all the legal transactions of the
Roman government. By his marriage with the granddaughter of Constantine,
the son of Valentinian acquired all the hereditary rights of the
Flavian family; which, in a series of three Imperial generations, were
sanctified by time, religion, and the reverence of the people. At the
death of his father, the royal youth was in the seventeenth year of his
age; and his virtues already justified the favorable opinion of the army
and the people. But Gratian resided, without apprehension, in the palace
of Treves; whilst, at the distance of many hundred miles, Valentinian
suddenly expired in the camp of Bregetio. The passions, which had been
so long suppressed by the presence of a master, immediately revived in
the Imperial council; and the ambitious design of reigning in the name
of an infant, was artfully executed by Mellobaudes and Equitius,
who commanded the attachment of the Illyrian and Italian bands. They
contrived the most honorable pretences to remove the popular leaders,
and the troops of Gaul, who might have asserted the claims of the lawful
successor; they suggested the necessity of extinguishing the hopes
of foreign and domestic enemies, by a bold and decisive measure. The
empress Justina, who had been left in a palace about one hundred miles
from Bregetio, was respectively invited to appear in the camp, with
the son of the deceased emperor. On the sixth day after the death of
Valentinian, the infant prince of the same name, who was only four years
old, was shown, in the arms of his mother, to the legions; and solemnly
invested, by military acclamation, with the titles and ensigns of
supreme power. The impending dangers of a civil war were seasonably
prevented by the wise and moderate conduct of the emperor Gratian. He
cheerfully accepted the choice of the army; declared that he should
always consider the son of Justina as a brother, not as a rival; and
advised the empress, with her son Valentinian to fix their residence at
Milan, in the fair and peaceful province of Italy; while he assumed
the more arduous command of the countries beyond the Alps. Gratian
dissembled his resentment till he could safely punish, or disgrace,
the authors of the conspiracy; and though he uniformly behaved with
tenderness and regard to his infant colleague, he gradually confounded,
in the administration of the Western empire, the office of a guardian
with the authority of a sovereign. The government of the R