156

HISTORY OF MARINE ARCHITECTURE.

misfortune just mentioned gave it the decisive blow. Historians record theparticular services rendered to the cause of Constantius by a fleet of no incon-siderable force, which, after having reduced under his subjection Spain andAfrica, landed an army in the latter country, which passing the Pyrenees, ad-vanred to Lyons, the last and fatal station of Magnentius, who, to prevent thedisgrace of a surrender, put a period to the war by falling on his own sword.

In five years after the event just mentioned, (that is to say, about the year357) a singular exertion took place in the science of Marine Architecture,which may in some measure serve to enliven the dull uninteresting detail ofwars, whose events are far more obscurely known, than they are of those*previous to the Augustan age, which have been classically transmitted to us,together with accounts of fleets of which there is no further information thanthat merely the expeditions specified did take place, without affording the mo-dern enquirer any testimony either in regard to the force of the armaments,or the construction of the vessels which composed them. Constantius, at thattime sole emperor of all the extensive countries over which Rome still con-tinued to exert and hold her dominion *, determined to visit the ancient capitalof the empire, and shew himself among subjects, to whom, though certainlythe first entitled to his countenance of any which he possessed, his very personwas in all probability totally unknown. He resolved to expiate, if possible, byone act of splendour, the neglect which he had heretofore, not contrary indeedto the example of many who were his predecessors, shewn to the parents of hisdiadem, and eager in his own wishes, would have exceeded the magnificenceof Trajan, or the elegance of Pompey. The debased condition of the artsforbad either ; but as the last resort of an ambitious man striving to excel hisforefathers, who lived in a more scientific and more polished age, he deter-mined to surpass them in a different line of genius, as far as they had pre-ceded him in that which was considered the most natural.

The obelisks raised by the Egyptians were even at that time considered asthe most curious remnants of antiquity. They are supposed to have beenerected in a very remote, but polished age, which is imagined by some writers tohave preceded the invention of alphabetical writing, and were most probablydestined by the fabricators for the transmission to posterity of certain great

* Which remained at this time nearly unimpaired, but in some very trivial instances, except that ofGermany, which had thrown off all subjection to Rome for more than fifty years.

events,