Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 2.djvu/288

 270 THE DECLINE AND FALL CHAP, sometimes the discord, which reigned between two ners, was productive of beneficial and of pernicious consequences. It was seldom to be expected that the general and the civil governor of a province should either conspire for the disturbance, or should unite for the service, of their country. While the one delayed to offer the assistance which the other disdained to solicit, the troops very frequently remained without orders or without supplies ; the public safety was be- trayed, and the defenceless subjects were left exposed to the fury of the barbarians. The divided administra- tion which had been formed by Constantine, relaxed the vigour of the state, while it secured the tranquillity of the monarch. Distinction The memory of Constantine has been deservedly cen- roops. gm.gj ^Qj. another innovation, which corrupted military discipline, and prepared the ruin of the empire. The nineteen years which preceded his final victory over Licinius, had been a period of licence and intestine war. The rivals who contended for the possession of the Roman world, had withdrawn the greatest part of their forces from the guard of the general frontier; and the principal cities which fonned the boundary of their respective dominions were filled with soldiers, who considered their countrymen as their most implacable enemies. After the use of these internal garrisons had ceased with the civil war, the conqueror wanted either wisdom or firmness to I'evive the severe discipline of Diocletian, and to suppress a fatal indulgence, which habit had endeared and almost confirmed to the military order. From the reign of Constantine, a popular and even legal distinction was admitted between the ' pala- tines' ° and the ' borderers ;' the troops of the court, as they were improperly styled, and the troops of the " Zosimus, 1. ii. p. 111. The distinction between the two classes of Ro- man troops is very darkly expressed in the historians, the laws, and the No- titia. Consult, however, the copious paratitlon or abstract which Godefroy has drawn up of the seventh book, de Re MUitari, of the Theodosian Code, 1. vii. tit. i. leg. 18. L. viii. tit. i. leg. 10.
 * _ professions of opposite interests and incompatible man-