A.D. 361.] TO CONSTANTIUS. 473 master of the offices, and to his chamberlain Eutherius; two ambassadors whom he appointed to receive the answer, and observe the dispositions of Constantius. This epistle is inscribed with the modest appellation of Cæsar; but Julian solicits, in a peremptory, though respectful 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 in 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 prefect 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. In this negotiation, 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 disaffected to the new government were disarmed and secured; and the vacant offices were distributed, according to the recommendation of merit, by a prince who despised the intrigues of the palace, and the clamours of the soldiers.* The negotiations of peace were accompanied and supported by the most vigorous preparations for war. The army, which Julian held in readiness for immediate action, was recruited and augmented by the disorders of the times. The cruel persecutions of the faction of Magnentius had filled Gaul with numerous bands of outlaws and robbers. They cheerfully accepted the offer of a general pardon from says Ammianus, private letters, objurgatorias et mordaces, which the historian had not seen, and would not have published. Perhaps they Dever existed. * See the first transactions of his reign in Julian ad 474 JULIAN TAKES THE FIELD. [CH. XXII. 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 Constantius.* 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 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 Allemanni, passed through Besançon,t 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 Allemanni S. P. Q. Athen. p. 285, 286. Ammianus, 20, 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 fac tions of the Greek republics, the exiles amounted to twenty thousand persons; and Isocrates assures Philip, that it would be easier to raise an army from the vagabonds than from the cities. See Hame's Essays, tom. i, pp. 426, 427. [According to Niebuhr (Lectures, vol. iii, p. 332) the wars of the peasants in Gaul, who, under the name of Bagaudæ, "took up arms in self-defence against the extortions of the government," as already stated by Gibbon (ch. 13, vol. i, p. 427) continued with little intermission from the reign of Gallienus to the dissolution of the empire. It is most probable, that these insurgents furnished the recruits for Julian's army: they would be ready to support a prince, who had manifested his desire to mitigate the weight of taxation.-ED.] + Julian (Epist. 38, 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. Now Vienne, on the Rhone, below Lyons. It is sometimes mistaken for Vindobonum, the modern Vienna, and capital of Austria.-ED. § Vadomair entered into the Roman service, and was promoted from a barbarian kingdom to A.D. 361.] ANGER OF CONSTANTIUS. 475 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 Allemanni 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 the barbarians were recovered from their 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. The empress Eusebia 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 the military rank of duke of Phoenicia. He still retained the same artful character; (Ammian. 21. 4,) but, under the reign of Valens, he signalized his valour in the Armenian war. (29. 1.) * Ammian. 20, 10. 21, 3, 4. Zosimus, 1. 3, p. 155. + Her remains were sent to Rome, and interred near those of her sister Constantina, in the suburb 476 FRUITLESS NEGOTIATIONS. [сн. XXII 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 fol lowers 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 negotiated at the distance of three thousand miles between Paris and Antioch; and as soon as Julian perceived that his moderate and respectful behaviour served only to irritate the pride of an implacable adversary, he boldly resolved to commit his life and fortune to the chance of a civil war. He gave a public and military audience to the questor Leonas; the haughty epistle of Constantius was read to the attentive multitude; and Julian protested with the most flattering deference, that he was ready to resign the title of Augustus, if he could obtain the consent of those whom he acknowledged as the authors of his elevation. The faint proposal was impetuously silenced; and the acclamations of" Julian Augustus, continue to reign, by the authority of the army, of the people, of the republic, which you have saved," thundered at once from every part of the field, and terrified the pale ambassador of Constantius. A part of the letter was afterwards read, in which the emperor arraigned the ingratitude of Julian, whom he had invested with the honours of the purple; whom he had educated with so much care and tenderness; whom he had preserved in his infancy, when he was left a helpless orphan. "An of the Via Nomentana. Ammian. 21, 1. Libanius has composed a very weak apology 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 prefect of the east, to whose evidence the accuser of Julian appeals, is arraigned by Libanius, as effeminate and ungrateful; yet the A.D. 361.] JULIAN'S DAnger. 477 orphan!" interrupted Julian, who justified his cause by indulging his passions; "Does the assassin of my family reproach me that I was left an orphan? He urges me to revenge those injuries which I have long studied to forget." The assembly was dismissed; and Leonas, who, with some difficulty, had been protected from the popular fury, was sent back to his master, with an epistle, in which Julian expressed, in a strain of the most vehement eloquence, the sentiments of contempt, of hatred, and of resentment, which had been suppressed and imbittered by the dissimulation of twenty years. After this message, which might be considered as a signal of irreconcilable war, Julian, who some weeks before had celebrated the Christian festival of the Epiphany, made a public declaration, that he committed the care of his safety to the IMMORTAL GODS; and thus publicly renounced the religion, as well as the friendship of Constantius.+ The situation of Julian required a vigorous and immediate resolution. He had discovered, from intercepted letters, that his adversary, sacrificing the interest of the state to that of the monarch, had again excited the barbarians to invade the provinces of the west. The position of two magazines, one of them collected on the banks of the lake of Constance, the other formed at the foot of the Cottian Alps, seemed to indicate the march of two armies; and the size of those magazines, each of which consisted of six hun religion of Elpidius is praised by Jerom, (tom. i, p. 243,) and his humanity by Ammianus. (21, 6.) Feriarum die quem celebrantes mense Januario, Christiani Epiphania dictitant, progressus in eorum ecclesiam, solemniter numine orato discessit. Ammian. 21, 2. Zonaras observes that it was on Christmas-day, and his assertion is not inconsistent; since the churches of Egypt, Asia, and perhaps Gaul, celebrated on the same day (the sixth of January) the nativity and baptism of their Saviour. The Romans, as ignorant as their brethren of the real date of his birth, fixed the solemn festival to the 25th of December, the Brumalia, or winter solstice, when the Pagans annually celebrated the birth of the sun. See Bingham's Antiquities of the Christian Church, 1. 20, c. 4, and Beausobre, Hist. Critique du Manichéisme, tom. ii, p. 690-700. The public and secret negotiations between Constantinus and Julian must be extracted, with some caution, from Julian himself; (Orat. ad S. P. Q. Athen. p. 286.) Libanius; (Orat. Parent. c. 51, p. 276.) Ammianus; (20. 9.) Zosimus; (l. 3, p. 154,) and ven Zonaras, (tom. ii, 1. 13, p. 20-22,) who, on this occasion, appears |