manifestly indicates his real or affected suspicions, that a secret
conspiracy had been formed against his person and government. By all the
allurements of honors and rewards, he invites informers of every degree
to accuse without exception his magistrates or ministers, his friends
or his most intimate favorites, protesting, with a solemn asseveration,
that he himself will listen to the charge, that he himself will revenge
his injuries; and concluding with a prayer, which discovers some
apprehension of danger, that the providence of the Supreme Being may
still continue to protect the safety of the emperor and of the empire.
[12]

[Footnote 11: Compare Idatius and the Paschal Chronicle, with Ammianus,
(l, xiv. c. 5.) The year in which Constantius was created Caesar seems
to be more accurately fixed by the two chronologists; but the historian
who lived in his court could not be ignorant of the day of the
anniversary. For the appointment of the new Caesar to the provinces of
Gaul, see Julian, Orat. i. p. 12, Godefroy, Chronol. Legum, p. 26. and
Blondel, de Primaute de l'Eglise, p. 1183.]

[Footnote 12: Cod. Theod. l. ix. tit. iv. Godefroy suspected the secret
motives of this law. Comment. tom. iii. p. 9.]

The informers, who complied with so liberal an invitation, were
sufficiently versed in the arts of courts to select the friends and
adherents of Crispus as the guilty persons; nor is there any reason to
distrust the veracity of the emperor, who had promised an ample measure
of revenge and punishment. The policy of Constantine maintained,
however, the same appearances of regard and confidence towards a son,
whom he began to consider as his most irreconcilable enemy. Medals were
struck with the customary vows for the long and auspicious reign of the
young Caesar; [13] and as the people, who were not admitted into the
secrets of the palace, still loved his virtues, and respected his
dignity, a poet who solicits his recall from exile, adores with equal
devotion the majesty of the father and that of the son. [14] The time
was now arrived for celebrating the august ceremony of the twentieth
year of the reign of Constantine; and the emperor, for that purpose,
removed his court from Nicomedia to Rome, where the most splendid
preparations had been made for his reception. Every eye, and every
tongue, affected to express their sense of the general happiness, and
the veil of ceremony and dissimulation was drawn for a while over
t