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 360 THE DECLINE AND FALL CHAP, relented, and endeavoured to recall the bloody man- XIX. . _^_1J__ date ; but that the second messenger intrusted with the reprieve was detained by the eunuchs, who dreaded the unforgiving temper of Gallus, and were desirous of reuniting to their empire the wealthy provinces of the east ''. The danger Besides the reigning emperor, Julian alone survived of JuHau. of all the numerous posterity of Constantius Chlorus. The misfortune of his royal birth involved him in the disgrace of Gallus. From his retirement in the happy country of Ionia, he was conveyed under a strong guard to the court of Milan; where he languished above seven months, in the continual apprehension of suffering the same ignominious death which was daily inflicted, al- most before his eyes, on the friends and adherents of his persecuted family. His looks, his gestures, his silence, were scrutinized with malignant curiosity, and he was perpetually assaulted by enemies whom he had never offended, and by arts to which he was a stran- ger ^ But in the school of adversity, Julian insensibly acquired the virtues of firmness and discretion. He defended his honour, as well as his life, against the en- snaring subtilties of the eunuchs, who endeavoured to extort some declaration of his sentiments : and whilst he cautiously suppressed his grief and resentment, he nobly disdained to flatter the tyrant, by any seeming approbation of his brother's murder. Julian most de- voutly ascribes his miraculous deliverance to the pro- tection of the gods, who had exempted his innocence from the sentence of destruction pronounced by their justice against the impious house of Constantine'*. As '' Philostoigius, 1. iv. c. 1 ; Zonaras, 1. xiii. torn. ii.p. 19. But the former was partial towards an Arian monarch ; and the latter transcribed, without choice or criticism, whatever he found in the writings of the ancients. « See Ammianus Marcellin. 1. xv. c. 1. 3. 8. Julian himself, in his epistle to the Athenians, draws a very lively and just picture of his own danger, and of his sentiments. He shows, however, a tendency to exagge- rate his sufferings, by insinuating, though in obscure terms, that they lasted above a year; a period which cannot be reconciled with the truth of chro- nology. ■J .lulian has worked the crimes and misfortunes of the family of Con- slantine into an allegorical fable, whicii is happily conceived and agreeably