Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 2.djvu/415

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 397 sistence, as well as for the safety, of the inhabitants CHAP. • XIX and of the garrisons. The desertion of the former, and ' the mutiny of the hitter, must have been the fatal and inevitable consequences of famine. The tillage of the provinces of Gaul had been interrupted by the cala- mities of war ; but the scanty harvests of the continent were supplied, by his paternal care, from the plenty of the adjacent island. Six hundred large barks, framed in the forest of the Ardennes, made several voyages to the coast of Britain ; and returning from thence laden with corn, sailed up the Rhine, and distributed their cargoes to the several towns and forti*esses along the banks of the river The arms of Julian had re- stored a free and secure navigation, which Constantius had offered to purchase at the expense of his dignity, and of a tributary present of two thousand pounds of silver. The emperor parsimoniously refused to his soldiers the sums which he granted with a lavish and trembling hand to the bai-barians. The dexterity, as well as the firmness of Julian, was put to a severe trial, when he took the field with a discontented army, which had already served two campaigns, without receiving any regular pay or any extraordinary donative *. A tender regard for the peace and happiness of his Civil admi- subjects, was the ruling principle which directed, or j^i^j^^^n'"" ° seemed to direct, the administration of Julian ". He devoted the leisure of his winter quarters to the offices of civil government ; and affected to assume, with more pleasure, the character of a magistrate than that of a general. Before he took the field, he devolved on the provincial governors, most of the public and private causes which had been referred to his tribunal; but, ' We may credit Julian himself, (Oral, ad S. P. Q. Athenien. p. 280.) who gives a very particular account of the transaction. Zosinius adds two hundred vessels more, 1. iii. p. 145. If we compute the six hundred corn ships of Julian at only seventy tons each, they were capable of exporting one hundred and twenty thousand quarters; (see Arbuthnot's Weights and Measures, p. 237.) and the country which could bear so large an exporta- tion must already have attained an improved state of agriculture. ' The troops once broke out into a mutiny, immediately before the second passage of the Rhine. Ammian. xvii. 9. " Ammian. xvi. 5. xviii. 1 ; Mamertinus in Panegyr. Vet. xi. 4.