of the best and
greatest of all the emperors. His six years of administration were marked
by uninterrupted successes, and he won a fame equal to that of the ancient
heroes. He restored peace and order in all the provinces; he broke the
power of the Sarmatians; he secured the alliance of the Goths; he drove
the Isaurians to their strongholds among their inaccessible mountains; he
chastised the rebellious cities of Egypt; he delivered Gaul from the
Germanic barbarians; he drove the Franks to their morasses at the mouth of
the Rhine; he vanquished the Burgundians who had wandered in quest of
booty from the banks of the Oder; he defeated the Lygii, a fierce tribe on
the borders of Silesia; he extended his victories to the Elbe, and erected
a wall, two hundred miles in length, from the Danube to the Rhine; so that
"there was not left," says Gibbon, "in all the provinces, a hostile
barbarian, or tyrant, or even a robber." After having destroyed four
hundred thousand of the barbarians, he returned to his capital to
celebrate a triumph, which equaled in splendor that of Aurelian. He, too,
fancied that all external enemies were subdued forever, and that Rome
should henceforth rejoice in eternal peace. But scarcely had the paeans of
victory been sung by a triumphant and infatuated people, when he was
assassinated in a mutiny of his own troops, whom he had compelled to labor
in draining the marshes around Sirmium, A.D. 282.

(M1121) The soldiers, repenting the act as soon as it was done, conferred
the purple on the praetorian prefect, and _notified_ the Senate of its
choice. And the choice was a good one; and the new emperor, Carus, at
sixty years of age, conferring the title of Caesar upon his two sons,
Carinus and Numerianus, whom he left to govern the West, hastened against
the Sarmatians, who had overrun Illyricum. Successful in his objects, he
advanced, in the depth of winter, through Thrace and Asia Minor to the
confines of Persia. The Persian king, wishing to avert the storm, sent his
ambassadors to the imperial camp, and found the emperor seated on the
grass, dining from peas and bacon, in all the simplicity of the early
successors of Mohammed. But before he could advance beyond the Tigris, his
tent was struck by lightning, and he was killed, on Christmas day, A.D.
283.

(M1122) Carinus and Numerian succeeded to the vacant throne. The former,
at Rome, disgraced his trust by indolence and shameless vices; while the
latter