f them singly, a visible
and important object in the military history of the Roman empire. A few
years afterwards, these gigantic bodies were shrunk to a very diminutive
size; and when seven legions, with some auxiliaries, defended the city
of Amida against the Persians, the total garrison, with the inhabitants
of both sexes, and the peasants of the deserted country, did not exceed
the number of twenty thousand persons. From this fact, and from similar
examples, there is reason to believe, that the constitution of the
legionary troops, to which they partly owed their valor and discipline,
was dissolved by Constantine; and that the bands of Roman infantry,
which still assumed the same names and the same honors, consisted
only of one thousand or fifteen hundred men. The conspiracy of so many
separate detachments, each of which was awed by the sense of its own
weakness, could easily be checked; and the successors of Constantine
might indulge their love of ostentation, by issuing their orders to one
hundred and thirty-two legions, inscribed on the muster-roll of their
numerous armies. The remainder of their troops was distributed into
several hundred cohorts of infantry, and squadrons of cavalry. Their
arms, and titles, and ensigns, were calculated to inspire terror, and to
display the variety of nations who marched under the Imperial standard.
And not a vestige was left of that severe simplicity, which, in the ages
of freedom and victory, had distinguished the line of battle of a Roman
army from the confused host of an Asiatic monarch. A more particular
enumeration, drawn from the Notitia, might exercise the diligence of an
antiquary; but the historian will content himself with observing,
that the number of permanent stations or garrisons established on the
frontiers of the empire, amounted to five hundred and eighty-three; and
that, under the successors of Constantine, the complete force of the
military establishment was computed at six hundred and forty-five
thousand soldiers. An effort so prodigious surpassed the wants of a more
ancient, and the faculties of a later, period.

In the various states of society, armies are recruited from very
different motives. Barbarians are urged by the love of war; the citizens
of a free republic may be prompted by a principle of duty; the subjects,
or at least the nobles, of a monarchy, are animated by a sentiment of
honor; but the timid and luxurious inhabitants of a declining empire