, afforded
a new and grateful spectacle to the vanity of the people. [87] In the
eyes of posterity, this triumph is remarkable, by a distinction of a
less honorable kind. It was the last that Rome ever beheld. Soon after
this period, the emperors ceased to vanquish, and Rome ceased to be the
capital of the empire.

[Footnote 85: Euseb. in Chron. Pagi ad annum. Till the discovery of the
treatise De Mortibus Persecutorum, it was not certain that the triumph
and the Vicennalia was celebrated at the same time.]

[Footnote 86: At the time of the Vicennalia, Galerius seems to have kept
station on the Danube. See Lactant. de M. P. c. 38.]

[Footnote 87: Eutropius (ix. 27) mentions them as a part of the triumph.
As the persons had been restored to Narses, nothing more than their
images could be exhibited.]

The spot on which Rome was founded had been consecrated by ancient
ceremonies and imaginary miracles. The presence of some god, or the
memory of some hero, seemed to animate every part of the city, and the
empire of the world had been promised to the Capitol. [88] The native
Romans felt and confessed the power of this agreeable illusion. It was
derived from their ancestors, had grown up with their earliest habits
of life, and was protected, in some measure, by the opinion of political
utility. The form and the seat of government were intimately blended
together, nor was it esteemed possible to transport the one without
destroying the other. [89] But the sovereignty of the capital was
gradually annihilated in the extent of conquest; the provinces rose
to the same level, and the vanquished nations acquired the name and
privileges, without imbibing the partial affections, of Romans. During
a long period, however, the remains of the ancient constitution, and the
influence of custom, preserved the dignity of Rome. The emperors, though
perhaps of African or Illyrian extraction, respected their adopted
country, as the seat of their power, and the centre of their extensive
dominions. The emergencies of war very frequently required their
presence on the frontiers; but Diocletian and Maximian were the first
Roman princes who fixed, in time of peace, their ordinary residence
in the provinces; and their conduct, however it might be suggested
by private motives, was justified by very specious considerations of
policy. The court of the emperor of the West was, for the most part,
established at Milan, whose situation, at the foot of th