Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 2.djvu/322

 304 THE DECLINE AND FALL CHAP. XVIII. Virtues of Crispus. rank, and the most affluent fortune, that could be con- . sistent with a private station. The youngest of the three Uved without a name, and died without posterity. His two elder brothers obtained in marriage the daugh- ters of wealthy senators, and propagated new branches of the imperial race. Gallus and Julian afterwards be- came the most illustrious of the children of Julius Con- stantius, the ' patrician.' The two sons of Dalmatius, who had been decorated with the vain title of ' censor,' were named Dalmatius and Hannibalianus. The two sisters of the great Constantine, Anastasia and Eutro- pia, were bestowed on Optatus and Nepotianus, two senators of noble birth and of consular dignity. His third sister, Constantia, was distinguished by her pre- eminence of greatness and of misery. She remained the widow of the vanquished Licinius ; and it was by her entreaties, that an innocent boy, the offspring of their marriage, preserved for some time his life, the title of Caesar, and a precarious hope of the succession. Besides the females, and the allies of the Flavian house, ten or twelve males, to whom the language of modern courts would apply the title of princes of the blood, seemed, according to the order of their birth, to be destined either to inherit or to support the throne of Constantine. But in less than thirty years, this numer- ous and increasing family was reduced to the persons of Constantius and Julian, who alone had survived a series of crimes and calamities, such as the tragic poets have deplored in the devoted lines of Pelops and of Cadmus. Crispus, the eldest son of Constantine, and the pre- sumptive heir of the empire, is represented by impartial historians as an amiable and accomplished youth. The care of his education, or at least of his studies, was in- trusted to Lactantius, the most eloquent of the chris- tians ; a preceptor admirably qualified to form the taste, the name of Constantine ; a name somewhat unlikely, as it was already oc- cupied by the elder brother. That of Hannibalianus is mentioned in the Paschal Chronicle, and is approved by Tillemont, Hist, des Empereurs, torn. iv. p. 527.