.

Sec. 1. In the mean time, Valentinian being attacked with a violent
sickness and at the point of death, at a secret entertainment of the
Gauls who were present in the emperor's army, Rusticus Julianus, at that
time master of the records, was proposed as the future emperor; a man as
greedy of human blood as a wild beast, seeming to be smitten with some
frenzy, as had been shown while governing Africa as proconsul.

2. For in his prefecture of the city, a post which he was filling when
he died, fearing a change in the tyranny through the exercise of which
he, as if in a dearth of worthy men, had been raised to that dignity, he
was compelled to appear more gentle and merciful.

3. Against his partisans others with higher aims were exerting
themselves in favour of Severus, who at that time was captain of the
infantry, as a man very fit for such a dignity, who, although rough and
unpopular, seemed yet more tolerable than the other, and worthy of being
preferred to him by any means that could be devised.

4. But all these plans were formed to no purpose; for in the meantime,
the emperor, through the variety of remedies applied, recovered, and
would scarcely believe that his life had been saved with difficulty.
And he proposed to invest his son Gratian, who was now on the point of
arriving at manhood, with the ensigns of the imperial authority.

5. And when everything was prepared, and the consent of the soldiers
secured, in order that all men might willingly accept the new emperor,
immediately upon the arrival of Gratian, Valentinian advancing into the
open space, mounted the tribune, and surrounded by a splendid circle of
nobles and princes, and holding the boy by his right hand, showed him to
them all, and in the following formal harangue recommended their
intended sovereign to the army.

6. "This imperial robe which I wear is a happy indication of your good
will towards me when you adjudged me superior to many illustrious men.
Now, with you as the partners of my counsels and the favourers of my
wishes, I will proceed to a seasonable work of affection, relying on the
protecting promises of God, to whose eternal assistance it is owing that
the Roman state stands and ever shall stand unshaken.

7. "Listen, I beseech you, O most gallant men, with willing minds to my
desire, recollecting that these things which the laws of natural
affection sanction, we have in this instance not only wished to
accomplish with your per