apartment, invested with the diadem and purple. The
conspirators instantly saluted him with the titles of Augustus and
Emperor. The surprise, the terror, the intoxication, the ambitious
hopes, and the mutual ignorance of the rest of the assembly, prompted
them to join their voices to the general acclamation. The guards
hastened to take the oath of fidelity; the gates of the town were shut;
and before the dawn of day, Magnentius became master of the troops and
treasure of the palace and city of Autun. By his secrecy and diligence
he entertained some hopes of surprising the person of Constans, who was
pursuing in the adjacent forest his favorite amusement of hunting, or
perhaps some pleasures of a more private and criminal nature. The rapid
progress of fame allowed him, however, an instant for flight, though
the desertion of his soldiers and subjects deprived him of the power of
resistance. Before he could reach a seaport in Spain, where he intended
to embark, he was overtaken near Helena, [71] at the foot of the
Pyrenees, by a party of light cavalry, whose chief, regardless of the
sanctity of a temple, executed his commission by the murder of the son
of Constantine. [72]

[Footnote 69: Quarum (gentium) obsides pretio quaesitos pueros
venustiore quod cultius habuerat libidine hujusmodi arsisse pro certo
habet. Had not the depraved taste of Constans been publicly avowed, the
elder Victor, who held a considerable office in his brother's reign,
would not have asserted it in such positive terms.]

[Footnote 70: Julian. Orat. i. and ii. Zosim. l. ii. p. 134. Victor in
Epitome. There is reason to believe that Magnentius was born in one of
those Barbarian colonies which Constantius Chlorus had established in
Gaul, (see this History, vol. i. p. 414.) His behavior may remind us of
the patriot earl of Leicester, the famous Simon de Montfort, who could
persuade the good people of England, that he, a Frenchman by birth had
taken arms to deliver them from foreign favorites.]

[Footnote 71: This ancient city had once flourished under the name of
Illiberis (Pomponius Mela, ii. 5.) The munificence of Constantine gave
it new splendor, and his mother's name. Helena (it is still called
Elne) became the seat of a bishop, who long afterwards transferred his
residence to Perpignan, the capital of modern Rousillon. See D'Anville.
Notice de l'Ancienne Gaule, p. 380. Longuerue, Description de la France,
p. 223, and the Marca Hispanica, l. i. c