Eutropius

“ XXVIII Diocletian lived to an old age in a private station, at a villa which is not far from Salonae, in honourable retirement, exercising extraordinary philosophy, inasmuch as he alone of all men, since the foundation of the Roman empire, voluntarily returned from so high a dignity to the condition of private life, and to an equality with the other citizens. That happened to him, therefore, which had happened to no one since men were created, that, though he died in a private condition, he was enrolled among the gods. ”

“ Constantius, however, content with the dignity of emperor, declined the care of governing Africa. He was an excellent man, of extreme benevolence, who studied to increase the resources of the provinces and of private persons, cared but little for the improvement of the public treasury, and used to say that "it was better for the national wealth to be in the hands of individuals than to be laid up in one place of confinement." ”

“ VIII To Hadrian, then, succeeded TITUS ANTONINUS FULVIUS BOIONIUS, [6] who was also named Pius, sprung from an eminent, though not very ancient, family: a man of high character, who may justly be compared to Numa Pompilius, as Trajan may be paralleled with Romulus. He lived, before he came to the throne, in great honour, but in greater still during his reign. He was cruel to none, but indulgent to all. His reputation in military affairs was but moderate; he studied rather to defend the provinces than to enlarge them. He sought out the most just men to fill political offices. ”

“ VII In the six hundred and seventy-eighth year of Rome, Marcus Licinius Lucullus, the cousin of that Lucullus who had carried on the war against Mithridates, obtained the province of Macedonia. A new war, too, suddenly sprung up in Italy; for eighty-four gladiators, led by Spartacus, Crixus, and Oenomaus, having broken out of a school at Capua, made their escape; and, wandering over Italy, kindled a war in it, not much less serious than that which Hannibal had raised; for, after defeating several generals and two consuls of the Romans, they collected an army of nearly sixty thousand men. ”

“ XVI After him TACITUS succeeded to the throne; a man of excellent morals, and well qualified to govern the empire. He was unable, however, to show the world anything remarkable, being cut off by death in the sixth mouth of his reign. FLORIANUS, who succeeded Tacitus, was on the throne only two mouths and twenty days, and did nothing worthy of mention.
XVII PROBUS then succeeded to the government, a man rendered illustrious by the distinction which he obtained in war. He recovered Gaul, which had been seized by the Barbarians, by remarkable successes in the field. ”

“ He conducted himself towards all men at Rome as if he had been their equal, being moved to no arrogance by his elevation to empire. He exercised the most prompt liberality, and managed the provinces with the utmost kindness and indulgence. ”

“ After the death of Constans, when MAGNENTIUS held the government of Italy, Africa, and Gaul, Illyricum also felt some new commotions, VETRANIO being elected to the throne by a combination of the soldiery, whom they made emperor when he was very old and universally popular from the length and success of his service in the field; an upright man, of morality severe as that of the ancients, and of an agreeable unassumingness of manner, but so ignorant of all polite learning, that he did not even acquire the first rudiments of literature until he was old and had become emperor. ”

“ The king, struck with admiration of his conduct, is reported to have exclaimed on the occasion, "That excellent Fabricius is a man who can less easily be diverted from the path of honour, than the sun from its course." ”

“ To the Emperor Valens, Maximus Perpetuus, Augustus. [1]
According to the pleasure of your Clemency, [2] I have arranged in a brief narrative, in the order of time, such particulars in the history of Rome as seemed most worthy of notice, in transactions either of war or peace, from the foundation of the city to our own days; adding concisely, also, such matters as were remarkable in the lives of the emperors; that your Serenity's divine mind may rejoice to learn that it has followed the actions of illustrious men in governing the empire, before it became acquainted with them by reading. ”

“ The war was carried by Scipio, and Masinissa, another king of the Numidians, who had made an alliance with Scipio, to the very walls of Carthage. Hannibal sent three spies into Scipio's camp, who were captured, and Scipio ordered them to be led round the camp, the whole army to be shown them, and themselves to be entertained and dismissed, that they might report to Hannibal all that they had seen among the Romans. ”

“ XXII In the consulship of Marcus Aemilius Paulus and Servius Fulvius Nobilior, both the Roman consuls set sail for Africa, with a fleet of three hundred ships. They first overcame the Africans in a sea-fight; Aemilius the consul sunk a hundred and four of the enemy's ships, took thirty, with the soldiers in them, killed or took prisoners fifteen thousand of the enemy, and enriched his own army with much plunder; and Africa would then have been subdued, but that so great a famine took place that the army could not continue there any longer. ”

“ On the side of the Romans were Eumenes, king of Asia, Ariarathes of Cappadocia, Antiochus of Syria, Ptolemy of Egypt, Masinissa of Numidia. Prusias, the king of Bithynia, although he had married the sister of Perseus, remained neutral. The general of the Romans, the consul Publius Licinius, was defeated by Perseus in a severe engagement; yet the Romans, although vanquished, refused peace to the king when he solicited it, except on condition that he should surrender himself and his people to the senate and the people of Rome. ”

“ XIII In the sixteenth year after the termination of the regal power, the people at Rome, thinking themselves oppressed by the senate and consuls, broke out into a sedition. On this occasion they created for themselves tribunes of the people, as their own peculiar judges and defenders, by whom they might be protected against the senate and the consuls.
XIV In the following year the Volsci recommenced hostilities against the Romans; and being overcome in the field, lost also Corioli, the best city that they had. ”

“ But Mithridates, having marched from thence to Cyzicus, that, after capturing that city, he might overrun all Asia, Lucullus, the other consul, met him; and, whilst Mithridates was detained at the siege of Cyzicus, besieged him in the rear, exhausted him with famine, defeated him in several battles, and at last pursued him to Byzantium, now called Constantinople. Lucullus also vanquished his commanders in a sea-fight. Thus, in a single winter and summer, almost a hundred thousand men on the king's side were cut off by Lucullus. ”

“ IX When affairs were in this desperate condition, and the Roman empire almost ruined, POSTUMUS, a man of very obscure birth, assumed the purple in Gaul, and held the government with such ability for ten years, that he recruited the provinces, which had been almost ruined, by his great energy and judgment ”

“ From that period he held the government as sole ruler for forty-four years, for during the twelve previous years he had held it in conjunction with Antony and Lepidus. Thus from the beginning of his reign to the end were fifty-six years. He died a natural death in his eighty-sixth year, at the town of Atella in Campania. and his remains are interred at Rome in the Campus Martius. He was a man who was considered in most respects, and not without reason, to resemble a divinity, for scarcely ever was there any one more successful than he in war, or more prudent in peace. ”

“ At last Licinius, defeated in a battle at Nicomedia by sea and land, surrendered himself, and, in violation of an oath taken by Constantine, was put to death, after being divested of the purple, at Thessalonica.
At this time the Roman empire fell under the sway of one emperor and three Caesars, a state of things which had never existed before; the sons of Constantine ruling over Gaul, the east, and Italy. But the pride of prosperity caused Constantine greatly to depart from his former agreeable mildness of temper. Falling first upon his own relatives, he put to death his son, an excellent man ”

“ XIII Thus war was carried on at the same time in four different places; in Italy, against Hannibal; in Spain, against Hasdrubal his brother; in Macedonia, against Philip; in Sardinia, against the Sardinians and another Hasdrubal, also a Carthaginian. Hasdrubal was taken alive by Titus Manlius the proconsul, who had been sent into Sardinia; twelve thousand of his men were slain, fifteen hundred made prisoners, and Sardinia brought under subjection to the Romans. Manlius, being thus successful, brought Hasdrubal and his other prisoners to Rome. ”

“ Fabricius, one of the Roman ambassadors, he admired so much, that, finding he was poor, he endeavoured to draw him over to his side with the promise of a fourth part of his kingdom, but he was repulsed with disdain by Fabricius. Pyrrhus, therefore, being struck with admiration at the character of the Romans, sent an eminent man. Cineas by name, as ambassador, to ask for peace on reasonable terms, provided that he might retain possession of that part of Italy, of which he had already become master in the war. ”

“ Envying Trajan's glory, he immediately gave up three of the provinces which Trajan had added to the empire, withdrawing the armies from Assyria, Mesopotamia, and Armenia, and deciding that the Euphrates should be the boundary of the empire. When he was proceeding, to act similarly with regard to Dacia, his friends dissuaded him, lest many Roman citizens should be left in the hands of the barbarians, because Trajan, after he had subdued Dacia, had transplanted thither an infinite number of men from the whole Roman world, to people the country and the cities ”

“ He was the first to institute the census, which till that time was unknown throughout the world. The people being all subjected to a census during his reign, Rome was found to contain eighty-four thousand citizens, including those in the country. He was cut off in the forty-fifth year of his reign, by the criminal machinations of his son-in-law Tarquin the Proud, the son of the king to whom he had succeeded, and of his own daughter, whom Tarquin had married. ”

“ VI On the death of Philip, king of Macedonia, who had both waged war with the Romans, and afterwards given aid to the Romans against Antiochus, his son Perseus took up arms again in Macedonia, having levied great forces for the war, and having as allies Cotys, king of Thrace, and the king of Illyricum, whose name was Gentius. ”

“ XI After this battle, several cities of Italy, which had been subject to the Romans, went over to Hannibal. Hannibal made proposals to the Romans concerning the redemption of the prisoners, but the senate replied, that "such citizens as would suffer themselves to be taken with arms in their hands were of no value to them." Hannibal then put them all to death with various tortures, and sent three modii of gold rings to Carthage, which he had taken from the fingers of Roman knights, senators, and soldiers. ”

“ During the forty-four years that he held the government alone, he conducted himself with the greatest courtesy, being most liberal to all, and most faithful to his friends, whom he raised to such honours, that he placed them almost on a level with his own dignity. ”

“ XIII About this time the Caesar Gallus, after committing many tyrannical acts, was put to death by Constantius. Gallus was a man naturally cruel, and too much inclined to tyranny, if he could but have reigned in his own right Silvanus also, who attempted an insurrection in Gaul, was cut off before the end of thirty days; and Constantius then remained sole ruler and emperor over the Roman dominions. ”

“ At length, as Metellus was thought singly unequal to the war, Cnaeus Pompey was sent into Spain. Thus, two generals being opposed to him, Sertorius often fought with very uncertain fortune. At last, in the eighth year of the war, he was put to death by his own soldiers, and an end made of the war by Cnaeus Pompey, at that time but a young man, and Quintus Metellus Pius; and nearly the whole of Spain was brought under the dominion of the Roman people. ”

“ The vanquished Carthaginians then sued to the Romans for peace, which Regulus refusing to grant, except upon the hardest conditions, the Africans sought aid from the Lacedaemonians, and, under a leader named Xantippus, who had been sent them by the Lacedaemonians, Regulus, the Roman general, was overthrown with a desperate slaughter; for two thousand men only escaped of all the Roman army; five hundred, with their commander Regulus, were taken prisoners, thirty thousand slain, and Regulus himself thrown into prison. ”

“ XX In the fourteenth year after Hannibal s invasion of Italy, Scipio, who had achieved such successes in Spain, was created consul, and sent into Africa; a man in whom there was thought to be something divine, so that he was even imagined to hold converse with the gods. He encountered Hanno, the general of the Carthaginians in Africa, and destroyed his army. ”

“ In his youth he performed many gallant acts in Gaul and Illyricum, killing Ingenuus, who had assumed the purple, at Mursa, [5] and Regalianus. He was then for a long time quiet and gentle; afterwards, abandoning himself to all manner of licentiousness, he relaxed the reins of government with disgraceful inactivity and carelesness. The Alemanni, having laid waste Gaul, penetrated into Italy. Dacia, which had been added to the empire beyond the Danube, was lost. Greece, Macedonia, Pontus, Asia, were devastated by the Goths. Pannonia was depopulated by the Sarmatians and Quadi. ”

“ Many kings, moreover, left their own dominions, and, assuming the Roman dress, that is, the toga, ran by the side of his carriage or his horse. At his death he was styled a divinity. He left the state in a most prosperous condition to his successor Tiberius, who had been his step-son, afterwards his son-in-law, and lastly his son by adoption.
XI TIBERIUS distinguished his reign by great indolence, excessive cruelty, unprincipled avarice, and abandoned licentiousness. He fought on no occasion in person; the wars were carried on by his generals. ”

“ Hannibal, who was with Antiochus, was defeated in a battle by sea. Antiochus himself was afterwards routed by Cornelius Scipio, the consul, in a great battle at Magnesia, a city of Asia, near mount Sipylus. Eumenes, who founded the city of Eumenia in Phrygia, the brother of king Attalus, assisted the Romans in that engagement. Fifty thousand foot, and three thousand horse were killed in that battle on the side of the king. ”