272 THE DECLINE AND FALL [A.D. 406] Constantlne Is acknow ledged in Britain and Gaul. A.D. 407 fair opportunity of the Gotliic war, when the walls and stations of the province were stripped of the Roman troops. If any of the legionaries were permitted to return from the Italian expedition, their faithful report of the court and character of Honorius must have tended to dissolve the bonds of allegiance and to exasperate the seditious temper of the British army. The spirit of revolt, which had formerly disturbed the age of Gallienus, was revived by the capricious violence of the soldiers ; and the unfortunate, perhaps the ambitious, candidates, who were the objects of their choice, were the instruments, and at length the victims, of their passion." Marcus was the first whom they placed on the throne, as the lawful emperor of Britain, and of the West. They violated, by the hasty murder of Marcus, the oath of fidelity which they had imposed on themselves ; and their disapprobation of his manners may seem to inscribe an honourable epitaph on his tomb. Gratian was the next whom they adorned with the diadem and the purple ; and, at the end of four months, Gratian experienced the fate of his predecessor. The memory of the great Constantine, whom the British legions had given to the church and to the empire, suggested the singular motive of their third choice. They discovered in the ranks a private soldier of the name of Constantine, and their impetuous levity had already seated him on the throne, before they perceived his incapacity to sustain the weight of that glorious appellation.^ Yet the authority of Constantine was less precarious, and his government was more successful, than the transient reigns of Marcus and of Gratian. The danger of leaving his inactive ti-oops in those camps which had been twice polluted with blood and sedition urged him to attempt the reduction of the Western provinces. He landed at Boulogne with an inconsiderable force ; and, after he had reposed him- self some days, he summoned the cities of Gaul, which had escaped the yoke of the Barbarians, to acknowledge their law- ful sovereign. They obeyed the summons without reluctance. The neglect of the court of Ravenna had absolved a deserted people from the duty of allegiance ; their actual distress en- ^ The British usurpers are taken from Zosimus (1. vi. p. 371-375 [c. 2]), Orosius (1. vii. c. 40, p. 576, 577), Olympiodorus (apud Photium, p. 180, 181 [fr. 12I), the ecclesiastical historians, and the Chronicles. The Latins are ignorant of Marcus. [According to Zosimus, the invasion of Gaul by the Vandals caused the revolt in Britain. For the usurpers see Appendix ig and 20.] 98 Cum in Constantino imonstantiam . . . execrarentur (Sidonius ApoUinaris, I. v. epist. 9, p. 139, edit, secund. Sirmond.). Yet Sidonius might be tempted, by so fair a pun, to stigmatize a prince who had disgraced his grandfather.
