which, in a series of three Imperial generations,
were sanctified by time, religion, and the reverence of the people. At
the death of his father, the royal youth was in the seventeenth year of
his age; and his virtues already justified the favorable opinion of the
army and the people. But Gratian resided, without apprehension, in
the palace of Treves; whilst, at the distance of many hundred miles,
Valentinian suddenly expired in the camp of Bregetio. The passions,
which had been so long suppressed by the presence of a master,
immediately revived in the Imperial council; and the ambitious design of
reigning in the name of an infant, was artfully executed by Mellobaudes
and Equitius, who commanded the attachment of the Illyrian and Italian
bands. They contrived the most honorable pretences to remove the popular
leaders, and the troops of Gaul, who might have asserted the claims of
the lawful successor; they suggested the necessity of extinguishing the
hopes of foreign and domestic enemies, by a bold and decisive measure.
The empress Justina, who had been left in a palace about one hundred
miles from Bregetio, was respectively invited to appear in the camp,
with the son of the deceased emperor. On the sixth day after the death
of Valentinian, the infant prince of the same name, who was only four
years old, was shown, in the arms of his mother, to the legions; and
solemnly invested, by military acclamation, with the titles and ensigns
of supreme power. The impending dangers of a civil war were seasonably
prevented by the wise and moderate conduct of the emperor Gratian. He
cheerfully accepted the choice of the army; declared that he should
always consider the son of Justina as a brother, not as a rival; and
advised the empress, with her son Valentinian to fix their residence at
Milan, in the fair and peaceful province of Italy; while he assumed
the more arduous command of the countries beyond the Alps. Gratian
dissembled his resentment till he could safely punish, or disgrace,
the authors of the conspiracy; and though he uniformly behaved with
tenderness and regard to his infant colleague, he gradually confounded,
in the administration of the Western empire, the office of a guardian
with the authority of a sovereign. The government of the Roman world
was exercised in the united names of Valens and his two nephews; but
the feeble emperor of the East, who succeeded to the rank of his elder
brother, never obtained any weight or