their strength threatened Gaul with a more formidable invasion, and required the presence of Gallienus, the heir and colleague of imperial power. Whilst that prince, and his infant son Salonius, displayed in the court of Treves, the majesty of the empire, its armies were ably conducted by their general Posthumus, who, though he afterwards betrayed the family of Valerian, was ever faithful to the great interest of the monarchy. The treacherous language of panegyrics and medals darkly announces a long series of victories. Trophies and titles attest (if such evidence can attest) the fame of Posthumus, who is repeatedly styled the conqueror of the Germans, and the saviour of Gaul.†

nor

But a single fact, the only one indeed of which we have any distinct knowledge, erases, in a great measure, these monuments of vanity and adulation. The Rhine, though dignified with the title of safeguard of the provinces, was an imperfect barrier against the daring spirit of enterprise with which the Franks were actuated. Their rapid devastations stretched from that river to the foot of the Pyrenees; were they stopped by those mountains. Spain, which had never dreaded, was unable to resist, the inroads of the Germans. During twelve years, the greatest part of the reign of Gallienus, that opulent country was the theatre of unequal and destructive hostilities.. Tarragona, the flourishing capital of a peaceful province, was sacked and almost destroyed; and so late as the days of Orosius, who wrote in the fifth century, wretched cottages scattered amidst the ruins of magnificent cities, still recorded the rage of the barbarians.§ When the exhausted country no longer supplied a variety of plunder, the Franks seized on some vessels * Zosimus, 1. 1. p. 27. M. de Brequigny (in the Mémoires de l'Académie, tom. xxx) has given us a very curious life of Posthumus. A series of the Augustan History, from medals and inscriptions, has been more than once planned, and is still much wanted. [This want has been supplied by M. Eckhel, Curator of the Cabinet of Medals and Professor of Antiquities at Vienna. He published in 8 vols. 4to, his Doctrina Nummorum Veterum; Vindobonæ, 1797.-GUIZOT.] Aurel. Victor. c. 33. Instead of pæne direpto, both the sense and the expression require deleto, though, indeed for different reasons, it is alike difficult to correct the text of the best and of the worst writers. § In the time of Ausonius (the end of the fourth century), Ilerda, or Lerida, was in a very ruinous state (Auson. Epist. 25, 58), which pro bably was the consequence of this invasion..

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*

in the ports of Spain, and transported themselves into Mauritania. The distant province was astonished with the fury of these barbarians, who seemed to fall from a new world, as their name, manners, and complexion, were equally unknown on the coast of Africa.†

II. In that part of Upper Saxony beyond the Elbe, which is at present called the marquisate of Lusace, there existed, in ancient times, a sacred wood, the awful seat of the superstition of the Suevi. None were permitted to enter the holy precincts, without confessing, by their servile bonds and suppliant posture, the immediate presence of the sovereign Deity. Patriotism contributed as well as devotion to consecrate the Sonnenwald, or wood of the Semnones.§ It was universally believed that the nation had received its first existence on that sacred spot. At stated periods, the numerous tribes who gloried in the Suevic blood, resorted thither by their ambassadors, and the memory of their common extraction was perpetuated by barbaric rites and human sacrifices. The wide-extended name of Suevi filled the interior countries of Germany, from the banks of the Oder to those of the Danube. They were distinguished from the other Germans by their peculiar mode of dressing their long hair, which they gathered into a rude knot on the crown of the head; and they delighted in an ornament that showed their ranks more lofty and terrible in the eyes of the enemy. Jealous as the Germans were of military renown, they all confessed the superior valour of the Suevi; and the tribes of the Usipetes and Tencteri, who with a vast army, encountered the dictator Cæsar, declared that they esteemed it not a disgrace to have fled before a people, to whose arms the immortal gods themselves were unequal.**

In the reign of the emperor Caracalla, an innumerable swarm of Suevi appeared on the banks of the Mein, and in the neighbourhood of the Roman provinces, in quest either of food, of plunder, or of glory.++ The hasty army of volunteers gradually coalesced into a great and permanent nation;

* Valesius is therefore mistaken in supposing that the Franks hai invaded Spain by sea. + Aurel. Victor. Eutrop. 9, 6. Tacit. Germania, 38. § Cluver. Germ. Antiq. 3, 25. Sic Suevi a ceteris Germanis, sic Suevorum ingenui a servis sepzrantur. A proud separation! **Cæsar in Bello Gallico, 4, 7. ++ Victor in Caracal. Dion Cassius, 67, p. 1350.