the ambition of some competitor, who might occupy the vacant allegiance of Europe. But he soon received the grateful intelligence that his authority was acknowledged from the Thracian Bosphorus to the Atlantic ocean. By the first letters which he dispatched from the camp of Mesopotamia he had delegated the military command of Gaul and Illyricum to Malarich, a brave and faithful officer of the nation of the Franks, and to his father-in-law. Count Lucillian, who had formerly distinguished his courage and conduct in the defence of Nisibis. Malarich had declined an office to which he thought himself unequal; and Lucillian was massacred at Rheims, in an accidental mutiny of the Batavian cohorts.[1] But the moderation of Jovinus, master-general of the cavalry, who forgave the intention of his disgrace, soon appeased the tumult and confirmed the uncertain minds of the soldiers. The oath of fidelity was administered and taken with loyal acclamations; and the deputies of the Western armies[2] saluted their new sovereign as he descended from Mount Taurus to the city of Tyana, in Cappadocia. From Tyana he continued his hasty march to Ancyra, capital of the province of Galatia; where Jovian assumed, with his infant son, the name and ensigns of the consulship. [3] A.D. 364, January 1 Dadastana,[4] an obscure town, almost at an equal distance between Ancyra and Nice, was marked for the fatal term of his journey and his life. After indulging himself with a plentiful, perhaps an intemperate, supper, he retired to rest; and the next morning the emperor Jovian was found dead in his bed. Death of Jovian, Feb. 17 The cause of this sudden death was variously understood. By some it was ascribed to the consequences of an indigestion, occasioned either by the quantity of the wine, or the quality of the mushrooms, which he had swallowed in the evening. According to others, he was
- ↑ Compare Ammianus (xxv. 10), who omits the name of the Batavians, with Zosimus (1. iii. p. 197 [c. 35]), who removes the scene of action from Rheims to Sirmium.
- ↑ Quos capita scholarum ordo castrensis appellat. Ammian. xxv. 10, and Vales, ad locum.
- ↑ Cujus vagitus, pertinaciter reluctantis, ne in curuli sellâ veheretur ex more, id quod mox accidit protendebat. Augustus and his successors respectfully solicited a dispensation of age for the sons or nephews whom they raised to the consulship. But the curule chair of the first Brutus had never been dishonoured by an infant.
- ↑ The Itinerary of Antoninus fixes Dadastana 125 [leg. 117] Roman miles from Nice; 117 [leg. 125] from Ancyra. Wesseling, Itinerar. p. 142. The pilgrim of Bordeaux, by omitting some stages, reduces the whole space from 242 to 181 miles. Wesseling, p. 574. [Dadastana, border town between Bithynia and Galatia, seems before Diocletian to have been in Bithynia, but at this time was in Galatia, See Ramsay, Hist. Geography of Asia Minor, p. 241.]
