and decisive
victories; which the reunion and insolence of the enemy soon reduced
to their just value. His negotiations procured a short and precarious
truce; and if some tribes of the Barbarians were engaged, by the
liberality of his gifts and promises, to undertake the defence of the
Rhine, these expensive and uncertain treaties, instead of restoring
the pristine vigor of the Gallic frontier, served only to disgrace the
majesty of the prince, and to exhaust what yet remained of the treasures
of the republic. Elated, however, with this imaginary triumph, the vain
deliverer of Gaul advanced into the provinces of the South, to encounter
a more pressing and personal danger. Sarus the Goth was ordered to
lay the head of the rebel at the feet of the emperor Honorius; and the
forces of Britain and Italy were unworthily consumed in this domestic
quarrel. After the loss of his two bravest generals, Justinian and
Nevigastes, the former of whom was slain in the field of battle, the
latter in a peaceful but treacherous interview, Constantine fortified
himself within the walls of Vienna. The place was ineffectually attacked
seven days; and the Imperial army supported, in a precipitate retreat,
the ignominy of purchasing a secure passage from the freebooters and
outlaws of the Alps. [97] Those mountains now separated the dominions of
two rival monarchs; and the fortifications of the double frontier were
guarded by the troops of the empire, whose arms would have been more
usefully employed to maintain the Roman limits against the Barbarians of
Germany and Scythia.

[Footnote 94: Claudian, (i. Cons. Stil. l. ii. 250.) It is supposed
that the Scots of Ireland invaded, by sea, the whole western coast of
Britain: and some slight credit may be given even to Nennius and the
Irish traditions, (Carte's Hist. of England, vol. i. p. 169.) Whitaker's
Genuine History of the Britons, p. 199. The sixty-six lives of St.
Patrick, which were extant in the ninth century, must have contained
as many thousand lies; yet we may believe, that, in one of these Irish
inroads the future apostle was led away captive, (Usher, Antiquit.
Eccles Britann. p. 431, and Tillemont, Mem. Eccles. tom. xvi. p. 45 782,
&c.)]

[Footnote 95: The British usurpers are taken from Zosimus, (l. vi. p.
371-375,) Orosius, (l. vii. c. 40, p. 576, 577,) Olympiodorus,
(apud Photium, p. 180, 181,) the ecclesiastical historians, and the
Chronicles. The Latins are ignorant of Marcus.]