evaporated in idle murmurs, had not the general of the East, the
heroic Probus, boldly declared himself the avenger of the senate. The
contest, however, was still unequal; nor could the most able leader, at
the head of the effeminate troops of Egypt and Syria, encounter, with
any hopes of victory, the legions of Europe, whose irresistible strength
appeared to support the brother of Tacitus. But the fortune and activity
of Probus triumphed over every obstacle. The hardy veterans of his
rival, accustomed to cold climates, sickened and consumed away in the
sultry heats of Cilicia, where the summer proved remarkably unwholesome.
Their numbers were diminished by frequent desertion; the passes of
the mountains were feebly defended; Tarsus opened its gates; and the
soldiers of Florianus, when they had permitted him to enjoy the Imperial
title about three months, delivered the empire from civil war by the
easy sacrifice of a prince whom they despised.

The perpetual revolutions of the throne had so perfectly erased every
notion of hereditary title, that the family of an unfortunate emperor
was incapable of exciting the jealousy of his successors. The children
of Tacitus and Florianus were permitted to descend into a private
station, and to mingle with the general mass of the people. Their
poverty indeed became an additional safeguard to their innocence. When
Tacitus was elected by the senate, he resigned his ample patrimony to
the public service; an act of generosity specious in appearance, but
which evidently disclosed his intention of transmitting the empire to
his descendants. The only consolation of their fallen state was the
remembrance of transient greatness, and a distant hope, the child of a
flattering prophecy, that at the end of a thousand years, a monarch
of the race of Tacitus should arise, the protector of the senate, the
restorer of Rome, and the conqueror of the whole earth.

The peasants of Illyricum, who had already given Claudius and Aurelian
to the sinking empire, had an equal right to glory in the elevation of
Probus. Above twenty years before, the emperor Valerian, with his usual
penetration, had discovered the rising merit of the young soldier, on
whom he conferred the rank of tribune, long before the age prescribed
by the military regulations. The tribune soon justified his choice, by a
victory over a great body of Sarmatians, in which he saved the life of
a near relation of Valerian; and deserved to rece