ted in a promiscuous massacre; which
involved the two uncles of Constantius, seven of his cousins, of whom
Dalmatius and Hannibalianus were the most illustrious, the Patrician
Optatus, who had married a sister of the late emperor, and the Praefect
Ablavius, whose power and riches had inspired him with some hopes of
obtaining the purple. If it were necessary to aggravate the horrors of
this bloody scene, we might add, that Constantius himself had espoused
the daughter of his uncle Julius, and that he had bestowed his sister in
marriage on his cousin Hannibalianus. These alliances, which the policy
of Constantine, regardless of the public prejudice, [51] had formed
between the several branches of the Imperial house, served only to
convince mankind, that these princes were as cold to the endearments
of conjugal affection, as they were insensible to the ties of
consanguinity, and the moving entreaties of youth and innocence. Of so
numerous a family, Gallus and Julian alone, the two youngest children
of Julius Constantius, were saved from the hands of the assassins, till
their rage, satiated with slaughter, had in some measure subsided. The
emperor Constantius, who, in the absence of his brothers, was the most
obnoxious to guilt and reproach, discovered, on some future occasions,
a faint and transient remorse for those cruelties which the perfidious
counsels of his ministers, and the irresistible violence of the troops,
had extorted from his unexperienced youth. [52]

[Footnote 50: I have related this singular anecdote on the authority
of Philostorgius, l. ii. c. 16. But if such a pretext was ever used by
Constantius and his adherents, it was laid aside with contempt, as
soon as it served their immediate purpose. Athanasius (tom. i. p. 856)
mention the oath which Constantius had taken for the security of his
kinsmen. ----The authority of Philostorgius is so suspicious, as not to
be sufficient to establish this fact, which Gibbon has inserted in his
history as certain, while in the note he appears to doubt it.--G.]

[Footnote 51: Conjugia sobrinarum diu ignorata, tempore addito
percrebuisse. Tacit. Annal. xii. 6, and Lipsius ad loc. The repeal
of the ancient law, and the practice of five hundred years, were
insufficient to eradicate the prejudices of the Romans, who still
considered the marriages of cousins-german as a species of imperfect
incest. (Augustin de Civitate Dei, xv. 6;) and Julian, whose mind was
biased by supers