Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 1.djvu/398

 374 THE DECLINE AND FALL CHAP, army, than to the government of an empire*^. Con- scious of the character in which nature and experience had enabled liim to excel, he again took the field a A.D.274. few months after his triumph. It was expedient to exercise the restless temper of the legions in some foreign war; and the Persian monarch, exulting in the shame of Valerian, still braved with impunity the of- fended majesty of Rome. At the head of an army, less formidable by its numbers than by its discipline and valour, the emperor advanced as far as the straits which divide Europe from Asia. He there expe- rienced, that the most absolute power is a weak de- fence against the effects of despair. He had threatened one of his secretaries who was accused of extortion; and it was known that he seldom threatened in vain. The last hope which remained for the criminal was to involve some of the principal officers of the army in his danger, or at least in his fears. Artfully counter- feiting his master's hand, he showed them, in a long and bloody list, their own names devoted to death. Without suspecting or examining the fraud, they re- solved to secure their lives by the murder of the em- peror. On his march, between Byzantium and Hera- clea, Aurelian was suddenly attacked by the conspirators, whose stations gave them a right to surround his per- son; and after a short resistance fell by the hand of Mucapor, a general whom he had always loved and A. D. 275. trusted. He died regretted by the army, detested by anuary. ^j^^ senate, but universally acknowledged as a warlike and fortunate prince, the useful though severe reformer of a degenerate state *^. •= It was the observation of Diocletian. See Vopiscus in Hist. August, p. 224. ^ ^ Vopiscus in Hist. August, p. 221 j Zosimus, 1. i. p. 57 ; Eutrop. ix. 15 ; the two Victors.