most part from Eutropius and the younger Victor, two sincere
pagans, who wrote after the extinction of his family. Even
Zosimus, and the Emperor Julian, acknowledge his personal courage
and military achievements.]

Had Constantine fallen on the banks of the Tyber, or even in
the plains of Hadrianople, such is the character which, with a
few exceptions, he might have transmitted to posterity. But the
conclusion of his reign (according to the moderate and indeed
tender sentence of a writer of the same age) degraded him from
the rank which he had acquired among the most deserving of the
Roman princes. ^3 In the life of Augustus, we behold the tyrant
of the republic, converted, almost by imperceptible degrees, into
the father of his country, and of human kind. In that of
Constantine, we may contemplate a hero, who had so long inspired
his subjects with love, and his enemies with terror, degenerating
into a cruel and dissolute monarch, corrupted by his fortune, or
raised by conquest above the necessity of dissimulation. The
general peace which he maintained during the last fourteen years
of his reign, was a period of apparent splendor rather than of
real prosperity; and the old age of Constantine was disgraced by
the opposite yet reconcilable vices of rapaciousness and
prodigality. The accumulated treasures found in the palaces of
Maxentius and Licinius, were lavishly consumed; the various
innovations introduced by the conqueror, were attended with an
increasing expense; the cost of his buildings, his court, and his
festivals, required an immediate and plentiful supply; and the
oppression of the people was the only fund which could support
the magnificence of the sovereign. ^4 His unworthy favorites,
enriched by the boundless liberality of their master, usurped