Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 2.djvu/290

 272 THE DECLINE AND FALL Reduction of the le- gions. CHAP, and though succeeding princes laboured to restore the XVII , '__ strength and numbers of the frontier garrisons, the em- pire, till the last moment of its dissolution, continued to languish under the mortal wound which had been so rashly or so weakly inflicted by the hand of Constantine. The same timid policy, of dividing whatever is united, of reducing whatever is eminent, of dreading every ac- tive power, and of expecting that the most feeble will prove the most obedient, seems to pervade the institu- tions of several princes, and particularly those of Con- stantine. The martial pride of the legions, whose vic- torious camps had so often been the scene of rebellion, was nourished by the memory of their past exploits, and the consciousness of their actual strength. As long as they maintained their ancient establishment of six thousand men, they subsisted, under the reign of Diocletian, each of them singly, a visible and important object in the military history of the Roman empire. A few years afterwards, these gigantic bodies were shrunk to a very diminutive size ; and when seven le- gions, with some auxiliaries, defended the city of Amida against the Persians, the total garrison, with the inha- bitants of both sexes, and the peasants of the deserted country, did not exceed the number of twenty thousand persons^. From this fact, and from similar examples, there is reason to believe, that the constitution of the legionary troops, to which they partly owed their valour and discipline, was dissolved by Constantine ; and that the bands of Roman infantry, which still assumed the same names and the same honours, consisted only of one thousand or fifteen hundred men"". The con- spiracy of so many separate detachments, each of which was awed by the sense of its own weakness could easily be checked ; and the successors of Con- stantine might indulge their love of ostentation, by is- <) Ammian. 1. xix. c. 2. He observes, (c. 5.) that the desperate sallies of two Gallic legions were like an handful of water thrown on a great con- flagration. ■■ Pancirolus ad Notitiam, p. 96. Memoires de 1 'Academic des Inscrip- tions, torn. XXV. p. 491.