ors of fortune, the death of his eldest son,
of his nephew, and perhaps of his wife, he enjoyed an uninterrupted flow
of private as well as public felicity, till the thirtieth year of his
reign; a period which none of his predecessors, since Augustus, had been
permitted to celebrate. Constantine survived that solemn festival about
ten months; and at the mature age of sixty-four, after a short illness,
he ended his memorable life at the palace of Aquyrion, in the suburbs of
Nicomedia, whither he had retired for the benefit of the air, and with
the hope of recruiting his exhausted strength by the use of the warm
baths. The excessive demonstrations of grief, or at least of mourning,
surpassed whatever had been practised on any former occasion.
Notwithstanding the claims of the senate and people of ancient Rome,
the corpse of the deceased emperor, according to his last request, was
transported to the city, which was destined to preserve the name and
memory of its founder. The body of Constantine adorned with the vain
symbols of greatness, the purple and diadem, was deposited on a golden
bed in one of the apartments of the palace, which for that purpose had
been splendidly furnished and illuminated. The forms of the court were
strictly maintained. Every day, at the appointed hours, the principal
officers of the state, the army, and the household, approaching the
person of their sovereign with bended knees and a composed countenance,
offered their respectful homage as seriously as if he had been still
alive. From motives of policy, this theatrical representation was for
some time continued; nor could flattery neglect the opportunity of
remarking that Constantine alone, by the peculiar indulgence of Heaven,
had reigned after his death.

But this reign could subsist only in empty pageantry; and it was soon
discovered that the will of the most absolute monarch is seldom obeyed,
when his subjects have no longer anything to hope from his favor, or to
dread from his resentment. The same ministers and generals, who bowed
with such referential awe before the inanimate corpse of their deceased
sovereign, were engaged in secret consultations to exclude his two
nephews, Dalmatius and Hannibalianus, from the share which he had
assigned them in the succession of the empire. We are too imperfectly
acquainted with the court of Constantine to form any judgment of the
real motives which influenced the leaders of the conspiracy; unless
we shou