treatise has avenged the cause of religion, bestows on the piety of the emperor a more awful and sublime character. He affirms, with the most perfect confidence, that in the night which preceded the last battle against Maxentius, Constantine was admonished in a dream to inscribe the shields of his soldiers with the celestial sign of God, the sacred monogram of the name of Christ; that he executed the commands of Heaven, and that his valor and obedience were rewarded by the decisive victory of the Milvian Bridge. Some considerations might perhaps incline a skeptical mind to suspect the judgment or the veracity of the rhetorician, whose pen, either from zeal or interest, was devoted to the cause of the prevailing faction. He appears to have published his "Deaths of the Persecutors" at Nicomedia about three years after the Roman victory; but the interval of a thousand miles, and a thousand days, will allow an ample latitude for the invention of declaimers, the credulity of party, and the tacit approbation of the emperor himself; who might listen without indignation to a marvelous tale, which exalted his fame, and promoted his designs. If the dream of Constantine is separately considered, it may be naturally explained either by the policy or the enthusiasm of the emperor. Whilst his anxiety for the approaching day, which must decide the fate of the empire, was suspended by a short and interrupted slumber, the venerable form of Christ, and the well-known symbol of his religion, might forcibly offer themselves to the active fancy of a prince who reverenced the name, and had perhaps secretly implored the power, of the God of the Christians. As readily might a consummate statesman indulge himself in the use of one of those military stratagems, one of those pious frauds, which Philip and Sertorius had employed with such art and effect. The preternatural origin of dreams was universally admitted by the nations of antiquity, and a considerable part of the Gallic army was already prepared to place their confidence in the salutary sign of the Christian religion.

The secret vision of Constantine could be disproved only by the event; and the intrepid hero who had passed the Alps, and the Apennine, might view with careless despair the con

sequences of a defeat under the walls of Rome. The senate and people, exulting in their own deliverance from an odious tyrant, acknowledged that the victory of Constantine surpassed the powers of man, without daring to insinuate that it had been obtained by the protection of the gods. The triumphal arch, which was erected about three years after the event, proclaims, in ambiguous language, that by the greatness of his own mind, and by an instinct or impulse of the Divinity, he had saved and avenged the Roman republic. The Pagan orator, who had seized an earlier opportunity of celebrating the virtues of the conqueror, supposes that he alone enjoyed a secret and intimate commerce with the Supreme Being, who delegated the care of mortals to his subordinate deities; and thus assigns a very plausible reason why the subjects of Constantine should not presume to embrace the new religion of their sovereign.

III. The philosopher, who with calm suspicion examines the dreams and omens, the miracles and prodigies, of profane or even of ecclesiastical history, will probably conclude, that if the eyes of the spectators have sometimes been deceived by fraud, the understanding of the readers has much more. frequently been insulted by fiction. Every event, or appearance, or accident, which seems to deviate from the ordinary course of nature, has been rashly ascribed to the immediate action of the Deity; and the astonished fancy of the multitude has sometimes given shape and color, language and motion, to the fleeting but uncommon meteors of the air. Eusebius reports Constantine to have seen with his own eyes the luminous trophy of the cross, placed above the meridian sun, and inscribed with the following words: BY THIS CONQUER. This amazing object in the sky astonished the whole army, as well as the emperor himself, who was yet undetermined in the choice of a religion; but his astonishment was converted into faith by the vision of the ensuing night. Christ appeared before his eyes; and displaying the same. celestial sign of the cross, he directed Constantine to frame a similar standard, and to march, with an assurance of victory, against Maxentius and all his enemies. The learned Bishop of Cæsarea appears to be sensible, that the recent discovery

of this marvelous anecdote would excite some surprise and distrust among the most pious of his readers. He contents himself with alleging a very singular testimony; that of the deceased Constantine, who, many years after the event, in the freedom of conversation, had related to him this extraordinary incident of his own life, and had attested the truth of it by a solemn oath. The prudence and gratitude of the learned prelate forbade him to suspect the veracity of his victorious master; but he plainly intimates, that in a fact of such a nature, he should have refused his assent to any meaner authority. This motive of credibility could not survive the power of the Flavian family; and the celestial sign, which the Infidels might afterwards deride, was disregarded by the Christians of the age which immediately followed the conversion of Constantine. But the Catholic church, both of the East and of the West, has adopted a prodigy, which favors, or seems to favor, the popular worship of the cross.

-E. GIBBON.

SPES PVBLIC
A

CONS

BELISARIUS.

ELISARIUS is one of those heroic names which are familiar to every age and nation. He was a military commander of the first order, and the greatest general of the Byzantine Empire. To his genius and victories the Emperor Justinian was indebted for the military glory of his reign. The pathetic close of his career, according to the common story, yet not thoroughly authenticated, has impressed his memory on the popular mind.

Belisarius was born of obscure parents at Germania, in Illyria, about 505, A.D. His native Slavonic name, Beli-Tzar, means "White Prince." The historian, Procopius, was his secretary and biographer, but has not given information about his youth. Belisarius served in the private guard of Justinian during the reign of Justin, and on the accession of Justinian, in 527, A.D., he was appointed general of the Eastern armies, which defended the empire from Persian invasion. In 530 he gained a decisive victory at Dara, and in the next year at Callinicum. In 532, A.D., a dangerous sedition was raised in Constantinople, by the mutual hatred of factions called the Blues and the Greens. Belisarius, with 3,000 veterans under his command, quelled the sedition after about 30,000 of the rioters and rebels had been killed.

Belisarius married Antonina, who had been an actress of loose morality, yet she reigned with absolute power over her uxorious husband, and accompanied him in all the hardships and dangers of a military life. In 533 Justinian collected a

large fleet and army for an expedition against the Vandals of Africa, and gave the supreme command, by land and sea, to Belisarius, with unlimited power to act according to his discretion. Departing from Constantinople in June, he landed on the coast of Africa in September, 533, A.D. The Vandal king, Gelimer, who reigned at the city of Carthage, collected a formidable army, which he commanded in person. Belisarius gained a decisive victory ten miles from Carthage and entered that city without resistance. The citizens, with joyful acclamations, welcomed and invited their Roman deliverers. Belisarius maintained strict discipline, and forbade the soldiers to rob or massacre the inhabitants. Another battle, in which he defeated the Vandals, resulted in the final overthrow of their African kingdom. He dispatched an officer to inform Justinian that in the space of three months he had achieved the conquest of Africa. Gelimer was captured and treated with clemency. In 534, A.D., Belisarius was honored with a triumph, which was the first ever witnessed in Constantinople, and the first ever enjoyed by a subject since the reign of Tiberius.

Belisarius became sole consul in the year 535; and in the same year commanded an expedition against the Gothic king, Theodatus, who reigned in Italy. He besieged and took Naples and marched to Rome, which Vitiges, the new Gothic king, did not defend. The deputies of the Pope and the Senate invited Belisarius to accept their voluntary allegiance and to enter the city, which he did in December, 536, A.D. In the following spring, Vitiges collected an army of 150,000 Goths and besieged Rome. With an army of 5,000 veterans, Belisarius defended the city for a year. In one battle between the Goths and Romans, the former were repulsed with 30,000 killed. "This perilous day," says Gibbon, "was the most glorious in the life of Belisarius." From this day the siege degenerated into a tedious blockade. In March, 538, A.D., the Gothic army was forced to raise the siege of Rome, and Vitiges retreated to Ravenna, the Gothic capital. The war was terminated by the capture of Ravenna and Vitiges, in 539, A.D. The Goths then tempted Belisarius to desert the service of his master and become the emperor of the West;