od to Constantius; no untimely accident cut him off
unbaptized; his plan worked excellently, and providing an Arian
heretic may go to heaven, in heaven he is to this day, singing
his Alleluias with the best of them,--and perhaps between whiles
arguing it out with the various uncles and cousins he murdered.

Meanwhile, however, priests and bishops are the great men of his
empire; and they enjoy immunities from duties and taxation to an
extent that throws the whole rational order of government out of
gear. Thus, for example, the upkeep of the great roads and posts
system,--the lines of communication,--falls upon a certain class
called the Decurions, who in each district at their own expense
have to maintain all in order. But churchmen,--an enormous class
now,--are immune from the decurionship; and are allowed further
the use of the post-horses and inns free of cost;--with the
result that, practically speaking, no one else can use them at
all. Because these churchmen are forever hurrying hither and
thither to conference, council, or synod; there each sect,--
Arian and Athanasian chiefly,--to damn to eternal perdition (and
temporal excommunication when possible) the vile heretics of the
other: Homoiousian to thunder against Homoousian, Homoousian
against Homoiousian: _Arius contra Athanasium,_ and _Athanasius
contra mundum:_--till the air of the whole Roman world is thick
with the fumes of brimstone and the stench of the Nether Pit.
Taxation, on those left to tax, falls an intolerable burden;
--we have seen how Shah Sapor is dealing with one end of the
empire;--at the other end, in Gaul, one Magnentius rose against
Constantius, and the latter thoughtfully invited in the Germans
to put him down and help themselves to what they found handy;--
and a certain Chnodomar, a king in those trans-Rhenish regions,
has taken him much at his word. Result: a strip forty miles
wide along the left bank of the Rhine from source to mouth has
been conquered and annexed; three times as much this side is a
perfectly desolate No-man's land; forty-five important cities,
including Cologne and Strasbourg, have been reduced to ashes,
with innumerable smaller towns and villages; all open towns in
north-eastern Gaul have been abandoned; the people of the walled
cities are starving on what corn they can grow on vacant corner
lots and in their own back-gardens; hundreds of thousands have
been killed out, or carried off into slavery in Germany; a