he had created Augustus, was dressed in Gallic trousers, a saffron tunic, and a robe of purple. The beauteous figure of Zenobia was confined by fetters of gold; a slave supported the gold chain which encircled her neck, and she almost fainted under the intolerable weight of jewels. She preceded on foot the magnificent chariot in which she once hoped to enter the gates of Rome. It was followed by two other chariots, still more sumptuous, of Odenathus and of the Persian monarch. The triumphal car of Aurelian (it had formerly been used by a Gothic king) was drawn, on this memorable occasion, either by four stags or by four elephants. The most illustrious of the senate, the people, and the army closed the solemn procession. Unfeigned joy, wonder, and gratitude swelled the acclamations of the multitude; but the satisfaction of the senate was clouded by the appearance of Tetricus; nor could they suppress a rising murmur that the haughty emperor should thus expose to public ignominy the person of a Roman and a magistrate.

'But however in the treatment of his unfortunate rivals Aurelian might indulge his pride, he behaved towards them with a generous clemency, which was seldom exercised by the ancient conquerors. Princes who without success had defended their throne or freedom, were frequently strangled in prison as soon as the triumphal pomp ascended the Capitol. These usurpers, whom their defeat had convicted of the crime of treason, were permitted to spend their lives in affluence and honourable repose. The emperor presented Zenobia with an elegant villa at Tibur or Tivoli, about twenty miles from the capital; the Syrian queen insensibly sank into a Roman matron, her daughters married into noble families, and her race was not yet extinct in the fifth century. Tetricus and his son were reinstated in their rank and fortunes. They erected on the Calian Hill a magnificent palace, and

as soon as it was finished invited Aurelian to supper. On his entrance he was agreeably surprised with a picture which represented their singular history. They were delineated offering to the emperor a civic crown and the sceptre of Gaul, and again receiving at his hands the ornaments of the senatorial dignity. The father was afterwards invested with the government of Lucania, and Aurelian, who soon admitted the abdicated monarch to his friendship and conversation, familiarly asked him whether it was not more desirable to administer a province of Italy than to reign beyond the Alps. The son long continued a respectable member of the senate; nor was there any one of the Roman nobility more esteemed by Aurelian, as well as by his successors.

'So long and so various was the pomp of Aurelian's triumph, that, although it opened with the dawn of day, the slow majesty of the procession ascended not the Capitol before the ninth hour; and it was already dark when the emperor returned to the palace. The festival was protracted by theatrical representations, the games of the circus, the hunting of wild beasts, combats of gladiators, and naval engagements. Liberal donatives were distributed to the army and people, and several institutions, agreeable or beneficial to the city, contributed to perpetuate the glory of Aurelian. A considerable portion of his oriental spoils was consecrated to the gods of Rome; the Capitol, and every other temple, glittered with the offerings of his ostentatious piety; and the Temple of the Sun alone received above fifteen thousand pounds of gold. This last was a magnificent structure, erected by the emperor on the side of the Quirinal Hill, and dedicated, soon after the triumph, to that deity whom Aurelian adored as the parent of his life and fortunes. His mother had been an inferior priestess in a chapel of the Sun; a peculiar devotion to the god of light was a sentiment which the fortunate peasant imbibed in his infancy; and every step

of his elevation, every victory of his reign, fortified superstition by gratitude.'1

The site of Aurelian's TEMPLE OF THE SUN has been the subject of much dispute among topographers; but we think there can be little doubt that Gibbon has properly located it, and it may very probably be identified with the remains of a large building in the Colonna gardens. For the reasons which have led the author to this conclusion, the reader is referred to Dr. Smith's Dictionary of Ancient Geography, vol. ii. p. 830 sq.

During this period the public spectacles at least, and the sports of the Circus and amphitheatre, betrayed no symptoms of the declining state of the Empire. Nothing could exceed the magnificence of the games exhibited by Probus. The Circus was transformed into the likeness of a forest by the transplanting of a large quantity of fullgrown trees, and thousands of ostriches, stags, and wild boars, having been let loose in it, were abandoned to be chased by the populace. On the following day was given a venatio, in which many hundreds of lions, tigers, and bears were massacred.2 The third day was devoted to the slaughter of the nobler animal, man, and three hundred pairs of gladiators displayed their ferocity and skill. The spectacles exhibited in the Flavian amphitheatre at this period were perhaps still more magnificent, and in the reign of Carinus appear to have exceeded anything before remembered. We cannot better present an idea of them to the reader than in the words of the eloquent historian whom we have already quoted. The slopes of the vast concave which formed the inside were filled and surrounded with sixty or eighty rows of seats, of marble likewise, covered with cushions, and capable of receiving with ease above four-score thousand spectators. Sixty-four vomitories (for by that name the doors were

1 Decline and Fall, ch. xi.

2

Vopiscus, Prob. c. 19.

very aptly distinguished) poured forth the immense multitude; and the entrances, passages, and staircases were contrived with such exquisite skill, that each person, whether of the senatorial, the equestrian, or the plebeian order, arrived at his destined place without trouble or confusion. Nothing was omitted which, in any respect, could be subservient to the convenience and pleasure of the spectators. They were protected from the sun and rain by an ample canopy, occasionally drawn over their heads. The air was continually refreshed by the playing of fountains, and profusely impregnated by the grateful scent of aromatics. In the centre of the edifice, the arena, or stage, was strewed with the finest sand, and successively assumed the most different forms. At one moment it seemed to rise out of the earth, like the garden of the Hesperides, and was afterwards broken into the rocks and caverns of Thrace. The subterraneous pipes conveyed an inexhaustible supply of water, and what had just before appeared a level plain might be suddenly converted into a wide lake, covered with armed vessels, and replenished with the monsters of the deep. In the decoration of these scenes, the Roman emperors displayed their wealth and liberality; and we read on various occasions that the whole furniture of the amphitheatre consisted either of silver, or of gold, or of amber. The poet who describes the games of Carinus, in the character of a shepherd attracted to the capital by the fame of their magnificence, affirms that the nets designed as a defence against the wild beasts were of gold wire; that the porticoes were gilded; and that the belt, or circle, which divided the several ranks of spectators from each other, was studded with a precious mosaic of beautiful stones.'1

1 Gibbon, Decline and Fall, ch. xii. The poet alluded to is Calpurnius, Eclog. 7. It is, indeed, far from certain that, as Gibbon assumes, Calpurnius was contemporary with

Carinus. Some critics, as Sarpe (Quæst. Philol. Rostock, 1819, p. 11 sqq.), who is followed by Weber in his edition of the Latin poets, with that love of paradox and hardihood

Such were the spectacles with which an enslaved and degenerate people consoled themselves for the loss of liberty; but, whatever may have been their gorgeousness and grandeur, they are far indeed removed from the interest and sublimity which environ the earlier and simpler scenes of Roman history.

The reign of Diocletian, the successor of Carinus, gave the first decisive blow to the predominance of the city, and in a few more years the capital of the world was to be transferred to the shores of the Bosphorus. In the incipient collapse of the empire, Rome appeared to be too far removed from the frontiers. Diocletian and Maximian, his associate in the empire, chose in preference Nicomedia in Bithynia and Milan for their places of residence, which, by their embellishments, seemed to grow into new capitals. The continued absence of Diocletian from Rome not only occasioned its splendour to decay, but also struck a deadly blow at the power and authority of the senate, who ceased to be consulted on the affairs of the Empire. Nearly twenty years of his reign had elapsed before Diocletian visited for the first time the Roman capital, when he celebrated a triumph which, though not precisely the last, as Gibbon says,1 was among the last which that city beheld (A. D. 302). His stay at Rome did not exceed two months, and shortly afterwards he abdicated the imperial throne and retired to Salona. Yet during this short visit he founded the THERME DIOCLETIANÆ, the largest and most splendid of the baths hitherto erected at Rome. They are said by Olympiodorus

of assertion which characterise German critics, have even placed him in the reign of Nero. But the Flavian amphitheatre, which is certainly described in the 7th Eclogue, as is plain from its situation among the hills (v. 32), was not then built; and as the citizen who converses with Corydon was an old man, the time of the poem must necessarily

be placed at earliest fifty years after Titus, or A. D. 130. On the other hand, we know from Vopiscus that Carinus celebrated some fantastically splendid games; and Calpurnius' line, quæ patula juvenis deus edit arena (ver. 6), agrees with the age of Carinus.

1 Decline and Fall, vol. ii. p. 89.