ity. But he soon experienced that
the principles of honor and integrity, which might regulate the ordinary
conduct of Constantius, were superseded by the loose doctrines of
political morality. The Roman general, indeed, refused to sully his
laurels with the blood of Constantine; but the abdicated emperor, and
his son Julian, were sent under a strong guard into Italy; and before
they reached the palace of Ravenna, they met the ministers of death.

[Footnote 152: It is the expression of Olympiodorus, which he seems
to have borrowed from Aeolus, a tragedy of Euripides, of which some
fragments only are now extant, (Euripid. Barnes, tom. ii. p. 443, ver
38.) This allusion may prove, that the ancient tragic poets were still
familiar to the Greeks of the fifth century.]

At a time when it was universally confessed, that almost every man
in the empire was superior in personal merit to the princes whom the
accident of their birth had seated on the throne, a rapid succession of
usurpers, regardless of the fate of their predecessors, still continued
to arise. This mischief was peculiarly felt in the provinces of
Spain and Gaul, where the principles of order and obedience had been
extinguished by war and rebellion. Before Constantine resigned the
purple, and in the fourth month of the siege of Arles, intelligence was
received in the Imperial camp, that Jovinus has assumed the diadem at
Mentz, in the Upper Germany, at the instigation of Goar, king of
the Alani, and of Guntiarius, king of the Burgundians; and that the
candidate, on whom they had bestowed the empire, advanced with a
formidable host of Barbarians, from the banks of the Rhine to those of
the Rhone. Every circumstance is dark and extraordinary in the short
history of the reign of Jovinus. It was natural to expect, that a
brave and skilful general, at the head of a victorious army, would have
asserted, in a field of battle, the justice of the cause of Honorius.
The hasty retreat of Constantius might be justified by weighty reasons;
but he resigned, without a struggle, the possession of Gaul; and
Dardanus, the Praetorian praefect, is recorded as the only magistrate
who refused to yield obedience to the usurper. [153] When the Goths, two
years after the siege of Rome, established their quarters in Gaul, it
was natural to suppose that their inclinations could be divided only
between the emperor Honorius, with whom they had formed a recent
alliance, and the degraded Attalus,