242

THE DECLINE AND FALL

CHAP.

XX.

He pro-tects theChristiansof Gaul,A. D. 306-312.

hero. The altars of Apollo were crowned withthe votive offerings of Constantine ; and thecredulous multitude were taught to believe,that the emperor was permitted to behold, withmortal eyes, the visible majesty of their tutelardeity; and that either waking or in a vision hewas blessed with the auspicious omens of along and victorious reign. The sun was uni-versally celebrated as the invincible guide andprotector of Constantine ; and the pagans mightreasonably expect that the insulted god wouldpursue, with unrelenting vengeance, the impietyof his ungrateful favourite . 1

As long as Constantine exercised a limitedsovereignty over the provinces of Gaul, hisChristian subjects were protected by the authority, and perhaps by the laws, of a prince, whowisely left to the gods the care of vindicatingtheir own honour. If we may credit the asser-tion of Constantine himself, he had been an in-dignant spectator of the savage cruelties whichwere inflicted, by the hands of Roman soldiers,on those citizens whose religion was their onlycrime. 1 " In the East and in the West, he hadseen the different effects of severity and indul-gence; and as the former was rendered still

1 The panegyric of Enmenius (vii, inter, panegyr. Vet.) which waspronounced a few months before the Italian war, abounds with themost unexceptionable evidence of the pagan superstition of Constan-tine , and of his particular veneration for Apollo, or the sun ■, to whichJulian alludes (Orat. vii, p. 229, hitoXsibw o-s). See Commentaire deSpauheiin sur Ics Cesars, p. 317.

m Constantin. Orat. ad. Sanctos, c. 25. But it might easily be shewn,that the Greek translator has improved the sense of the Latin original;and the aged emperor might recollect the persecution of Diocletian with a more lively abhorrence than he had actually felt in the days ofhis youth and paganism.