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in his sleep by the vapor of charcoal, which extracted from the walls of the apartment the unwholesome moisture of the fresh plaster. ^16 But the want of a regular inquiry into the death of a prince, whose reign and person were soon forgotten, appears to have been the only circumstance which countenanced the malicious whispers of poison and domestic guilt. ^17 The body of Jovian was sent to Constantinople, to be interred with his predecessors, and the sad procession was met on the road by his wife Charito, the daughter of Count Lucillian; who still wept the recent death of her father, and was hastening to dry her tears in the embraces of an Imperial husband. Her disappointment and grief were imbittered by the anxiety of maternal tenderness. Six weeks before the death of Jovian, his infant son had been placed in the curule chair, adorned with the title of Nobilissimus, and the vain ensigns of the consulship. Unconscious of his fortune, the royal youth, who, from his grandfather, assumed the name of Varronian, was reminded only by the jealousy of the government, that he was the son of an emperor. Sixteen years afterwards he was still alive, but he had already been deprived of an eye; and his afflicted mother expected every hour, that the innocent victim would be torn from her arms, to appease, with his blood, the suspicions of the reigning prince. ^18

[Footnote 11: Johan. Antiochen. in Excerpt. Valesian. p. 845. The libels of Antioch may be admitted on very slight evidence.]

[Footnote 12: Compare Ammianus, (xxv. 10,) who omits the name of the Batarians, with Zosimus, (l. iii. p. 197,) who removes the scene of action from Rheims to Sirmium.]

[Footnote 13: Quos capita scholarum ordo castrensis appellat. Ammian. xxv. 10, and Vales. ad locum.]

[Footnote 14: Cugus vagitus, pertinaciter reluctantis, ne in curuli sella veheretur ex more, id quod mox accidit protendebat. Augustus and his successors respectfully solicited a dispensation of age for the sons or nephews whom they raised to the consulship. But the curule chair of the first Brutus had never been dishonored by an infant.]

[Footnote 15: The Itinerary of Antoninus fixes Dadastana 125 Roman miles from Nice; 117 from Ancyra, (Wesseling, Itinerar. p. 142.) The pilgrim of Bourdeaux, by omitting some stages, reduces the whole space from 242 to 181 miles. Wesseling, p. 574.

Note: Dadastana is supposed to be Castabat. - M.]

[Footnote 16: See Ammianus, (xxv. 10,) Eutropius, (x. 18.) who might likewise be present, Jerom, (tom. i. p. 26, ad Heliodorum.) Orosius, (vii. 31,) Sozomen, (l. vi. c. 6,) Zosimus, (l. iii. p. 197, 198,) and Zonaras, (tom. ii. l. xiii. p. 28, 29.) We cannot expect a perfect agreement, and we shall not discuss minute differences.]

[Footnote 17: Ammianus, unmindful of his usual candor and good sense, compares the death of the harmless Jovian to that of the second Africanus, who had excited the fears and resentment of the popular faction.]

[Footnote 18: Chrysostom, tom. i. p. 336, 344, edit. Montfaucon. The Christian orator attempts to comfort a widow by the examples of illustrious misfortunes; and observes, that of nine emperors (including the Caesar Gallus) who had reigned in his time, only two (Constantine and Constantius) died a natural death. Such vague consolations have never wiped away a single tear.]

After the death of Jovian, the throne of the Roman world remained ten days, ^19 without a master. The ministers and generals still continued to meet in council; to exercise their respective functions; to maintain the public order; and peaceably to conduct the army to the city of Nice in Bithynia, which was chosen for the place of the election. ^20 In a solemn assembly of the civil and military powers of the empire, the diadem was again unanimously offered to the praefect Sallust. He enjoyed the glory of a second refusal: and when the virtues of the father were alleged in favor of his son, the praefect, with the firmness of a disinterested patriot, declared to the electors, that the feeble age of the one, and the unexperienced