Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 2.djvu/372

 354 THE DECLINE AND FALL CHAP, cast a veil over the frailties of his brother, are obliifed XIX,. . '__ to confess that the Caesar was incapable of reigning. Transported from a prison to a throne, he possessed neither genius, nor application, nor docility to compen- sate for the want of knowledge and experience. A temper naturally morose and violent, instead of being corrected, was soured by solitude and adversity; the remembrance of what he had endured, disposed him to retaliation rather than to sympathy ; and the ungo- verned sallies of his rage were often fatal to those who approached his person, or were subject to his power p. Constantina, his wife, is described not as a woman, but as one of the infernal furies tormented with an insatiate thirst of human blood '^. Instead of employing her in- fluence to insinuate the mild counsels of prudence and humanity, she exasperated the fierce passions of her husband ; and as she retained the vanity, though she had renounced the gentleness of her sex, a pearl neck- lace was esteemed an equivalent price for the murder of an innocent and virtuous nobleman ^ The cruelty of Gallus was sometimes displayed in the undissembled violence of popular or military executions; and was sometimes disguised by the abuse of law, and the forms of judicial proceedings. The private houses of An- tioch, and the places of public resort, were besieged by spies and informers ; and the Caesar himself, con- cealed in a plebeian habit, very frequently condescended to assume that odious character. Every apartment of the palace was adorned with the instruments of death P See Julian ad S. P. Q. A. p. 271 ; Jerom. in Chron. ; Aurelius Victor, Eutropius, X. 14. I shall copy the words of Eutropius, who wrote his abridgement about fifteen years after the death of Gallus, when there was no longer any motive either to flatter or to depreciate his character. " Mul- tis incivilibus gestis Gallus Caesar . . . vir natura ferox, et ad tyrannidem pronior, si suo jure imperare licuisset." 1 Mega;ra quidem mortalis, inflammatrix ssevientis assidua, huniani cru- oris avida, etc. Ammiau. INIarcellin. 1. xiv. c. 1. The sincerity of Am- mianus would not suffer him to misrepresent facts or characters, but his love of ambUious ornaments frequently betrayed him into an unnatural ve- hemence of expression. f His name was Clematius of Alexandria ; and his only crime was a re- fusal to gratify the desires of his mother-in-law; who solicited his death, because she had been disappointed of his love. Ammian. 1. xiv. c. 1.