Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 2.djvu/373

 OF THE ROMAN EiMPIRE. 355 and torture, and a general consternation was diffused CHAP, through the capital of Syria. The prince of the east, as if he had been conscious how much he had to fear, and how little he deserved to reign, selected for the objects of his resentment, the provincials accused of some imaginary treason, and his own courtiers, whom with more reason he suspected of incensing, by their secret correspondence, the timid and suspicious mind of Constantius. But he forgot that he was depriving himself of liis only supjiort, the affection of the people; whilst he furnished the malice of his enemies with the arms of truth, and afforded the emperor the fairest pretence of exacting the forfeit of his purple and of hishfe^ As long as the civil war suspended the fate of the iMassacre of Roman world, Constantius dissembled his knowledge ministers"''^ of the weak and cruel administration to which his choice A. D. 354. had subjected the east; and the discovery of some assassins, secretly despatched to Antioch by the tyrant of Gaul, was employed to convince the public, that the emperor and the Caesar were united by the same inter- est, and pursued by the same enemies *. But when the victory was decided in favour of Constantius, his dependent colleague became less useful and less for- midable. Every circumstance of his conduct was severely and suspiciously examined ; and it was privately resolved, either to deprive GaUus of the purple, or at least to remove him from the indolent luxury of Asia to the hardships and dangers of a German war. The death of Theophilus, consular of the province of Syria, who in a time of scarcity had been massacred by the people of Antioch, with the connivance, and almost at the instigation, of Gallus, was justly resented, not only Gallus. His brother Julian (p. 272.) insinuates, that a secret conspiracy had been formed against him ; and Zosimus names (I. ii. p. 135.) the per- sons engaged in it ; a minister of considerable rank, and two obscure agents, who were resolved to make their fortune. ' Zonaras, 1. xiii. tom. ii. p. 17, 18. The assassins had seduced a great number of legionaries ; but their designs were discovered and revealed by an old woman in whose cottage ihey lodged. A a 2
 * See in Ammianus (1. xiv. c. i. 7.) a very ample detail of the cruelties of