ep was to
signify a concise and haughty mandate, importing that the Caesar should
immediately repair to Italy, and threatening that he himself would
punish his delay or hesitation, by suspending the usual allowance of his
household. The nephew and daughter of Constantine, who could ill brook
the insolence of a subject, expressed their resentment by instantly
delivering Domitian to the custody of a guard. The quarrel still
admitted of some terms of accommodation. They were rendered
impracticable by the imprudent behavior of Montius, a statesman whose
arts and experience were frequently betrayed by the levity of his
disposition. [20] The quaestor reproached Gallus in a haughty language,
that a prince who was scarcely authorized to remove a municipal
magistrate, should presume to imprison a Praetorian praefect; convoked
a meeting of the civil and military officers; and required them, in
the name of their sovereign, to defend the person and dignity of his
representatives. By this rash declaration of war, the impatient temper
of Gallus was provoked to embrace the most desperate counsels. He
ordered his guards to stand to their arms, assembled the populace
of Antioch, and recommended to their zeal the care of his safety and
revenge. His commands were too fatally obeyed. They rudely seized the
praefect and the quaestor, and tying their legs together with ropes,
they dragged them through the streets of the city, inflicted a thousand
insults and a thousand wounds on these unhappy victims, and at last
precipitated their mangled and lifeless bodies into the stream of the
Orontes. [21]

[Footnote 19: Zonaras, l. xiii. tom. ii. p. 17, 18. The assassins had
seduced a great number of legionaries; but their designs were discovered
and revealed by an old woman in whose cottage they lodged.]

[Footnote 19a: The commission seems to have been granted to Domitian
alone. Montius interfered to support his authority. Amm. Marc. loc.
cit.--M]

[Footnote 20: In the present text of Ammianus, we read Asper, quidem,
sed ad lenitatem propensior; which forms a sentence of contradictory
nonsense. With the aid of an old manuscript, Valesius has rectified
the first of these corruptions, and we perceive a ray of light in the
substitution of the word vafer. If we venture to change lenitatem into
lexitatem, this alteration of a single letter will render the whole
passage clear and consistent.]

[Footnote 21: Instead of being obliged to collect scatter