informers and the other ministers of
oppression; and that the reformation of the coin should have been an
action equally popular with the destruction of those obsolete accounts,
which by the emperor's order were burnt in the forum of Trajan. [90] In
an age when the principles of commerce were so imperfectly understood,
the most desirable end might perhaps be effected by harsh and
injudicious means; but a temporary grievance of such a nature can
scarcely excite and support a serious civil war. The repetition of
intolerable taxes, imposed either on the land or on the necessaries of
life, may at last provoke those who will not, or who cannot, relinquish
their country. But the case is far otherwise in every operation
which, by whatsoever expedients, restores the just value of money. The
transient evil is soon obliterated by the permanent benefit, the loss is
divided among multitudes; and if a few wealthy individuals experience
a sensible diminution of treasure, with their riches, they at the same
time lose the degree of weight and importance which they derived from
the possession of them. However Aurelian might choose to disguise
the real cause of the insurrection, his reformation of the coin
could furnish only a faint pretence to a party already powerful and
discontented. Rome, though deprived of freedom, was distracted by
faction. The people, towards whom the emperor, himself a plebeian,
always expressed a peculiar fondness, lived in perpetual dissension with
the senate, the equestrian order, and the Praetorian guards. [91] Nothing
less than the firm though secret conspiracy of those orders, of the
authority of the first, the wealth of the second, and the arms of the
third, could have displayed a strength capable of contending in battle
with the veteran legions of the Danube, which, under the conduct of
a martial sovereign, had achieved the conquest of the West and of the
East.

[Footnote 90: Hist. August. p. 222. Aurel Victor.]

[Footnote 91: It already raged before Aurelian's return from Egypt. See
Vipiscus, who quotes an original letter. Hist. August. p. 244.]

Whatever was the cause or the object of this rebellion, imputed with so
little probability to the workmen of the mint, Aurelian used his victory
with unrelenting rigor. [92] He was naturally of a severe disposition. A
peasant and a soldier, his nerves yielded not easily to the impressions
of sympathy, and he could sustain without emotion the sight of tortures