prince; and the experience of the Roman censor might have directed him where to bestow the Imperial purple, as the reward of military merit. But, instead of making a judicious choice, which would have confirmed his reign and endeared his memory, Valerian, consulting only the dictates of affection or vanity, immediately invested with the supreme honours his son Gallienus,[1] a youth whose effeminate vices had been hitherto concealed by the obscurity of a private station. The joint government of the father and the son subsisted about seven, and the sole administration of Gallienus continued about eight, years. But the whole period was one uninterrupted series of confusion and calamity. As the Roman empire was at the same time, and on every side, attacked by the blind fury of foreign invaders, and the wild ambition of domestic usurpers, we shall consult order and perspicuity by pursuing not so much the doubtful arrangement of dates as the more natural distribution of subjects. The most dangerous enemies of Rome, during the reigns of Inroads of the barbarians Valerian and Gallienus, were,—1. The Franks. 2. The Alemanni. 3. The Goths; and, 4. The Persians. Under these general appellations we may comprehend the adventures of less considerable tribes, whose obscure and uncouth names would only serve to oppress the memory and perplex the attention of the reader.
Origin and confederacy of the FranksI. As the posterity of the Franks compose one of the greatest and most enlightened nations of Europe, the powers of learning and ingenuity have been exhausted in the discovery of their unlettered ancestors. To the tales of credulity have succeeded the systems of fancy. Every passage has been sifted, every spot has been surveyed, that might possibly reveal some faint traces of their origin. It has been supposed that Pannonia,[2] that Gaul, that the northern parts of Germany,[3] gave birth to that celebrated colony of warriors. At length the most rational critics, rejecting the fictitious emigrations of ideal conquerors, have acquiesced in a sentiment whose simplicity persuades us of its truth.[4] They suppose that, about the year two hundred- ↑ [P. Licinius Egnatius Gallienus. The son of Gallienus was also associated in the empire—P. Licinius Cornelius Valerianus.]
- ↑ Various systems have been formed to explain difficult passages in Gregory of Tours, l. ii. c. 9.
- ↑ The Geographer of Ravenna, i. 11, by mentioning Mauringania on the confines of Denmark, as the ancient seat of the Franks, gave birth to an ingenious system of Leibnitz.
- ↑ See Cluver. Germania Antiqua, l. iii. c. 20. M. Freret, in the Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions, tom. xviii. [The Franks were the descendants of the
