had taken for the security of his kinsmen.]
[Footnote *: 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 superstition and resentment,
stigmatizes these unnatural alliances between his own cousins
with the opprobrious epithet (Orat. vii. p. 228.). The
jurisprudence of the canons has since received and enforced this
prohibition, without being able to introduce it either into the
civil or the common law of Europe. See on the subject of these
marriages, Taylor's Civil Law, p. 331. Brouer de Jure Connub. l.
ii. c. 12. Hericourt des Loix Ecclesiastiques, part iii. c. 5.
Fleury, Institutions du Droit Canonique, tom. i. p. 331. Paris,
1767, and Fra Paolo, Istoria del Concilio Trident, l. viii.]

[Footnote 52: Julian (ad S. P.. Q. Athen. p. 270) charges his
cousin Constantius with the whole guilt of a massacre, from which
he himself so narrowly escaped. His assertion is confirmed by
Athanasius, who, for reasons of a very different nature, was not
less an enemy of Constantius, (tom. i. p. 856.) Zosimus joins in
the same accusation. But the three abbreviators, Eutropius and
the Victors, use very qualifying expressions: "sinente potius