Wars of Constantius.
The emperor Constantius was engaged in successive wars with the barbarians,—with the Persians on the East, the Sarmatians on the Danube, and the Franks and Alemanni, on the Rhine. During these wars, his brother-in-law, Julian, was sent to the West with the title of Cæsar, where he restored order, and showed signal ability. On the death of Constantius, he was recognized as emperor without opposition, A.D. 361.
Julian.
Julian is generally called the Apostate, since he proclaimed a change in the established religion, but tolerated Christianity. He was a Platonic philosopher—a man of great virtue and ability, whose life was unstained by vices. But his attempt to restore paganism was senseless [pg 630] and ineffectual. As a popular belief, paganism had expired. His character is warmly praised by Gibbon, and commended by other historians. He struggled against the spirit of his age, and was unsuccessful. He was worthy of the best ages of the empire in the exercise of all pagan virtues—the true successor of Hadrian and the Antonines.
Death of Julian. Jovian.
He was also a great general, and sought to crush the power of the Persian kings and make Babylonia a Roman province. Here, too, he failed, although he gained signal successes. He was mortally wounded while effecting a retreat from the Tigris, after a short reign of twenty months. With him ended the house of Constantine. The empire was conferred by the troops on Flavius Claudius Jovianus, chief of the imperial household, A.D. 363—a man of moderate talents and good intentions, but unfit for such stormy times. He restored Christianity, which henceforth was the national religion. He died the following year, and was succeeded by Flavius Valentinianus, the son of Count Gratian, a general who had arisen from obscurity in Pannonia, to the command of Africa and Britain.
Valentinian. Barbaric invasions.
Valentinian was forty-four years of age when he began to reign, A.D. 364, a man of noble character and person, and in a month associated his brother Flavius Valens with him in the government of the empire. Valentinian kept the West, and conferred the East on Valens. Thus was the empire again formally divided, and was not reunited until the reign of Theodosius. Valentinian chose the post of danger, rather than of pleasure and luxury, for the West was now invaded by various tribes of the Germanic race. The Alemanni were powerful on the Rhine; the Saxons were invading Britain; the Burgundians were commencing their ravages in Gaul; and the Goths were preparing for another inroad. The emperor, whose seat of power was Milan, was engaged in perpetual, but indecisive conflicts. He reigned with vigor, and repressed the barbarians. He bestowed the title of Augustus on his [pg 631] son Gratian, and died in a storm of wrath by the bursting of a blood-vessel, while reviling the ambassadors of the Quadi, A.D. 375.
Valens.
The emperor Valens, at Constantinople, was exposed to no less dangers, without the force to meet them. The great nation of the Goths, who had been at peace with the empire for a generation, resumed their hostilities upon the Danube. Hermanneric, the first historic name among these fierce people, had won a series of brilliant victories over other barbarians, after he was eighty years of age. His dominions extended from the Danube to the Baltic, and embraced the greater part of Germany and Scythia.