nded to take his seat in council; but his first step was to
signify a concise and haughty mandate, importing that the Caesar should
immediately repair to Italy, and threatening that he himself would
punish his delay or hesitation, by suspending the usual allowance of his
household. The nephew and daughter of Constantine, who could ill brook
the insolence of a subject, expressed their resentment by instantly
delivering Domitian to the custody of a guard. The quarrel still
admitted of some terms of accommodation. They were rendered
impracticable by the imprudent behavior of Montius, a statesman whose
arts and experience were frequently betrayed by the levity of his
disposition. The quaestor reproached Gallus in a haughty language, that
a prince who was scarcely authorized to remove a municipal magistrate,
should presume to imprison a Praetorian praefect; convoked a meeting of
the civil and military officers; and required them, in the name of their
sovereign, to defend the person and dignity of his representatives.
By this rash declaration of war, the impatient temper of Gallus was
provoked to embrace the most desperate counsels. He ordered his
guards to stand to their arms, assembled the populace of Antioch,
and recommended to their zeal the care of his safety and revenge. His
commands were too fatally obeyed. They rudely seized the praefect and
the quaestor, and tying their legs together with ropes, they dragged
them through the streets of the city, inflicted a thousand insults and a
thousand wounds on these unhappy victims, and at last precipitated their
mangled and lifeless bodies into the stream of the Orontes.

After such a deed, whatever might have been the designs of Gallus, it
was only in a field of battle that he could assert his innocence with
any hope of success. But the mind of that prince was formed of an equal
mixture of violence and weakness. Instead of assuming the title of
Augustus, instead of employing in his defence the troops and treasures
of the East, he suffered himself to be deceived by the affected
tranquillity of Constantius, who, leaving him the vain pageantry of a
court, imperceptibly recalled the veteran legions from the provinces
of Asia. But as it still appeared dangerous to arrest Gallus in his
capital, the slow and safer arts of dissimulation were practised with
success. The frequent and pressing epistles of Constantius were filled
with professions of confidence and friendship; exhorting the