ntry; and sacrifices, whose powerful influence disabled
the barbarians from passing the mystic ground on which they had been
celebrated. However puerile in themselves, these superstitious arts were
subservient to the success of the war; and if, in the decisive battle of
Fano, the Alemanni fancied they saw an army of spectres combating on
the side of Aurelian, he received a real and effectual aid from this
imaginary reenforcement.

But whatever confidence might be placed in ideal ramparts, the
experience of the past, and the dread of the future, induced the Romans
to construct fortifications of a grosser and more substantial kind. The
seven hills of Rome had been surrounded, by the successors of Romulus,
with an ancient wall of more than thirteen miles. The vast enclosure may
seem disproportioned to the strength and numbers of the infant state.
But it was necessary to secure an ample extent of pasture and arable
land, against the frequent and sudden incursions of the tribes of
Latium, the perpetual enemies of the republic. With the progress of
Roman greatness, the city and its inhabitants gradually increased,
filled up the vacant space, pierced through the useless walls, covered
the field of Mars, and, on every side, followed the public highways
in long and beautiful suburbs. The extent of the new walls, erected by
Aurelian, and finished in the reign of Probus, was magnified by popular
estimation to near fifty, but is reduced by accurate measurement to
about twenty-one miles. It was a great but a melancholy labor, since the
defence of the capital betrayed the decline of the monarchy. The Romans
of a more prosperous age, who trusted to the arms of the legions
the safety of the frontier camps, were very far from entertaining a
suspicion, that it would ever become necessary to fortify the seat of
empire against the inroads of the barbarians.

The victory of Claudius over the Goths, and the success of Aurelian
against the Alemanni, had already restored to the arms of Rome their
ancient superiority over the barbarous nations of the North. To chastise
domestic tyrants, and to reunite the dismembered parts of the empire,
was a task reserved for the second of those warlike emperors. Though
he was acknowledged by the senate and people, the frontiers of Italy,
Africa, Illyricum, and Thrace, confined the limits of his reign. Gaul,
Spain, and Britain, Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor, were still possessed
by two rebels, who alone, out