with his father-in-law, whom Rome is made to apostrophize to deliver her from the unworthy hands into which she had fallen since his enforced abdication.

The author is more or less a pagan, like Eumenius and another anonymous writer who used to be identified with Nazarius, who congratulated Constantine on his victory over Maxentius, won in spite of the warnings of the haruspices. He himself is rather sceptical; he does not know whether fate is to blame for evil, or whether the gods are too much engaged with other things to be able to prevent it. It is probably a personal tribute to Constantine' when the author says that the sun is the god by whose gifts we both live and see.

The other anonymous panegyrist perhaps comes nearer to being a theist, but he still thinks it safe to say "your deity," as now we might say "your majesty." He is perhaps the simplest of all the panegyrists, because he has an exciting and manageable story to tell, and he is disposed to apologize for what he takes for rhetorical flights. He insists that he is not a Roman, perhaps because Maxentius insisted that he was the one genuine Roman emperor, inasmuch as he, and he alone, lived at Rome.

Nazarius, a professor of Bordeaux, spoke himself on this campaign, as we learn from a speech delivered eight years later to celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of Constantine's accession, and the fifth anniversary of the admission of his son to rank as Cæsar. If we could trust the text, Nazarius had delivered two speeches on successive days, and in the first he had handled the campaign against Maxentius, but it is not inadmissible to read pridem, "some time before," instead of pridie, "the day before." In that case the anonymous speech might not impossibly be the speech of Nazarius, for there is no reason why a rhetorician should not acquire a new manner in eight years. The undoubted speech of Nazarius, who, according to St. Jerome's chronicle, reached the height of his reputation about five years later, is certainly more ornate than its predecessors, and rather more stately in cadences; be

His devotion to the sun appears on his coins after he saw "the sign of the sun," which he afterwards thought converted him to Christianity.

sides, the vocabulary abounds in verbal substantives, many coined for the occasion, and in semi-poetical phrases which are of the kind we might expect from a rhetorician who had lately been reading Tacitus. The speech is singularly unreal; it is addressed throughout to Constantine, though he is absent.

There is more actuality in the last two speeches in the collection. One is addressed to Julian in 361 by Claudius Mamertinus, to thank him for his consulship, and the other by Latinus Pacatus Drepanius to Theodosius the Great, to thank him for delivering Gaul from the usurper Maximus. Mamertinus is obviously anxious to rival the independence of Pliny; like him, he assumes to be the chosen colleague of a patriot prince who is just closing an era of oppression and opening a new golden age to mankind. The parallel is not very exact: instead of being the colleague of the emperor, Mamertinus was the colleague of the barbarian Nevitta, whose nomination gave great offence, the rather that Julian had satirized his uncle Constantine for conferring the consulship on a barbarian whose rank and services both stood higher; and seven years after his consulship Mamertinus came to be deposed from office and tried for peculation. Even apart from the sequel, the speech is abundantly grotesque. The author takes immortal god to witness - he takes his pure conscience to witness, which he reveres as a god-that if Constantius, who was dead, or, as the author puts it, deified, were still alive, the Romans should see with what a steady spirit he would defend Julian against that emperor's flatterers, who had denounced the hero solely on account of the virtues which ought to have been pledges of permanent friendship. In the same spirit the author dilates on the great goodness of the emperor in giving unasked the consulship which he had hankered after all his life. He recounts with natural exultation the ceremonious way in which Julian did honor to the first magistrates of what had been a republic (other observers thought Julian's behavior a piece of childish antiquarianism in a monarch). He actually assures us, apropos of the emperor's official salutation, Ave consul amplissime, that he is, and means to be, quite.

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as well as was to be expected in the enjoyment of the favor of such an illustrious emperor as Julian, and felt that his 'grandeur" was entirely unalloyed. Though he intends to spare the memory of Constantius, he emphasizes the fact that he brought the barbarians into Gaul to embarrass Magnentius, which rather lessens Julian's glory in driving them out. He succeeds better in bringing out the immense boon which an emperor with simple tastes was to the provincials. Julian kept no court, and he did not care about building, and so he was able to make largesses to the communities, and at the same time to remit taxes all along the road to Constantinople.

It is curious to find the same praise given to Theodosius, whom most historians represent as one of the most luxurious of the emperors. The praise of Drepanius' is not pitched so high; perhaps we may suppose that the habits of Theodosius on a campaign were a real contrast to the parvenu luxury of Maximus. Of course it is an embarrassing question why, if it was a glorious achievement to put down Maximus, he was allowed to enjoy his usurpation so long. Drepanius can only dilate on his madness in presuming on the forbearance of the emperor. The picture of the misgovernment of Maximus is not very characteristic; he is accused of the kind of things of which every ruler of the fourth century, except Julian, was accused when unpopular-of living upon confiscations, treating wealth as a crime, and trafficking in the marriage of heiresses-perhaps the oldest of all the incidents of feudalism. The only special trait is that he was more dependent upon his army, and had shocked a large body of opinion by putting some Priscillianists to death. Of this Drepanius speaks just as a modern writer might speak of persecution: he has not the least suspicion that the Priscillianists were heretics, and that Maximus had set an example which every orthodox emperor would have to follow.

1 Drepanius came to Rome to offer his speech of congratulation. He belonged, like Nazarius, to the circle of Ausonius, who dedicates two of his lighter works to him. He was a native of the canton of which Aginnum (Agen) was the capital, and doubtless formed himself in the rhetorical school of Bordeaux, though he was not a professor there. He never rose higher in the public service than proconsul.

But, after all, there is little to choose beween any of these writers; even their mannerisms are not really distinctive. They all make it their business to multiply ingenious exclamations at as many acts as they can of the emperor panegyrized; they all have the same grotesque affectation of patronizing independence as if they were the organs of public approbation, which doubtless springs in part from genuine public spirit, though it provokes a smile even in the younger Pliny. And the younger Pliny always preserves his selfrespect; like every Roman senator of the first century, he could fall back upon the natural pride of traditional gentility, while it is difficult to think that any of his successors had any self-respect to preserve.

CHAPTER II.

THE HISTORIANS.

THE rhetorical activity of the time, imitative as it is, gives us an outside measure of its intellectual activity. It was barren in poetry till the age of Theodosius; it was barren in history till the age of Theodosius; it was barren even in compilations till we come to the second half of the fourth century, and then it is true that we have plenty which are good of their kind.

Three at least of the works of this period have come to be among the first Latin books put into the hands of schoolboys, and this shows that they are simple enough in style to be tolerably correct.

SEXTUS AURELIUS VICTOR.

The two most important of the compilers belonged at once to the literary class and the official hierarchy. Sextus Aurelius Victor, who wrote under Constantius, was the son of an insignificant father who was not over-learned, and owed the distinction of his own life to his studies. He was one of the few who did credit to the patronage of Julian, who sent for him on his way to Constantinople and appointed him "consular" of part of Pannonia. He wrote a short history of the empire to the death of Constantius, whom he mentions in the latter part of his work as noster princeps; his tone is commendably cool and impartial; he has no affectation of homage or independence, and closes his work without an intimation that the sequel requires higher inspiration than his. The work is clear and sober, and one can hardly draw any inference personal to the writer from the emphasis which he gives to prodigies. From Suetonius to Marius Maximus, perhaps from Marius Maximus to the compilers of the Augustan