Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 2.djvu/385

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. ^07 liowever detected; and in a great council of the civil CHAP. and military officers, held in the presence of the em- '__ peror himself, the innocence of Sylvanus was pubHcly acknowledged. But the discovery came too late : the report of the calumny, and the hasty seizure of his estate, had already provoked the indignant chief to the rebellion of which he was so unjustly accused. He assumed the purple at his head-quarters of Cologne ; and his active powers appeared to menace Italy with an invasion, and Milan with a siege. In this emer- gency, Ursicinus, a general of equal rank, regained, by an act of treachery, the favour which he had lost by his eminent services in the east. Exasperated, as he might speciously allege, by injuries of a similar nature, he hastened with a few followers to join the standard, and to betray the confidence, of his too credulous friend. After a reign of only twenty-eight days, Syl- vanus was assassinated : the soldiers, who, without any criminal intention, had blindly followed the example of their leader, immediately returned to their allegiance ; and the flatterers of Constantius celebrated the wisdom and felicity of the monarch who had extinguished a civil war without the hazard of a battle "'. The protection of the Rhaetian frontier, and the per- Constantius secution of the catholic cliurch, detained Constantius ^'^'^gg"^^' in Italy above eighteen months after the departure of April 28. Julian. Before the emperor returned into the east, he indulged his pride and curiosity in a visit to the ancient capital ^ He proceeded from Milan to Rome along the iEmilian and Flaminian ways ; and as soon as he approached within forty miles of the city, the march of a prince who had never vanquished a foreign enemy, assumed the appearance of a triumphal pro- cession. His splendid train was composed of all the ' Ammianus (xv. 5.) was perfectly well informed of the conduct and fate of Sylvanus. He himself was one of the few followers who attended Ursicinus in his dangerous enterprise. 1. xvi. c. 10. We have only to add, that Themistius was appointed deputy from Constantinople, and that he composed his fourth oration for ttiis ceremony.
 * For the pai ticulars of tiie visit of Constantius to Rome, see Ammianus,