Book Description

Excerpt from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 4 Doubtful, the buffoons of the palace, who were lkilled in the language of fatire, tried the ethea cy of thofe arts which they had to often prae tifed with fuccefs. They eafily difcovered, that his fimplicity was not exempt from afi'eé'tation the ridiculous epithets of an hairy favage, of an ape invet'ted with the purple, were applied to the drefs and petton of the philofophic war rior and his modett difpatches were Itigmatiz ed as the vain and elaborate fictions of a loqua cions Greek, a fpeculative foldier, who had fiudied the art of waramidfl the groves of the academy The voice of malicious folly was at length filqnced by the (bouts of victory; the conqueror of the Franks and Alemanni could no longer be painted as an object of contempt and the monarch himfelf was meanly ambitious of fiealing frdm his lieutenant the honourable reward of his labours. In the letters crowned with laurel, which, according to ancient cufioin, were addrefi'ed to the provinces, the name of Julian was omitted. Confiantius had made his difpofitions in perfon; be had fignalized his valour in the foremol't ranks; bis military conduct had fecured the victory; and the captive king of the Barbarians was prefented to firm on the field of battle. From. Which he was at that time dittant above forty daysjour. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.