Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 1.djvu/306

 CHAPTER X. THE EMPERORS DECIUS, GALLUS, /EMILIANUS, VALERIAN, AND GALLIENUS. THE GENERAL IRRUPTION OF THE BARBARIANS. THE THIRTY TYRANTS. The nature FROM the great secular games celebrated by Philip, wf ^ ^"^' *o the death of the emperor Gallienus, there elapsed A.D. twenty years of shame and misfortune. During that ~ ' calamitous period, every instant of time was marked, every province of the Roman world was afflicted, by barbarous invaders and military tyrants ; and the ruined empire seemed to approach the last and fatal moment of its dissolution. The confusion of the times, and the scarcity of authentic memorials, oppose equal difficul- ties to the historian, who attempts to preserve a clear and unbroken thread of narration. Surrounded with imperfect fragments, always concise, often obscure, and sometimes contradictory, he is reduced to collect, to compare, and to conjecture ; and though he ought never to place his conjectures in the rank of facts, yet the knowledge of human nature, and of the sure opera- tion of its fierce and unrestrained passions, might, on some occasions, supply the want of historical materials. The empe- There is not, for instance, any difficulty in conceiv- ror Philip, -j^g^ ^^^^ ^YiQ successive murders of so many emperors had loosened all the ties of allegiance between the prince and people ; that all the generals of Philip were disposed to imitate the example of their master ; and that the caprice of armies, long shice habituated to frequent and violent revolutions, might every day raise to the throne the most obscure of their fellow soldiers. History can only add, that the rebellion against the emperor Phihp broke out in the summer of the year 249, among the legions of Maesia ; and that a subaltern officer*, named Marinus, was the object of their sedi- commanded a century, a cohort, or a legion.
 * The expression used by Zosimus and Zonaras may signify that Marinus