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 8 THE DECLINE AND FALL concerted by timid perplexity, he was able, as often as the occasion prompted him, to deliver his decided sentiments with bold and ready elocution. The laws of martial discipline were the only laws that he had studied ; and he was soon dis- tinguished by the laborious diligence and inflexible severity with which he discharged and enforced the duties of the camp. In the time of Julian he provoked the danger of disgrace by the contempt which he publicly expressed for the reigning religion ; 23 and it should seem from his subsequent conduct that the indiscreet and unseasonable freedom of Valentinian was the effect of military spirit rather than of Christian zeal. He was pardoned, however, and still employed by a prince who esteemed his merit : -^ and in the various events of the Persian war he improved the reputation which he had already acquired on the banks of the Rhine. The celerity and success with which he executed an important commission recommended him to the favour of Jovian, and to the honourable command of the second school, or company, of Targetteers, of the domestic guards. In the march from Antioch, he had reached his quartei-s at AncjTa, when he was unexpectedly summoned without guilt, and without intrigue, to assume, in the forty- third year of his age, the absolute government of the Roman empire. Heuacknow. The invitation of the ministers and generals at Nice was of army, little moment, unless it were confirmed by the voice of the army. Feb^ar^26 Thc agcd Sallust, who had long obsen-^ed the irregular fluctua- tions of popular assemblies, proposed, under pain of death, that none of those persons whose rank in the service might excite a party in their favour should appear in public, on the day of the inauguration. Yet such was the prevalence of ancient superstition that a whole day was voluntarily added to this dangerous interval, because it happened to be the intercalation of the Bissextile.-^ At length, when the hour was supposed 23 At Antioch, where he was obliged to attend the emperor to the temple, he struck a priest, who had presumed to purify him with lustral water (Sozomen, 1. vi. c. 6. Theodoret, 1. iii. c. 15 {leg. 12]). Such public defiance might become Valen- tinian ; but it could leave no room for the unworthy delation of the philosopher Maximus, which supposes some more private offence (Zosimus, 1. iv. p. 200, 201 [c. 2]). 24 Socrates, L iv. A previous exile to Melitene, or Thebais (the first might be possible), is interposed by Sozomen (1. vi. c 6) and Philostorgius (1. vii. c. 7, with Godefroy's Dissertations, p. 293). 25 Ammianus, in a long, because unseasonable, digression (xxvi. i and Valesius ad locum), rashly supposes that he understands an astronomical question of which his readers are ignorant. It is treated with more judgment and propriety by Censorinus (de Die Katali, c. 20) and Macrobius (SatumaL L L cap. 13-16). The [or 25]