officers of the empire, are all subject to your
tribunal. None are exempted, excepting only the ordinary consuls, the
praefect of the city, the king of the sacrifices, and (as long as she
preserves her chastity inviolate) the eldest of the vestal virgins. Even
these few, who may not dread the severity, will anxiously solicit the
esteem, of the Roman censor."

A magistrate, invested with such extensive powers, would have appeared
not so much the minister, as the colleague of his sovereign. Valerian
justly dreaded an elevation so full of envy and of suspicion.
He modestly argued the alarming greatness of the trust, his own
insufficiency, and the incurable corruption of the times. He artfully
insinuated, that the office of censor was inseparable from the Imperial
dignity, and that the feeble hands of a subject were unequal to the
support of such an immense weight of cares and of power. The approaching
event of war soon put an end to the prosecution of a project so
specious, but so impracticable; and whilst it preserved Valerian from
the danger, saved the emperor Decius from the disappointment, which
would most probably have attended it. A censor may maintain, he can
never restore, the morals of a state. It is impossible for such a
magistrate to exert his authority with benefit, or even with effect,
unless he is supported by a quick sense of honor and virtue in the minds
of the people, by a decent reverence for the public opinion, and by a
train of useful prejudices combating on the side of national manners.
In a period when these principles are annihilated, the censorial
jurisdiction must either sink into empty pageantry, or be converted into
a partial instrument of vexatious oppression. It was easier to vanquish
the Goths than to eradicate the public vices; yet even in the first of
these enterprises, Decius lost his army and his life.

The Goths were now, on every side, surrounded and pursued by the Roman
arms. The flower of their troops had perished in the long siege
of Philippopolis, and the exhausted country could no longer afford
subsistence for the remaining multitude of licentious barbarians.
Reduced to this extremity, the Goths would gladly have purchased, by
the surrender of all their booty and prisoners, the permission of
an undisturbed retreat. But the emperor, confident of victory, and
resolving, by the chastisement of these invaders, to strike a salutary
terror into the nations of the North, refused to listen