even the forms of legal proceedings were repeatedly violated 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