OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 278 couraged them to accept any circumstances of change, without apprehension, and perhaps with some degree of hope ; and they might flatter themselves that the troops, the authority, and even the name of a Roman emperor, who fixed his residence in Gaul, would protect the unhappy country from the rage of the Bar- barians. The first successes of Constantine against the detached parties of the Germans were magnified by the voice of adula- tion into splendid and decisive victories ; which the reunion and insolence of the enemy soon reduced to their just value. His negotiations procured a short and precarious truce ; and, if some tribes of the barbarians were engaged, by the liberality of his gifts and promises, to undertake the defence of the Rhine, these expensive and uncertain treaties, instead of restoring the pristine vigour of the Gallic frontier, served only to disgrace the majesty of the prince and to exhaust what yet remained of the treasures of the republic. Elated, however, with this imaginary triumph, the vain deliverer of Gaul advanced into the provinces of the South, to encounter a more pressing and personal danger. Sarus the Goth was ordered to lay the head of the rebel at the feet of [a.d.408] the emperor Honorius ; and the forces of Britain and Italy wei'e unworthily consumed in this domestic quarrel. After the loss of his two bravest generals Justinian and Nevigastes, the former [Neviogast] of whom was slain in the field of battle, the latter in a peaceful and treacherous interview, Constantine fortified himself within the walls of Vienna. The place was ineffectually attacked [Je?. vaientia, seven days ; and the Imperial army supported, in a precipitate '^^' retreat, the ignominy of purchasing a secure passage from the fi'eebooters and outlaws of the Alps.-'-' Those mountains now separated the dominions of two rival monarchs : and the fortifica- tions of the double frontier were guarded by the ti-oops of the empire, whose arms would have been more usefully employed to maintain the Roman limits against the Barbarians of Germany and Scythia. On the side of the Pyrenees, the ambition of Constantine He reduces might be justified by the proximity of danger ; but his throne l^rii^ios was soon established by the conquest, or rather submission, of Spain ; which yielded to the influence of regular and habitual subordination, and received the laws and magistrates of the Gallic praefecture. The only opposition which was made to the ^ BagaudcB is the name which Zosimus applies to them [BaxaOSais. vi. 2] ; perhaps they deserved a less odious character (see Dubos, Hist. Critique, torn. i. p. 203, and this History, vol. ii. p. 121). We shall hear of them again. [Here they appear as a sort of national militia. Cp. Freeman, in Eng. Hist. Review, i. 63.] VOL. III. 18
