of great external splendour, but of real and rapid decay; the court was distinguished at once by avarice and prodigality; the money raised by heavy taxes, unknown in former ages, was lavished on unworthy favourites or wasted in idle exhibitions of magnificence. 2.  A mind relaxed by prosperity is peculiarly open to suspicion; the ears of the monarch were greedily lent to every tale brought to him by malignant spies and informers; such encouragement increased the number of those wretches; every street and almost every house in the capital, contained some one ever on the watch to pick up any unguarded expression which might be distorted into treason or sedition.  It was not likely that a monarch who had consented to the murder of his own son, on the most groundless charges, would be more merciful to those who had no natural claims upon his forbearance; execution followed execution with fearful rapidity, until the bonds of society were broken, and every man dreaded his neighbour, lest by misinterpreting a word or look, he should expose him to the indiscriminate cruelty of the sovereign.

3.  The example of their father’s tyranny produced an effect on the minds of his sons, which no education, however excellent or judicious, could remove.  Pious Christian pastors, learned philosophers, and venerable sages of the law, were employed to instruct the three princes, Constanti’ne, Constan’tius, and Con’stans; but the effects of their labours never appeared in the lives of their pupils.

4.  For some reasons which it is now impossible to discover, the great Constantine had raised two of his nephews to the rank of princes, and placed them on an equality with his own children.  Before the emperor’s body was consigned to the tomb, this impolitic arrangement brought destruction on the entire Flavian family.  A forged scroll was produced by the bishop of Nicome’dia, purporting to be Constantine’s last will, in which he accused his brothers of having given him poison, and besought his sons to avenge his death. 5.  Constan’tius eagerly embraced such an opportunity of destroying the objects of his jealousy; his two uncles, seven of his cousins, the patrician Opta’lus, who married the late emperor’s sister, and the prefect Abla’vius, whose chief crime was enormous wealth, were subjected to a mock trial, and delivered to the executioner.  Of so numerous a family Gal’lus and Julian alone were spared; they owed their safety to their concealment, until the rage of the assassins had abated. 6.  After this massacre, the three brothers, similar in name, and more alike in crime, proceeded to divide their father’s dominions:  Constantine took for his share the new capital and the central provinces; Thrace and the East were assigned to Constan’tius; Con’stans received Italy, Africa, and the western Illy’ricum.