the diadem and the purple; and, at the end of four months, Gratian
experienced the fate of his predecessor. The memory of the great
Constantine, whom the British legions had given to the church and to
the empire, suggested the singular motive of their third choice. They
discovered in the ranks a private soldier of the name of Constantine,
and their impetuous levity had already seated him on the throne, before
they perceived his incapacity to sustain the weight of that glorious
appellation. Yet the authority of Constantine was less precarious, and
his government was more successful, than the transient reigns of Marcus
and of Gratian. The danger of leaving his inactive troops in those
camps, which had been twice polluted with blood and sedition, urged him
to attempt the reduction of the Western provinces. He landed at Boulogne
with an inconsiderable force; and after he had reposed himself some
days, he summoned the cities of Gaul, which had escaped the yoke of
the Barbarians, to acknowledge their lawful sovereign. They obeyed the
summons without reluctance. The neglect of the court of Ravenna had
absolved a deserted people from the duty of allegiance; their actual
distress encouraged them to accept any circumstances of change, without
apprehension, and, perhaps, with some degree of hope; and they might
flatter themselves, that the troops, the authority, and even the name
of a Roman emperor, who fixed his residence in Gaul, would protect the
unhappy country from the rage of the Barbarians. The first successes of
Constantine against the detached parties of the Germans, were magnified
by the voice of adulation into splendid and decisive victories; which
the reunion and insolence of the enemy soon reduced to their just value.
His negotiations procured a short and precarious truce; and if some
tribes of the Barbarians were engaged, by the liberality of his gifts
and promises, to undertake the defence of the Rhine, these expensive
and uncertain treaties, instead of restoring the pristine vigor of the
Gallic frontier, served only to disgrace the majesty of the prince, and
to exhaust what yet remained of the treasures of the republic. Elated,
however, with this imaginary triumph, the vain deliverer of Gaul
advanced into the provinces of the South, to encounter a more pressing
and personal danger. Sarus the Goth was ordered to lay the head of the
rebel at the feet of the emperor Honorius; and the forces of Britain and
Italy were unw