Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 2.djvu/412

 394 THE DECLINE AND FALL CHAP. XIX. Makes three expe- ditions be- yond the Rhine. A.D. 357, 358, 359. Julian, who ingeniously contrived both the plot and . the catastrophe of the tragedy. When the Chamavians sued for peace, he required the son of their king, as the only hostage on whom he could rely. A mournful silence, interrupted by tears and groans, declared the sad perplexity of the barbarians ; and their aged chief lamented in pathetic language, that his private loss was now imbittered by a sense of the public calamity. While the Chamavians lay prostrate at the foot of his throne, the royal captive, whom they believed to have been slain, unexpectedly appeared before their eyes ; and as soon as the tumult of joy was hushed into atten- tion, the Caesar addressed the assembly in the following terms: *' Behold the son, the prince, whom you wept. You had lost him by your fault. God and the Romans have restored him to you. I shall still preserve and educate the youth, rather as a monument of my own virtue, than as a pledge of your sincerity. Should you presume to violate the faith which you have sworn, the arms of the republic will avenge the pei'fidy, not on the innocent, but on the guilty." The barbarians with- drew from his presence, impressed with the warmest sentiments of gratitude and admiration °. It was not enough for Julian to have delivered the pro- vinces of Gaul from the barbarians of Germany. He aspired to emulate the glory of the first and most illus- trious of the emperors ; after whose example he com- posed his own commentaries of the Gallic war p. Caesar has related, with conscious pride, the manner in which he tivice passed the Rhine. Julian could boast, that be- fore he assumed the title of Augustus, he had carried the Roman eagles beyond that great river in three " Tiiis interesting story, which Zosimus has abridged, is related by Euna- pius (in Excerpt. Legationum, p. 15, 16, 17.) with all the amplifications of Grecian rhetoric: but the silence of Libanius, of Ammianus, and of Julian himself, renders the truth of it extremely suspicious. 1' Libanius, the friend of Julian, clearly insinuates, (Orat. iv. p. 178.) that his hero had composed the history of his Gallic campaigns. But Zosimus (1. iii. p. 140.) seems to have derived his information only from the orations (yioi) and the epistles of Julian. The discourse which is addressed to the Athenians contains an ancurate, though general, account of the war against the Germans.