Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 3 (1897).djvu/363

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 343 At a time when it was universally confessed that almost eveiy Fauofthe man in the empire was superior in personal merit to the princes Jovmns, SebfistiSLn whom the accident of their birth had seated on the throne^ a and Attains. rapid succession of usurpers, regardless of the fate of their pre- decessors, still continued to arise. This mischief was peculiarly felt in the provinces of Spain and Gaul, where the principles of order and obedience had been extinguished by war and rebellion. Be- fore Constantine resigned the purple, and in the fourth month of the siege of Aries, intelligence was received in the Imperial caiTip that Jovinus had assumed the diadem at Mentz in the Upper Germany, at the instigation of Goar, king of the Alani, and of Guntiarius, king of the Burgundians ; and that the candidate on whom they had bestowed the empire advanced with a formidable host of Barbarians fi-om the banks of the Rhine to those of the Rhone. Every circumstance is dark and extraordinary in the short history of the reign of Jovinus. It was natural to expect that a brave and skilful general, at the head of a victorious army, would have asserted in a field of battle the justice of the cause of Honorius. The hasty retreat of Constantius might be justi- fied by weighty reasons ; but he resigned, without a struggle, the possession of Gaul : and Dardanus, the Praetorian praefect, is recorded as the only magistrate who refused to yield obedience to the usurper. ^^'^ When the Goths, two years after the siege of Rome, established their quarters in Gaul, it was natural to sup- pose that their inclinations could be divided only between the emperor Honorius, with whom they had formed a recent alliance, and the degraded Attains, whom they resei-ved in their camp for the occasional purpose of acting the part of a musician or a monarch. Yet in a moment of disgust (for v/hich it is not easy to assign a cause or a date) Adolphus connected himself with the usurper of Gaul, and imposed on Attains the igno- minious task of negotiating the treaty which ratified his own disgrace. We are again sui'prised to read that, instead of considering the Gothic alliance as the firmest support of his throne, Jovinus upbraided, in dark and ambiguous language, the officious importunity of Attains ; that, scorning the advice of 158 Sidonius Apollinaris (1. v. epLst. 9, p. 139, and Not. Sirmond, p. 58), after stigmatizing the inconstancy of Constantine, Xhe. facility of Jovinus, the perfidy of Gerontius, continues to observe that all the vices of these tyrants were united in the person of Dardanus. Yet the prsefect supported a respectable character in the world, and even in the church; held a devout correspondence with St. Augustin and St. Jerom ; and was complimented by the latter (torn. iii. p. 66) with the epithets of Christianorum Nobilissime and Nobilium Christianissime.