Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 2.djvu/383

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. S65 authority, which his superior age ami station permitted CHAP. V I V him to assume; and exhorting the new Caesar to de- serve, by heroic deeds, that sacred and immortal name, the emperor gave his colleague the strongest assurances of a friendship which should never be impaired by time, nor interrupted by their separation into the most dis- tant climates. As soon as the speech was ended, the troops, as a token of applause, clashed their shields against their knees " ; while the officers who surrounded the tribunal expressed, with decent reserve, their sense of the merits of the representative of Constantius. The two princes returned to the palace in the same and de- chariot ; and during the slow pi'ocession, Julian re- ^'^"^^a ^' peated to himself a verse of his favourite Homer, which 355,Nov.6. he might equally apply to his fortune and to his fears". The four and twenty days which the Caesar spent at Milan after his investiture, and the first months of his Gallic reign, were devoted to a splendid but severe captivity ; nor could the acquisition of honour com- pensate for the loss of freedom ' His steps were watched, his correspondence was intercepted ; and he was obliged, by prudence, to decline the visits of his most intimate friends. Of his former domestics, four only were permitted to attend him ; two pages, his physician, and his librarian ; the last of whom was em- ployed in the care of a valuable collection of books, the gift of the empress, who studied the inclinations as well as the interest of her friend. In the room of these " Militares omnes horrendo fragore scuta genibus illidentes; quod est prosperitatis indicium plenum ; nam contra cum hastis clypei feriuntur, has documentum est et doloris. . . . Amraianus adds, with a nice distinction, Eumque ut poiiori reverentia servaretur, nee supra modum laudabant nee infra quam decebat. ° "EXkaj3t TTop^i/ptoc OdvaroQ, Kai fioipa Koaraii). 'I'he word purple, which Homer had used as a vague but common epithet for death, was applied by Julian to express, very aptly, the nature and object of his own appre- hensions. P He represents, in the most pathetic terms, (p. 277.) the distress of his new situation. The provision for his table was however so elegant and sumptuous, that the young philosopher rejected it with disdain. Quum legeret libellum assidue, quern Constantius ut privignum ad studia mittens manu sua conscripserat, prjelicenter disponens quid in convivio Csesaris impendi deberet, phasiaoum, et vulvam et sumen exigi vetuit et inferri. Ammian. Marcellin, 1. xvi. c. 5.