lt the patience
and disposition of his fierce legionaries. [60] The dangers of the
military profession seem only to be compensated by a life of pleasure
and idleness; but if the duties of the soldier are incessantly
aggravated by the labors of the peasant, he will at last sink under the
intolerable burden, or shake it off with indignation. The imprudence of
Probus is said to have inflamed the discontent of his troops. More
attentive to the interests of mankind than to those of the army, he
expressed the vain hope, that, by the establishment of universal peace,
he should soon abolish the necessity of a standing and mercenary force.
[61] The unguarded expression proved fatal to him. In one of the hottest
days of summer, as he severely urged the unwholesome labor of draining
the marshes of Sirmium, the soldiers, impatient of fatigue, on a sudden
threw down their tools, grasped their arms, and broke out into a furious
mutiny. The emperor, conscious of his danger, took refuge in a lofty
tower, constructed for the purpose of surveying the progress of the
work. [62] The tower was instantly forced, and a thousand swords were
plunged at once into the bosom of the unfortunate Probus. The rage of
the troops subsided as soon as it had been gratified. They then lamented
their fatal rashness, forgot the severity of the emperor, whom they had
massacred, and hastened to perpetuate, by an honorable monument, the
memory of his virtues and victories. [63]

[Footnote 60: Julian bestows a severe, and indeed excessive, censure
on the rigor of Probus, who, as he thinks, almost deserved his fate.]

[Footnote 61: Vopiscus in Hist. August. p. 241. He lavishes on this idle
hope a large stock of very foolish eloquence.]

[Footnote 62: Turris ferrata. It seems to have been a movable tower, and
cased with iron.]

[Footnote 63: Probus, et vere probus situs est; Victor omnium gentium
Barbararum; victor etiam tyrannorum.]

When the legions had indulged their grief and repentance for the death
of Probus, their unanimous consent declared Carus, his Praetorian
praefect, the most deserving of the Imperial throne. Every circumstance
that relates to this prince appears of a mixed and doubtful nature.
He gloried in the title of Roman Citizen; and affected to compare the
purity of his blood with the foreign and even barbarous origin of the
preceding emperors; yet the most inquisitive of his contemporaries, very
far from admitting his claim, have variously