ed, as was usual with so many of the
emperors, by the hand of an assassin, in A.D. 275. He restored vigor to
the empire, and preserved it from instant destruction.

The army, filled with sorrow for the loss of the emperor, revenged his
death by tearing his assassin in pieces; and they then wrote a
respectful letter to the Senate, asking the Senators to select his
successor. The Senate, however, passed a decree that the army should
name the new emperor. The soldiers, in their turn, refused, and thus for
eight months an interregnum prevailed while this friendly contest
continued. At last the Senate appointed the virtuous Tacitus, who
claimed a descent from his namesake, the famous historian. Tacitus,
however, who was seventy years old, sank under the hardships of his
first campaign, and died A.D. 276, at Tyania, in Cappadocia.

His brother Florian then ascended the throne, but was defeated and put
to death by Probus, the best soldier of the age, who, in six years, once
more repelled the barbarians from every part of the empire. He delivered
Gaul from the ravages of the Germans, pursued them across the Rhine, and
every where defeated them. He suppressed, also, several insurrections,
and employed his soldiers in various useful works. But at length, weary
of these labors, they put Probus to death, A.D. 282.

Carus, the next emperor, was singularly frugal in his mode of life. When
the Persian embassadors visited him in his tent they found him sitting
upon the grass, clothed in a coarse robe, and eating his supper of bacon
and hard pease. Carus gained many victories over the Persians, but died
suddenly in A.D. 283. His two sons, Carinus and Namerian, succeeded him,
but were soon assassinated, giving place to the more famous Diocletian.

[Illustration: The Court-yard of Diocletian's Palace at Spalatro.]

CHAPTER XLIII.

FROM DIOCLETIAN, A.D. 284, TO CONSTANTINE'S DEATH, A.D. 337.

Diocletian began to reign A.D. 284, and once more revived the vigor of
the declining empire, which now seemed more than ever to depend for its
existence upon the qualities of a single ruler. It seems, indeed, to
have required an intellect of no common order to preserve the unity of
the empire, composed of so many different nations, of territories
separated by such vast distances, and threatened on every side by
innumerable foes; but, of all his contemporaries, Diocletian was best
suited to this task. His parents had been the slaves of a