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256
THE DECLINE AND FALL
ably conducted by their general Posthumus,[1] who, though he afterwards betrayed[2] the family of Valerian, was ever faithful to the great interest of the monarchy. The treacherous language of panegyrics and medals darkly announces a long series of victories. Trophies and titles attest (if such evidence can attest) the fame of Posthumus, who is repeatedly styled The Conqueror of the Germans, and the Saviour of Gaul.[3]
ravage Spain But a single fact, the only one indeed of which we have any distinct knowledge, erases in a great measure these monuments of vanity and adulation. The Rhine, though dignified with the title of Safeguard of the provinces, was an imperfect barrier against the daring spirit of enterprise with which the Franks were actuated. Their rapid devastations stretched from the river to the foot of the Pyrenees; nor were they stopped by those mountains. Spain, which had never dreaded, was unable to resist, the inroads of the Germans. During twelve years,[4] the greatest part of the reign of Gallienus, that opulent country was the theatre of unequal and destructive hostilities. Tarragona, the flourishing capital of a peaceful province, was sacked and almost destroyed;[5] and so late as the days of Orosius, who wrote in the fifth century, wretched cottages, scattered amidst the ruins of magnificent cities, still recorded the rage of the and pass over into Africa barbarians.[6] When the exhausted country no longer supplied a variety of plunder, the Franks seized on some vessels in the ports of Spain[7] and transported themselves into Mauritania. The distant province was astonished with the fury of these bar-- ↑ [M. Cassianius Latinius Postumus.]
- ↑ [He was proclaimed emperor by the soldiers in 258, shortly after Gallienus had hastened from the Rhine frontier to the defence of the Danube. The emperor's elder son and colleague, Valerian the Younger, who had been left at Köln to represent him, was slain by the rebels in 259. The reign of Postumus, one of the "thirty tyrants," lasted till 268. Gibbon omits to mention the elder son of Gallienus, Valerian. Saloninus was the younger, but he was called Valerian after his brother's death.]
- ↑ M. de Brequigny (in the Mémoires de l'Académie, tom. xxx.) has given us a very curious life of Posthumus. A series of the Augustan History from Medals and Inscriptions has been more than once planned, and is still much wanted. [See Eckhel, vii. 439.]
- ↑ [256-268 A.D.]
- ↑ Aurel. Victor [Cæs.], c. 33 [§ 3]. Instead of Pane direpto, both the sense and the expression require deleto, though, indeed, for different reasons, it is alike difficult to correct the text of the best and of the worst writers.
- ↑ In the time of Ausonius (the end of the fourth century) Ilerda or Lerida was in a very ruinous state (Auson. Epist. xxv. 58), which probably was the consequence of this invasion. [See Orosius, vii. 22, 8]
- ↑ Valesius is therefore mistaken in supposing that the Franks had invaded Spain by sea.
