ustified by the dangers of his
own situation, by the character of his rivals, by the consciousness of
superior merit, and by the prospect that his success would enable him
to restore peace and order to the distracted empire. In his civil
wars against Maxentius and Licinius, he had engaged on his side the
inclinations of the people, who compared the undissembled vices of those
tyrants with the spirit of wisdom and justice which seemed to direct the
general tenor of the administration of Constantine. [2]

[Footnote 2: The virtues of Constantine are collected for the most part
from Eutropius and the younger Victor, two sincere pagans, who wrote
after the extinction of his family. Even Zosimus, and the Emperor
Julian, acknowledge his personal courage and military achievements.]

Had Constantine fallen on the banks of the Tyber, or even in the plains
of Hadrianople, such is the character which, with a few exceptions, he
might have transmitted to posterity. But the conclusion of his reign
(according to the moderate and indeed tender sentence of a writer of
the same age) degraded him from the rank which he had acquired among
the most deserving of the Roman princes. [3] In the life of Augustus,
we behold the tyrant of the republic, converted, almost by imperceptible
degrees, into the father of his country, and of human kind. In that of
Constantine, we may contemplate a hero, who had so long inspired his
subjects with love, and his enemies with terror, degenerating into a
cruel and dissolute monarch, corrupted by his fortune, or raised by
conquest above the necessity of dissimulation. The general peace which
he maintained during the last fourteen years of his reign, was a period
of apparent splendor rather than of real prosperity; and the old age
of Constantine was disgraced by the opposite yet reconcilable vices of
rapaciousness and prodigality. The accumulated treasures found in the
palaces of Maxentius and Licinius, were lavishly consumed; the
various innovations introduced by the conqueror, were attended with
an increasing expense; the cost of his buildings, his court, and
his festivals, required an immediate and plentiful supply; and the
oppression of the people was the only fund which could support the
magnificence of the sovereign. [4] His unworthy favorites, enriched
by the boundless liberality of their master, usurped with impunity the
privilege of rapine and corruption. [5] A secret but universal decay
was felt in eve