A.D 330-334.3

THE CORONARY GOLD.

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of the coronary gold still retained the name and semblance of popular consent. It was an ancient custom that the allies of the republic, who ascribed their safety or deliverance to the success of the Roman arms, and even the cities of Italy, who admired the virtues of their victorious general, adorned the pomp of his triumph by their voluntary gifts of crowns of gold, which, after the ceremony, were consecrated in the temple of Jupiter, to remain a lasting monument of his glory to future ages. The progress of zeal and flattery soon multiplied the number, and increased the size, of these popular donations; and the triumph of Cæsar was enriched with two thousand eight hundred and twenty-two massy crowns, whose weight amounted to twenty thousand four hundred and fourteen pounds of gold. This treasure was immediately melted down by the prudent dictator, who was satisfied that it would be more serviceable to his soldiers than to the gods; his example was imitated by his succesand the custom was introduced of exchanging these splendid ornaments for the more acceptable present of the current gold coin of the empire. The spontaneous offering was at length exacted as the debt of duty; and instead of being confined to the occasion of a triumph, it was supposed to be granted by the several cities and provinces of the monarchy as often as the emperor condescended to announce his accession, his consulship, the birth of a son, the creation of a Cæsar, a victory over the barbarians, or any other real or imaginary event which graced the annals of his reign. The peculiar free gift of the senate of Rome was fixed by custom at sixteen hundred pounds of gold, or about 64,000%. sterling. The oppressed subjects celebrated their own felicity, that their sovereign should graciously consent to accept this feeble but voluntary testimony of their loyalty and gratitude.‡

sors;

* This custom was derived by the Romans from Greece. The oration of Demosthenes is universally known, the subject of which is the golden crown decreed to him by his fellow-citizens, and opposed by Eschines.-GUIZOT. + See Lipsius de Magnitud. Romana, 1. 2, c. 9. The Tarragonese Spain presented the emperor Claudius with a crown of gold of seven, and Gaul with another of nine, hundred pounds weight. I have followed the rational emendation of Lipsius.

Cod. Theod. 1. 12, tit. 13. The senators were supposed to be exempt from the Aurum Coronarium; but the Auri Oblatio, which was required at their hands, was precisely of the same nature.

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GENERAL STATE OF THE EMPIRE. [OH. XVIIL

A people elated by pride, or soured by discontent, are seldom qualified to form a just estimate of their actual situation. The subjects of Constantine were incapable of discerning the decline of genius and manly virtue, which so far degraded them below the dignity of their ancestors; but they could feel and lament the rage of tyranny, the relaxation of discipline, and the increase of taxes. The impartial historian, who acknowledges the justice of their complaints, will observe some favourable circumstances which tended to alleviate the misery of their condition. The threatening tempest of barbarians, which so soon subverted the foundations of Roman greatness, was still repelled, or suspended, on the frontiers. The arts of luxury and literature were cultivated, and the elegant pleasures of society were enjoyed, by the inhabitants of a considerable portion of the globe The forms, the pomp, and the expense of the civil administration, contributed to restrain the irregular licence of the soldiers; and although the laws were violated by power, or perverted by subtlety, the sage principles of the Roman jurisprudence preserved a sense of order and equity unknown to the despotic governments of the east. The rights of mankind might derive some protection from religion and philosophy; and the name of freedom, which could no longer alarm, might sometimes admonish, the successors of Augus tus, that they did not reign over a nation of slaves or barbarians.*

CHAPTER XVIII.-CHARACTER OF CONSTANTINE-GOTHIC WARDEATH OF CONSTANTINE. - DIVISION OF THE EMPIRE AMONG HIS THREE SONS. PERSIAN WAR.-TRAGIC DEATHS OF CONSTANTINE THE YOUNGER AND CONSTANS.-USURPATION OF MAGNENTIUS CIVIL WAR -VICTORY OF CONSTANTIUS.

THE character of the prince who removed the seat of empire, and introduced such important changes into the civil and religious constitution of his country, has fixed the attention, and divided the opinions, of mankind. By the grateful zeal of the Christians, the deliverer of the church has been decorated with every attribute of a hero, and even

The great Theodosius, in his judicious advice to his son, (Claudiau in 4 consulat Honorii, 214, &c.), distinguishes the station of a

▲ D. 323-337.] CHARACTER OF CONSTANTINE.

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of a saint; while the discontent of the vanquished party has compared Constantine to the most abhorred of those tyrants, who, by their vice and weakness, dishonoured the imperial purple. The same passions have in some degree been perpetuated to succeeding generations, and the character of Constantine is considered, even in the present age, as an object either of satire or of panegyric. By the impartial union of those defects which are confessed by his warmest admirers, and of those virtues which are acknowledged by his most implacable enemies, we might hope to delineate a just portrait of that extraordinary man, which the truth and candour of history should adopt without a blush. But it would soon appear, that the vain attempt to blend such discordant colours, and to reconcile such inconsistent qualities, must produce a figure monstrous rather than human, unless it is viewed in its proper and distinct lights, by a careful separation of the different periods of the reign of Constantine.

The person, as well as the mind of Constantine, had been

Roman prince from that of a Parthian monarch. Virtue was necessary for the one; birth might suffice for the other. * On ne se

trompera point sur Constantin, en croyant tout le mal qu'en dit Eusèbe, et tout le bien qu'en dit Zosime. Fleury, Hist. Ecclésiastique, tom. iii, p. 233. Eusebius and Zosimus form indeed the two extremes of flattery and invective. The intermediate shades are expressed by those writers whose character or situation variously tempered the influence of their religious zeal. [There are many points of resemblance between Constantine and our Henry the Eighth. The policy of self-advantage was equally the guide of both neither the one nor the ather had the faintest idea of principle. They both plundered the rich establishments, which they overthrew; they both resisted error and assisted truth, only as far as the one prejudiced and the other served their own interests. But by similar proceedings they awakened two different spirits; one led to twelve centuries of gloom; the other kindled a light which has been growing brighter for three hundred and fifty years, and whose future glories can be circumscribed by no imaginable limits. The following sketch of Constantine by Niebuhr is appropriate. “Gibbon judged of him with great fairness; otherwise he has scarcely met with any but fanatical admirers or detractors; and the manner in which he was idolized by the eastern church is so bad, that it might easily drive us into the opposite extreme. His motives in establishing the Christian religion appear

to have been very strange. Whatever religion was in his head,

must have been a confused mixture. On his coins he has the "Sol invictus." he worships Pagan deities, consults the haruspices, bolds heathen superstitions, and yet he shuts up the temples and

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CHARACTER OF CONSTANTINE. [CH. XVIIL

enriched by nature with her choicest endowments. His stature was lofty, his countenance majestic, his deportment graceful; his strength and activity were displayed in every manly exercise, and from his earliest youth, to a very advanced season of life, he preserved the vigour of his constitution by a strict adherence to the domestic virtues of chastity and temperance. He delighted in the social intercourse of familiar conversation; and though he might sometimes indulge his disposition to raillery with less reserve than was required by the severe dignity of his station, the courtesy and liberality of his manners gained the hearts of all who approached him. The sincerity of his friendship has been suspected; yet he showed, on some occasions, that he was not incapable of a warm and lasting attachment. The disadvantage of an illiterate education had not prevented him from forming a just estimate of the value of learning; and the arts and sciences derived some encouragement from the munificent protection of Constantine. In the dispatch of business, his diligence was indefatigable; and the active powers of his mind were almost continually exercised in reading, writing, or meditating, in giving audience to ambassadors, and in examining the complaints of his subjects. Even those who censured the propriety of his measures were compelled to acknowledge that he possessed magnanimity to conceive, and patience to execute, the most arduous designs, without being checked either by the prejudices of education, or by the clamours of the mul titude. In the field, he infused his own intrepid spirit into the troops, whom he conducted with the talents of a consummate general; and to his abilities, rather than to his fortune, we may ascribe the signal victories which he obtained over the foreign and domestic foes of the republic. He loved glory, as the reward, perhaps as the motive, of his labours. The boundless ambition, which, from the moment of his accepting the purple at York, appears as the ruling passion of his soul, may be justified by the dangers of his

builds churches. As president of the Nicene Council, we can only look upon him with disgust; he was himself no Christian, and would never be baptized till he was at the point of death. He had taken up the Christian faith as a superstition, which he mingled with his other superstitions. When therefore eastern writers speak of him as an ioanóorodos, they do not know what they are saying, and

A.D. 323-337.] HIS GOOD AND BAD QUALITIES.

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own situation, by the character of his rivals, by the consciousness of superior merit, and by the prospect that his success would enable him to restore peace and order to the distracted empire. In his civil wars against Maxentius and Licinius, he had engaged on his side the inclinations of the people, who compared the undissembled vices of those tyrants with the spirit of wisdom and justice which seemed to direct the general tenor of the administration of Constantine.*

Had Constantine fallen on the banks of the Tiber, or even in the plains of Hadrianople, such is the character which, with a few exceptions, he might have transmitted to posterity. But the conclusion of his reign (according to the moderate and indeed tender sentence of a writer of the same age,) degraded him from the rank which he had acquired among the most deserving of the Roman princes.t In the life of Augustus, we behold the tyrant of the republic, converted, almost by imperceptible degrees, into the father of his country and of human kind. In that of Constantine we may contemplate a hero, who had so long inspired his subjects with love and his enemies with terror, degenerating into a cruel and dissolute monarch, corrupted by his fortune, or raised by conquest above the necessity of dissimulation. The general peace which he maintained during the last fourteen years of his reign, was a period of apparent splendour rather than of real prosperity; and the old age of Constantine was disgraced by the opposite yet reconcilable vices of rapaciousness and prodigality. The accumulated treasures found in the palaces of Maxentius and Licinius, were lavishly consumed; the various innovations introduced by the conqueror were attended with an

to call him a saint is a profanation of the term." (Lectures on Rom. Hist. vol iii, p. 303).—ED.] The virtues of Constantine are collected for the most part from Eutropius, and the younger Victor, two sincere Pagans, who wrote after the extinction of his family. Even Zosimus, and the Emperor Julian, acknowledge his personal courage and military achievements. +See Eutropius, 10. 6. In primo Imperii tempore optimis principibus, ultimo mediis comparandus. From the ancient Greek version of Paanius, (edit. Havercamp, p. 697,) I am inclined to suspect that Eutropius had originally written vir mediis; and that the offensive monosyllable was dropped by the wilful inadvertency of transcribers. Aurelius Victor expresses the general opinion by a vulgar and indeed obscure proverb, Trachala