Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 2.djvu/319

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. .301 the motive, of his labours. The boundless ambition CHAP. which, from the moment of his accepting the purple at '_ York, appears as the ruling passion of his soul, may be justified by the dangers of his own situation, by the character of his rivals, by the consciousness of superior merit, and by the prospect that his success would en- able him to restore peace and order to the distracted empire. In his civil wars against Maxentius and Lici- nius, he had engaged on his side the inclinations of the people, who compared the undissembled vices of those tyrants with the spirit of wisdom and justice which seemed to direct the general tenor of the administra- tion of Constantine''. Had Constantine fallen on the banks of the Tiber, His vices. or even in the plains of Hadrianople, such is the cha- racter which, with a few exceptions, he might have transmitted to posterity. But the conclusion of his reign (according to the moderate and indeed tender sentence of a writer of the same age) degraded him from the rank which he had acquired among the most deserving of the Roman princes'^. In the life of Au- gustus, we behold the tyrant of the republic converted, almost by imperceptible degrees, into the father of his country and of human kind. In that of Constantine, we may contemplate a hero, who had so long inspired his subjects with love, and his enemies with terror, de- generating into a cruel and dissolute monarch, cor- rupted by his fortune, or raised by conquest above the necessity of dissimulation. The general peace which ^ ^ he maintained during the last fourteen years of his 323—337. ^ The virtues of Constantine are collected for the most part from Eutro- pius and the younger Victor, two sincere pagans, who wrote after the ex- tinction of his family. Even Zosimus, and the emperor Julian, acknowledge his personal courage and military achievements. ' See Eutropius, x. 6. In primo imperii tempore optimis principibus, ultimo mediis comparandus. From the ancient Greek version of Poeanius, (edit. Havercamp. p. 697.) I am inclined to suspect that Eutropius had ori- ginally written ri.i mediis; and that the oftensive monosyllable was dropped by the wilful inadvertency of transcribers. Aurelius Victor expresses the general opinion by a vulgar and indeed obscure proverb. Truchala decem annis prastantissimus ; duodecim sequentibus /nfro; decem novissimis pii- ■ jrillus ob immodicas profusiones.