is divided among
multitudes; and if a few wealthy individuals experience a sensible
diminution of treasure, with their riches, they at the same time
lose the degree of weight and importance which they derived from the
possession of them. However Aurelian might choose to disguise the real
cause of the insurrection, his reformation of the coin could furnish
only a faint pretence to a party already powerful and discontented.
Rome, though deprived of freedom, was distracted by faction. The
people, towards whom the emperor, himself a plebeian, always expressed
a peculiar fondness, lived in perpetual dissension with the senate, the
equestrian order, and the Praetorian guards. Nothing less than the firm
though secret conspiracy of those orders, of the authority of the
first, the wealth of the second, and the arms of the third, could have
displayed a strength capable of contending in battle with the veteran
legions of the Danube, which, under the conduct of a martial sovereign,
had achieved the conquest of the West and of the East.

Whatever was the cause or the object of this rebellion, imputed with so
little probability to the workmen of the mint, Aurelian used his victory
with unrelenting rigor. He was naturally of a severe disposition. A
peasant and a soldier, his nerves yielded not easily to the impressions
of sympathy, and he could sustain without emotion the sight of tortures
and death. Trained from his earliest youth in the exercise of arms, he
set too small a value on the life of a citizen, chastised by military
execution the slightest offences, and transferred the stern discipline
of the camp into the civil administration of the laws. His love of
justice often became a blind and furious passion and whenever he deemed
his own or the public safety endangered, he disregarded the rules of
evidence, and the proportion of punishments. The unprovoked rebellion
with which the Romans rewarded his services, exasperated his haughty
spirit. The noblest families of the capital were involved in the guilt
or suspicion of this dark conspiracy. A nasty spirit of revenge urged
the bloody prosecution, and it proved fatal to one of the nephews of
the emperor. The executioners (if we may use the expression of a
contemporary poet) were fatigued, the prisons were crowded, and the
unhappy senate lamented the death or absence of its most illustrious
members. Nor was the pride of Aurelian less offensive to that assembly
than his cruelty. Igno