emn oaths, that the late invasion
was the crime of some irregular robbers, which the public council of the
nation condemned and abhorred. The answer of the emperor left them but
little to hope from his clemency or compassion. He reviled, in the
most intemperate language, their baseness, their ingratitude, their
insolence. His eyes, his voice, his color, his gestures, expressed the
violence of his ungoverned fury; and while his whole frame was agitated
with convulsive passion, a large blood vessel suddenly burst in his
body; and Valentinian fell speechless into the arms of his attendants.
Their pious care immediately concealed his situation from the crowd;
but, in a few minutes, the emperor of the West expired in an agony
of pain, retaining his senses till the last; and struggling, without
success, to declare his intentions to the generals and ministers, who
surrounded the royal couch. Valentinian was about fifty-four years of
age; and he wanted only one hundred days to accomplish the twelve years
of his reign.

The polygamy of Valentinian is seriously attested by an ecclesiastical
historian. "The empress Severa (I relate the fable) admitted into
her familiar society the lovely Justina, the daughter of an Italian
governor: her admiration of those naked charms, which she had often seen
in the bath, was expressed with such lavish and imprudent praise, that
the emperor was tempted to introduce a second wife into his bed; and
his public edict extended to all the subjects of the empire the same
domestic privilege which he had assumed for himself." But we may be
assured, from the evidence of reason as well as history, that the
two marriages of Valentinian, with Severa, and with Justina, were
successively contracted; and that he used the ancient permission of
divorce, which was still allowed by the laws, though it was condemned by
the church Severa was the mother of Gratian, who seemed to unite every
claim which could entitle him to the undoubted succession of the Western
empire. He was the eldest son of a monarch whose glorious reign had
confirmed the free and honorable choice of his fellow-soldiers. Before
he had attained the ninth year of his age, the royal youth received from
the hands of his indulgent father the purple robe and diadem, with the
title of Augustus; the election was solemnly ratified by the consent and
applause of the armies of Gaul; and the name of Gratian was added to the
names of Valentinian and Valens, in