Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 2.djvu/343

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 325 The massacre of the Flavian race was succeeded by C H A P. a new division of the provinces ; which was ratified in ' a personal interview of the three brothers. Constan- Division of tine, the eldest of the Caesars, obtained, with a certain a^^^w?^ preeminence of rank, the possession of the new capital Sept. ii. which bore his own name and that of his father. Thrace, and the countries of the east, were allotted for the patrimony of Constantius ; and Constans was acknowledged as the lawful sovereign of Italy, Africa, and the western Illyricum. The armies submitted to their hereditary right ; and they condescended, after some delay, to accept from the Roman senate the title of ' Augustus.' When they first assumed the reins of government, the eldest of these princes was twenty-one, the second twenty, and the third only se- venteen years of age *. While the martial nations of Europe followed the Sapor king standards of his brothers, Constantius, at the head of. d.'^sTo. the effeminate troops of Asia, was left to sustain the weight of the Persian war. At the decease of Con- stantine, the throne of the east was filled by Sapor, son of Hormouz, or Hormisdas, and grandson of Narses, who, after the victory of Galerius, had humbly confessed the superiority of the Roman power. Although Sapor was in the thirtieth year of his long reign, he was still in the vigour of his youth, as the date of his accession, by a very strange fatality, had preceded that of his birth. The wife of Hormouz remained pregnant at the time of her husband's death; and the uncertainty of the sex, as well as of the event, excited the ambitious hopes of the princes of the house of Sassan. The ap- prehensions of civil war were at length removed, by the positive assurance of the magi, that the widow of Hormouz had conceived, and would safely produce, a Victors, use very qualifying expressions: " sinente potius quam jubente;" " incertum quo suasore ;" " vi militum." ? Euseb. in it. Constantin. 1. iv. c. 69; Zosimus, I. ii. p. 117; Idat. in Chron. See two notes of Tillemont, Hist, des Empereurs, torn. iv. p. 1086 — 1091. The reign of the eldest brother at Constantinople is noticed only in the Alexandrian Chronicle.