156

THE DECLINE AND FALL

chap, city of Prusa was assigned for the exile or re-

__ tirement of the abdicated monarch, who lived

six years in the enjoyment of ease and affluence.He often expressed his grateful sense of thegoodness of Constantius, and, with a very ami-able simplicity, advised his benefactor to resignthe sceptre of the world, and to seek for con-tent (where alone it could be found) in thepeaceful obscurity of a private condition . 1Makes war The behaviour of Constantius on this memo-Magnen- rable occasion was celebrated with some ap-a"d 35i pearance of justice; and his courtiers comparedthe studied orations which a Pericles or a De-mosthenes addressed to the populace of Athens ,with the victorious eloquence which had per-suaded an armed multitude to desert and de-pose the object of their partial choice ." 1 Theapproaching contest with Magnentius was of amore serious and bloody kind. The tyrant ad-vanced by rapid marches to encounter Con-stantius, at the head of a numerous army, com-posed of Gauls and Spaniards, of Franks andSaxons ; of those provincials who supplied thestrength of the legions, and of those barbarianswho were dreaded as the most formidable ene-

1 The younger Victor assigns to his exile the empliatical appellationof “ Volnptarium otium.” Socrates (1. ii, c. 28) is the voucher for thecorrespondence with the empi'ror, which would seem to prove, thatVitranio was, indeed, prope ad stultitiam simplicissimus.

m Eum Constantius . facundiae vi dejectum imperio in privatum

otinm removit. Quae gloria post narum impcrium soli processit eloquioclementiaque, Sic. Aurelius Victor, Julian, and Themistius (Orat. iii,and iv), adorn this exploit with ali the artificial and gaudy colouring (Atheir rhetoric.