tantius; and Constans
was acknowledged as the lawful sovereign of Italy, Africa, and the
Western Illyricum. The armies submitted to their hereditary right; and
they condescended, after some delay, to accept from the Roman senate the
title of Augustus. When they first assumed the reins of government, the
eldest of these princes was twenty-one, the second twenty, and the third
only seventeen, years of age.

While the martial nations of Europe followed the standards of his
brothers, Constantius, at the head of the effeminate troops of Asia,
was left to sustain the weight of the Persian war. At the decease of
Constantine, the throne of the East was filled by Sapor, son of
Hormouz, or Hormisdas, and grandson of Narses, who, after the victory
of Galerius, had humbly confessed the superiority of the Roman power.
Although Sapor was in the thirtieth year of his long reign, he was still
in the vigor of youth, as the date of his accession, by a very strange
fatality, had preceded that of his birth. The wife of Hormouz remained
pregnant at the time of her husband's death; and the uncertainty of the
sex, as well as of the event, excited the ambitious hopes of the princes
of the house of Sassan. The apprehensions of civil war were at length
removed, by the positive assurance of the Magi, that the widow of
Hormouz had conceived, and would safely produce a son. Obedient to
the voice of superstition, the Persians prepared, without delay, the
ceremony of his coronation. A royal bed, on which the queen lay in
state, was exhibited in the midst of the palace; the diadem was placed
on the spot, which might be supposed to conceal the future heir of
Artaxerxes, and the prostrate satraps adored the majesty of their
invisible and insensible sovereign. If any credit can be given to this
marvellous tale, which seems, however, to be countenanced by the manners
of the people, and by the extraordinary duration of his reign, we must
admire not only the fortune, but the genius, of Sapor. In the soft,
sequestered education of a Persian harem, the royal youth could discover
the importance of exercising the vigor of his mind and body; and, by his
personal merit, deserved a throne, on which he had been seated, while he
was yet unconscious of the duties and temptations of absolute power.
His minority was exposed to the almost inevitable calamities of domestic
discord; his capital was surprised and plundered by Thair, a powerful
king of Yemen, or Arabia; and