never be restored if she had consented to the will of the
adulterer. A patriot would have hesitated before he plunged himself
and his country into those inevitable calamities which must follow
the extinction of the royal house of Theodosius. The imprudent Maximus
disregarded these salutary considerations; he gratified his resentment
and ambition; he saw the bleeding corpse of Valentinian at his feet; and
he heard himself saluted Emperor by the unanimous voice of the senate
and people. But the day of his inauguration was the last day of his
happiness. He was imprisoned (such is the lively expression of Sidonius)
in the palace; and after passing a sleepless night, he sighed that he
had attained the summit of his wishes, and aspired only to descend
from the dangerous elevation. Oppressed by the weight of the diadem, he
communicated his anxious thoughts to his friend and quaestor Fulgentius;
and when he looked back with unavailing regret on the secure pleasures
of his former life, the emperor exclaimed, "O fortunate Damocles, thy
reign began and ended with the same dinner;" a well-known allusion,
which Fulgentius afterwards repeated as an instructive lesson for
princes and subjects.

The reign of Maximus continued about three months. His hours, of which
he had lost the command, were disturbed by remorse, or guilt, or terror,
and his throne was shaken by the seditions of the soldiers, the people,
and the confederate Barbarians. The marriage of his son Paladius with
the eldest daughter of the late emperor, might tend to establish the
hereditary succession of his family; but the violence which he offered
to the empress Eudoxia, could proceed only from the blind impulse of
lust or revenge. His own wife, the cause of these tragic events, had
been seasonably removed by death; and the widow of Valentinian was
compelled to violate her decent mourning, perhaps her real grief, and to
submit to the embraces of a presumptuous usurper, whom she suspected
as the assassin of her deceased husband. These suspicions were soon
justified by the indiscreet confession of Maximus himself; and he
wantonly provoked the hatred of his reluctant bride, who was still
conscious that she was descended from a line of emperors. From the East,
however, Eudoxia could not hope to obtain any effectual assistance;
her father and her aunt Pulcheria were dead; her mother languished at
Jerusalem in disgrace and exile; and the sceptre of Constantinople was
in the h